How to Control, Disable, or Block YouTube Shorts on FortiGate?

[emar]

Hi all,

I manage a network with FortiGate firewalls running firmware versions 7.0.15 and 7.4.4. I have attempted several methods to block access to YouTube Shorts:

• Used youtube.com/shorts, youtube.com/shorts*, youtube.com/shorts*. *.youtube.com/shorts*, and *youtube.com/shorts* with wildcards in both Content and URL Filters.
• Attempted to block *.shorts* in the DNS filter.

Despite these efforts, I can still not effectively block YouTube Shorts content. What is the recommended and most effective approach to achieving this using both URL and Content Filters, ensuring that only YouTube Shorts content is blocked without impacting other aspects of YouTube usage? Any detailed guidance or specific configuration examples would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you in advance for your assistance!

[AEK]

Hi Emar

Video filter requires deep inspection. You can start here:

https://docs.fortinet.com/document/fortigate/7.4.4/administration-guide/553495/video-filter

Hope it helps.

[emar]

Hi AEK, 

Thanks for the suggestion. However, I am specifically looking to block YouTube Shorts, not entire channels or other video content. Do you have any guidance on how to achieve this?

[Ashishdeep]

Hi,

Can you try creating a static url entry for URL 'youtube.com/shorts' and set it to block in the webfilter profile.

There are not official Fortinet documents or KBs that could lead us to blocking Youtube shorts while allowing the Youtube service.

[emar]

Dear Ashishdeep,

Thank you for your suggestion. I tried creating a static URL entry for youtube shorts and set it to block in the web filter profile. Unfortunately, even with various configurations like flow-based, proxy-based, and with SSL deep inspection, it didn't achieve the desired result.

Blocking YouTube Shorts while allowing other YouTube content is proving to be quite challenging. It seems that more granular control is required, possibly at the application level rather than just URL filtering.

If you have any other suggestions or if there's an updated method to address this issue, I would greatly appreciate your input.

Thank you for your assistance!

[GGiampaoli]

Hi,

I was able to implement a video filter that blocks all of YouTube except for one single channel (the customer’s channel).

However, I’ve noticed that while it works fine, the video filter doesn’t block YouTube Shorts. It seems that Shorts are somehow treated differently from regular videos.

Any idea why this might be?

Regards,