Last year, YouTube launched a full-on assault against ad blockers in October, following an initial small scale experiment in June. Now, many months later, the crackdown is expanding.
YouTube has announced that it will be commencing enforcement of its anti-ad blocker policy on third-party apps that violate YouTube’s Terms of Service. YouTube specifically calls out “ad-blocking apps”, on this occasion, although we assume third-party players with ad blocking built-in could also be a target.
As for ad blocking apps, ones like AdGuard let you open YouTube within the ad blocking app, where you get to see videos with no ads. This will no longer be possible. If you try to use this workaround, you’ll see an error saying “The following content is not available on this app”.
YouTube emphasizes that its terms don’t allow third-party apps to turn off ads “because that prevents the creator from being rewarded for viewership, and Ads on YouTube help support creators and let billions of people around the world use the streaming service”.
As always, YouTube unsurprisingly suggests you start paying for YouTube Premium if you don’t like ads.
