YouTube isn't happy you're using ad blockers — and it's doing something about it

Some YouTube users are starting to see a prompt warning them that ad blockers are not allowed on the platform. That could prove a major roadblock for folks worldwide.

As reported by The Verge this week, this is the latest step in a building crusade from the platform against ad blockers.

Jay Peters of The Verge wrote that they were getting a prompt from YouTube saying that it looked like they were using an ad blocker — and that YouTube required a person to have ads or upgrade to Premium to use the platform. YouTube said, however, that this was part of a test that began over the summer to prohibit the use of ad blockers on the platform.

Wrote Peters in The Verge:

I’m starting to see YouTube’s ad blocker prompt — are you?

I asked if Google was starting to show the prompt to more people, but spokesperson Christopher Lawton pointed back to a statement from June defining the prompt as a “small experiment globally.”

A quick online search shows that Peters is not alone in seeing the ad blocker prompt. People are certainly not happy about it. For some users, watching YouTube with ads is a non-starter.

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Recently, YouTube has been experimenting with its subscription and ad-free plans. It announced last month, for instance, that it would be killing off its Premium Lite subscription plan toward the end of October. It was a cheaper, ad-free subscription tier available in select European countries.

"While we understand that this may be disappointing news, we continue to work on different versions of Premium Lite as we incorporate feedback from our users, creators, and partners," read an email to users announcing the news.