YouTube Is Cracking Down on Cheap Premium Plans Bought With a VPN (pcmag.com) 118
An anonymous reader shares a report: YouTube Premium subscribers who use VPNs are reporting that their plans are being automatically canceled by the Google-owned company, according to multiple subscribers who have posted screenshots and descriptions of the issue on Reddit.
A Google support representative confirmed to PCMag that YouTube has started a crackdown. "YouTube has initiated the cancellation of premium memberships for accounts identified as having falsified signup country information," the Google support agent said via chat message. "Due to violating YouTube's Paid Terms of Service, these users will receive an email and an in-app notification informing them of the cancellation."
A Google support representative confirmed to PCMag that YouTube has started a crackdown. "YouTube has initiated the cancellation of premium memberships for accounts identified as having falsified signup country information," the Google support agent said via chat message. "Due to violating YouTube's Paid Terms of Service, these users will receive an email and an in-app notification informing them of the cancellation."
YouTube Premium is too expensive (Score:5, Interesting)
YouTube has made its premium service offering too expensive for my pocketbook. I just want to pay for ad-free viewing -- which is a bit of a misnomer anyway, because you still see ads made by the channels. I neither want nor need access to their Music Library or TV shows. The reason I never signed up for cable in the first place is because I don't like paying for things I don't use.
Get with the program, Google. Just give us an ad-free offering and you won't need to worry so much about VPN thieves.
Re:YouTube Premium is too expensive (Score:5, Interesting)
What Google really want is to get rid of YouTube and get paid premium for it - so they want to show a high profit in order to get good bids. Increase the profit and cut the costs and the company valuing algorithms will make the stock value soar.
Then sell an expensive shell and the buyer will discover it has been gutted. This is way too common.
Re:YouTube Premium is too expensive - gone (Score:3)
I can't think of the last time I watched YouTube.
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Re: YouTube Premium is too expensive - gone (Score:2)
No, shell is $ or #. Not /.
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If ads are that amazingly valuable, then I want Google to PAY ME to watch them!
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Somewhat. If all of their customers were paying that they probably wouldn't stay afloat.
The reality is that to some degree customers in the richer countries subsidize the service for the service in poorer countries.
If they truly charged what they needed to to everyone to keep it afloat though they'd get zero subscriptions from those poor countries (since they can't afford it) so by charging the rich countries more and just charging the poorer countries and arbitrary low price they at least get some revenue
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Re:YouTube Premium is too expensive (Score:4, Informative)
You can use SponsorBlock to remove in-video ads and other time-wasting like recaps and "like and subscribe". There is also DeArrow which replaces clickbait titles and thumbnails with good ones.
Of course if you pay for YouTube Premium you get none of those premium features. As you say, all you get is crap you don't want like YouTube Music.
Google's other services aren't particularly attractively priced either, like Google One or whatever it's called now.
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SponsorBlock probably won't work with Youtube ads injected into the video, though.
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No you can't. Sponsorblock themselves have said it will be impossible for their system to block ads correctly since their system relies on timestamping, and youtube's trial of ad injection creates completely variable timestamp offsets in videos.
Not only can Sponsorblock not block the youtube ads, when a video features an ad it will not be able to block a sponsored segment either. Go follow their twitter feed for an update on the issue. Currently outlook is bleak.
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That's right now. But I'm sure SponsorBlock w
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AdBlock Plus still works fairly well, and if it doesn't, just open the link in an incognito window or in another browser where you are not signed in to youtube.
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Get with the program, Google. Just give us an ad-free offering and you won't need to worry so much about VPN thieves.
Im a bit confused by your request. YouTube Premium IS the ad-free offering.
My understanding of the reason you would use a VPN with YouTube Premium is the same reason you use a VPN with Netflix; to get access to content only licensed for specific global catalogs. Isn’t Google doing this to comply with the restrictions they agreed to? What does that have to do with ads?
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Their Premium offer is ad-free PLUS music, PLUS TV. I just want the one, not the others.
