It was inevitable that it would happen one day, and that day appears to have arrived. YouTube is getting stricter about how a Premium Family plan can be used.
The rules that apply to YouTube Family Premium are not changing, but YouTube is now seemingly enforcing restrictions that it was previously happy to turn a blind eye to.
If you are unfamiliar with YouTube Premium Family, it is a paid-for YouTube subscription that removes ads from the platform, and includes other perks such as background playback. More than this, these benefits can be shared with up to five family members.
Of course, just as with other shared subscriptions, people have been sharing their account with non-family members, or family member who live in different places. It has long been the case that YouTube has only permitted YouTube Premium Family to be shared with family members who live in the same household, but this is not something that has been strongly enforced.
The idea is that as soon as a child moves away to go to college or university, for instance, they are no longer entitled to use the same account – they either need to sign up for another Premium subscription or simply lose access to the benefits they have enjoyed.
As reported by Android Police, YouTube appears to have had enough of what it presumably regards as freeloading and is now starting to enforce the “must be in the same household” rule. Emails bearing the subject line “Your YouTube Premium family membership will be paused” have been sent out by YouTube which read:
Your YouTube Premium family membership requires all members to be in the same household as the family manager. It appears you may not be in the same household as your family manager, and your membership will be paused in 14 days. Once your access is paused, you will remain in your family group and be able to watch YouTube with ads, but will no longer have YouTube Premium benefits.
YouTube gets tough
It follows similar moves by other streaming media platforms such as Netflix who have clamped down on account sharing.
At the moment, it does not appear that the toughening up of rules is particularly widespread. Plenty of YouTube Family Premium subscribers with family members (or friends) living in different households have received no contact from YouTube, but it could just be a matter of time.
Although the policies connected to a YouTube Family Premium subscription have not changed – and are made very clear during the signup process – there are understandable complaints that “family means family”. Should the fact that someone has moved out of the family home render them ineligible? YouTube certainly thinks so, but it is causing debate and discussion.
With YouTube only just starting to take its own rule seriously, it is difficult to predict how all of this will pan out. It is not clear how many subscribers may be violating the rules, and how many YouTube will be able to identify. There is also the question of whether YouTube will mistakenly accuse some subscribers of sharing their accounts – the use of VPNs by different household members could present the company with a skewed view of account usage, for instance.
Will this result in an uptick in subscriptions as violators switch to another package to retain the benefits they have become used to? YouTube and Disney+ have both fared well with their restrictive crackdowns on account sharing, so there is no reason to believe that YouTube might not experience the same.
Does this affect you? How will you respond if you receive an email from YouTube?
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