I notice that Norton Safeweb declares
Norton Safe Web provides protection from online threats while you browse the web.
Is that an alternative to VPN?
Norton Safe Web helps you surf, search and shop more safely online. It analyzes websites that you visit and helps detect if there are any viruses, spyware, malware, or other online threats.
Based on the analysis, Norton Safe Web provides safety ratings for websites, before you visit them. Now, Norton Safe Web has new features to help protect in new ways. Read on to learn more. [...]
When you connect to a VPN, your browsing activity appears to come from the IP address of the VPN server rather than your own. Your browsing activity is also encrypted, so the data sent and received in your online activity is encoded.
John. Gnerally, YouTube doesn't refute the use of a VPN. However. The issue may well be, that YouTube detects the "physical" location of the VPN server location you are using, finding its different from your originating IP / GEO location. Set the VPN to the country you are in or nearest one and retest.
Many web sites do not allow access from known VPN IP addresses. They do this for copyright, legal, security, and political reasons. There is nothing a VPN provider can or should do to circumvent these legal protections. See this How to Geeks article. https://www.howtogeek.com/403771/why-do-some-websites-block-vpns/
So the changes you are seeing are not related to the VPN service. The sites you used to be able to view seem to have changed their access to users with VPN active. Check with the sites support to see if this is what has happened.
