YouTube Is Canceling Premium Subscriptions For Users Who Spoofed Their Location
If you live in a first-world country like the United States, the United Kingdom, or Canada, you might find yourself burdened by the weight of the price of many major subscriptions. YouTube Premium is no exception to that rule, as an individual plan costs $13.99 each month. Slap that together with all the other subscriptions you pay for and it can come up to an eye-watering total.
If you know anything about paying for most subscriptions in developing countries like India and Nigeria, you might know that the dollar equivalent that is paid for most of these subscriptions is a fraction of what you might be paying. For instance, a Family Premium plan in Nigeria costs a dollar and a few cents each month. It’s understandable that this is done based on the relative spending power of each country, but it also provides a unique opportunity.
Users have opted to take advantage of this price discrepancy by spoofing their location using a VPN, to say, India, fooling YouTube into thinking that’s where they live. By doing this, they then get access to YouTube Premium prices which are ridiculously cheap by comparison. Unfortunately, according to users on Reddit, YouTube has started to cancel subscriptions that were detected to have taken advantage of this.
In addition, this doesn’t seem to have affected people who subscribed and then moved from one country to another; only those who use a VPN for another location.
Google Really Wants You To Use YouTube Premium… Just Not That Way
Google’s battle against ad blockers has made something very clear. They want you to either shut up and sit through several minutes of ads on a daily basis, or bring out your wallet and pay for YouTube Premium. However, with this recent move, they’ve made it very clear that they don’t just want you to pay for YouTube Premium, but to pay the appropriate full price for it.
Recently, in YouTube vs AdBlock news, the company seems to have plans to start playing ads directly in video streams, and not as a separate segment that cuts off what you’re watching. Theoretically, this would make it a lot harder for ad blockers to be able to detect the point at which an ad is playing and would allow Google to have its way. And this time, you won’t be able to get a cheap Premium subscription with a VPN.