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Their Premium offer is ad-free PLUS music, PLUS TV. I just want the one, not the others.
At least for the US, it appears their “Premium” offering starts at $13.99/month and only includes ad-free YouTube and YouTube Music. No live TV or “cable” like package is included with that.
https://www.youtube.com/premiu... [youtube.com]
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You're not going to save much.
The reality is that most of the revenue that you're replacing is coming from the ads being removed, not covering the music and and video services.
If they offered a "just remove the ads" option it would probably be 90-95% of what the current cost is.
Re:YouTube Premium is too expensive [& extorti (Score:1)
Nice FP and you covered a lot of the key issues. However I think you left out the extortion aspect. Two many of the ads I see on YouTube (while waiting for the 5-second dismissal click) do not make any sense as advertising. They are obvious scams, personally offensive, both, or worse and the only explanation that makes sense is the EVIL folks running YouTube are trying to sell Premium by extorting people to pay to make the worst of the ads go away. (And you already noted that the in-content ads remain.)
But
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https://sponsor.ajay.app/ [ajay.app]
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The Music seems good, we migrated off of Spotify because my kids complained that some amount of Kpop and Jpop were always missing (and YT Music seems more popular than Spotify among the kids here.)
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Re:YouTube Premium is too expensive (Score:5, Interesting)
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This is going to suck, too. And I'm not totally against ads. I would pay a reasonable price for just youtube, but I'm like the parent poster here, I AM NOT GOING TO PAY FOR ANYTHING THAT INCLUDES A MUSIC subscription, because I'll never listen to it. Youtube premium lite is exactly what I would pay for:
https://www.theverge.com/2021/... [theverge.com]
Re: YouTube Premium is too expensive (Score:2)
The only reason I don't pay for YouTube premium is because I really don't want to log in. I just don't like the way their suggestion algorithms work. If you're bored and just watch one mindless crap video, then google just starts autoplaying them nonstop.
Re: YouTube Premium is too expensive (Score:2)
If you log in, it remembers your autoplay preference and doesn't do that.
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I logged in because it was terrible at recommendations. And absolutely would not recommend the next video in a long sequential playlist. After logging in, I found out that Youtube still will not recommend the next video in a long sequential play list. But logging in allows me to more quickly head to subscribers's channel to laboriously search for it (easier on PC, awful with a remote control).
At thing point my habit is to put every video I want onto the "watch later" list, even while I am watching it. T
Re: YouTube Premium is too expensive (Score:2)
I, too, have been forced to rely on constant adding/removing Watch Later.
And they want money for this crap? Not gonna happen. Build a good product first, then come talk to me about money.
Re: YouTube Premium is too expensive (Score:2)
It's not autoplay I don't like, it's the crappy suggestion algorithm. That and the whole privacy thing.
Re:YouTube Premium is too expensive (Score:4, Interesting)
This is going to suck, too. And I'm not totally against ads. I would pay a reasonable price for just youtube, but I'm like the parent poster here, I AM NOT GOING TO PAY FOR ANYTHING THAT INCLUDES A MUSIC subscription, because I'll never listen to it. Youtube premium lite is exactly what I would pay for:
https://www.theverge.com/2021/... [theverge.com]
That's something I'd pay for, too, but not at that price. At that price, given my average amount of YouTube viewing, I'd be paying a dollar per skipped ad. What I want is to take part in the advertising auction process. I specify how much I'm willing to pay to not see an ad on a per-ad basis, and assuming my bid is higher than the highest person bidding for my eyes, YouTube would charge me what the advertiser would have paid, and I don't see the ad.
And I'd like that to be available from every ad network so that I can bid to not see Facebook ads, Google/AdSense ads, etc. Give me the ad-free web for exactly as much money as it is worth to the ad companies. And if too many people participate and companies start realizing that not enough people are seeing ads, they'll up the amount that they bid per ad, and content creators will get more money and content quality will maybe improve. Either way, it's a win-win.
