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


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.

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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.”

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“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.

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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.

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

The only other way I can think of Youtube to make more money or do some kind of cost cutting measure is to start deleting videos with 0 views after some amount of time has past in order to save on cash spent on server space. They've dedicated so much to becoming a knockoff of streaming services with their "Primetime" movies and with the corporate influence so deep rooted now nothing would be surprising.
 
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Oilspill Battery said:
Everytime I click a youtube link on mobile it will forcefuly open the app no matter what, Idunno how to stop it, I don't watch youtube on my phone anyway so I never bothered figuring out how to stop it.
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Did you tell the phone to always use the Youtube app at some point? My phone and tablet always give me a choice.
 
I only go to YouTube to watch videos. I don't even bother to comment anymore because of the censorship has gotten so ridiculous. You can't even say fuck or retard in a comment anymore. YouTube is so fucking lame and gay now. But most of the YouTube videos I watch they don't use any alternative sites like Rumble Odysee or Bitchute. The only YouTube creator I know that uses an alternative site is StyxHexenHammer and he uses all of them. But I only watch him on Rumble. Odysee is ok and Bitchute doesn't allow HD videos. It also doesn't look very good and needs work. It gets spammed with Boomer schizo conspiritard shit as well. Bitchute is more like late 2000's YouTube. Like YouTube was from 2007-2010. I prefer Rumble. Styx says if you want to start up your own channel you are better off doing it on one of the "new tech" sites like Rumble Odysee or Bitchute. I think he may be right.

If YouTube starts blocking ad blockers I will have to start looking for my favorite YouTube channels on other video sites or watching more content off YouTube. But I think it's more likely that someone will come up with a better adblocker. I currently use adblock on all my browsers. I have 4 browsers Edge Firefox Brave and Tor. I keep other Browsers around as backups in case something doesn't work with Edge. I have always had Firefox on my computers since at least the late 2000's. I remember when they released ABP (Adblock Plus) for Firefox and it was a big reason for people to use it. I think it was the first browser to have an adblocking capability. If anyone remembers what the internet was like in the mid to late 2000's it was a mess of all kinds of ads. Getting to block the ads was a big deal.

I refuse to use Chrome. It's bad enough that Google owns YouTube but I refuse to allow a Google product on my PC. I just stick with Edge and if needed I use one of the others. I only use Tor for KF when needed. But Edge is my main browser that I use often. I know the user base for Edge is small and the Firefox user base has been declining for about a decade or more now. I will never use Chrome. Fuck Google.

I have noticed the porn sites have been getting those annoying roll-on ads around adblock for a while now. Pornhub and Xhamster you end up seeing ads even with an adblocker. It's funny that they do it and YouTube is a pussy about it. It's annoying when you have to sit through ads for dope dope related shit pecker pills and lube. But I guess that's all the advertisers a porn streaming site could get.
 
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Has any alt-youtube tried just going full subscription model with their website? Like, charge 5 cents per video watched after a few free credits, or 25 cents to upload a video. Then have zero ads.

IDK avout the idea, but if you were honest and upfront with people that "we have to pay our bills, it's either this or ads," I think it might have a chance.
 
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Skeletonized Cow said:
Has any alt-youtube tried just going full subscription model with their website? Like, charge 5 cents per video watched after a few free credits, or 25 cents to upload a video. Then have zero ads.

IDK avout the idea, but if you were honest and upfront with people that "we have to pay our bills, it's either this or ads," I think it might have a chance.
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Rumble has a bandwidth max that charges the poster after it has been exceeded for the month. And by charge, I mean enrolling you in a "premium" account with a higher cap.
 
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CuzinEd said:
I refuse to use Chrome. It's bad enough that Google owns YouTube but I refuse to allow a Google product on my PC. I just stick with Edge
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Edge is literally a fork of Chromium. If you use Edge you are using Chrome. So is Brave, but Brave has at least done some work to distinguish itself, Edge is basically just Chrome with Microsoft's spyware at the front and center instead of Google's (though Google's is still there). If you absolutely must use a Chromium-based browser and absolutely don't want Google shit mixed in you should use Ungoogled-Chromium with Brave as a second.
 
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There is something funny about people protesting they can't hack an app.

PS: Chromium is shit, specially if you have an old pc. Opera switching to Chromium was their worst mistake.
 
Avenue said:
I'll always use the analogy of a mailbox in terms of ads. If I receive unwanted mail (physical or digital) it just goes to the trash without looking at it, I have no time to read up on which bad deal for irrelevant products are available that week. So having an ad blocker is like an automated version of me throwing your shitty ad in the paper bin which I should be allowed to do.
Anyhow, if through some Google magic, ads are still shown even with a decent blocker I'll just install Adnauseam , this plugin essentially 'clicks' all the ads you see in a background process making your personal ad data essentially useless and it wastes advertiser money.
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Yeah this is the true second step to this dumb bullshit.

