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YouTube Is Cracking Down on Cheap Premium Plans Bought With a VPN (pcmag.com) 118

Posted by msmash from the catch-me-if-you-can dept.
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."
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YouTube Is Cracking Down on Cheap Premium Plans Bought With a VPN More

YouTube Is Cracking Down on Cheap Premium Plans Bought With a VPN

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  • YouTube Premium is too expensive (Score:5, Interesting)

    by davide marney ( 231845 ) on Thursday June 20, 2024 @09:06AM (#64563739) Journal

    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)

      by Z00L00K ( 682162 ) on Thursday June 20, 2024 @09:19AM (#64563801) Homepage Journal

      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: (Score:2)

      by CEC-P ( 10248912 )
      And keep in mind, they can run it in some random semi-developed country and still make a profit. So whatever you're paying, that's not an operating loss for them. They just see it as lost revenue but totally proved that they can operate at that income level.

      • 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

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by keltor ( 99721 ) *
        There's the operational cost of the service, then there's what they can charge for ads. The ad in India costs much less than the ad in the US, so they US people pay more, plus likely they pay a higher portion of the cost to operate since ultimately, they have more disposable income and can easy bare a higher cost.

    • Re:YouTube Premium is too expensive (Score:4, Informative)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Thursday June 20, 2024 @09:31AM (#64563855) Homepage Journal

      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.

      • SponsorBlock probably won't work with Youtube ads injected into the video, though.

      • 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.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

          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.

          That's right now. But I'm sure SponsorBlock w

    • 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.

    • 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?

      • Their Premium offer is ad-free PLUS music, PLUS TV. I just want the one, not the others.

        • 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]

    • 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.

    • 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

    • > which is a bit of a misnomer anyway, because you still see ads made by the channels.

      https://sponsor.ajay.app/ [ajay.app]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by keltor ( 99721 ) *
      The TV is a different subscription though right?

      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.)
    • However the execs want to tell Wall street of their reach, and like Netflix, love the numbers of Indian consumers, and even poorer countries.

  • Youtube has gotten too big to fail (Score:5, Insightful)

    by xack ( 5304745 ) on Thursday June 20, 2024 @09:17AM (#64563791)
    Google knows they are the world's VCR now and any competitors get disparged as "nazi video sites". Archive.org is being ddosed by both technical and legal means, Wikimedia Commons is only useful for old public domain stuff and Most other video sites have drm and ad blocker blockers as well. The whole hype around HTML5 was that anyone could share a video with a simple video tag, but too many conflicts of interest in codec wars made it unviable.

  • inadequate competition (Score:3)

    by sjames ( 1099 ) on Thursday June 20, 2024 @09:23AM (#64563819) Homepage Journal

    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.

    • 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.

      • 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.

    • so, insulin?

    • ... want 5x dollars in country B ...

      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.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by sjames ( 1099 )

        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.

  • So you paid for something that was taken from you by the seller after you bought it... You need to ask to be refunded. If they refuse, tell your bank to chargeback that payment.

    • It's not so straightforward when you made the purchase fraudulently.

      • Right. When corporations take advantage of cheap overseas services for labor it's considered being business savvy but when consumers attempt to take advantage of cheap overseas services it's called "fraud". Funny how that works.

        • 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.

      • Yeah, how dare those filthy people in whatever country pay for YouTube premium! They should exist only to get exploited by America for their resources and get no benefits or shit benefits at best in return. /sarcasm
    • Does one really care that much about the 29.99 Turkish Lira ($1.23 USD) paid to get YouTube premium via a Turkish IP address?

    • I guarantee the EULA you signed allows cancellation at any time without refund.

  • 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

    • Frictionless of the internet cuts both ways as google has discovered. Imagine them clammering for a giant firewall like china has for every country to increase the friction and protect their profits? Not likely. But maybe at some point in the future there will be country specific internets with tariff/customs walls at the borders. Those customs offices in large part make it possible for the 10 dollar US CD versus the 10c one in India. Not the net that was imagined by the early creators, but I could see it h

    • 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

    • Re:it's broken and they like it that way (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Chris Mattern ( 191822 ) on Thursday June 20, 2024 @09:55AM (#64563953)

      "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.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by MeNeXT ( 200840 )

        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.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

          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."

