Youtube Premium is a discriminating paywall (per country)

[maestro_it]

A lot of times when Youtube Premium get mentioned, because of changes (such as 4k going to premium feature) or any other change, many things gets discussed except the fact that this Premium subscription is very discriminating for users depending on their country, because Youtube Premium is not available worldwide, in contrary to all other paywalled sites that once you pay you get past the paywall regardless of your country.

 

My case is a strange one because I live in a country were Premium is NOT available (PS), and go to work daily across the border to another country where Premium IS available (IL).

When I am home Youtube doesn't have or offer Premium feature, doesn't popup asking me to try premium for 1 month, the subscribe buttons are not available, the super chat and super sticker buttons are also not enabled (see attachments).

But When I leave home and my home wifi, and go with 4G or while at work, Youtube will show the popup to get the 1 month free trial, and allows subscribing and sending super chats, and all Premium features are available. I went ahead once and tried the 1 month free trial: when using my work Wifi or cellular 4G, Youtube works as premium: no ads, PiP on my Android phone and other premium features, but once I reach home and connect to my home wifi PiP gets disabled, I get ads and all premium features vanish !!!

 

If Alphabet/Google wants to lock features behind a paywall, they should allow anybody to get past it, you can't lock features behind a paywall and ban users in some countries from even having the possibility to pay, this is very discriminating and very stupid.

 

I would like to pay to get PiP on Youtube (I really need this feature), but as Google doesn't want my money, I went Vanced.....

[BiotechBen]

8 minutes ago, maestro_it said:

A lot of times when Youtube Premium get mentioned, because of changes (such as 4k going to premium feature) or any other change, many things gets discussed except the fact that this Premium subscription is very discriminating for users depending on their country, because Youtube Premium is not available worldwide, in contrary to all other paywalled sites that once you pay you get past the paywall regardless of your country.

 

My case is a strange one because I live in a country were Premium is NOT available (PS), and go to work daily across the border to another country where Premium IS available (IL).

When I am home Youtube doesn't have or offer Premium feature, doesn't popup asking me to try premium for 1 month, the subscribe buttons are not available, the super chat and super sticker buttons are also not enabled (see attachments).

But When I leave home and my home wifi, and go with 4G or while at work, Youtube will show the popup to get the 1 month free trial, and allows subscribing and sending super chats, and all Premium features are available. I went ahead once and tried the 1 month free trial: when using my work Wifi or cellular 4G, Youtube works as premium: no ads, PiP on my Android phone and other premium features, but once I reach home and connect to my home wifi PiP gets disabled, I get ads and all premium features vanish !!!

 

If Alphabet/Google wants to lock features behind a paywall, they should allow anybody to get past it, you can't lock features behind a paywall and ban users in some countries from even having the possibility to pay, this is very discriminating and very stupid.

 

I would like to pay to get PiP on Youtube (I really need this feature), but as Google doesn't want my money, I went Vanced.....

Sounds like what you are running into is an ISP problem where either they don't have the desire to support the 4k streams or don't have the backbone to. And given that you are commuting from palestine to Israel, you are crossing international borders and very contentious political borders as well. I will not take a stance on the political ramifications here, but note that even if the ISP in Palestine was willing to do the 4K, the infrastructure may be at risk given conflicts in the region. It also really depends on where the Internet cables come in. If they come through Israel: you are SOL for any improvement unless they want it. This is not limited to just IL and PS; if Uganda wanted to increase their bandwidth but the lines came in through Egypt and Egypt said no, they'd be SOL.

 

If they come in directly to Palestine, there's a possibility.

[maestro_it]

50 minutes ago, BiotechBen said:

Sounds like what you are running into is an ISP problem where either they don't have the desire to support the 4k streams or don't have the backbone to. And given that you are commuting from palestine to Israel, you are crossing international borders and very contentious political borders as well. I will not take a stance on the political ramifications here, but note that even if the ISP in Palestine was willing to do the 4K, the infrastructure may be at risk given conflicts in the region. It also really depends on where the Internet cables come in. If they come through Israel: you are SOL for any improvement unless they want it. This is not limited to just IL and PS; if Uganda wanted to increase their bandwidth but the lines came in through Egypt and Egypt said no, they'd be SOL.

 

If they come in directly to Palestine, there's a possibility.

Bandwidth has nothing to do with this paywall, putting 4K aside you should be able to pay to have YT Premium for no ads or PiP, this is more a Google policy thing than bandwidth.

 

Not to mention that Palestine now offers FTTH fiber lines, at home I have 500mbps symmetric, while at work I have 100mbps symmetric.

[BiotechBen]

1 minute ago, maestro_it said:

Bandwidth has nothing to do with this paywall, putting 4K aside you should be able to pay to have YT Premium for no ads or PiP, this is more a Google policy thing than bandwidth.

 

Not to mention that Palestine now offers FTTH fiber lines, at home I have 500mbps symmetric, while at work I have 100mbps symmetric.

Then it looks like a geopolitical problem here, if it's available in Israel but not Palestine, I would point my finger to that. 

 

[maestro_it]

11 minutes ago, BiotechBen said:

Then it looks like a geopolitical problem here, if it's available in Israel but not Palestine, I would point my finger to that. 

 

Why is it not available in Palestine is not the main issue here, (yes I would prefer if it were supported, but for some reasons it is not), the issue is that Youtube Premium is available in only some countries, listed on this support ticket https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6307365, and Google choose to lock the membership if you are in an unsupported country, even if your account already has an active membership:

Quote

You may not be allowed to access each of your paid membership benefits if you travel to a country/region that is not listed here. Read more about how traveling impacts your membership:

YouTube Premium:

• If you leave these countries/regions, you won’t be allowed to download videos, videos won’t play in the background, and you may see ads. Any videos that you’ve downloaded before traveling will be available offline for 30 days.
• YouTube Premium members can watch each YouTube Original movies and series while traveling outside of these countries/regions. Background play and download features on this content may not be available.

When someone pays for a 'Premium' membership it is expected to have it work everywhere.

[tikker]

1 hour ago, maestro_it said:

When someone pays for a 'Premium' membership it is expected to have it work everywhere.

Not really. What you expect is pretty irrelevant and you should read what you are buying. In this case you are provided with a list of locations where what you intend to buy is not supported. Now if they let you buy Premium in that location only to not let you use it, because of being in such a locataion then that is something you can leverage. If they don't let you buy Premium in those location in the first place then your footing is much less strong.

1 hour ago, maestro_it said:

Why is it not available in Palestine is not the main issue here, (yes I would prefer if it were supported, but for some reasons it is not), the issue is that Youtube Premium is available in only some countries, listed on this support ticket https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6307365, and Google choose to lock the membership if you are in an unsupported country, even if your account already has an active membership:

Well as was pointed out above there may be reasons for not doing this. That reason could be a simple "we don't want to", but it could also be for legal or political reasons. Those same reasons might force them to suspend operations as well for as lone as you reside in those locations.

[LogicalDrm]

Discrimination is hard word here. We are talking about premium feature of otherwise free* service. Not offering service to someplace and offering it in another is not discrimination, unless the reasons of doing it are something more than logical (ISPs/bandwidth support, payment processing, local laws etc.). I would advice you (like I have recently adviced many others) to think actual meaning of the words you are using before using it. Just like retailer selling something at the chosen price is not scam or scalper, company offering service in one place, but not in another is not automatically discrimination.

 

Otherwise I would say many US companies are discriminating people in Europe by not allowing to use their US based streaming services. Not how things work.