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YouTube is now flagging accounts on Premium family plans that aren't in the same household
(www.androidpolice.com)
this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2025
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Why pay for premium anyway? Let alone a family plan. You still get ads. They can be skipped too — SponsorBlock will do it for free. Google could use this but chooses not to.
They want YouTube to be like cable TV. You pay for it. You watch ads. You pay more for premium channels.
I pay for it. No ads. Background playing on mobile, and YouTube music included.
So you're using SponsorBlock as well, or you're watching videos without sponsors.
In-video sponsors are not even remotely the same thing as the ads YouTube puts on videos, but that being said no I’m not using SponsorBlock. YouTube premium has a button to skip in-video sponsors so I don’t need sponsor block.
The fact that they put this behind a paywall is enough for me to never pay them a dime.
I found a neat little workaround that I used for a while. I’d load the video up in my browser, turn the phone on an off a couple times, press play on the lock screen, and enjoy it that way.
Edit:
Still works. Just gotta full screen the video and then power off before it kills picture in picture.
And now I’m listening in the background as I type this.
Most certainly off-topic, but I have found other cool workarounds for apps.
For instance, if you open 2 windows of, say, PowerPoint (1 you want to use, the other you must close after; read below). Then, go to the one you don't want to use (or at least one you use for this method), and wait for the no account/Office not bought/whatever pop up; in any case, do NOT close the pop up. Open the other PowerPoint, and then close the former. If done right, you'll be pleasantly surprised that it works perfectly! After that, you can open any additional ppt files. Do note that, after you close PowerPoint entirely, you gotta do this all over again.
I found a little workaround called Newpipe.
I’ll check it out. Thank you.
I use NewPipe on my phone (and FreeTube on my laptop)
@interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml gave me a really good suggestion the other day. If youre on Firefox, it might work for you too :)
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/video-background-play-fix/
I just have the video running on Firefox and can them go to another App / turn off the screen
That’s fair
It used to just work. Then it only worked with a funny work around. Now I don't care because I pirate their content instead.
I'm in a family plan, so when this change hits, going to have to find alternative methods.
I do too but the value is waning. When I try to watch without having logged in and see all the ads, that add some value back
In what scenario are you watching it without being logged in?
Go to a family member's house and try to show them something on YT.
Cringe in horror at the experience.
I am aware of how bad logged out YouTube is, that’s why don’t do it lol.
Not the person you asked, but I do that sometimes. For instance, when I want to watch a specific video but I don't want having watched it to affect other video recommendations.
Incognito window =)
That's how it's done, yep.
I don't know if this actually does what I hope it does, but if I happen to watch a video that I don't want recommendations on in the future, I manually delete the video from my watch history.
I don't know if that really helps, but at least as a placebo it feels good to do.
If unsure of a video, 1. on desktop open in new tab - if ya don't want that content/creator click the 3 dots on the main page video and select don't suggest channel, on phone (just did this a few mins ago) back out of video and since on mobile the home feed doesn't reset hit the 3 dots etc
I stopped watching YouTube logged in after getting FreeTube on my laptop.
NewPipe does this for free
I don’t have an android
I dont pay for it, use grayjay or firefox with ad block, I have no ads, background playing on mobile and I could care less about YouTube music.
I just pirate it
Pirate… what?
Videos from YouTube
How does one pirate free videos? Is there somebody uploading torrents of YouTube videos?
How have you never heard of yt-dlp?
Yt-dlp doesn’t pirate YouTube videos… it downloads them directly from YouTube.
Thus, pirating them. More or less by the same method that is used to download every single WEB-DL movie/episode you see on torrent sites.
It’s not pirating if you’re obtaining a video that they’re making available to you for free lmao.
Otherwise it would be “pirating” to just load up YouTube.com in your browser and watching any old video.
when all the videos get put behind login walls and drm, perhaps someone will.
YouTube is my only subscription.
I use it for Music and Video. I definitely get my money's worth, they're streaming to me at least 8 hours a day.
If it's not background music, it's videos. I can't even fathom how many hours of ads I have avoided.
same here, but even I'm looking to cancel both to avoid supporting a US company and because they're making my experience worse by having a shitty user experience
I've never seen a single youtube ad with uBlock Origin. SponsorBlock takes care of most of the sponsored segments that a premium youtube account won't get rid of.
I pay for it, also no ads except the sponsor plugs, which are pretty easy to skip. Overall a better experience than the non premium. I don't live in the USA so my cost is like $5/month.
The three people who replied before you said they don't get the sponsor plugs.
When I had YTP (I had a trial, it was like 3 months for $1), I got the sponsored segments. So either those other people are lying, or they don't understand what I'm saying.
You don't get ads. You pay less than double what two premiums cost and your household can share.
I have YouTube premium and have not gotten any ads.
I pay for premium because currently it's the easier option for getting no Ads on all my devices. Yes I could install a third party client on my TV, Phone & use uBlock on Desktop, but two of those require active upkeep.
For sponsorships, YouTube Premium has the "Skip Ahead" feature which basically leeches off sponsorblock users where commonly skipped sections can be also skipped by you.
It's just currently easier to pay than to pirate. I will say however, if it gets too shitty, I will resort back to pirating.
YouTube is fucking garbage.
I don't care about the ads because it's fucking garbage, and why would I watch garbage?