YouTube recently doubled down on its relentless campaign against ad blocking services.
But for ad blocker users who have recently encountered annoying issues on the video-sharing platform, YouTube may not be the party to blame.
In an April announcement, YouTube pledged to strengthen its anti-adblocker “enforcement,” arguing that they violate the platform’s terms of service and ultimately hinder creators.
At the same time, the company has eagerly raised the prices of its subscription service to the Premium tier, charging up to $14 per month for an ad-free experience – a considerable price that many users have balked at.
Lately it seems YouTube is succeeding a few of its warnings, intensifying its battle with its own loyal user base. According to users on the r/YouTube subreddit, many ad-blocking YouTube users have recently seen an “unavailable” error code appear on their browsers.
While this error code is certainly the result of YouTube’s crackdown efforts, other video-related issues (think: missing audio, random timestamp skipping, or, as YouTube specifically warned, upload issues buffered) can be caused by third-party ad blockers and YouTube. maintains those particular the problems are not his fault.
The company said 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Google Some ad blockers may not be compatible with recent platform updates.
“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,” YouTube said . 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Google. “An independent drive to improve YouTube’s performance and reliability could result in suboptimal viewing experiences for ad blocker users.”
To be clear, Google has used tactics such as slow loading web pages to deter users from blocking ads in the past.
But there is recent history in favor of YouTube’s latest white flag. Earlier this year, the company was widely blamed for similar ad-blocking issues. But as Ars Technica reported at the time, the consensus ultimately was that the problem was actually a bug in AdBlock Plus, one of the most widely used Internet ad blocking services. Other blockers, like uBlock Origin, worked great.
And according to AndroidCentral, the same seems to be true this time around as well. Brave, an ad-blocking web browser, wrote in an article in X (formerly Twitter) this week that it had not encountered any problems. It seems the same is true for uBlock users.
Either way, YouTube’s ad-blocking war with its own users continues – and rest assured, whatever the glitches or error codes, some ad-hating internet users aren’t backing down.
“At this point,” said one r/YouTube commenter, “I’m just using my adblock out of spite.”
More on the Internet: We regret to inform you that the rotating “Loading” icon is actually called “Throbber”
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