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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[–] irmadlad@lemmy.world 8 points 4 days ago (2 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 4 days ago

Honestly just need to bring back Usenet newsgroup traffic

[–] syzygy@lemmy.ml 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

What about platforms like Lemmy and Peertube? Seem like a solid alternatives to Reddit and YT.

[–] irmadlad@lemmy.world 1 points 12 hours ago

Honestly just need to bring back Usenet newsgroup traffic

Hey bro. I appologize for the late reply. Apparently I lost track of time.

First, I am a mediocre musician on my best day. I've been playing stringed instruments for about 65 years, but it's more of a hobby that I get a lot of satisfaction out of. I did entertain the notion that maybe I could pick up one or two gigs doing background music for an indie game dev, which is why I was using YT. I do have some tracks on PeerTube, but as you are probably aware, the traffic flow of PeerTube is rather spartan.