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I hope they roll this out. These companies seem to think that shoveling more stuff into an offer makes us think it's worth more, but we actually evaluate the utility of each feature.
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They are constantly changing their ads, even if you don't block. The 1 or 2 ads that you can skip after 5 seconds are rarer now. I've seen the 30 second mandatory set of ads; the 5-seconds to skip that immediatley goes to a 20-seconds to skip, without no chance to actually skip in between. They absolutely are experimenting to find the most painful ad viewing process possible.
Re: YouTube Premium is too expensive (Score:2)
Use sponsorblock.
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Nope, quite the opposite. SponsorBlock (which I use as well) is disabled on videos with in-steam advertisements because those advertisements are of random length which breaks the sponsorblock timestamping system. Not only can it not block ads accurately, when ads are displayed it no longer blocks sponsors either. Check our their twitter feed for more info - they are posting a lot about problems with this.
Youtube has gotten too big to fail (Score:5, Insightful)
inadequate competition (Score:3)
Any time you see market segmentation even attempted, you can bet that the market has faioled, often due to inadequate competition.
If a company is able to profit from selling their product for x dollars in country A, they can profitably sell for x dollars everywhere. So when they want 5x dollars in country B, even if you are willing to pick the product up in country A, it's just gouging because they believe they can.
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In this case, it fails due to network effect. The site that can aggregate more information wins over all competitors as customers only use one. In order for another site to compete, all the users who generate content would need to be uploading to all the competitors every time they upload to YouTube. That ain't going to happen. It's not a market failure in the classic sense of having driven out all competitors. Instead, it's a case for making YouTube into a regulated monopoly utility.
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In order for another site to compete, all the users who generate content would need to be uploading to all the competitors every time they upload to YouTube.
That is a fairly easy, technologically solvable problem: make a website that uploads a posting to multiple video sites. The problem is that YouTube will fight the website and win, because our lawmakers won't tolerate an even playing field. The problem is political rather than technological.
Re: inadequate competition (Score:2)
A website that uploaded to all would require the same government regulation or else YouTube would simply change their upload APIs regularly.
Re: inadequate competition (Score:2)
Those exist but are used by a vanishingly small subset of uploaders. If it became nearly all content going everywhere, then Iâ(TM)d expect Google to react.
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so, insulin?
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That would be one example of many.
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Possibly, rental expenses are higher in country B.
When dealing with software, a company sells an exclusive license to country B, who is then a monopoly and thus can charge any price it desires.
With industry-level software, customers were flying to country A, buying the software, then flying home cheaper than the cost of software in country B. The customers just have to get their product support from country A, during that country's business-hours.
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In this case, through the power of a VPN tunnel, the customers in B are picking the product up in country A and the company is working to stop them.
Refunds? (Score:2)
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It's not so straightforward when you made the purchase fraudulently.
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You're free to give your political support to a ban on corporations "taking advantage of cheap overseas services for labor".
I guess you could also try to make it legal to lie to a company about where you live to buy something from them--good luck with that.
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I guarantee the EULA you signed allows cancellation at any time without refund.
it's broken and they like it that way (Score:2)
The whole concept of "region locking" and pricing of goods differently in different markets underscores the practice of "pricing based on what they're willing to pay" rather than "pricing based on what the product is actually worth". It's 100% predatory on the consumer. I'd file it right along side early-termination fees and carrer-locking.
But since it's propping up their profit margins, we'll probably never see it go away. I'm sure they're crying about how they need to rely on these predatory behaviors
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The whole concept of "region locking" and pricing of goods differently in different markets underscores the practice of "pricing based on what they're willing to pay" rather than "pricing based on what the product is actually worth". It's 100% predatory on the consumer. I'd file it right along side early-termination fees and carrer-locking.
But since it's propping up their profit margins, we'll probably never see it go away. I'm sure they're crying about how they need to rely on these predatory behaviors to stay in business (they don't), but I'd simply reply that if your business model relies on predatory behavior, your business model is broken and it's not my job to fund your problem. (and you deserve to go bankrupt)
Figure out an honest way to run your business or go away.
