Ever more eager to encourage its users to subscribe to its premium plan, the YouTube site is now preparing to mute and automatically skip your videos if Adblock is activated.
Do you use YouTube on a daily basis? There is a good chance that you accompany the latter with an Adblock plugin on your browser. According to recent surveys, more than 36% of French people regularly use an ad blocker on their computer. However, their use still raises the hackles of many web players who depend, in part, on advertising for their online income.
This is particularly the case for YouTube. The benchmark site for online videos has notably launched its own paid subscription, YouTube Premium, to allow its users to free themselves from advertisements which launch automatically when launching and during a video.
This is why YouTube regularly tries to combat Adblock users. His latest idea: automatically play your video if the site detects an ad blocker on your computer. You will thus arrive directly at the end of your video, without having been able to view it first.
But this is not the only measure YouTube has put in place to encourage you to deactivate your ad blocker. If the site detects that, despite its new measure, you manage to access your video, then the latter will be entirely silent. This discovery was notably observed by a user of the site Reddit.
At the start of 2024, YouTube had already caused its site to slow down significantly if it detected an ad blocker on your computer. Users are therefore advised to look into the option of YouTube Premium (the first month of which is free) or to look for other Adblocks potentially capable of circumventing this new restriction.