YouTube cracks down on Family Plan members outside the same household

[midian182]

A hot potato: If there's one thing that's really angered streaming subscribers in recent times, it's companies cracking down on password/login sharing. Several services have followed Netflix in introducing enforcement policies to prevent the practice. And it seems that YouTube is now doing the same with Premium Family Plan members who live outside of a main household.

Like other companies' family plans, the YouTube Premium Family Plan lets five nominated people share one person's subscription benefits. The $23 plan offers ad-free videos, offline download, background play, and YouTube Music Premium access.

One of the eligibility requirements for the plan's family members is that they reside at the same residential address as the family manager (who pays the subscription). As used to be the case with subscription services, YouTube has been lax in enforcing this rule, but no longer.

Android Police reports that the Google-owned company is sending out emails to those it suspects are flouting the rules, reminding them that Premium family membership requires all members to be in the same household.

The email says that the recipient "may not be in the same household as your family manager." As such, their membership will be paused in 14 days at which point they will no longer have access to YouTube Premium benefits, though they will remain in the family group.

YouTube has long carried out what it calls an electronic check-in every 30 days to confirm family members all live at the manager's address. But until now, it never seemed to punish those who violated the rules.

Many believed that having the same billing address as the family plan manager was sufficient, but YouTube confirmed in 2023 that they must also physically reside at the address.

YouTube recently started testing a two-person plan for YouTube Premium, allowing two people in the same household to share a subscription. March also saw the US launch of Premium Lite, which offers an ad-free viewing experience for most videos while removing several Premium features for $7.99 per month.

Netflix actually saw its subscriber numbers jump drastically after it cracked down on password sharing in 2023, so it's no surprise that Google has finally decided to follow suit, especially now that the new duo/lite plans are available.

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YouTube cracks down on Family Plan members outside the same household

 

[techstrike]

Consumers, wake up!

every time the same practice.

they could restrict it from the beginning but they wanted you to buy the product first and think that you're smart but you are not.

they giving you a small bite ... cheap and easy, and later they eat you instead.

Will you ever wake up, little consumer?

 

[m4a4]

All thanks to consumers showing how weak they are to Netflix when they did it...

 

[Neatfeatguy]

Youtube offers nothing to me so whatever they do doesn't impact me either. I know my mom and step-dad dropped their dish plan about a year ago and picked up YouTube TV. It seems to work for them. Though, after looking at the cost of it....$50 for first two months, then $83 per month after that for the "YouTube TV Base Plan" seems nuts.

As for Netflix, well, it priced itself out of my personal spending limit. Spending nearly $22 (after taxes) a month to watch what has turned into a lot of woke type writing in shows/movies over the past years was it for me. I haven't enjoyed much of anything they put out for a while and the family didn't watch it much either so it was time to drop. I stopped paying for it about a year ago and don't miss it. Not spending $250 a year for drivel is okay with me.

I'll just stick to my 1100+ movies and 50+ full TV series I have on my Plex server. If I really want to watch something, there are a lot of free to watch streaming channels if you're okay with suffering through the same half a dozen ads that replay.

 

[axiomatic13]

Look, I'm just going to be blunt on this one. If you don't know how to use a VPN to make your remote user look like they’re at home, you have no business reading this website. This is trivial to work around.

 

[m4a4]

Look, I'm just going to be blunt on this one. If you don't know how to use a VPN to make your remote user look like they’re at home, you have no business reading this website. This is trivial to work around.

And I'm going to be blunt to you, I reject your premise 100%.

Nobody should need to use a workaround for corporate greed, "trivial" or not. Stop pretending that the core issue is perfectly fine, and that consumers should keep paying for a service that requires a workaround (whether they're techy or not).

 

[mbk34]

So other people produce content for them and then youtube wants you to pay $23/month to watch that content? Maybe they should just sell whatever it is they're smoking.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

So other people produce content for them and then youtube wants you to pay $23/month to watch that content? Maybe they should just sell whatever it is they're smoking.

Other people expect Google to develop the backend, store these videos, and stream them at a variety of quality settings to b potentially millions of people at once....for free.

 

[axiomatic13]

And I'm going to be blunt to you, I reject your premise 100%.

Nobody should need to use a workaround for corporate greed, "trivial" or not. Stop pretending that the core issue is perfectly fine, and that consumers should keep paying for a service that requires a workaround (whether they're techy or not).

I never said the core issue is fine. It totally sucks. Stop giving me my opinion, please?

 

[m4a4]

I never said the core issue is fine. It totally sucks. Stop giving me my opinion, please?

You implied it by instead attacking people for "[having] no business reading this website" if they "[didn't] know how to use a VPN". As in, the premise of them geoblocking the consumer to their house for a subscription wasn't your issue there, the consumer not working around the issue by using a VPN was.

Don't pretend otherwise after getting called out. Own up to it and move on.

 

[axiomatic13]

You implied it by instead attacking people for "[having] no business reading this website" if they "[didn't] know how to use a VPN". As in, the premise of them geoblocking the consumer to their house for a subscription wasn't your issue there, the consumer not working around the issue by using a VPN was.

Don't pretend otherwise after getting called out. Own up to it and move on.

You really like to push opinions on others, that's weird, dude? I regret nothing.

 

[m4a4]

You really like to push opinions on others, that's weird, dude? I regret nothing.

Or not own up to it like an adult. And here you were originally implying other people shouldn't be on a tech website for something petty lol
Back to setting you ignored then.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

And I'm going to be blunt to you, I reject your premise 100%.

