YouTube breaks ad blockers again and tries viewing restriction (Update: Google statement)

Update, June 14, 2024 (2:30 AM ET): Google has issued a statement confirming that it has released an update that may affect ad blocking tools. It suggests that users should “allow ads on YouTube or try YouTube Premium” to support the site’s creators. Read the full statement below:

YouTube improves performance and reliability when serving both organic and advertising video content. This update may result in a suboptimal viewing experience for viewers with ad blockers installed. Ad blockers are against YouTube’s Terms of Service and we have been urging viewers for some time to support their favorite creators and allow ads on YouTube or try YouTube Premium for an ad-free experience.

Original article: YouTube has taken a stronger stance on ad blockers in recent months, testing several systems to stop users from using them. Such measures include a three-strike system for users of these tools and skipping or muting videos in their entirety. Ad blocking tools have seemingly evaded all of YouTube’s efforts so far, but the company is now testing a few systems that could make it much more difficult to block ads.

According to insight from SponsorBlok (an add-on that identifies and skips sponsor segments in videos), YouTube is testing server-side ad injection. With this method, YouTube effectively combines ad segments within videos and offers the whole package to viewers instead of combining them from two sources in your browser or app.

This makes it slightly more difficult for ad blockers to identify where the ad begins and ends. It could also break other add-ons like SponsorBlock, as the video timestamps would no longer be consistent across all instances of the video. Other possible side effects include the inability to skip ads.

Notably, the SponsorBlock team notes in an FAQ that this shouldn’t mean the end of ad blocking tools, but it does make implementation much more difficult. Some users, especially on the uBlock Origin subreddit, have even encountered ads while running the plugin.

However, another apparent change could be more concerning for third-party apps. A bug logged on the NewPipe GitHub earlier this month suggests that Google is letting some users log in before watching a video. This will appear as a security check with the message: “Sign in to confirm you are not a bot.” The issue was also reported on X by developers of the content aggregation tool Cobalt.

This means that YouTube may restrict access to logged out videos in the future, forcing users to log in to watch content. This would make YouTube more like a traditional streaming video service, but would negatively impact third-party apps and, presumably, the way shared YouTube videos are viewed on the web.

The Cobalt developers have since found a way around the login restrictions, but future YouTube changes would likely break this and other tools.

Both methods are still being tested and it is unclear if and when YouTube will roll out these measures on a larger scale. In the meantime, please let us know if you have encountered any of these measures. We’ve reached out to YouTube for comment and will update this article if we receive a response.