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disconnectikacio ,

Why you would pay if i can watch youtube for free with Smarttube on Android TV, Tubular on Android, ublock in browser

Facebones ,

I could never get that to work anyway lol

bamboo ,

It’s a game of whack a mole. In the past I’ve been able to get it to work in India, but now YT India blocks foreign payment cards. Was able to set up a monthly subscription in Ukraine recently using my foreign credit card. The taxes support the war effort I guess.

Beryl ,

That there are such wild variations in price between countries shows how little that subscription is correlated to any actual costs.

At best subscribers in richest countries are subsidizing poorer ones, but most probably, Google is just trying to maximize the amount of money they can extract from everyone’s pocket. The repeated seemingly random price hikes seem to confirm this hypothesis. It’s just the MBAs enforcing terminal stage capitalism and ruining everything that is good.

darreninthenet ,
@darreninthenet@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

Not approving of any corporate behaviours here, but extracting the maximum price a market will bear has been the basis of pricing and supply/demand since such concepts existed which is at least 250 years.

Beryl ,

I don’t disagree but it seems to me it’s going crescendo, with de facto monopolies running the show and buying anything that could be an obstacle, be it other companies or policymakers.

NeptuneOrbit ,

So if it makes sense to charge people in India 1/4 the people in the US why can’t we pretend we are in India? People travel to other continents for healthcare.

darreninthenet ,
@darreninthenet@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

I suppose the argument would be, yes that’s fine as long as you only use it in India…? 🤷🏻‍♂️

Again, not saying I agree but it’s hard to make a comparison like that I think.

BigFatNips ,

Novel take, I agree though I’m sure it will b controversial.

Blackmist ,

Yeah, there’s no real costs, because in this case it’s a cost of “lost opportunity” in advertising.

As a rich westerner, your eyeballs are worth more than some rickshaw driver in deepest darkest India, because you have more money to fritter away on nonsense.

Never understood how the third world pricing logic holds up for things like video games, since the hardware to play them costs pretty much the same no matter where you are.

demonsword ,
@demonsword@lemmy.world avatar

Never understood how the third world pricing logic holds up for things like video games, since the hardware to play them costs pretty much the same no matter where you are.

logistics and taxes also play a role

Princeofspace ,

They just blocked a few of the main ones. I was able to sign up from Sri Lanka last week for ~$4/mo family plan. Might meet more investigating to see where works.

cupcakezealot ,
@cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

doesn’t that first more in the end considering you have to pay for yt premium and a vpn? i fail to see how that would be a better option…

dan1101 ,

VPN plus cheap YouTube is probably less than YouTube. And VPN is useful for more than just YouTube.

KairuByte ,
@KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

You assume there is no other use for the VPN? And honestly, you can get a free trial of a VPN if you want to, to handle this, it doesn’t need a yearly re-up or anything, just when your card expires.

balder1991 ,

I don’t currently use a VPN but my impression is that nowadays I’d be greeted with captchas everywhere, is that wrong?

KairuByte ,
@KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Depends on the site being used. Google? Most likely. But I’ve used dozens of others without any issues.

bamboo ,

With FreeVPNs, probably, but otherwise it’s not too big of a deal. Once in a while some specific sites will be broken, like archive.is recently would force you into an infinite captcha (which was really annoying because I couldn’t read many archive links posted here). Some big sites that are targets for various attacks will use a captcha in the login process, but once you do it it goes away.

praise_idleness ,

Old but Google shifted $23 billion to tax haven Bermuda

disconnectikacio ,

Didnt noticed it with smarttube smarttubeapp.github.io or github.com/polymorphicshade/Tubular ;)

Jako301 ,

Tbh, that’s pretty much the only thing Youtube did in the last few years that I can’t really complain about. I despise their business tactics, but using your VPN to get regional prices just fucks it up for everyone. In first world countries, it’s one or two hours of work. The same price in poor countries would be up to a monthly wage, that’s why it costs them less. Abusing this will only end in most companies removing regional differences and blocking VPNs completely.

There are other methods to get the same functionality, use them instead of creating problems for others.

Imprudent3449 ,

I get what you are saying, but I just can’t get too upset about it in this case for some reason.

CaptainBasculin ,

If anyone wants to keep going with this, try Google Play Gift Cards for said countries. You can pay for it via gift card balances, You can find them in key selling websites, or have someone you know in those countries buy gift cards.

