YouTube is once again on a reinvigorated warpath with ad blockers, and it is absolutely and unsurprisingly frustrating users. Some people are reporting that the online video platform has been targetting them, blocking them from watching videos without the frustration of ads.
According to Neowin, a minority of users have been slapped with a banner warning, telling them that their ad blockers were a violation of the site’s terms of services. “It looks like you may be using an ad blocker. Video playback is blocked unless YouTube is allowlisted or the ad blocker is disabled,” the message says.
Google’s defense in its mission against ad blockers is that YouTube requires advertisements in order to allow YouTube to remain free to its billions of users worldwide, and that the ads is for the benefits of content creators. Don’t want the ads? There’s only one way out of this legally: pay the subscription fees to YouTube Premium, says Google.
Again, the war against ad blocker is a tale as old as time, as are the actions the video platform has allegedly taken to curb them. Earlier this year, one user reportedly that their video had an hour-long, unskippable ad, which goes against its 15-second rule for any ad.
