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Google clamps down on VPN workarounds for cheaper YouTube Premium subscriptions
(www.androidauthority.com)
Jesus Christ google, how much money are you spending to foil 0.000034% of your user base
this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2024
170 points (99.4% liked)
Android
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The purpose, is to keep it difficult enough that the "honest" person doesn't get the idea to start doing it.
Same concept as putting a lock on your front door. It's not to stop thieves, it's to stop the average person from getting the idea to "just take a quick look".
By occasional going after workarounds AND making it public news. Your average computer user thinks it's not worth the hassle.
If they don't want honest people considering it, maybe they shouldn't raise the price by 80% in a single price change.
I paid for YouTube premium when it was first available. They guaranteed the price would never change as I was a first adopter. Then they did. Then they did it again. And then again.
Google can fuck off. They have all the money in the world and they need to extort the people who helped grow their business.
so they prefer that users use adblockers?
Well, no, they prefer people pay the subscription cost they set in each region.
Which they've shown they aren't willing to do...
Personally, YT premium is my only subscription I have, and wouldn't really have any others if money wasn't this tight. But I was paying before this recent anti blocker war, I prefer YT Music just because of the way it handles a bunch of the music remixed by seperate and probably not "official" artists. And with how much youtube I watch on mobile instead of my PC, messing with blocking wasn't very appealing to me, since the jump from YTmusic to full premium is less than almost any streaming sub.
But I have always watched/backgroundnoised a lot of youtube, so its not that much of pain. Realistically, this was bound to happen eventually, hosting that much content hasn't really gone down in costs as quickly as most tech overhead. But its a fairly complex line item, not just hardware & facilities, but all the law office hours related to copyright log is an ongoing and probably still growing cost for them and since they are not Disney thats a real cost I'd imagine.
As a side note, it just reminds me how shockingly unaware I am of how much they must value our personal data, that it only just now became worthwile to fight blockers with this much effort and PR/image depreciation.
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Yeah but on one hand the price they want I'm not willing to pay, but if I could get it for less then I'd consider it.
Sounds like the service isn't quite right for you, then.
It's only worth what people are willing to pay. Already have Spotify anyways and not a fan of googles app killing tactics, learned that the hard way a couple times.
Luckily they can't do this in the EU. As an EU-citizen, I have the right to subscribe in Romania, for example, and pay no more than a Romanian would.
It sounds kinda illegal. Can Coca-cola stop me from going to Denmark to buy for danish prices and claim I have to pay Norwegian prices?
Itβs directly comparable to buying danish subscription and using the service from a danish exit. If my data originates in china and are vpn-ed to Denmark they have the same cost on providing me service as anyone else in Denmark
Edit: Iβve never been to China, but itβs like really far away from Denmark.
If you're a convenience store but pallets of Coca Cola, then they kind-of can. They can just blacklist you from buying Coca Cola in the foreign country.
It's also different because they're selling you continuous access one month at a time instead of a physical good you drink and they can't take away from you. I've been to places where service costs are lower for locals than for tourists, and this is told to you outright. Stuff like museums, taxis, etc. It's a similar idea YouTube has.
Prices are also almost never based on cost, they're based on what people will pay.
I live in Canada, and cars are more expensive here than in the USA. US dealerships near the border refuse to sell new cars to Canadians, even though it's legal for everyone as long as you make sure to pay duties on the way back. I'm guessing each brand has some rule against it.
Ultimately VPN users aren't a protected class so it's legal to discriminate.
Iβm still not sure your car thing would match here - unless they refuse to sell you a car that you only use in the USA. Iβm guessing these stores are brand owned? Why else would you refuse a sale - even if itβs useless to the buyer
I could see rights come into play - but they usually regulate within the nation.
I would think this is connected to name/address/payment not matching the country you claim to live in. If itβs VPN detection then a WiFi router doing the VPN would work fine.
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In the EU, this is illegal. As an EU resident, you have the right to subscribe to any service in another EU country.
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There's probably something in the terms about it, and it would take a very expensive legal battle to settle it. And I doubt it has enough legal merit to be taken on as a class-action lawsuit.
So, really, does it matter if it's illegal? With the asymmetrical power imbalance, they literally don't need to care about the laws. Realistically, no EU regulator is going to fine them for cancelling "a purchase made in India", either.
Thereβs probably something in the terms about it
The Paid Services, and certain content available within the Paid Services, may only be available in certain countries. You agree that you will not present any false, inaccurate or misleading information in an effort to misrepresent your country of residence, and you will not attempt to circumvent any restrictions on access to or availability of the Paid Services or content available within the Paid Services.
Terminations and Suspensions by YouTube
YouTube reserves the right to suspend or terminate your Google account or your access to all or part of the Service if (a) you materially or repeatedly breach this Agreement; (b) we are required to do so to comply with a legal requirement or a court order; or (c) we believe there has been conduct that creates (or could create) liability or harm to any user, other third party, YouTube or our Affiliates.
I don't understand these surprise pikachu reactions from some people. If you break the terms of service you are running the risk that the company in question will terminate your service or account at some point in the future. There is nothing controversial or surprising about this, other than the fact that Google has taken so long to get around to it.
Newpipe and its forks for the win.
Its too fucking expensive for what you get. Throw in access to all movires and TV for $15, then maybe I'll subscribe.
I can watch Youtube without ads using an adblocker or NewPipe. Why anyone buys Premium is beyond me.
Could be one of the many reasons such as ensuring their favorite creators get paid for their views and end users not being tech savvy enough to know about ad blockers and NewPipe.
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TV
Tubular is a fork of NewPipe with SponsorBlock and ReturnYouTubeDislike integration. LibreTube is another great option, which uses the Piped backend. They also have a Lemmy community, and you can check them out on Mastodon: https://fosstodon.org/@libretube
Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using a URL instead of its name, which doesn't work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: [email protected]
Congrats, your subscription has been canceled
What subscription?
The article is only based on a handful of accounts from reddit, but it would be quite funny considering how many people I've encountered who do this and think they are geniuses or morally superior because they don't use an ad-blocker. Let's see how they feel after a fee hike. :)
I don't really understand who you are getting at here. Everyone I know uses this combined with regular ad blockers. Anyway, once they figure out how to properly inject ads into the stream blocking is going to get really hard.
I would not pay anyway. This is a principled position after I was shown a fraudulent advertisement 10 times in one evening (which used children with cancer to manipulate emotions)
Oh there goes my back up plan for server side injection ads
I tried to get brazillian youtube premium or whatever and it just didn't work.
I did a South American country once too but the payment processor has a snafu and it stopped working after the 2nd month. I just spun up a personal invidious VM and moved on with my life.
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