YouTube is expanding its ad-blocking powers — closes loopholes that allowed some users to bypass restrictions

YouTube has recently expanded its ad-blocking measures, closing the loopholes that browsers and other third-party extensions with ad-blocking capabilities used to remove ads from YouTube videos. The company first started experimental measures against ad-blockers in 2023, before going full steam ahead in 2024. But even so, a few apps, including Mozilla Firefox (and extensions), exploited weaknesses in YouTube’s protection over the past few months. However, this is no longer the case, according to 9to5Google, and some users who previously bypassed ads reported they can no longer play YouTube videos unless they add the video hosting site to their adblocker's allowlist or disable their ad-blocker altogether.

You can subscribe to YouTube if you want to get rid of ads on the platform, but many people do not like doing that. After all, why pay a monthly fee when there is an easy way to get around the ads? And when the company first tried implementing the ad-blocker ban, there was a massive uproar online and in the real world. It even went to the point that a privacy consultant in the EU filed a criminal complaint against the company for “unlawful surveillance.”

The aforementioned ruckus died down with the discovery of ad blocker-blocker loopholes. But now that Google has acted again to close loopholes, people are up in arms about the measures.

New measures don't seem to be 100% water tight

Nevertheless, it seems that not everyone has been affected by this change yet. Users in Southeast Asia and Europe still seem to have fully-functioning ad blockers for YouTube. We do not know if YouTube hasn't implemented the changes in those regions yet, or if updated filter-lists have already been deployed by ad blockers devs to counter the latest ad blocker-blocker efforts.

While we understand the need for Google to make money, people will still want to access their services for free and without any irksome interruptions. So, as long as there is a demand, there will definitely be a supply. This will likely be the whack-a-mole game that YouTube, and its parent company Alphabet, will need to do as long as it exists.

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