They want to forcefully get people to watch ads for "interactivity and analytics?" Then their data and other bullshit is now useless. You will not be able to stop people not watching ads unless you have someone forcefully making them watch it.
 
PSA for everyone who uses YT on mobile or can't install blockers for whatever reason, you can skip nearly any YT ad by clicking on the small "I" icon in the bottom left and reporting the ad. It doesn't matter what you report it for. It will immediately skip any ads on that particular ad roll regardless of length or skippability. There are a few ads that you cannot do this with but they are rare.
 
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100% on YouTube's side here. Hosting and streaming video costs gargantuan piles of money and you gotta pay for it somehow. The ads are fucking awful, noxious, and oppressive which is why I toss YouTube $15 bucks a month for Premium. Absolutely worth it.

If you're truly bothered by ads and can't be bother to pay then just use youtube-dl. If Google ever breaks that, it's war.
 
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quackrock said:
100% on YouTube's side here. Hosting and streaming video costs gargantuan piles of money and you gotta pay for it somehow. The ads are fucking awful, noxious, and oppressive which is why I toss YouTube $15 bucks a month for Premium. Absolutely worth it.

If you're truly bothered by ads and can't be bother to pay then just use youtube-dl. If Google ever breaks that, it's war.
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That argument only works if YouTube was ever intended to operate with an aim toward profit instead of ideology. A big reason for their current predicament is due to the obscenely large number of creators they refuse to monetize for ideological reasons and also because of the extremely retarded overcorrective measures they put in place post-adpocalypse where instead of telling that gay mexican jew to anhero they bent over and took it in the traditional Globohomo manner. Back then it really didn't matter anyway; For many years Alphabet was content to allow YT to flounder because Google raked in so much money and day in day out they were getting regular cash injections from nu-Left interests who saw YT as another means of controlling narrative similar to Twitter. Now that Google stock is crashing and Silicon Valley banks are going bankrupt that money isn't coming quite so easy. They're in panic mode, because at the moment they can't afford to continue to lose hundreds of millions of dollars a year to brainwash children like they once could.
 
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They've updated it now so you will be blocked after playing three videos with an adblocker.

YouTube test threatens to block viewers if they continue using ad blockers​

The experiment is meant to urge users to disable their ad blockers or subscribe to YouTube Premium.

Mariella Moon | @mariella_moon | June 30, 2023 1:31 AM

YouTube is looking to take a more aggressive approach in preventing viewers from using ad blockers while watching videos on its platform. As BleepingComputer reports, people have been posting screenshots on social networks like Reddit that show a pop-up notice warning them that their player will be blocked after three videos.

The warning says YouTube will block their ability to play videos on the platform unless they disable their ad blocker or add the website to their white list. "Ads allow YouTube to stay free for billions of users worldwide," the notice continues. To go ad-free, the company tells users to get a YouTube Premium subscription so "creators can still get paid." Prior to these warnings, YouTube only showed popups to ad blocker users, reminding them that it's against the website's TOS. Eventually, it added a timer to the notices to ensure viewers take the time to read them.

The website has confirmed to BleepingComputer that the new alerts are part of an experiment. A spokesperson told the publication that YouTube is "running a small experiment globally that urges viewers with ad blockers enabled to allow ads on YouTube or try YouTube Premium." They said that YouTube might temporarily disable playback "[i]n extreme cases, where viewers continue their use of ad blockers." The spokesperson added that they will only disable playback "if viewers ignore repeated requests to allow ads on YouTube," though it's unclear if that means YouTube won't automatically block playback after a viewer watches three videos and will give them more opportunities to comply.

At the moment, this new approach only affects a small number of users, and YouTube didn't say how many people and regions are part of the test. The website, which makes most of its money from ads, has seen its ad revenue decline over the past three quarters, so we won't be surprised if this test expands to more users around the world should it turn out to be effective.

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I'll probably just come here or snoop around reddit to find a work around.
Look, I'm not the type to plop a tablet in my kid's hands and walk away, but we'll spend less than an hour a day watching something on one service or another depending on what he wants.
One of the favorites is Bumble Nums, okay? It's really sweet and tame, but kind of funny and mildly educational. I'm only telling you this because we usually watch it on YouTube on the main computer which has adblocker. But this one time at the airport I pulled it up on my phone which does not have adblocker and one of the ads interrupted mid video to show a character that was in the same style as a bumble num in a gimp suit getting whipped by a dominatrix. Absolutely no way of reporting it, or knowing that was going to show up on a kids channel. Anyway, fuck YouTube, I just pay for kids shows on Prime now, but even they are starting with the ads.
 
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