Predatory behavior is built into our capitalist system, 100% through and through. In fact, it's encouraged and lauded by our government. Anything that drives profits upward is positive. Anything that brings them down, even if they're already soaring far over reality, is bad. Note, there are no exceptions to these rules. It's not, "anything except for predatory behavior," no. It's literally "anything." Period. Full stop. Money to be made is considered by these larger corporations as theirs by right. And we a
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Yes of course, profits are taxed.
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LOL
Re:it's broken and they like it that way (Score:4, Insightful)
"The whole concept of "region locking" and pricing of goods differently in different markets underscores the practice of "pricing based on what they're willing to pay" rather than "pricing based on what the product is actually worth".
What the customer is willing to pay *is* what the product is actually worth. There is no other meaningful metric.
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You are absolutely right but unfortunately we created barriers that force price manipulation such as copyright, patents, DRM, etc.... Eliminate the artificial barriers and let the customer pay.
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Unions, occupational safety, minimum wage....
One of the reasons for charging less in some places and more in others is that it costs less to do business there. A big mac costs $5.29 in New York and $2.68 in Turkey because of how much it costs to make and serve it. It's not as simple as "capitalism == predatory."
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If you don't like paying $5.29 in New York nothing stops you from going to Turkey to $2.68. That can't be said for the artificial barriers.
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If you don't like paying $5.29 in New York nothing stops you from going to Turkey to $2.68. That can't be said for the artificial barriers.
Well, if you want cheap YouTube Premium nothing stops you from going to the country where it's cheap.
Re: it's broken and they like it that way (Score:2)
And thanks to the power of VPN, I have.
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There are in fact quite a few things that may stop you from doing that.
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they actually have their traffic routed to Turkey. otherwise it is the same dataset on the same servers being accessed by the same gateway.
NeXT you will try to defend the pharma price gouging?
Re:it's broken and they like it that way (Score:4, Insightful)
What the customer is willing to pay is meaningful as a ceiling value as what it costs to produce is a meaningful floor value. But markets are a key feature of Capitalism and a functional market drives price towards the floor value. Wherever that doesn't happen, it's because the market has failed. There are an awful lot of failed markets in our modern economy. Government regulation in a capitalist system is supposed to prevent market failures. It too has failed. Given that, perhaps Capitalism is a good system, we might should try it.
The reason we see more and more people (especially younger generations) calling for socialism is that they have been brainwashed their entire lives to believe the steaming pile we have now is actually Capitalism and they can see that it isn't working.
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Also ad impressions in (for example) Turkey are probably worth less than in the United States. It would cost Google a lot more ad revenue to allow American viewers to skip ads as opposed to Turkish viewers.
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OTOH, it is apparently profitable to serve videos with ads in Turkey. With adequate competition, a comparable service (or several) would charge less for ad-free videos in the U.S. driving the price down.
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That is also a logical conclusion. Google certainly could charge less to American customers. They don't have enough legit competition to undercut them so we may never find out.
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That isn't "insightful", but economically illiterate!
For a trivial example, consider something with a billion dollar fixed cost and nominal marginal cost.
In Rich Country (RC), peak revenue would be the ten million people would buy at $90, or $.9B.
If RC was the only market, this wouldn't reach market.
But add Poor Country (PC), where peak revenue would be at $15, for ten million people.
If you can sell for $90 in RC and $15 in PC, there's $1.05b in revenue, enough that it get produced.
If you have to sell for t
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The problem shows when next year, after that fixed cost has been paid, the widget is STILL priced at $90 in the wealthy country because the market is broken.
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when we simplify like this, we're including the the present value of all future sales, not using annual sales.
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These days the financial sector doesn't like to even wait 5 years to reach payback, much less the better part of a product's useful life. It's a hard sell even with government guarantees and subsidies.
That assumes the product or service is amenable to a decent estimate of all future sales.