RmDebArc_5 , (edited )
@RmDebArc_5@sh.itjust.works avatar

No, you see this is different from when google puts their headquarter in a different country to where they are working to pay less taxes because that’s … uh … just pay your 17 bucks and stop complaining.

tutus ,

You pay $14 per month and you STILL get ads?!?!

WTF!?

tja ,
@tja@sh.itjust.works avatar

I thought this is so you don’t get ads?

magic_lobster_party ,

Where are you getting that from? YouTube premium is ad free (so far).

dmtalon ,

Generally an Unpopular opinion, but I think this should include creator ads (or at least an option per creator to support them by turning on their own ads).

Defaulted to off , I don’t want to watch a random videos AG1 ad. That said there are a couple creators I watch I would be willing to enable theirs strictly to support them.

Because if I’m paying for ad removal it should be complete ad removal.

magic_lobster_party ,

I don’t think it’s an unpopular opinion, but I’m not sure how YouTube can deal with it best. There’s sponsor block, but it’s relying on crowdsourced data.

dmtalon ,

Ya, just an infrastructure where their ads have to go into blocks within the video (inserted wherever but tagged as such)

Imprudent3449 ,

Force the creator to flag the sponsor section and then filter it out. Then compensate the creator for the view using the $17 premium subscription.

balder1991 ,

The creator is already compensated as of now. They earn more if a premium user watches their video than a free user with YouTube ads.

So the sponsor is giving them more money regardless of whether the user is premium or not, which for them is probably a good deal but for us it feels like being double charged.

Imprudent3449 , (edited )

Generally an Unpopular opinion

You’re 100% correct though. Sponsors are exactly (long) ads and I have no personal problem skipping them after paying $17 a month for premium. If a creator has a problem with that they should take it up with Google. I’m paying for ad free, and that’s what I expect.

If sponsorblock breaks I will be reevaluating my premium sub. Not that it will have a meaningful impact on Google or anything, but I’m just fucking sick of ads and am not going to pay to remove them and still get ads delivered to me.

dmtalon ,

I was more aminable when I was paying $14.99 for YT Red Family plan. At $23/mo it’s pretty expensive and I want new features/controls for that money

tutus ,

The link I posted said this:

In the U.S., Google charges individual users $14 per month for YouTube Premium, which limits ads and offers a few additional features.

So it ‘limits ads’ which means there are still ads.

magic_lobster_party ,

It’s a poorly worded article. YouTube premium “limits ads” as in being completely ad free (besides in-video sponsorships). YouTube hasn’t gone down that route yet.

balder1991 ,

deleted_by_author

    •
    Facebones ,

    One of my current favorite techy creators writes a blog post for most of his videos I can reference if I’m interested in the project. ❤️

    kemsat ,

    No. The only ads are the sponsors the creators have within the videos.

    umbrella ,
    @umbrella@lemmy.ml avatar

    paying for youtube

    UraniumBlazer ,

    Absolutely correct decision. YouTube is just so incredibly poor. They really need money guys. In fact, we should set up a donations page to support this great organization that totally respects its users and artists while being very strict against spam, dangerous misinformation and state funded propaganda! /s

    Eggyhead ,

    True. In fact, anyone using an ad blocker is actually a thief, and anyone with a VPN is probably a criminal. /s

    dan1101 ,

    They are so poor and so small that they can’t curate the content and ads, it’s just too much with only billions of dollars of profit to work with.

    autotldr Bot ,

    This is the best summary I could come up with:

    It sounds like the jig is up for YouTube users who snagged cheaper Premium memberships by obscuring their location with virtual private networks (VPNs).

    In the U.S., Google charges individual users $14 per month for YouTube Premium, which limits ads and offers a few additional features.

    But that price varies widely across locales, and some Reddit users say they once managed to snag better deals by pretending to access the service from other countries, PCMag and TechCrunch reported.

    Google charges the equivalent of $3 per month or less in places such as Argentina, India, Turkey, Ukraine, and the Philippines, according to Android Authority.

    Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the matter, but the internet giant’s support staff reportedly told PCMag that YouTube recently started cancelling premium plans “for accounts identified as having falsified signup country information.” A YouTube Help page directs would-be subscribers to turn their VPN off if they get an error while signing up for Premium.

    Google also recently escalated its crackdown on ad blockers by making YouTube videos unwatchable for users of services like AdBlock.

    The original article contains 264 words, the summary contains 183 words. Saved 31%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

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