Google pushing "Ad blockers violate YouTube's Terms of Service" banners on YouTube
It has been almost a year since Google started to implement changes on YouTube to block content blockers on the platform. The fight against adblockers started in 2023 with "Ad blockers are not allowed by YouTube" banners being shown to affected users.
Google has been testing new implementations since then, including server-side ads that break adblockers, or by throwing jabs against competing browsers like Firefox.
A new banner
Reports on Reddit and other online forums suggest that Google has started to intensify its fight against content blockers once again on YouTube.
The new banner resembles the old. It is shown to users when they use content blockers. The text is slightly different, as it now says "Ad blockers violate YouTube's Terms of Service".
The options are identical to last year's banner: allow ads on YouTube or subscribe to YouTube Premium. No word on YouTube Premium Lite, a cheaper subscription option that promises fewer ads on YouTube as well though.
Not everyone appears to be affected by this. Google, is likely testing the waters on a small percentage of YouTube visitors to collect data and make sure that false positives are low.
Affected users report issues on non-Chrome browsers for the most part. Opera and Firefox seem to be affected specifically by this.
I tested YouTube video playback in several browsers with native or extension-based content blockers and it worked in all of them.
Affected users may try a few things to get back on track.
- First thing they may want to do is update the content blocker and its filter lists, if such an option is provided.
- If that does not work, loading YouTube in private browsing mode may help, as it uses a separate profile for the loading. Just make sure that the content blocker is allowed to run in private browsing mode.
- The next option is to test different browsers to see if they let you get around the blockage.
- Another option is to use Bing Videos to play YouTube videos. Not the most elegant of solutions, but it seems to come without any ads.
If all of those fail, you may want to give third-party frontends and apps a try. Invidious appears to be working again for now, and apps like NewPipe for Android are also alive and kicking.
Closing Words
The cat and mouse game between content blockers and Google's anti-ad-blocking on YouTube could intensify again in the coming months. Users with content blockers may be blocked from time to time when they try to play videos on YouTube.
Now You: do you watch videos on YouTube regularly? Did you run into any content blocks or use YouTube Premium? Let us know in the comments below. (via Neowin)
They keep insisting on this suicidality. Pity. It’d help a lot if they just made YouTube decent to look at; then it might actually be worth shoving them a little money. It’s trash, though, so it’s not worth subscribing.
They stung me (for the moment) on Vivaldi with uBlock Origin… but the same video plays fine on Chrome.
We’ll keep fighting the good fight.
They must really hate people like me that almost never watch Youtube videos ON Youtube, but instead download them using yt-dlp and front-ends like Media Downloader.
That is the only way to go with Youtube (except maybe some of these video player plugins that let you view Youtube in the player.)
Screw ’em. Google has been violating the “don’t be evil” rule for years anyway. The CIA created Google – do an (ironic) Google (or other search engine) search for that phrase.
So I don’t care if I “violate their Terms of Service.” They can bite me.
Using Firefox ESR + proper uBO + Mullvad-with-DNS-blocks-enabled. I don’t see ads or banners on YouTube (or anywhere else on the web), no issues with video playback.
If Google “wins” this battle, I’ll simple stop using YT. That’s how I treat the rest of their services.
Nothing new, they’ve been doing this since they added adblockers to their ToS last year. People are seeing this more now because uBlock Lite filters can only be updated when the extension is updated and approved by Google. The adblock filters can no longer be updated by the end user within the extension.
0 results found for “Skipvids”
The free version of Total Adblock does not block YouTube ads. But the paid version supposedly does block. Is this true? And if it’s true, how does Total Adblock continue to outsmart Google? I could of course just sign up for the paid version but I use YouTube and do not want to have my account deleted or blocked long term for using a blocker. Any information will be appreciated. Thank you.
The free version of Total Adblock does not block YouTube ads. But the paid version supposedly does. Is this true? And if it is true, how does Total Adblock outsmart Google?
There is also another bug with uBlock which has to do with SSAI ads, which seems to be account-related. That will make the bug harder to fix because all uBlock devs aren’t affected. There is usually a 3-10 second loading screen before a video loads, due to it trying to load the ad from what my thinking is. Not everyone has this, but it was reported on uBlock’s reddit.
