YouTube has a new policy against ad blocking that prevents
users who use ad blockers from watching videos on the platform. According to the
company, the policy is part of a new experiment and is therefore not applicable
widely yet.
In a new pop up that appears to users who use ad blockers, YouTube explains that ads allow the platform to provide free content to people all over the world, therefore hinting that ad blocking is not favourable to the service. The platform suggests users to subscribe to its Premium offering if they want to avoid seeing ads, which will continue to benefit creators as they can earn from the subscriptions.
While it wouldn’t take long for developers to work their way around YouTube’s new policy, the initiative shows that YouTube’s parent company Google is getting more serious about tackling ad blocking technologies and practices. Previously, Google made changes to Chrome extensions that have led to the removal of the Web Request API, which is crucial for ad blockers for browsing data and searching for ads.
