YouTube cracks down on Premium plans bought with a VPN
YouTube has been aggressively going after ad blockers. If you don’t want to play this game of cat and mouse, buying a YouTube Premium subscription is the only legal recourse. Unfortunately for some users, it seems that YouTube is canceling Premium subscriptions that were bought using a VPN.
This is according to a post on Reddit where some users are finding their subscriptions suddenly canceled. According to the comments, it seems to be affecting YouTube Premium subscribers who might have bought a cheaper plan using services like a VPN.
YouTube, like many online services, operates in a global market. This means that depending on where you live, the cost of a Premium subscription varies. This is because it isn’t financially feasible to convert the USD equivalent of a YouTube Premium subscription to another currency. For example, $10 a month might seem “affordable” to people in the US. But converting it to a currency in a developing country would make it downright expensive.
This is why YouTube uses local currency that when converted, might be cheaper compared to the US. Some users have used VPNs to trick YouTube into thinking they’re in a cheaper region, thus allowing them to pay less. One commenter on Reddit says that their subscription was based in Ukraine where it was priced at £2.30 a month. This is versus the £12.99 a month they would have to pay if they subscribed in the UK, where they actually live.
We’ve seen this happen with other services, like Steam, where the prices of games are cheaper compared to the US. Like YouTube, Steam has also cracked down on these practices.