YouTube has been actively addressing the use of ad blockers, encouraging users to either subscribe to YouTube Premium or disable their ad blockers to accept the growing number of ads.
Now, YouTube has introduced a new measure that involves skipping videos entirely and muting their audio for users with ad blockers enabled.
A Reddit user, SDHD4K, highlighted YouTube’s latest strategy against ad blockers. According to their post, if an ad blocker is active, the video will automatically skip to the end, preventing any playback.
Other users in the same Reddit thread reported similar issues, including missing audio when using an ad blocker on YouTube. They noted that while adjusting the volume slider temporarily restores the sound, it reverts to mute as soon as they stop adjusting the slider. Therefore, even if users bypass the video skipping, they may still face an audio-less experience.
See also: How to get YouTube Premium student rate in the Philippines
This ongoing battle against ad blockers seems specific to Adblock Plus for now. However, some ad blockers have already developed workarounds for this issue. Other YouTube users have noted that uBlock Origin still works effectively on Brave and Firefox browsers.
With these developments, we recommend considering YouTube Premium as a last resort. The ad experience on YouTube has significantly worsened recently, with frequent long and unskippable ads. For those who heavily use YouTube, a Php239/month YouTube Premium family subscription might be worth it, especially since it also includes access to YouTube Music. That’s like hitting two birds in one stone because you can drop Spotify for more savings.
Source: Android Authority