YouTube, a Google-owned platform for video-sharing has blocked the use of Ad Blocker, an app used for stopping advertisements from running before playing the video on the platfrom. This indeed doubled its effort to crack down on the ad blockers on its platform globally, as it has been reportedly running advertisements for ad blockers.
According to Malwarebytes, the cybersecurity company- YouTube was still showing an ad for Total Adblock as of November 9, after making it quite clear that the usage of an ad blocker will be against the Terms of Service of the video-sharing platform.
The report further says, "YouTube has made it quite clear that using an ad blocker goes against its Terms of Service, reminding users that they have a choice between accepting ads or paying for a premium subscription.”
It further said: "Yet, as of November 9, 2023, YouTube was still showing an ad for Total Adblock, a browser extension that blocks… ads. It certainly looks confusing and is sending mixed messages," it added.
But there is said to be some irony here as the report further notes that YouTube does not have a good handle on its ads, and it might be the reason why users were able to resort to ad blockers in recent years.
The report mentions, "It’s not that people want an ad-free experience to purposely hurt content creators. They more likely want a scam-free and malware-free experience but perhaps aren’t in a position to pay for a subscription.”
Furthermore, YouTube's effort to crack the ad blockers has resulted in a record number of uninstalls. Multiple ad-blocking companies have reported that thousands of people have started uninstalling their products after the video-sharing platform started showing warnings to the users who were trying to watch videos on the video streaming website while using the ad blockers in the background.
One of the companies named AdGuard said that the Chrome extension has been uninstalled by over 11,000 people on a daily basis, since October 9 (2023), and the number has gone up from 6,000 uninstallations per every- to YouTube's change, as per The Wired report.
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Inputs from IANS
