YouTube tighting its grip on adblockers as many users unable to watch videos

Over the past few days, many adblock extension users on browsers like Firefox and Opera have been reporting that the platform is preventing them from playing videos. According to reports on Reddit, I noticed users are getting messages like “Video player will be blocked after 3 videos,” “Ad blockers are not allowed on YouTube,” and “Ad blockers violate YouTube’s Terms of Service.”

Check out the screenshots below for reference:

These are just a few examples of the hundreds of reports that have been popping up in the past couple of days. Of course, this isn’t surprising considering YouTube has been escalating its war on adblockers for over a year. In fact, last year it was caught slowing down load times or leaving users staring at black screens if they were using adblockers.

Adding to the trouble for the average user, YouTube has lately started spamming more and more ads, some that are several minutes long too. This move leaves most users who don’t want to pay for YouTube Premium left with no other option but to use adblockers. I mean, who wants to spend half an hour of their day watching ads if they just want to watch a few videos from their favorite creators?

That said, after reading through the comments on several posts about the problem. I noticed that the issue doesn’t affect all adblock extensions. Many users confirmed that uBlock Origin still works without a problem. I tested this myself on Firefox and managed to dodge the ads on every video I clicked on.

So if you were using any other adblock extension, I’d suggest switching to uBlock Origin. I mean, there’s a reason why it’s the most popular and trusted one out there. But there’s always a possibility that YouTube might render uBlock Origin useless too if and when it wants.

Let me know what adblocker you’re using and if you’re running into any issues while watching videos on YouTube.