YouTube really hates ad blockers, starts skipping and muting videos (Update: Statement)

Updated: May 29, 2024 (05:42 AM ET): We’ve reached out to YouTube for a statement, and a YouTube spokesperson provided us with the following:

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. Unrelated efforts to improve YouTube performance and reliability may result in sub-optimal viewing experiences for users of ad blockers.

According to the statement, YouTube is not intentionally trying to hinder ad blocker users with this new move, but such users have been caught in the crossfire due to a performance-related update.

Original article: May 28, 2024 (02:37 AM ET): YouTube has been fighting ad blockers for a while now, recommending that users either subscribe to YouTube Premium or turn off their ad blocker and make peace with the ever-increasing ads on the platform. The platform has adopted several tricks, such as slowdowns, countdown clocks, and more, to convince more users to switch to fair means of monetization. YouTube’s latest move against ad blockers is to start skipping videos altogether and even muting the audio.

Reddit user SDHD4K Share YouTube’s latest tactics against ad blockers. If you enable an ad blocker, playing the video will take you directly to the end, skipping playback entirely.

As you can see, if you enable ad blocking, YouTube won’t really let you play the video and enjoy the content anymore.

Other users in the Reddit thread mentioned that they also experience loss of sound when using YouTube’s ad blocker. They can adjust the volume slider to turn the sound back on, but it goes back to mute again as soon as they leave the slider. So, if you can get past the video skip, you will get a video experience without sound.

Blocking ad blockers is a game of cat and mouse, although this issue seems to affect Adblock Plus most often. Some ad blockers have already implemented solutions to this problem. Users have reported that uBlock Origin works well on Firefox and Brave, while others prefer Opera GX or alternative clients like FreeTube.

However, we highly recommend users to explore YouTube Premium as an option. I’ll admit, the YouTube advertising experience has deteriorated significantly in recent months, with many long, unskippable ads popping up. Given how much my family uses YouTube as a service, we’re evaluating whether it makes sense to get a family subscription to YouTube Premium and enjoy YouTube Music alongside it.

We’ve reached out to YouTube for a statement. We will update this article when we hear back from them.