Based on recent reports, YouTube is actively restricting access to Premium accounts created through VPNs and cracking down on users accessing Premium content across different regions. According to user discussions, YouTube now detects and blocks VPN connections when attempting to stream Premium content[1][2].

Some key impacts:

  • Users report being unable to play YouTube Music through Sonos speakers when using a VPN, with the service becoming accessible only after bypassing VPN connections[1:1]
  • Premium subscribers attempting to access content from different regions than their subscription face connection errors and service disruptions
  • The restrictions appear to be part of YouTube’s broader strategy to enforce regional content licensing and subscription terms

The crackdown coincides with YouTube’s increased focus on Premium subscriptions, including showing longer unskippable ads to free users in 2025 to drive Premium adoption[3].

  1. Sonos Community - Unable to play YouTube Music ↩︎ ↩︎

  2. Reddit r/VPN - Getting around YouTube Premium ↩︎

  3. LateNode Community - Why are YouTube users experiencing extremely long, non-skippable advertisements? ↩︎

  • Normaldude@lemmy.ml
    51·
    3 个月前

    LOL this is insane we should switch to Rumble and other alternatives other wise we are fucked.

  • Schlemmy@lemmy.ml
    13·
    3 个月前

    On what terms? I have my VPN permanently on. That doesn’t mean I’m trying to cheat.

  • Ardens@lemmy.ml
    71·
    3 个月前

    I feel good, that I have never depended on YT… I don’t pay them, I don’t watch ads, and I use other services too, and own my films and music… It’s nice - especially when reading posts like this.

  • Schwim Dandy@lemmy.zip
    22·
    3 个月前

    Of course, for the same reason streaming services block it. They don’t want to risk account sharing.

    This doesn’t seem newsworthy but more along the lines of “yeah that makes sense.”

  • rosco385@lemmy.wtf
    101·
    3 个月前

    A year ago I would have been worried about this, but YouTube is so full of AI slop now that I barely watch it.

  • w3dd1e@lemmy.zip
    23·
    3 个月前

    You know, I was trying to pay for YouTube Premium. I do think that was fair even though I knew I could use ad blockers for free.

    The prices are outrageous where I live so i used a VPN to find a more reasonable price. Every so often, YouTube would cancel my account and I’d do it again.

    This happened several times, but I finally realized that YouTube doesn’t want any money for my account! They would rather I pay nothing at all! That’s so generous of them.

    So, now I use ad blockers and I get the same service for free.

    Also fuck Google.

  • Rentlar@lemmy.ca
    40·
    3 个月前

    Every time YouTube raises the price of Premium or messes with their ad-model, it raises the value of blocking ads! 😊✨️

    • clb92@feddit.dkEnglish
      16·
      3 个月前

      I do value my adblockers very highly, and I blocks ads in the browser, via DNS on my home network, and on my rooted phone too. Every time I access the internet on a device that isn’t mine, I’m blown away with how bad it is.

      • irmadlad@lemmy.worldEnglish
        9·
        3 个月前

        Every time I access the internet on a device that isn’t mine, I’m blown away with how bad it is.

        Sometimes my friends will ask if I can take a look at their computers because it’s not working as expected or something is definitely wrong. I am always blown away by all the ads and crap all over the screen. It’s like going to a porn site. I always ask ‘How the fuck do you do this?’ At the very least, install an adblocker. Sometimes I’ll just go ahead and install UBlock, but there’s an issue with doing that. Ublock Origin has a little bit of a learning curve. You actually have to put in a little work before it really works optimally for you. I find that people are not willing to do the work.

          • dditty@lemmy.dbzer0.com
            2·
            3 个月前

            If you don’t have Bypass Paywalls Clean too, some news sites won’t let you read their articles when they detect your browser- or DNS-based ad-blocking. The user might want to know how to turn it off for a particular site (or learn how to switch to reader mode and/or how to use a site like 12ft.io) to get around that. Or if they turn on extra uBlock lists like the “annoyances” ones they might not see certain social media sign-in pop-ups they’re expecting to see, for example.

  • irmadlad@lemmy.worldEnglish
    8·
    3 个月前

    As far as YT & Google et al, I don’t participate. A good while back, I tried to promote some of my music on YT. The experience was… terrible afaic. I used to use YT for tutorials, but there is no way I’m going to jump through all their hoops and endure back to back, un-skippible ads, to find out that the tut is shit. Screw that noise.

    Reddit has been silently rejecting accounts that sign up with a VPN for quite some time now. If you make an account using a VPN, an alias email, using a hardened Firefox, and all the blockers, you can expect that your account will be shadow banned almost immediately. So, as long as Reddit front ends work, I’ll still use it as a resource…for now.

    I foresee that private forums will become a thing again where people of like minds congregate and exchange info, expertise, ideas, content, etc. They were once quite popular but people gravitated to these multi billion dollar corp owned social media outlets because it was the next best thing, and now the other shoe has dropped.

    • syzygy@lemmy.mlEnglish
      3·
      3 个月前

      What about platforms like Lemmy and Peertube? Seem like a solid alternatives to Reddit and YT.

      • irmadlad@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        3 个月前

        Honestly just need to bring back Usenet newsgroup traffic

        Hey bro. I appologize for the late reply. Apparently I lost track of time.

        First, I am a mediocre musician on my best day. I’ve been playing stringed instruments for about 65 years, but it’s more of a hobby that I get a lot of satisfaction out of. I did entertain the notion that maybe I could pick up one or two gigs doing background music for an indie game dev, which is why I was using YT. I do have some tracks on PeerTube, but as you are probably aware, the traffic flow of PeerTube is rather spartan.