YouTube has reportedly decided to make your experience as miserable as possible if you are using an ad blocker.
According to Business Insider report, the company is urging viewers to disable their ad blockers in their browsers or sign up for YouTube Premium, which costs a hefty $13.99 a month, by ruining the experience of using the site.
“Ads are a crucial support for our creators that helps them manage and grow their businesses,” a spokesperson was quoted as saying in Insider. “That’s why the use of ad blockers breaches YouTube’s Terms of Service.”
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As a consequence, users with ad blockers have been getting more and more annoyed with persistent messages and frustrating multi-second delays.
“In the past week, users using ad blockers may have faced substandard viewing, which involved delays in loading, regardless of the browser they are using,” the spokesperson added.
Earlier this week, Reddit users blamed YouTube for slowing down their Firefox browsers. But as it turns out, the company wasn’t just aiming at a single browser — it’s simply trying to irritate anyone making use of an ad blocker, no matter what browser they’re using.
YouTube’s clampdown on ad blocking has been happening for months now, with users becoming more and more dissatisfied, as shown by recent surges in Google searches for terms like “YouTube ad blocker.”
“I am never buying YouTube Premium, get lost YouTube,” one Reddit user wrote in a post that was upvoted more than 1,000 times last month.
Others recoiled at the considerable price the company charges to access the ad-free YouTube Premium.
“If [YouTube] Premium was five bucks I’d pay for it in a flash, and would’ve done years ago,” another user commented.
However, ad blockers’ success remains uncertain as Google is still planning to change how extensions work in its Chrome browser — which could eventually make many, if not all, ad blockers ineffective on its dominant browser.