More often, estimates and computations are done to a particular time horizon.
There are many products that have reached payback of their investment that don't come down in price in the slightest, the reason is lack of any m
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Re: it's broken and they like it that way (Score:2)
What the customer is willing to pay *is* what the product is actually worth. There is no other meaningful metric.
Sure there are other meaningful metrics. Until quite recently shops didn't display price tags, and instead they shop clerks would haggle with each individual customer to get them to pay as much as they were willing.
In the 1800s the Quakers, feeling this was immoral, started a movement to have fixed prices displayed on labels so that everyone paid the same price. I think I heard that the origin of this moral stance was something in the Bible about "an honest day's wage for an honest day's work" but am not su
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"... product is actually worth"
A product is worth something because it is cheaper than the alternative.
If I can hire 1,000 monkeys cheaper than I can buy a PC and office-suite software, the computer manufacturer and software developer aren't making a sale. It's difficult for computers to be sold cheaply because it's mostly, variable costs. But software is mostly a fixed (sunk) cost, so the developer can reduce the price and increase consumption. This new price allows the activity of arbitrage. That's bad for the developer because pe
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This is why both it seems Capitalism both works and doesn't work. Disney wants
Re:it's broken and they like it that way (Score:4, Insightful)
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a large part of it is it's a relatively new technology. In the past you didn't really have any ability to control how someone used your product after they bought it and left with it. The laws haven't kept up with the technology. And worse still, some of the NEW laws are working for the new wealthy tech groups instead of the public as they should be.
And that's why we have so many contradictory laws on the books like laws that say you are legally allowed to make a backup, but at the same time if we go to A
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I think a basic tenet there is that if a work is available in one jurisdiction, it can be moved to another.
Where did you get this idea from? There's nothing of the sort in the Berne convention. In fact there's a specific carve out for developing nations to under some circumstances bypass restrictions from content in other countries. That along with the careful definition of country of origin should be indication enough that there's no implication in the Berne convention that you can use your material anywhere.
In fact, the right to control reproduction, broadcast and public performance is expressly listed in the
What a greedy little entropy toilet Google is now. (Score:5, Funny)
Google in 2024: (ritually stomps on effigies of 2005 Google while chanting Satanic liturgy)
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Google in 2005: "Don't be evil." Google in 2024: (ritually stomps on effigies of 2005 Google while chanting Satanic liturgy)
If a few dollars per month regional difference in price for unlimited entertainment is what constitutes "evil" today, the world must be doing great!
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Wow (Score:2)
YouTube is really trying to drive everyone away from them.....
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So what? (Score:2)
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This appears to be a case of Google being sloppy and not only using the apparent IP address as the customer's location but accepting payment cards from anywhere. That's probably a great way to get indicted for money laundering. The reddit thread suggests they've smartened up and now want your payment card to be registered to an actual address.
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you can register a giftcard to any address
In short (Score:1)
They're going to cram down their theft of screen real estate and processor power to make us watch their shitty forced advertising.
Fine. YouTube can fuck right the hell off.
Start of a doom spiral? (Score:2)
Question is, is that a thing that will happen here?
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At least they tried (Score:2)
It is a tough lesson but they will just have to get used to using the VPN for what everyone else does - free stuff. Tell em Google sent ya.
How long (Score:1)
do we have to subsize the rest of the world? Even for entertainment?
Oh well (Score:2)
I am one of the culprits. I signed up for YouTube Premium using a VPN. I guess the jig is up. Was bound to happen sooner or later.
And no, I will not complain that Google is being evil in this instance. They are not. I know the rules. Pricing is clear. I don't have to buy the service if I don't want it.
Yet Quack Cure Ads Continue (Score:2)
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Like all the streaming services, YouTube's premium service has to follow all the country-specific rules.
If they find out you're watching a show in a country they don't have the right to stream it to, they have a legal liability.
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Except they're streaming to whenever the VPN is. It is the VPN provider that is sending the video elsewhere.
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That's not a loophole.