I watch all Youtube videos by redirecting them to their embedded format , immediate display, no ads.
I use the ‘SponsorBlock’ extension (Firefox) to skip in-video sponsors.
Embedded Youtube videos render only the video, so should I need the video description and/or comments that I call upon a working Invidious or Piped instance (working = which at least retrieves the video description when the video itself may not be correctly retrieved or in a low resolution) of which I modify the /watch page (UserStyle) to have it only display the description/comments, watch page which is called by a manual redirect rule installed in the ‘Redirect Link’ extension, and set as an exception in the ‘Redirector’ extension (open YT video in Youtube embedded) for the /watch to YouTube
and I have that page brought in a popup thanks to two dedicated Firefox extensions. The result is :
Video : [https://img.justpaste.me/i/20250318/tuXFa/1.jpg]
Video with popup : [https://img.justpaste.me/i/20250318/tuXGZ/2.jpg]
No fuss.
Firefox extensions used to accomplish this :
1- Redirector
2- Redirect Link
3- Popup Window
4- WebApp Mode (from the developer of ”Popup Window) which allow to automatize popup rendering of certain urls.
Works like a charm.
? You do things so simply. Errr…
Nothing like google shooting itself in the foot. Had my fill of youtube crap long ago. Not worth the time, inconvenience, and now, money for garbage content.
There’s always books.
@Skynet,
Google is blocking adblockers on its own browser which is probably why UBO has been disabled.
But you don’t have to use Google Chrome: switch to Firefox instead and install UBO on that. Google has no access to any addons on Firefox. https://www.mozilla.org/nl/firefox/new/ and then go to https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/ to get a fresh copy of UBO.
I don’t use youtube very often but here’s my recent experience on 3 different pc’s.
Mullvad with Ublock origin on Win 11 – Vidoes freeze with error – I download then and watch with vlc.
Firefox with Adblock Plus on Win 11 – Works fine with no ads last I checked.
Firefox on ZorinOS (Linux) with Ublock Origin – Works fine with no ads.
App on Samsung TV (Kids watch this when I’m not in the room) More fucking ads then content.
Thanks for the info Martin.
I disabled my content blocker on Youtube and tried to watch a 22 minute video. In the first 8 minutes I had four ad breaks – at which point I gave up. It is such an incredibly crappy experience without a content blocker. Also, f**k Google.
Used SkipVids to view this video: https://youtu.be/Y7uHOL4ddbo But all the happened is a brief image of the video appeared to be immediately replaced with another one I wasn’t interested in watching.
Also, it’s a dark mode site which means I have to change FF color mode settings to a white background to watch anything since I use the Text Legibility addon to turn grey colored text to black and that interferes with youtube’s descriptions if a site uses dark mode.
I used NewPipe a few times on my Android phone, but watching videos on such a small screen ultimately becomes irritating especially since it’s necessary to type the URL to every video you want to watch.
I haven’t tried Freetube yet since it requires installing their app, but I’ll give it a go later.
Google just disabled my Ublock and it can no longer be installed. Other adblockers don’t work as good as uBlock Origin did…so sad.
If you want to continue using a Chrome-like browser, then consider using Brave browser as they are still allowing uBlock Origin and other extensions to run in the browser, Google can not disable the extension in Brave.
For Chrome and Edge browsers remains uBlock Origin Lite [https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home] which, by the way, is no longer available as a Firefox extension given, of course, that Firefox (but not only), (still) supports MV2.
By the way, want to test your adblocker? Not sure if this tester is the toughest but it scores a 100% for my Firefox (uBlock Origin 1.62.0) : [https://adblock-tester.com/]
I don’t see this banner. It’s blocked by my ad blocker ?
Don’t forget FreeTube and SkipVids as alternatives. FreeTube works great with a sock5 proxy and SkipVids offers free TV. My favorite channel is the mountain bike channel.
Thanks. Skipvids also gets rid of the annoying shorts I don’t wish to see.