YouTube Is Cracking Down on Ad Blockers

• YouTube is cracking down on the use of ad blockers.
• Users are complaining of a pop-up warning against the use of ad blockers.
• YouTube started testing a feature to detect ad blockers in June.

It’s getting harder to avoid watching ads on YouTube.

Users on X, formerly known as Twitter, and other social media sites, have complained of a new pop-up on YouTube warning against the use of ad blockers in the last week.

Screenshots of the pop-up show that it warns users that ad blockers violate YouTube’s terms of service. The message tells the user that their video will be blocked until they either remove the ad blocker or set it to allow YouTube ads.

“Don’t ever disable your AdBlocker and allow YouTube to run ads for your account,” one person wrote on X. “If you show Google that you are willing to forgo your AdBlocker for YouTube, they will make this new AdBlock ban a permanent change.”

The message also encourage’s the user to sign up for YouTube Premium, the site’s ad-free version which costs $13.99 per month.

YouTube started testing a feature on the website in June that “urges viewers with ad blockers enabled to allow ads on YouTube or try YouTube Premium,” the company told The Verge at the time.

YouTube did not immediately return Insider’s request for comment Sunday.

According to The Verge, some viewers were met with a prompt that said their video playback would be cut off after watching more than three videos with an ad blocker turned on.

Oluwa Falodun, a spokesperson for Google, which owns YouTube, told the outlet that ad blocker detection is “not new” and other websites regularly ask users to disable blockers.

“We take disabling playback very seriously, and will only disable playback if viewers ignore repeated requests to allow ads on YouTube. In cases when viewers feel they have been falsely flagged as using an ad blocker, they can share this feedback by clicking on the link in the prompt,” Falodun told The Verge.