with the family plans, each family member is required to have their own account and join the family group. This let’s them share the benefits of a Premium membership, but since the accounts are separate, the library, watch history, like, subscriptions etc. are all private to the individual accounts.
Yes, you can always leave your family group. The only privacy issue is, that you can see the name, profile picture and email address of other members in the plan.
Sounds great. Just one small question: do you know if I should enter the email adress of the Youtube account that I wish to be part of that family plan? Or will I be able to specify the Youtube account after the purchase? Since I don’t really use the email address of my Youtube account for acutal email it would be easier for me to enter a different email address.
I highly recommend to enter a gmail adress that you freshly create. I would just assume that they at some point block this account (and hope that they do not).
It also makes sense that it is not linked to any other of your activities (Play Store, etc).
Yes, the viewing history will be messed up at the start but after subscribing to a few of the creators you like that fixes itself quickly.
It needs to be the Google account that should be added to the family plan. You will get an email on that account with the family plan invitation.
I don’t know why the viewing history should be messed up?
I’m trying to cut down on YT time. I think quite soon, I will be able to get AI to download the videos for me and edit out the adverts.
If you create a new Google account, it will be starting from zero for the history.
I have seen people using their main Google Account, trying to do tricks, and then at some point getting heat from Google. I wouldn’t want that happen to a Google account where I use the calendar, PlayStore, GDrive etc.
Keeping this separated is not much effort and if you get heat, you just swap to a new account. AFAIK Google is not as desparate yet that they would try to link different accounts running on the same phone together (they surely would be able to see that), to punish them all.
That’s my one reason for trying to stick with my current Google account.
I have a Google workspace account from my work. As far as I understand there are no Youtube adds on such an account. But again, it’s the viewing history that’s precious to me.
Maybe I can separate that one Google account, moving stuff like calendar (main use of the account) to a new account, and keeping only Youtube. If it then gets banned, I have only lost my Youtube viewing history.
Of course your own decision in the end to balance the loss of viewing history vs. potentially having troubles with an account that is held in your real name, where your previous calendar was on etc.
I myself would make a clean start with random name etc. and a new account.