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by MeNeXT ( 200840 )

            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.

            • 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: (Score:2)

              by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

              There are in fact quite a few things that may stop you from doing that.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by zlives ( 2009072 )

              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)

        by sjames ( 1099 ) on Thursday June 20, 2024 @10:25AM (#64564091) Homepage Journal

        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.

        • 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.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by sjames ( 1099 )

            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.

            • 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.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by hawk ( 1151 )

          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

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by sjames ( 1099 )

            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.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by hawk ( 1151 )

              when we simplify like this, we're including the the present value of all future sales, not using annual sales.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by sjames ( 1099 )

                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

      • Even Adam Smith knew that your statement is false in the presence of monopolies.

      • 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

      • "... 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

      • To be fair, and I am not saying I like Capitalism, part of the problem is that ceiling value is way different depending on what country your in. Hell might even be the same country but different territory's. A country with cheap labor doesn't mean the populous doesn't spend money. It might mean the cost of living is way less than say the US. Paying $10 a month for them is like paying $40 a month for your average New Yorker.
        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)

      by Xylantiel ( 177496 ) on Thursday June 20, 2024 @12:05PM (#64564383)
      I have never really understood how much of this region locking stuff, even for DVDs, is actually legal under the Berne convention [wikipedia.org]. I think a basic tenet there is that if a work is available in one jurisdiction, it can be moved to another. i.e. the right to take a work from one jurisdiction to another is not a right that is reserved to the author/owner, only the right to make reproductions is reserved to the author. So as long as one is not viewing the work in the country the VPN is located in, there is no reproduction and this is not something that the author's country can restrict. I think the reality is that life has completely outrun even international rules in these situations and nobody really knows what is and isn't allowed. It is more determined by brute force than legal right.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by v1 ( 525388 )

        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

      • 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)

    by Eunomion ( 8640039 ) on Thursday June 20, 2024 @09:27AM (#64563841)
    Google in 2005: "Don't be evil."

    Google in 2024: (ritually stomps on effigies of 2005 Google while chanting Satanic liturgy)

    • 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!

    • *Sigh* I still remember that quote. I worked at Unisys at the time. They weren't evil, just faceless.

  • YouTube is really trying to drive everyone away from them.....

    • i quit visiting youtube over a year ago, it has become an unbearable mess of advertising,
      • Not only that, but you can't even have what we're once inoffensive and normal words and phrases in your comments on YouTube videos without the high risk of getting shadowbanned. Because some people may get "triggered". Go on Reddit or Quora, look this up, and you will be deluged with posts complaining about this. And aside from this, Google search has really gone to shit and I am using Qwant.com now which is much like Google search in the old days. Google has melted into a steaming puddle of diarrhea in so
  • This really isn't that big of a deal. They are trying to get people to pay the actual price they are charging for their service. The Reddit post they are referring to is an OP who was using a VPN to get YouTube Premium cheaper than everyone else in his region. I'm not promoting region pricing one way or another but it's nothing unique to YouTube. Plus, they aren't cancelling the membership, just the premium subscription. Good business move or not, there's nothing surprising about this.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      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.

  • In short (Score:1)

    by Chas ( 5144 )

    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.

  • Usually in the corporate lifespan, when a product switches from "Make the best user experience" to "Aggressively monetize" that's usually when something will start to rise up to challenge the market leader.

    Question is, is that a thing that will happen here?
  • Good on Google for at least teaching people how to use a VPN properly. None of this paying for stuff - see, they won't even allow it if you try!

    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.

  • do we have to subsize the rest of the world? Even for entertainment?

  • 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.

  • Just stop your heart medicine, don't need insulin, and your hearing will grow back, claims youtube ads.

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