Business YouTube viewers outraged after site ‘tests’ banning ad blockers - A chronically incompetent site with a history of making bad decisions makes yet another bad decision

https://www.dexerto.com/entertainment/youtube-viewers-outraged-after-site-tests-banning-ad-blockers-2141315/

https://archive.ph/e92a3

Virginia Glaze ❘ Published: May 10, 2023, 18:22 ❘ Updated: May 10, 2023, 18:22

YouTube viewers are raising alarm bells after being greeted with a message saying the site is now banning ad blockers.

YouTube is one of the most popular video-sharing platforms on the internet, boasting an active user base of over 2.5 billion monthly users as of February 2023.

A large number of content creators have made careers for themselves by uploading videos to the site, ringing in a new era of entertainment far ahead of the curve of other influencers on sites like Instagram and TikTok.

Over the course of the site’s existence, advertisements have played a major part in revenue for both the platform itself and its massive catalog of creators. However, many users have complained about the length and frequency of the ads they’ve been seeing — some of which last 30 seconds and are completely unskippable.

YouTube reportedly “experimenting” with banning ad blockers​

Many viewers have found a way to get around ads on YouTube by using ad blockers. Unfortunately, it looks like this method might be going in the bin soon, according to some users who’ve encountered a new feature that the platform is purportedly testing.



In early May, users posted a message they’d allegedly received while attempting to use YouTube with an ad blocker. The message reads: “Ad blockers are not allowed on YouTube.”

“It looks like you may be using an ad blocker,” the message continues. “Ads allow YouTube to stay free for billions of users worldwide.”

The message then prompts users to switch to YouTube Premium, a service it officially launched in 2015 that allows users to bypass ads and even watch with their phones locked in exchange for a monthly fee.

Users aren’t happy with this purported change and took to social media to warn others about the possibility of being unable to watch YouTube with an ad blocker.

“One ad before each video was fine, but they got greedy and started playing multiple unskippable 30-second ads,” one user said on Reddit. “That’s when I went for adblock. There is zero chance I am ever deactivating it or paying for premium now, that ship has sailed.”



“If there’s SO MANY ads that your users are going out of their way to download and use ad blockers, maybe [it’s] YOU’RE the problem, not the people using them,” another said on Twitter.



According to a moderator on the YouTube subreddit, a YouTube employee allegedly confirmed that this is an “experiment” the website is currently running, and has not been rolled out to all users at the time of writing.



Dexerto has reached out to YouTube for comment. For more entertainment news and coverage, check out our page here.

 

[Dysnomia]

I wouldn't want to use Youtube if I had to deal with ads. The ad display is too frequent and very annoying. But i'd figure the amount of normies who use the app would make up for it. I tried the app on a mobile device and it was so horrible that I just used the website.

 

[attractive_pneumonia]

I use Youtube more for playing music than I do watching videos at this point. If ads became more prevalent I'd just go back to pirating music.

 

[Lone Wandering Courier]

I use Youtube more for playing music than I do watching videos at this point. If ads became more prevalent I'd just go back to pirating music.

Funny you say that since I sometimes preview music on Youtube before pirating it.

 

[Pissmaster]

You can always download and back up just about anything on YouTube with yt-dlp, and copying the URL and plugging it into that will download the video, no ads included (except ones integrated into the video).

Archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything archive everything

 

[The Last Stand]

You WILL watch the ads.
You WILL buy our curated adblock service.

 

[Barry McKockner]

It seems to only affect extensions. For now, Brave seems to screen ads without issue.

I don't see why they can't just have a standardized structure for ad breaks - something like, every two videos, one 15 second ad, then a 6 second ad every 5 minutes or so. Why anybody is making a 30 second ad in the Tik-Tok era is...befuddling.

That said, I'm a bit more sympathetic to YouTube here - they can't admit it, but they're given conflicting priorities from Google and the userbase they're supposed to cater to, the website is cluttered and bloated with huge amounts of useless, unwatched content and that's on top of the fact that no 'creator' is losing more money than YouTube does itself. Despite the fact it has no real competitors, the long-form video gallery format is obsolete from a marketing and revenue perspective when you compare it to successor social media. Videos already have to pass very high bars for monetization (no swear words or 'controversial' topics) and that's only for the channels that have the required views. If you've ever been on those video sharing websites where you're basically playing whack-a-mole with pop-up windows for camgirls and Chinese vitamins, I don't think anyone can really justify getting worked up over a few midrolls. Does anybody remember the period of 1 hour long unskippable mid-roll ads?

Youtube's high bar for monetization is it's own fault. It capitulated to crybabies and journalists instead of holding their ground and telling advertisers that they have the eyes they want on their ads. This is ENTIRELY youtube's creation.

