So, a little background info, for those who may not know, I am from China but I am liberal and I only like western video games, music, TV and movies etc. (primarily in English).
And I use VPNs to bypass the GFW to access international internet.
So I noticed today that I can't access some YouTube videos because the videos are region restricted. Such as Beyonce - I Was Here, it wasn't made available in the Hong Kong region. And I usually use Hong Kong servers because they have the lowest ping.
I at first theorized that YouTube uses my public IP address to apply regional restrictions, that was a reasonable assumption and it now appears to be indeed the case, but this isn't the full picture.
I switched to servers from a bunch of different countries, Taiwan, Singapore, Japan, United States, etc… Each time after the switch, I immediately refreshed the page (video linked above), but it doesn't lift the restriction.
I thought maybe somehow the servers are all inside Hong Kong and I have been lied to.
Okay, I tried to use another browser to open the same page, just to see what happens. I used Chrome, and suddenly the superscript has become JP and I could watch the video again. How could it be? I immediately switched back to Firefox and refreshed. Nope, I still can't watch the video on Firefox.
I then tried to check my public IP address:
They all showed the same IP, this means the VPN provider wasn't lying. But how could YouTube geolocate me as in Hong Kong when my public IP says that I am in Japan? It then dawned on me that YouTube must had somehow remembered my past GeoIP results and used it to apply regional restrictions instead of current GeoIP result.
So I opened DevTools and went to Storage tab, and I deleted everything in Session Storage, Local Storage and then I logged out, and deleted all the cookies. Then I logged in, and nope, the problem persists. I still can't access that video in regular Firefox (I mainly use Firefox).
I did this a bunch of times, just to make sure. It didn't work.
Maybe the GeoIP result is tied to my account? To test this, I opened a private Firefox window, went to youtube.com, the region I saw is JP, as expected. I then proceeded to login, but interestingly, the notification on my phone said that I logged in from Japan. And then…
The region is still JP and I can watch the linked video.
All my hypotheses seemed to have been proven wrong, YouTube somehow seemed to be able to remember my GeoIP result without storing anything on my computer.
But then, sometime later, the problem inexplicably solved itself, on the Firefox session with regular profile, after refreshing the region suddenly changed to JP and I could watch the linked video again.
How can I solve this problem and make YouTube not to remember my past geolocation? I of course can use a private window but I don't want to always go through login every time. And I have to switch servers regularly because reasons and Hong Kong servers are the most reliable, so if YouTube happens to remember Hong Kong as my geolocation I may run out of browsers to circumvent the regional restriction.
Proof:
At time of first image, in a Firefox session with the primary profile, I had connected to a Japan VPN server and I could watch the video.
I then closed Firefox (to prevent YouTube from remembering my Hong Kong Geolocation) and Chrome, I opened a new Chrome window, went to the link, I could watch the video as the region is JP. I then switched to a Hong Kong server and reloaded the page, I immediately couldn't watch the video.
Then I switched back to a Japan server and reloaded the page, the region restriction still applies and I still can't watch the video, even though my public IP is from Japan.
