I know you’re out there, watching YouTube with your ad-blocker enabled, enjoying the life of someone not having to pay for YouTube Premium. Turns out, YouTube doesn’t like that so much, so they’re testing out a new system to block your blocker.
According to talks between Google Spokesperson Oluwa Falodun and The Verge, YouTube is testing out a new “feature” that will prompt users to consider disabling their ad-blocker or to try out YouTube Premium, which removes all ads for you.
What happens if you ignore the message from YouTube? Well, it will pop up a few more times; apparently. It will allow you to watch up to three videos on the site before completely cutting off video playback for you. You would more than likely have to get in touch with the support team to re-activate your viewing.
YouTube claims that having ads on their platform allows them to run it for free and to pay the content creators that are working so hard to put their content on to the platform.
Of course, this could be seen as a drive to get more people to subscribe to their monthly YouTube Premium subscription model, and for R72 p/m, it’s not terribly expensive if you are on YouTube daily, but I’m pretty sure there will be a lot of ad-blocker users out there that are going to have a few ruffled feathers if this “experiment” turns into a real thing.