- YouTube Premium users who are living outside the household of the family manager are receiving warning emails from YouTube.
- YouTube is now warning those users that they may lose their premium features after a 14-day pause.
- This new change is reported by only a very few users at the moment.
Gone are the days when we used to freely share our streaming accounts with friends and family. In recent times, every major streaming platform, such as Netflix, Disney+, and more, has begun cracking down on password and account sharing in pursuit of stronger growth of their platform. Now, the unexpected addition to this list is YouTube Premium, which has started enforcing strict rules on its family plan sharing to users worldwide. If you are someone who has been sharing with friends or family outside your household, like me, the bad news is coming our way.
According to a report from Android Police, YouTube has started handing out emails to users who aren’t accessing their platform from within the same household as the family manager. The user was notified that “your YouTube Premium Family Membership will be paused,” and contains the following message: “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.”
As you can see here, YouTube has begun tracking down the locations of the users within a family account. They are now reminding the policy that was already put in place on YouTube’s support page, i.e., “Live within the same residential address as the family manager.” There is no escape, as the flagged user will eventually lose access to YT Premium benefits, such as the ad-free feature, after 14 days, despite remaining within the family account.
Though YouTube may have overlooked this rule previously, they are now strictly enforcing it after introducing new plans, such as the two-person premium plan and premium-lite plan. As of now, YouTube is only gradually sending out these emails, with only a handful of users reporting the new change on social media platforms. Still, the message is loud and clear: soon, YouTube will likely send the reminder emails to those (like me) who are enjoying the YT premium family plan without living in the same location as the family manager.
We would have to wait and see if this new change implemented by YouTube will bring in more users (as happened with Netflix) or impact its current user base. That said, what do you think about the family plan sharing restrictions on YouTube? Let us know in the comments below.
