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.

 

[Barry McKockner]

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.

The funny thing is I would likely have gotten Red IF they had not changed their monetization and censorship rules.

 

[Puff]

The funny thing is I would likely have gotten Red IF they had not changed their monetization and censorship rules.

Hell, I only don't use their mobile app which gives me ads is because they stop letting me close the screen while using it. I pretty much only "watch" audio primary stuff. Brave's mobile version only now.

 

[Barry McKockner]

Hell, I only don't use their mobile app which gives me ads is because they stop letting me close the screen while using it. I pretty much only "watch" audio primary stuff. Brave's mobile version only now.

It's the reason I browse rumble before youtube. Also, kiwi browser with adblock plus and a background play script on android is the only way I use YouTube for the moment.

 

[SandyCat]

How to turn the userbase against you in less than a second.

Knowing how it went on Twitch people will complain for 1 or 2 days then become complacent. I hope I'm wrong but I get the feeling that's how it will go with youtube once this rolls out in full.

On the upside some people created bypasses for Twitch ads despite the ads being baked directly into the stream itself.

 

[xXx: State of the Union]

The vast majority of people don't give a shit about the ads or just get premium, I'm pretty sure.

Sucks but normies and tards rule the world

 

[PixarsTedKennedy]

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

When the midroll ads are 30 minutes long, I can. My three year old watches kid shit on there and I have to constantly walk in and skip the ad for her.

On a side note, an ad came on during one of her kids shows and I just hear nigger music. So I go in to skip the ad, and some nigger is shaking her ass in a thong. Good job, youtube. But Josh is too toxic for the platform?

 

[Pee Cola]

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.

Might be time to consider installing a Pi-Hole. That will block ads on all devices connected to your network.

 

[Premium Gonzo]

I use MPV + yt-dlp to watch videos. I can't imagine doing it any other way, no ads, no bullshit. You can even use a script to skip sponser stuff with sponserblock.

Sponsor block is god tier, i wish they'd utilize it for alternative platforms like Odysee.

 

[Roland TB-303]

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.

Buy a router compatible with open source firmware like OPNsense or pfSense and install the adblocker directly on that. Or get a raspberry pi with pi-hole.

 

[Rain Team Pepe]

This just seems like an automatic self-own.

 

[Null]

I will do literally whatever it takes to not see ads.

 

[Whoopsie Daisy]

It's strange that there isn't a real alternative to Youtube. Demonitising platforms and content creators because they say words like "dead/died/death". They have to say "unalived" now, which is peak retardation.

It's interesting to see Youtube clamping down on adblockers, Netflix stopping password sharing and Disney+ merging with Hulu. They're all trying to boost/retain their numbers, while laying off 10,000's of staff.

It's as if the majority of those 2.5 billion visits are bots and most internet and social media pages are riddled with them, all in the name of inflating numbers to scam more advertising money from investors.

Dead internet theory keeps on winning.

 

[Vect]

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.

Maybe, but that's an assessment that benefits from hindsight; it's very easy to say other people should have been braver years after the fact. I think it capitulated because the legacy media, likely factoring in that YouTube was competition, created a narrative that it was platforming hate speech by decontextualizing the laissez faire culture of edgy humor that was dominant back in 2017, at a time when consumers started to believe (or were 'encouraged' to believe) that corporations, particularly those that dealt with social interaction, could no longer be responsibly apolitical (given recent events). It was so advertisers were pressured to leave in droves and it wasn't helped by some embarrassing scandals of and timed hit pieces on it's biggest stars, as well a characterizing a tiny slew of far-right commentators as a radicalization factory, none of which YouTube could realistically be expected to anticipate and control. I'm not saying the company didn't make serious mistakes, and probably should at least have tried to defend their position, but back before cancel culture became endemic, I can look back and understand why they panicked.

HD, 4K, monetization for practically any creator? All that shit was way ahead of the curve, to ensure total market dominance...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.

