Used VPN for cheaper YouTube Premium? Congrats, your subscription has been canceled

Nemeski@lemm.ee to Technology@lemmy.world – 482 points –
Used VPN for cheaper YouTube Premium? Congrats, your subscription has been canceled
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If they raise the prices in those countries they would make less money because volume of subscribers would go down enough for total income to decrease.

If they lowered the price in the US, they would make less money because the subscribers they would gain would not be enough to offset the reduced income from each.

That's it, it has nothing to do with operating costs or fairness, it's just a question of what price point they believe will make them the most money in a given market.

Some media companies called it piracy even if you're doing it to get paid access content they aren't offering in your country 🤷

Thanks. That’s something I hadn’t thought of.

I’m sort of more moderate when it comes to paying Google to access YouTube. I’m happy to pay for products that I use. I want Google and creators to be rewarded for services rendered, but the prices are double what they should be.

I’m one of the people who used the VPN to get Premium at an affordable rate even though I have Ublock and know about other options.

My Premium account did get canceled. I was able to sign back up via another location, but if they push me out again, I would just revert to adblockers.

I suspect other users who signed up with a VPN are like me. We are the few who know how to get around the ads but want to pay, if we can. Just a guess though.

In theory the service operating costs could be spread across region differences such that in other areas it was at a loss to build and preserve market share and in richer areas it was making up for that.

But yes, in reality it's just exploitative "what we think we can get away with" pricing to "maximize shareholder value" (which is largely BS as the vast holders of shares are very small clusters of the population but people with a handful of shares in their 401k think that statement is talking about them).