Interesting, that's not my experience at all. So they are doing something different for you and/or your IP address vs. mine.

For sure, this is why my original comment said "make your identity legible to Google". They're apparently happy enough with the identity signal of your specific IP, but they most certainly no longer allow general anonymous access. Reddit has not been generally publicly accessible for quite some time, and imgur even longer. Reddit at least still seems to work through TOR (no idea about imgur or Youtube).

The "AI" bot scare has really kicked the surveillance lockdown into overdrive. These days I get hassled merely trying to browse online stores. Like their goal is to advertise and sell things - yet they somehow care if it's "to a bot" ? rolls eyes.