You come across a way-too-long video on YouTube, such as instructions on how to assemble an IKEA table, and hit the playback button to speed up the video. You’re not exactly watching Pride and Prejudice, so what do you care if the movements are cartoonishly sped up a little?

If Google pushes through a change, one it seems to be trialing right now, it might be that only YouTubers who shell out $14 per month for YouTube Premium get to speed up and slow down videos.

speeding off a cliff

Altering the playback speed is such a basic, elemental part of a video viewing experience that it seems petty for a company to try to monetize it.

Unlike the swankier features that YouTube Premium boasts over vanilla YouTube, such as removing advertisements and downloading videos for offline viewing, moving playback speed alteration behind a paywall makes it appear that Meta is scraping the bottom of the barrel for ways by which to turn a spare buck.

There’s been no official announcement on the part of Google, which owns YouTube. Rather, it’s been Redditors who noticed that YouTube is testing the change, as of January 2026.

Aside from the original poster, many more responded that they, too, are suddenly unable to change videos’ playback speeds on their non-Premium accounts and are instead directed to a YouTube Premium sign-up page when they try. Many others responded that they haven’t seen such a change, though, which suggests that YouTube is running an experiment by applying the change to only some, not all, users.

Three months ago, YouTube moved the faster playback speeds of 3x and 4x behind the YouTube Premium paywall. While there was some outrage at the time, it was comparatively less than the latest trial. Perhaps this is one step too far?

There’s no hint yet as to whether this change will roll out to more users, all users, orbe abandoned as not worth the anger and headaches it would cause.