YouTube users are furious after realizing that a ‘simple’ feature is now locked behind a premium subscription.
As tech YouTuber Marques Brownlee once wrote on social media - the golden rule of the internet is ‘never try to charge for something that was already free’.
But apparently YouTube didn’t get the memo as fans of the site are realizing a feature that was once free now comes with a price.
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While the platform is still free to use, certain features require a premium subscription in order to unlock.
And one locked function isn’t sitting right with users.
If you want to queue up videos to automatically play one after the other then you’ll need to have YouTube Premium, a fact that not everyone seemed to be aware of.
An even bigger issue is that the paid-for features don’t seem to be the same across devices.
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If you’re watching YouTube on your phone or tablet then the queue feature is locked but streaming from a TV seems to allow you to queue up videos for free.
Taking to Reddit to share their reaction, one user wrote: “When did queueing videos on mobile become a premium feature?
“Not sure if I missed an announcement about this, but are they seriously gating queued videos behind a $19/month paywall? On top of ads? This is getting out of hand.”
Another said: “Are you actually kidding me? How is making a queue a premium feature now?”
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Many took to social media to share their thoughts, with one person replying: “Everyone is getting more greedy nowadays, not even surprised anymore.”
Another user wrote: “At this point, just make YouTube a paid streaming service.”
A third said: “I thought queuing was already a premium feature? I know you could queue if you were casting to a TV or something like that, but you couldn't if you were just on your phone or tablet.”
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This prompted a reply from the original poster, who said: “That's. Dumb. As. Hell. It should be uniform for all platforms or just don't make a simple (client side) function locked behind a paywall.”
Although one person had a handy trick for getting around the system, adding: “I use the watch later playlist as my way around it.”
And another suggested: “Make a playlist and use it as a queue list.”
YouTube premium costs $13.99 a month for an individual account or $22.99 a month for a family, where you can add up to five members.