YouTube May Be Ramping Up Anti-Ad Blocking Pressure

Users continue to report increased pressure from YouTube to stop using ad blockers, even limiting how many videos they can watch....
YouTube May Be Ramping Up Anti-Ad Blocking Pressure
Written by Staff
  • Users continue to report increased pressure from YouTube to stop using ad blockers, even limiting how many videos they can watch.

    YouTube has been ramping up its efforts to stop people from using ad-blockers when viewing videos. The latest efforts have involved warning users that they must disable their ad-blockers and preventing them from watching videos until they do.

    The Verge’s Jay Peters asked readers if they were seeing the warning, as he just recently began seeing them himself. He reached out to YouTube to find out if the company had expanded its efforts, and was told the measures were still a “small experiment globally.”

    Peters says he began seeing the ads after switching from Chrome to Safari and wondered if YouTube was targeting non-Chrome users, especially since many of those that responded to Peters’ inquiry were also using other browsers.

    YouTube’s spokesperson responded to Peters and told him the anti-ad blocking measures were browser agnostic, “meaning we are not targeting any specific browsers.”

    Whatever is going on with YouTube’s efforts, it’s clear the platform’s crackdown on ad-blocking is only going to get worse moving forward.

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