- YouTube may stop working if you have Ad-blockers installed.
- Google is cracking down on third-party YouTube apps and Ad Blockers that go against its Terms of Service.
- The search giant has encouraged users to get YouTube Premium for an Ad-free experience.
Google has lately increased its efforts to crack down on third-party apps and services that block Ads on YouTube. Google has announced that it will now strictly go against Ad blockers that go against its terms of service.
The Google-owned platform announced today that it’s “Strengthening its enforcement on third-party apps that violate the platform’s terms of service, specifically ad-blocking apps,”. And viewers using them may “experience buffering issues” or encounter the error, “The following content is not available on this app” when trying to watch a video.
YouTube states they’re doing so because “We want to emphasize that our terms don’t allow third-party apps to turn off ads because that prevents the creator from being rewarded for viewership”. The platform has also encouraged users to buy YouTube Premium subscriptions for an “Ad-free experience”.
To put these changes to the test, we installed a few popular Ad-block extensions such as uBlock and AdBlock. It looks like YouTube has yet to block these services. We also tried Brave, one of the most popular browsers around for blocking any type of Ads but to no avail. The videos played well without issues.
That said, the strict measures to ban Ad blockers tell us that Google is forcing users to purchase YouTube Premium, which gives you access to Ad-free video playback and YouTube Music. On the other hand, Google has steadily increased the price of YouTube Premium in the US, while pricing in the subcontinent has remained the same.
What are your thoughts on YouTube cracking down on third-party apps and blockers? Do you think it’s justifiable? Let us know in the comments below.