Nobody should need to use a workaround for corporate greed, "trivial" or not. Stop pretending that the core issue is perfectly fine, and that consumers should keep paying for a service that requires a workaround (whether they're techy or not).

Even if we do know how to use VPNs without issue....do we really want to have to support our family using them? That gets exhausting after awhile. Not to mention VPNs can get blocked too, and fairly easily if a service wants them gone. Then we end up int he ever escalating arms race of anti VPN detection.

 

[AnilD]

Wild how "family" has gone from meaning people you love and support, to meaning "people literally standing in the same WiFi radius as you." The corporate redefinition of family is bleakly hilarious.

 

[dmatheson]

This is not going to end well for YouTube. Scenario 1: kids parents are divorced so every time custody changes for the kid, they have to re-logon to YouTube? Scenario 2: Kids at college. Just what parents need when their kids are in school...another line item of money. Scenario 3: Spousal business trips......the list goes on. I don't use YouTube Premium, but this would make me drop them as quickly as I can login into my account.

 

[p51d007]

Streaming services are like "crack dealers". Low price...get you hooked, then start
charging more and more for the same product.

 

[axiomatic13]

Even if we do know how to use VPNs without issue....do we really want to have to support our family using them? That gets exhausting after awhile. Not to mention VPNs can get blocked too, and fairly easily if a service wants them gone. Then we end up int he ever escalating arms race of anti VPN detection.

All three of my family use Ubiquiti's UniFi Teleport VPN to log in to a UDM-SE router, which is basically what they call their OpenVPN with WireGuard. Each had to load the WiFiMan app and push a button. Where is the hassle? What arms race? It sounds to me like my original assessment was on point? Y'all think this is hard, it isn't. It's trivial.

 

[bviktor]

So I guess I'm not allowed to move out from my parents' home. Neither are my cousins. And we should never travel either. Or move into a dorm for uni.

If you want your subscription to be restricted to a single household, then call it a household plan, not a family plan. You're confused, Google.

Also, you might as well add such ad-hoc requirements to your EULA, instead of suddenly deciding that now it's a thing.

But yeah, the moment they start threatening me with this garbage, I'm cancelling. They just doubled their prices recently so I was already on the edge with this.

 

[bviktor]

Look, I'm just going to be blunt on this one. If you don't know how to use a VPN to make your remote user look like they’re at home, you have no business reading this website. This is trivial to work around.

You confuse "can" with "want to". I most certainly won't run a VPN 24/7 on my phone while listening to YouTube Music. Let alone my family.

Oh and I won't run, maintain, and pay for a publicly available, fix IP VPN server either. No, I can't host at home, I have CG-NAT. And even if I could, I wouldn't. I don't need no random cyber attacks all the time, nor added electricity costs.

No, I won't mess around with random Cloudflare tricks and DynDNS and all that carp either.

No, I won't pay for some sort of premium VPN that reserves a fix IP range for me either (not that I'm aware of any).

All these options would entail me paying more for something I already paid for. All this mess for me to be able to keep using the service that I FULLY PAID FOR.

 

[OortCloud]

Or you could just use Brave and have ad free YouTube for nothing as well as stopping Google from snooping on every aspect of your life and selling it to anybody who gives them money...

 

[whateversa]

Youtube premium is an absolute bargain - excellent value for money. If people don't want to pay, they must have serious financial problems or an attitude problem. I am happy to pay my own subscription fee (which I have done for many years now) as I get a lot of value out of Youtube. I use it every evening to listen & watch live music performance recordings while I exercise, and over a month many more hours of general videos and news. Getting 60fps 4k gaming videos is also good.

 

[whateversa]

Streaming services are like "crack dealers". Low price...get you hooked, then start
charging more and more for the same product.

They are still a bargain (71ZAR for countless hours of music performances and other content). When you have such cheap pricing, you are forced to increase for inflation or other changes in underlying cost - which is still a bargain.

 

[whateversa]

they giving you a small bite ... cheap and easy, and later they eat you instead.

I don't get it, how are they eating you? It's a very cheap service that offers far more than what we are paying for to be honest.

 

[whateversa]

So other people produce content for them and then youtube wants you to pay $23/month to watch that content? Maybe they should just sell whatever it is they're smoking.

Are you expecting all content creators to upload content for free (for you) while they pay all the expenses they went through to produce content? Just take one kpop stage performance video - that is many people that have to be paid (after countless hours of dance rehearsals), audio equipment, the location has to be paid for, video editing... I am not sure it's Google that is smoking something. Those costs were for just 1 video...there are an endless ocean of such videos.

 

[mbk34]

Are you expecting all content creators to upload content for free (for you) while they pay all the expenses they went through to produce content? Just take one kpop stage performance video - that is many people that have to be paid (after countless hours of dance rehearsals), audio equipment, the location has to be paid for, video editing... I am not sure it's Google that is smoking something. Those costs were for just 1 video...there are an endless ocean of such videos.

TBH I don't watch dance videos. I'm not even keen on seeing videos by "creators" who support their living via videos simply because they usually contain 3 minutes of info, 7 minutes of filler and 5 minutes of advertising. It wouldn't even be so bad of those 3 minutes of content have any relevance to the "click bait" titles their videos often get.

I am genuinely impressed by how YT's algorithms seem to identify my subconscious interests (it seems to be Ukraine, tennis and young ladies surfing at the moment) but who knows what it will be next month. The only problem with this type of algorithm is that it reenforces existing beliefs, not so much of a problem with young ladies surfing, but it does create a feedback loop on political subjects that most likely leads to the polarised views everyone seems to have these days.

For the expensive videos you mention, I'd be quite happy if they were lost forever.