I think it's because YouTube, like Facebook, doesn't quite have a niche that it can market towards, unlike legacy publications or modern social media. YouTube is just The Video Website, and it's better known as an awkward middleman rather than a source of original content, and they're forced to acknowledge this when they promote late night TV and mainstream celebrities to demonstrate their relevance instead of their own creators. That's why Rewind was so insecure every year. It doesn't have the pedigree and journalistic integrity (deserved or otherwise) of establishment news and magazines, nor does it have the specialized and limited formats of Twitter, Instagram and Tik-Tok. It never seems to know what it wants to be, so it ends up, as you say, focused on rote technological dominance and pleasing nobody.

Clearly you guys are getting a whole different ad slate though. I haven't gotten anything longer than 20 seconds and getting repeats very infrequently.

 

[Haramburger]

When the midroll ads are 30 minutes long, I can. My three year old watches kid shit on there and I have to constantly walk in and skip the ad for her.

typical kiwi parenting strategy

 

[My Name is Ed]

I will do literally whatever it takes to not see ads.

The only bulletproof method of not watching ads is to not watch videos.

 

[Nottafed]

Somebody asked about their Smart TV - I use Adguard DNS at the router level for simple adblocking on all the tvs / smartphones and other stuff connected to my network. It actually works quite well for blocking most youtube ads and other annoyances with ublock origin handling the rest on the PC's - heres just what the DNS has blocked network wide in the last 5 days. Highly recommended.

 

[Bananadana]

Maybe, but that's an assessment that benefits from hindsight; it's very easy to say other people should have been braver years after the fact. I think it capitulated because the legacy media, likely factoring in that YouTube was competition, created a narrative that it was platforming hate speech by decontextualizing the laissez faire culture of edgy humor that was dominant back in 2017, at a time when consumers started to believe (or were 'encouraged' to believe) that corporations, particularly those that dealt with social interaction, could no longer be responsibly apolitical (given recent events). It was so advertisers were pressured to leave in droves and it wasn't helped by some embarrassing scandals of and timed hit pieces on it's biggest stars, as well a characterizing a tiny slew of far-right commentators as a radicalization factory, none of which YouTube could realistically be expected to anticipate and control. I'm not saying the company didn't make serious mistakes, and probably should at least have tried to defend their position, but back before cancel culture became endemic, I can look back and understand why they panicked.

Youtube has 2.1 billion monthly active users.
If they had just placed an e-begging banner on the frontpage like what wikipedia does when they need money that says
"Hey, these journalists lied about us and we need you to send a friendly email to these companies to convince them to stay with us by explaining why you love youtube"
then the nagging tranny activist emails would have been drowned out by 10-100x as many positive messages from all over the world.

Youtube decided to surrender to the people that want to destroy it instead of throwing around the weight of its userbase to clap back.
Google/alphabet also decided to surrender instead of just de-listing any website that contributed to this (objectively untrue) narrative
from all ads and search results unless they retract their articles, apologize and fire the employees who wrote them.

They could have prevented all of this in the name of fighting "fake news" and "ensuring high quality standards for journalism"
but the spineless cucks and women running alphabet are too incompetent to use their power for anything that isnt enforcing the establishment narrative.

This is one of the biggest and most powerful companies the world has ever seen. And they surrendered to a bunch of blatantly lying journalists.
And none of this requires hindsight. It just requires remotely competent management.

 

[Blood Bath & Beyond]

Just like every other time any other site has tried to implement one of these "anti-adblock" measures there will be a workaround to keep the adblockers running flawlessly within days. Twitch regularly tweaks their anti-adblock and ads will suddenly start to get through, but then as if by magic they completely disappear merely hours later when I update the extension I use to block them.

 

[Null]

The only bulletproof method of not watching ads is to not watch videos.

Nonsense. I have sponsorblock and adnauseum and I never see ads. If for whatever reason I disable my extensions and forget to re-enable them, it is genuinely appalling how bad the modern browsing experience is.

Youtube decided to surrender

YouTube is "those people". They didn't capitulate to shit. They are the same apparatus. I don't know how any other narrative could even exist. YouTube should, and must, die.

 

[Gravityqueen4life]

the worst thing about having a broke pc is to be forced to watch adds. i love having the video puss every 5 minutes just to be focred to click the skip button on my phone.