While YouTube has begun cracking down on users who use YouTube premium memberships from other countries using bypass programs such as VPNs, there are cases where the Gmail account used when signing up for YouTube is being suspended.
YouTube spokesman Paul Pennington recently said, "The company has a system in place to verify a user's location," and added, "If the country of registration and the country from which the user accesses YouTube do not match, we ask members to update their payment information to their current country of residence." “We are requesting it,” he said.
The reason why YouTube users sign up for YouTube premium membership by lying about their nationality through a bypass program, to the point where a new term ‘digital immigration’ was coined, is because the subscription fees differ significantly between countries.
Simply put, for Korean accounts, the subscription fee for YouTube Premium is 14,900 won per month, while in Turkey, where YouTube users mainly access using bypass programs, it is TRY 57.99, which is about 2,500 won, and for Argentina, it is ARS 1899, which is about 2,900 won.
In addition, you can use the family plan, which is not provided by Korean accounts, and share the subscription fee with others to use it more cheaply.
Due to this price difference, as the number of cases of people moving their YouTube account nationality to a country they do not actually reside in and subscribing to YouTube Premium is increasing, YouTube is strengthening its crackdown on ‘digital immigrants’.
According to posts posted on SNS communities by users whose subscriptions were canceled due to this, it is known that not only are YouTube premium plans canceled, but the Gmail account used at the time of signing up for YouTube is also suspended altogether.
Recently, YouTube is not only cracking down on account bypass, but is also attempting to block 'ad blocking' applications or programs that block advertisements that play along with YouTube videos. For YouTube, which derives 75% of its revenue from advertisements, programs that try to block advertisements are inevitably a thorn in the side.