this post was submitted on 25 Aug 2025
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Privacy

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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[^6][^10].

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[^6]
  • 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[^8].

[^6]: Sonos Community - Unable to play YouTube Music

[^8]: LateNode Community - Why are YouTube users experiencing extremely long, non-skippable advertisements?

[^10]: Reddit r/VPN - Getting around YouTube Premium

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[–] birdwing@lemmy.blahaj.zone 87 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Thanks Youtube, once more showing why Peertube is better!

[–] Suspiciousbrowsing@kbin.melroy.org 47 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Does anyone actually upload to peertube though? I mean my "recently uploaded" is a few videos from days ago and then from weeks ago

[–] Auster@thebrainbin.org 15 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Checked to confirm, having 22 Peertube instances integrated to Grayjay (platforms aggregator) so not necessarily one communicates with the other, and filtering the contents from the Home tab just by Peertube instances, and indeed most stuff is months old at best.

However, least for tech content creators, it seems to thrive. Also, if lack of contents is a problem but the person sees potential in the technology, I'd invite the given person to also help producing contents for there. Like the saying goes, if you want change, be the change.

And also, the more content a platform has, the more inviting it is to others. Expecting it to be as big as youtube but much quicker and organically is a first step to regret, I think.

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[–] DoucheBagMcSwag@lemmy.dbzer0.com 19 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Peertube will take off more when you can make money from it. That's why people still stuck with YouTube. Money

[–] asudox@lemmy.asudox.dev 18 points 1 week ago

Well, since Peertube won't get ads, I don't see that happening soon. YouTubers will have to get used to asking for donations and setting up donation accounts.

...or another solution is cryptocurrencies but that is not very reliable.

[–] Zerush@lemmy.ml 16 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Maybe in the future, until now not a real alternative by content. For users which want to watch music vids of their favorite band or vids from prefered science channels, movies, etc. it's not an valid alternative, nor for authors which want to monetize their content. Last prefer Bandcamp, Vimeo, Odysee and other.

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[–] cerebralhawks@lemmy.dbzer0.com 66 points 1 week ago (4 children)

YouTube is trash. I was watching a cooking video, and I swear, after 60 seconds of ads, the YouTuber talked for maybe one whole minute before it went to ads again with a 60 second timer.

[–] friend_of_satan@lemmy.world 9 points 1 week ago (1 children)

For the first time ever today I deliberately watched some shorts. It was so much worse than I expected. Thank TFSM for blocking shorts with ubo.

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[–] iAmTheTot@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 week ago (5 children)

I am pretty sure the video uploader controls when ads play. So that seems less of a platform issue and more of a "that specific channel" problem.

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[–] nightlily@leminal.space 50 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Fuck me if I want to securely access stuff on hotel wifi I guess?

[–] possumparty@lemmy.blahaj.zone 17 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Stop giving youtube money, use ublock and revanced.

[–] Plagiatus@lemmy.world 9 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Not OP but for me I'm fine giving them some money in exchange for me not having to watch any ads while using their services. Just not the amount they want to charge me in my home country. 5€ a month feels fair, 15 does not.

[–] possumparty@lemmy.blahaj.zone 11 points 1 week ago (1 children)

That's fair, but my code of ethics prohibits me giving money to a corporation that engages in mass surveillance and actively radicalizes young men and women into the alt-right rabbit hole.

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[–] Rentlar@lemmy.ca 42 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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

[–] clb92@feddit.dk 17 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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.world 9 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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.

[–] Plagiatus@lemmy.world 8 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Not sure what you mean - UBlock Origin works great for me out of the box.

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[–] W3dd1e@lemmy.zip 23 points 1 week ago (2 children)

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.

[–] Scrollone@feddit.it 10 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Firefox + uBlock Origin on desktop.

ReVanced on Android phone/tablet.

SmartTube on Android TV.

Enjoy a good user experience as it should be.

[–] BoxOfFeet@lemmy.world 2 points 6 days ago

My exact setup.

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[–] floopus@lemmy.ml 19 points 1 week ago (5 children)

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).

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[–] artyom@piefed.social 19 points 1 week ago (4 children)

Unfortunately YouTube Premium doesn't solve any of the horrendous problems YouTube has. Using a third party client is the only thing that does.

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[–] jaggedrobotpubes@lemmy.world 14 points 1 week ago

This is why you don't give them money.

Also other reasons.

[–] Schlemmy@lemmy.ml 13 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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

[–] notarobot@lemmy.zip 9 points 1 week ago

On terms of using a VPN. They don't need a reason. They can just do it

[–] umbrella@lemmy.ml 10 points 1 week ago

at this point i'm using invidious almost exclusively now.

youtube keeps insisting that i use an account at all.

[–] rosco385@lemmy.wtf 9 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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

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[–] IndustryStandard@lemmy.world 9 points 1 week ago

ReVanced for the win

[–] moss_icon@hexbear.net 9 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I just set my VPN to Albania. No ads and I don’t have to give YouTube any of my money.

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[–] irmadlad@lemmy.world 8 points 1 week ago (3 children)

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.

[–] kalpol@lemmy.ca 6 points 1 week ago

Honestly just need to bring back Usenet newsgroup traffic

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[–] Core_of_Arden@lemmy.ml 7 points 1 week ago

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.

[–] DieserTypMatthias@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Just install uBO/use Brave and you don't need Premium.

[–] warm@kbin.earth 49 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Dont use brave, use uBlock Origin and Firefox.

Or FreeTube on Desktop.

For mobile, NewPipe or one of its forks, e.g. PipePipe for SponsorBlock too.

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[–] artyom@piefed.social 8 points 1 week ago (1 children)

You're very brave to make such a suggestion around here.

[–] DieserTypMatthias@lemmy.ml 1 points 6 days ago (1 children)

At least on Brave you don't have to use an account (which Mozilla hasn't figured out yet) to synchronize your bookmarks, extensions and settings. And mind you that you can disable all the controversial things.

[–] artyom@piefed.social 1 points 6 days ago

It's true. I use Brave as well. They have several novel privacy features that no one else does. And although the company has a checkered history, I still think it's the best (for now). I just wish more FOSS devs would take notes and implement these privacy features in other browsers.

[–] Zerush@lemmy.ml 8 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

You don't need Premium anyway. For the cost of an YT Premium account you can use Netflix, Rakuten or any other paid streaming service with less money, or even for free in PlutoTV, or channels of public TV of every country, where you can watch movies, documentals, Series, etc for free, without ads. The greed and policy of YT will be its end sooner or later. Ads always can be avoided, uBO, even uBO Lite, Adguard and several others are working fine in YT.

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[–] NigelFrobisher@aussie.zone 6 points 1 week ago

More reasons to never subscribe to YouTube.

[–] MetalMachine@feddit.nl 6 points 1 week ago

They could have just ignored this

[–] notarobot@lemmy.zip 6 points 1 week ago

Of course not seeing ads on YouTube doesn't mean they don't want to profile you to shore ads somewhere else. Premuim is ad free, not tracker free

[–] StarryPhoenix97@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago

YouTube is already hostile towards vons

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