YouTube Really Hates Ad Blockers, Starts Skipping and Disabling Videos (Updated: Statement)

Updated: May 29, 2024 (5:42 a.m. ET): We reached out to YouTube for a statement, and a YouTube spokesperson provided us with the following:

Ad blockers violate YouTube’s Terms of Service, and we’ve been urging users for some time to support their favorite creators and allow ads on YouTube or try YouTube Premium for an ad-free experience. An independent drive to improve YouTube’s performance and reliability may result in suboptimal viewing experiences for ad blocker users.

According to the statement, YouTube is not intentionally trying to inconvenience ad blocking users with this new move, but these users have been caught in the crossfire of a performance-related update.

Original article: May 28, 2024 (2:37 a.m. ET): YouTube has been battling ad blockers for some time now, recommending users subscribe to YouTube Premium or turn off their ad blocker and make peace with the platform’s ever-increasing ads. The platform has adopted various tricks, such as slowdowns, countdowns, etc., to persuade more users to switch to fair means of monetization. YouTube’s latest move against ad blockers is to start skipping videos altogether and even muting their audio.

Reddit user SDHD4K shared YouTube’s latest tactic against ad blockers. If you have an ad blocker enabled, playing a video will take you straight to the end, skipping playback altogether.

As you can see, if ad blocking is enabled, YouTube doesn’t really let you play the video and enjoy the content anymore.

Other users on the Reddit thread mentioned that they were also experiencing a lack of sound when using an ad blocker on YouTube. They can adjust the volume slider to unmute the sound, but it goes back to muted as soon as you leave the slider. So, if you can bypass the skipped video, you will have an audio-free video experience.

Blocking ad blockers is a game of cat and mouse, although this problem seems to largely affect Adblock Plus. Some ad blockers have already implemented workarounds for this problem. Users report that uBlock Origin works well on Firefox and Brave, while others prefer the Opera GX browser or other clients like FreeTube.

Still, we strongly recommend users to explore YouTube Premium as an option. I admit that the advertising experience on YouTube has deteriorated considerably in recent months, with several long and unavoidable advertisements. Given how often my family uses YouTube as a service, we are evaluating whether it makes sense to sign up for a YouTube Premium family subscription and enjoy YouTube Music on the side.

We have contacted YouTube for a statement. We will update this article if and when we receive a response from them.