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].
A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
Some Rules
- Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn’t great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
- Don’t promote proprietary software
- Try to keep things on topic
- If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
- Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
- Be nice :)
Related communities
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
- 0 users online
- 124 users / day
- 1.05K users / week
- 1.3K users / month
- 4.58K users / 6 months
- 1 subscriber
- 4.18K Posts
- 106K Comments
- Modlog
Just install uBO/use Brave and you don’t need Premium.
You’re very brave to make such a suggestion around here.
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.
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.
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.
I stopped paying for YouTube when they started cracking down on free users, and stopped using them pretty much entirely. It was hard though - even though I have Netflix, I always found it easier to find interesting and informative things to watch on YouTube than Netflix. I’d watch YouTube several times a day, whereas with Netflix I usually spend about 10 or 15 minutes scrolling through their god-awful UI before closing it and finding something else to do.
At least in the EU almost every public TV has an online channel with movies, series, documentals, entertainment, live and/or on demand, all for free and without ads, similar in Pluto TV
Spanish public TV
German public TV
More
https://tv.ssuiteoffice.com/
You can add arte, too.
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.
And for Android TV, use SmartTube.