Google clamps down on VPN workarounds for cheaper YouTube Premium subscriptions
https://www.androidauthority.com/youtube-premium-vpn-cheap-subscription-clampdown-3452674/Open linkView original on reddthat.com168
Comments61https://www.androidauthority.com/youtube-premium-vpn-cheap-subscription-clampdown-3452674/Open linkView original on reddthat.com
Jesus Christ google, how much money are you spending to foil 0.000034% of your user base
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.
You got it, on the nose.
Shadow boxing is always good practice.
Huh?
It's an analogy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadowboxing
Preparing to fight beforehand.
I know what it is, just didnt know my comment meant I was preparing to fight.
You're not.
Google are thou hence the shadowboxing reference.
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.
Sounds like the monopolized industry isn't right for the users
What exactly is the monopoly here?
Video content? YouTube's made it all but impossible to compete with their free offerings, for the cost of server upkeep alone
How has YouTube made it impossible for another video hoster to allow free viewing with ads?
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?
It’s 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: I’ve never been to China, but it’s like really far away from Denmark.
In the EU, this is illegal. As an EU resident, you have the right to subscribe to any service in another EU country.
Yeh - but it does not include efta
Newpipe and its forks for the win.
And LibreTube, they're also on Mastodon and even have a Lemmy community: ![email protected]
I can watch Youtube without ads using an adblocker or NewPipe. Why anyone buys Premium is beyond me.
TV
Smarttubenext. I even install it on every hotel TV I use.
consoles?
Open browser and go to piped/individious page. If your console doesn't have browser than suffer.
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.
I can donate. No reason for Google to get most of it.
That's a good approach. But people aren't tech savvy enough to install NewPipe in order to avoid ads. Paying for YT premium is the most user friendly way to avoid ads and support creators.
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]
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
What subscription?
The ones mentioned in the headline?
Yesss, I know ;)
Ok I'm using revanced anyway..
Newpipe over here
Tubular is better, it has SponsorBlock and ReturnYouTubeDislike integration
You didn't link tubular fyi
Damn I seem to have pasted the RYD link twice, now it's fixed
I will check it thx for the info
NewPipe it's pretty good, I'm using revanced for YT Music and NewPipe for YouTube.
You might want to check out InnerTune or RiMusic for YTMusic, they are open source and don't spy on you, unlike Google's proprietary garbage
I will check it thx for the info
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.
Isn't a cheaper subscription better than no subscription Google?