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YouTube’s latest weapon against ad blockers spoils the ending
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YouTube has beenwaging war against the use of ad blockersfor quite some time now and its latest trick is the craftiest one yet.
Some YouTube users determined to avoid the commercial interruptions – which are bloody annoying but provide revenue to both the service provider and people creating the videos for everyone to watch – have noticed videos are now skipping all the way to the end when playback is attempted.
According to some people onReddit(via9to5Google), only disabling their ad-blocker causes video performance to resume as intended. Some people said that if they have been able to work around the skip, the audio drops out completely.
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It might be some sort of problem with the ad blocker itself. It might also be the ad blocker causing inadvertent problems as it interacts with YouTube. However, judging by recent form, it seems most likely this is another ploy from YouTube to discourage use of the revenue-sapping tech.
YouTube, of course, gives users the option to remove the ads by paying forYouTube Premium, which is expensive but includes access to the YouTube Music service. However, that would involve ad-swervers having to pay for music too.
Naturally, Reddit is awash with folks who are aggrieved at the sheer audacity of Google interfering with their inalienable rights to free content on the internet and anything that might pay for that free content.
“I hate YouTube so much. Greedy Company,” writes _k1llswitch. “The Ads are ridiculous sometimes and I will NEVER pay a penny for your stupid premium service. I don’t use YouTube on my phone so that ain’t no problem and I guess I just have to wait until the AdBlock people find a way to get it working again.”
The apparent skipping issue comes after Google beganwarning that people with ad-blockers enabledwould not be able to watch videos last autumn. Then playback slowed and, in some cases, unduly taxed the computer’s memory andcaused slow performanceof the machine itself.
One thinks this is a battle YouTube is probably going to continue fighting, as ad blockers and users continue to insist on finding new workarounds.
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Chris Smith is a freelance technology journalist for a host of UK tech publications, including Trusted Reviews. He’s based in South Florida, USA. …
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Founded in 2003, Trusted Reviews exists to give our readers thorough, unbiased and independent advice on what to buy.
Today, we have millions of users a month from around the world, and assess more than 1,000 products a year.
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
