YouTube Threatens to Become Even More Horrendous If You Have … – Futurism

Watching YouTube is becoming miserable. Blocker Blocker

YouTube has had it with you blocking the ads on its platform and it's willing to make the experience as miserable as possible until you give up.

As Business Insider reports, the company is encouraging viewers to turn off their ad blockers in their browsers or subscribe to YouTube Premium, which costs a whopping $13.99 a month, by degrading the experience of using the site.

"Ads are a vital lifeline for our creators that helps them run and grow their businesses," a spokesperson told Insider. "That's why the use of ad blockers violates YouTube's Terms of Service."

As a result, users with ad blockers have been getting increasingly frustrated with nagging messages and irritating multi-second delays.

"In the past week, users using ad blockers may have experienced suboptimal viewing, which included delays in loading, regardless of the browser they are using," the spokesperson added.

Earlier this week, Reddit users accused YouTube of slowing down their Firefox browsers. But as it turns out, the company wasn't just targeting a single browser it's simply trying to annoy anybody making use of an ad blocker, regardless of what browser they're using.

YouTube's crackdown on ad blocking has been going on for months now, with users growing increasingly frustrated, as evidenced by recent spikes in Google searches for terms like "YouTube ad blocker."

"I am never buying YouTube Premium, piss off YouTube," one Reddit user wrote in a post that was upvoted well over 1,000 times last month.

Others balked at the considerable price the company charges to access the ad-free YouTube Premium.

"If [YouTube] Premium was five bucks I'd pay for it in a heartbeat, and would've done years ago," another user commented.

But whether ad blockers will prevail remains to be seen. Google is still planning to change how extensions work in its Chrome browser which could eventually render many, if not all, ad blockers obsolete on its dominant browser.

More on YouTube: YouTube Creators Will Be Forced To Disclose AI Content

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YouTube Threatens to Become Even More Horrendous If You Have ... - Futurism