Last year, YouTube launched a full-scale attack on ad blockers in October after an initial small-scale experiment in June. Now, months later, the crackdown is expanding.
YouTube has announced that it will begin enforcing its anti-ad blocking policy against third-party apps that violate YouTube’s terms of service. YouTube specifically singled out “ad-blocking apps” this time, although we assume third-party players with built-in ad blocking capabilities could also be targeted.
As for ad-blocking apps, apps like AdGuard allow you to open YouTube in an ad-blocking app, where you can watch videos without ads. This will no longer be possible. If you try to use this workaround, you will see an error message “This application does not provide the following content.”
YouTube stressed that its terms do not allow third-party apps to turn off ads “as this would prevent creators from being rewarded for viewership, while ads on YouTube help support creators and enable streaming by billions of people around the world Serve”.
As always, if you don’t like ads, YouTube unsurprisingly recommends that you start paying for YouTube Premium.
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