Google pushing "Ad blockers violate YouTube's Terms of Service" banners on YouTube

It has been nearly a yr since Google began to implement adjustments on YouTube to dam content material blockers on the platform. The struggle towards adblockers began in 2023 with “Advert blockers should not allowed by YouTube” banners being proven to affected customers.

Google has been testing new implementations since then, together with server-side advertisements that break adblockers, or by throwing jabs towards competing browsers like Firefox.

A brand new banner

Stories on Reddit and different on-line boards recommend that Google has began to accentuate its struggle towards content material blockers as soon as once more on YouTube.

The brand new banner resembles the previous. It’s proven to customers after they use content material blockers. The textual content is barely completely different, because it now says “Advert blockers violate YouTube’s Phrases of Service”.

The choices are similar to final yr’s banner: permit advertisements on YouTube or subscribe to YouTube Premium. No phrase on YouTube Premium Lite, a less expensive subscription choice that guarantees fewer advertisements on YouTube as effectively although.

Not everybody seems to be affected by this. Google, is probably going testing the waters on a small proportion of YouTube guests to gather knowledge and guarantee that false positives are low.

Affected customers report points on non-Chrome browsers for probably the most half. Opera and Firefox appear to be affected particularly by this.

I examined YouTube video playback in a number of browsers with native or extension-based content material blockers and it labored in all of them.

Affected customers might attempt a number of issues to get again on monitor.

Very first thing they could wish to do is replace the content material blocker and its filter lists, if such an choice is offered.
If that doesn’t work, loading YouTube in personal looking mode might assist, because it makes use of a separate profile for the loading. Simply guarantee that the content material blocker is allowed to run in personal looking mode.
The subsequent choice is to check completely different browsers to see in the event that they allow you to get across the blockage.
Another choice is to make use of Bing Movies to play YouTube movies. Not probably the most elegant of options, however it appears to come back with none advertisements.

If all of these fail, chances are you’ll wish to give third-party frontends and apps a attempt. Invidious seems to be working once more for now, and apps like NewPipe for Android are additionally alive and kicking.

Closing Phrases

The cat and mouse recreation between content material blockers and Google’s anti-ad-blocking on YouTube might intensify once more within the coming months. Customers with content material blockers could also be blocked on occasion after they attempt to play movies on YouTube.

Now You: do you watch movies on YouTube often? Did you run into any content material blocks or use YouTube Premium? Tell us within the feedback beneath. (through Neowin)

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