 

[Gottahavemysips]

I don't think anyone can really justify getting worked up over a few midrolls

Oh, but I absolutely can. You know, I had no problem with the site when it was just banner ads. Hell, I didn't even have a problem with an ad at the start of a video until I saw that smug Lamborghini motherfucker 8 videos in a row.
It's absolutely justified to be pissed at YouTube with the way they run things, because they consistently pushed out features that were years ahead of being necessary because their primary focus was on strangling the competition. HD, 4K, monetization for practically any creator? All that shit was way ahead of the curve, to ensure total market dominance.
YouTube has been around for almost 20 years now, and it's starting to be time to pay the piper. Their lunch is currently getting eaten by TikTok (nobody wanted Shorts, but they pushed that shit to try and crowd out the competition, even boosted their presence in the algorithm so they'd get eyes on it) but they've been hyper focused on adding shit nobody wants. Their only hope is all the creators who rely on their ecosystem guilt tripping viewers into paying their bills, but at this point, fuck the creators too, when they decide to run sponsorships for every fucking video and even people paying into YouTube have to see them. The YouTube ecosystem was always a house of cards. For years, it's relied on young people who weren't aware of how shitty the site has become over the years, and now that has all but dried up. As far as I'm concerned, they earned the position they've gotten themselves into.

 

[attractive_pneumonia]

I don't know why everyone in this thread keeps shouting yt-dlp. Its reliant on webpage scraping and using the API to get what it wants, a modest effort by Youtube will destroy the program.

 

[tehpope]

You can always download and back up just about anything on YouTube with yt-dlp, and copying the URL and plugging it into that will download the video, no ads included (except ones integrated into the video).

yt-dlp has sponsorblock built-in, so you can cut out shit you don't want. If the db has it. RTFM.

 

[Pissmaster]

I don't know why everyone in this thread keeps shouting yt-dlp. Its reliant on webpage scraping and using the API to get what it wants, a modest effort by Youtube will destroy the program.

Which is why you should archive everything you care about while it still works

 

[Roland TB-303]

They’ll just figure out another way to block ads. Every time my football app blocks VPN’s I just jump on the VPN’s chat and it’s fixed in a few days. It’ll be the same thing here.

 

[Markass the Worst]

I don't know why everyone in this thread keeps shouting yt-dlp. Its reliant on webpage scraping and using the API to get what it wants, a modest effort by Youtube will destroy the program.

Youtube already changes their API and webpage all the time, that's why yt-dlp is always constantly updated. So far Youtube hasn't made a direct effort to kill the project besides changing their API and webpage (except for that weirdness that happened where youtube-dl, the predecessor, stopped development at one point which I'm still not sure what happened there)

 

[JackoVerde]

how banned are the ad blockers?
is it just adblock and ublock origin.
does it ban vpn blocks and ones you build into your router with an raspberry pi

Youtube already changes their API and webpage all the time, that's why yt-dlp is always constantly updated. So far Youtube hasn't made a direct effort to kill the project besides changing their API and webpage (except for that weirdness that happened where youtube-dl, the predecessor, stopped development at one point which I'm still not sure what happened there)

makes me wonder though, would doing anything more than be way harder?
changing the api and webpage might not be that hard and resource intensive.
how much harder is any other thing?
maybe in a small site, it wouldnt be hard. but youtube does have a giant giant system and holds tons of data.

 

[Agent Abe Caprine]

Youtube already changes their API and webpage all the time, that's why yt-dlp is always constantly updated. So far Youtube hasn't made a direct effort to kill the project besides changing their API and webpage (except for that weirdness that happened where youtube-dl, the predecessor, stopped development at one point which I'm still not sure what happened there)

It was because a music video was linked somewhere on the project's page. They were using it as a demo.

 

[Flaming Dumpster]

Honestly I kinda hope they do this because YouTube is the only mainstream social media site I use, I spend way too much time on it and having garbage-tier ads shoved in my face every 5 seconds is probably the only way to completely break the spell.

 

[T-21]

For now. It won't be long until YouTube starts constantly breaking its API, and all these alternative YouTube consumption apps/sites keep breaking every week instead of a couple times a year.

Might be time to go Odysneed.

I really want to like Odysneed, but it runs like shit on desktop and shittier on phone. I just hope Odysneed does something about it. Also the compression feature too for the sake of smaller file size to archive.

 

[Vesperus]

YouTube is entering a death spiral where they increasingly shovel ads in my face, whilst not passing that ad revenue on to creators because they did a wrong-think.
Now that the tech is mature and storage is cheap, I think creators will increasingly leap to other providers like odysee or just flat out self-host with some sort of subscription model.

This makes me happy.

 

[The Carpet Crawler]

One thing's for certain, if this shit affects Brave, my response to YouTube will be "to hell with you!". Spotify already is a superior music-listening experience, and YouTube's assclownery is just not worth the shows I watch. And will this entice me to get Red? Pfft, as if. They jack up the price for an inferior experience.

 

[ShitLurker]

Seeing how this seems on topic enough. Anyway to avoid fucking ads in my LG smart TV? On desktop and phone I know all the tricks, but have been unable to figure out anything for the tv and the ads are getting drastically worse.

 

[Jump]

I use bone stock Brave browser and it seems to block youtube ad's just fine.
Hopefully they can keep ahead of this.