YouTube Premium users across the globe are facing significant price hikes as Google increases subscription costs in over a dozen countries. This follows earlier price jumps in various regions, including the United States last summer. The latest increases vary by region, with some countries experiencing hikes between 30% to 50%. For instance, in Ireland, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Italy, the Family plan will rise from €18 to €26 starting November, while the individual plan will increase by €2 to €14.

Countries affected by these changes include Ireland, Netherlands, Italy, Belgium, UAE, Switzerland, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Colombia, Thailand, Singapore, Norway, Sweden, Czech Republic, and Denmark. Although most Reddit reports are from European users, the price hikes also impact the Middle East, Colombia, Singapore, Thailand, and Indonesia. YouTube had already raised its subscription prices in India by 15–20% in late August.

    • Gregor@gregtech.eu
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      3 months ago

      Agreed. Mullvad is absolutely epic. A question: why do we have to pay for domain names? And why do some providers offer a domain at a lower price than others, while offering the same services? it doesn’t make sense to me, an explaination is welcome

      • Dudewitbow@lemmy.zip
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        3 months ago

        a couple of reasons, some being that 1, ip addresses are limited on the internet, and making it free would instantly fill it up. another is that there is still some work involved,because once you register for a domain, internet service providers and DNS providers around the world need to also add your newly established domain to ip to their DNS so that people get redirected to your domain correctly. the domain endings also have a cost attached to them due to popularity and who is allowed to hand them out. e.g country related domains (e.g .kr for korea, .fr for france has their reasons to charge or without handing a domain out, but some countries may get lucky and happen to have a domain thats desirable (e.g Anguilla has .ai) and thus will charge more

        you also want to prevent domain name ransoming. if domain names were free, there will be people registering for all domain names to use as bargaining chips against a person or company similar to social media handles

        • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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          3 months ago

          And it’s really not that much, it’s like $10/domain/year, though it varies by TLD (vanity TLDs are more, less desirable ones are less).

          I have about 10, and I’ll probably free up half of those the next time I need to pay for them (they were for a business idea that I’ve largely given up on).

      • theneverfox@pawb.social
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        3 months ago

        Because it’s a monopoly created by international agreement. It’s like a phone number - it needs to be routable in the system, but if you follow the standards, you can get integrated into the system as a registrar

        The top level domains are owned by countries - the UK has .UK, the US has .com and .gov, the UK has .io (because they stole it), but most countries have just one. They charge a fee to register a secondary domain, and the registrar can charge whatever they want to their customers to register on their behalf

        This is just the centralized system though - you could build your own, AOL tried to do that through “keywords” back in the 90s