YouTube is one of the largest video platforms on the internet, with over 2 billion monthly logged-in users. With this huge amount of data, it's understandable why developers may want to collect or "scrape" YouTube data for their own applications and analysis. However, YouTube's terms of service strictly limit how their platform can be used. So does YouTube allow web scraping at all?
The short answer is yes, but with significant restrictions. YouTube's terms of service prohibit scraping or otherwise accessing their data in an automated way without explicit permission. However, they do allow limited scraping for non-commercial personal use cases like academic research.
Here are some best practices to follow:
Overall YouTube aims to enable developers through their API while restricting large-scale automated scraping. By following these best practices and respecting their terms, personal small-scale scraping appears to be tolerated. However if collecting data for commercial applications, use of the YouTube API is a must for respecting their platform and user data.