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].
This is why you don’t give them money.
Also other reasons.
ReVanced for the win
On what terms? I have my VPN permanently on. That doesn’t mean I’m trying to cheat.
Every time YouTube raises the price of Premium or messes with their ad-model, it raises the value of blocking ads! 😊✨️
Who paid for premium? I can watch ad-free and my screen off on my phone for free
I used this addon and I watch stuff in the phone’s browser
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/video-background-play-fix/
That’s what I do too 😂
They could have just ignored this
Lol, it’s like paying to lose your privacy, it’s dumb!
The problem here is the lack of a current alternative. As others here have mentioned, peertube might be a future alternative, but I can not help but feel that only fairly ideological people like myself would be interested (in the sense of dropping youtube on privacy grounds). I can’t see “normies” moving elsewhere. That said, maybe a good alternative doesn’t require mass uptake. I mean Lemmy seem pretty cool, albeit I haven’t been here very long at all (like a day lol, although I have lurked for sometime).
Nebula seems promising. It’s reasonably priced and because they charge money there are no ads. I can afford it while I can’t afford the amounts people ask for on Patreon. But I don’t know whether it can scale up while paying the creators enough and keeping the price to users low.
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.
Honestly just need to bring back Usenet newsgroup traffic
What about platforms like Lemmy and Peertube? Seem like a solid alternatives to Reddit and YT.
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.
at this point i’m using invidious almost exclusively now.
youtube keeps insisting that i use an account at all.
YouTube is already hostile towards vons
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.
😐
LOL this is insane we should switch to Rumble and other alternatives other wise we are fucked.
deleted by creator
PeerTube is what he should have said.
Fuck YouTube. Only thing I still like about it is the ability to find how-to videos on it.
I search the Video with Andi and watch it there in the search result.
What is “Andi”?
