After spending years as the subscription black sheep, YouTube Premium is beginning to look mightily attractive. Why? In a move that pretty much everyone could see coming, the company may be about to handicap its ad-filled tier in the way of blocking ad blockers entirely. When the company said it would be investing more into Premium once the service hit 80 million users in 2022, this isn’t what we had in mind.
Begone, ad blockers
Before you slide into the deep end, this isn’t the new normal. At least, not yet. So far, the only confirmation that the video giant is gearing up for a battle against adblockers comes from a Redditor, who was greeted with a popup with the message: “Ad blockers are not allowed on YouTube.” Fortunately, there was a conveniently placed “Allow YouTube Ads” placed ever so close to the “Try YouTube Premium” button.
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Soon after the screenshot made the rounds on social media, the team confirmed to the moderators of the subreddit that the user was part of an experiment that the company was running. Google refused to elaborate any further.
It appears to be limited to a small subset of users, considering that this is the only instance we’ve seen of the experiment. A full rollout could be months away or ready to implement in a week. Or, if we’re lucky, YouTube could decide to scrap the idea entirely. If you’re anything like us, you struggled to keep a straight face while reading that sentence.