YouTube is going hard on its mission to remove ad blockers from the platform, which it claims helps the company to pay the creators. What started as a limited-scale test has now expanded to a worldwide mission, as the platform warns users that having ad blockers enabled on YouTube will result in them not able to watch videos.
That’s right, the platform has been showing pop-up messages like the one below, telling them to remove the adblocker from their browser right away.
However, that’s not the only compromise that people will have to make for using ad blockers. YouTube says that users who have installed ad blockers to watch YouTube videos will continue to have a sub-standard viewing experience, which basically means the video quality will be lower in quality compared to what without ad blockers. The reduced quality is not limited to other browsers like Firefox and Edge but for Chrome users as well.
So what’s the best way to avoid these limiting features? YouTube has only one answer for those users, asking them to pay for the YouTube Premium service which has other benefits like ad-free videos, background playback and access to YouTube music app with its million+ content lineup. It is worrying that YouTube is going gung-ho with its ad blocker-free ecosystem and trying everything in its power to force people to pay for the content they watch.
The company faces serious questions from antitrust regulators, especially in Europe where it could have to tweak its ad blocker strategy so that it doesn’t face intense grilling for breaking user privacy rules. YouTube Premium comes for over Rs 100 per month in countries like India while those living in the US pay a higher monthly fee to use the service.
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