YouTube could be about to lock users' favourite feature behind premium subscription
The feature has been available for over 15 years
Nothing is truly free on the internet these days, yet that still doesn't stop the feeling of frustration when people realized that a fan-favorite YouTube feature could be about to be locked behind the platform's premium subscription.
It has been over a decade since YouTube Premium first launched and it's now far more than the ad-free option that it was originally pushed as, offering a wide variety of impressive features that arguably make the cost worthwhile.
Some might see those features as things that have been taken away from the 'free' experience though, especially when ads are getting longer for everyone apart from in a few select regions.
It could soon get worse though if one Reddit user is to be believed though, as many claim that YouTube is testing a change that would see the ability to change playback speed locked behind the Premium service despite it being an incredibly popular feature.
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While you might not use it all the time, playback speed adjustments have been a fundamental part of the YouTube experience for around 15 years now, and are incredibly useful if you're trying to speed through a certain video or slow things down to keep up with a fast-moving subject.
You might have noticed that a new option for four times faster speeds has become available recently, albeit only to Premium users, yet that could soon extend to the feature as a whole.
As reported by TechRadar, a recent post on the r/YouTube subreddit has speculated that the video sharing platform is "currently running an experiment involving playback speeds to decide whether they should become a Premium-only feature."
The post speculates that users are split into two groups, with 'Group A' carrying on as normal whereas 'Group B' users will now require Premium to access different playback speeds.
Presumably this test will identify how many free users will be motivated to sign up for Premium in order to access playback speeds alone, although the existence of the experiment in the first place is entirely speculation right now with no official confirmation from YouTube itself.
There have been instances in the past few months where users have been unable to select different playback speeds without having Premium, but these have seemingly been resolved with time indicating that it was perhaps just a bug.
This could seemingly motivate people to stop watching YouTube altogether though as opposed to paying for Premium, with one comment noting that they "need at least x1.25. If not, I will not consume more YouTube."