Overview

Ad Blockers Are Not Allowed On YouTube refers to YouTube's attempts to curb the use of ad blockers on the video-sharing platform by limiting the number of ad-free videos people can watch and by inserting pop-up warnings that prevent people from watching videos until they disable the ad block or buy YouTube Premium.

Background

In May 2023, YouTube began testing an anti-adblock program on the platform. A May 10th post by X^[1] account @Dexerto shows an early version of the warning, with the post gathering over 36,000 likes in five months (seen below, left). X^[2] user @Aeyga_X quoted the aforementioned post noting that Ublock Origin still manages to circumvent the pop up.

On June 29th, X^[3] user @Thafnine noted that YouTube was also adopting a strategy where the video player is disabled after someone watches 3 videos with adblock (seen below, left). On July 1st, YouTuber^[4] @Cybershell expressed his dislike of YouTube's anti-adblock projects, encouraging his subscribers to block ads on his videos (seen below, right).

Online Reactions

On September 13th, X^[5] user @cookietanukiart quoted a post about YouTube disabling a Discord music feature, encouraging people to use Adblock and gathering over 16,000 likes in a month (seen below, left). On October 12th, X^[6] user @TheBobPony posted about YouTube launching its anti-adblock pop up, saying that it was "Joever" (seen below, right).

On October 12th, X^[7] user @ploicky made a post that read, "apparently the youtube ad blocker pop up registers as a video thumbnail, and i have a browser extension that putts scott the woz everywhere," gathering over 14,000 likes in four days (seen below, left). On October 16th, X^[8] user @ShitpostRock made a post saying that only "0.6% of total users on youtube use adblock," gathering over 27,000 likes in a day (seen below, right).

Search Interest

Unavailable.

External References