Google clamps down on VPN workarounds for cheaper YouTube Premium subscriptions

limerod@reddthat.commod to Android@lemdro.id – 169 points –
VPN workarounds for cheaper YouTube Premium subscriptions failing (Update: Google confirms)
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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.

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.

my comment meant I was preparing to fight.

You're not.

Google are thou hence the shadowboxing reference.

Ahhhhhhhh

Uh

Except I can't think of a company that's large enough to be multi-state who hasn't made almost every decision in the last 10 years the wasnt the most short-sighted option regardless of how much more value would be made otherwise. No corporate strategies look anything like Shadow Boxing to me, they all want to just rape and pillage for a short of a time as possible the same they're more Bandits then Shadow boxers

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?

The cost of server upkeep alone

How is that Google's fault? What is your solution to this?

Same as Walmart killing off every ma and pa shop is their fault, they lowbid the competition solely because they're able to with their monopolization, solution being actual competition in the industry.

Can't help but feel your goal posts are sentient with how much they're moving.

I'm not sure how my goalposts could be moving when I'm not even sure I placed any at all. Do you have any ideas to solve this monopoly you see YouTube having?

I guess thats a good example, when have I claimed to have a solution?

Im just saying they have a monopoly, but if I could scale up to YouTube size economically, I'd probably be doing it instead of arguing about it online

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To add information on that the other person didn't, YouTube was purchased by alphabet in 2006, it was purchased in a very unstable state, it was bleeding money, but they wanted it because they saw potential in the platform for Data Tracking and video analytics along with the fact that it had a very high traffic ratio.

When they purchased it one of the first things they started working on was trying to turn it to be green instead of red, but despite this they still didn't start seeing any real decent change until about 2009, and it wasn't until 2015 that the platform itself started running in the green.

All this happened with YouTube being one of the most popular video platform sites out there. YouTube doesn't have to do anything to actively block competitors from doing it, with their established market dominance, search engine self promotion tendancies(there was an ongoing lawsuit in Australia regarding this) and the amount of sheer money they have, no company is going to try to compete, the closest arguably is likely twitch but they are pushing the reverse direction with streaming instead of video hosting

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