Skip to content 
Image Credits: Alexander Shatov/ UnsplashIf a user has an ad blocker installed, YouTube no longer blocks a tiny portion of its user base from viewing its videos.
The platform acknowledged to Engadget that it has made great efforts to combat the usage of extensions, add-ons, and other programs that stop it from providing advertisements to users worldwide.
A representative informed that using ad blockers is against YouTube’s terms of service. We’ve started a global campaign to encourage people who have ad blockers turned on to either allow YouTube commercials or try YouTube Premium for an ad-free viewing experience. Millions of people can access their favorite YouTube video thanks to ads, which also support a broad network of producers worldwide.
Earlier this year, YouTube began to take strong action against the use of ad blockers. Users were first alerted by pop-ups that it was against the terms of service (TOS) of the website. To ensure that they saw the notice, the pop-ups were later timed.
By June, it had adopted a more assertive stance, alerting users that failing to disable their ad blockers would prevent them from playing more than three movies. That was a “small experiment” designed to persuade people to try YouTube Premium, which has since been extended to the website’s whole user base, or to enable advertisements.
According to Android Police, some users are unable to play videos on Firefox and Microsoft Edge browsers even without ad blockers, however, we were unable to reproduce that behavior.
Unsurprisingly, many are upset with this development and have vented their frustrations on social media sites like Reddit. After all, the only way for them to watch videos uninterrupted if they don’t want to enable adverts is to subscribe to YouTube Premium.
It’s true that the notice viewers receive strongly advertises the membership service. “Ads allow YouTube to stay free for billions of users worldwide,” it states. However, users can avoid advertisements with YouTube Premium, and “creators can still get paid from [their] subscription.”
The website increased the monthly charge for Premium from $12 to $14 in July. In addition to offline viewing, background playback, and higher-quality 1080p streaming, YouTube Premium may be too costly for those who only want an ad-free experience. In some European locations, the site used to have a less expensive version called Premium Lite, which only cost €7 ($7.42) a month to remove ads from films. But by the end of October, it had canceled that choice and never made Lite available worldwide.
2 thoughts on “YouTube is cracking down on ad blockers globally”