YouTube has been waging a war against adblockers over the last few months. Previously, the company started its crackdown on desktop users and deliberately slowed down video playback for users who tried to block ads. YouTube is now coming after third-party YouTube mobile apps like Revanced, YouTube Vanced, and others that natively block ads on mobile devices.
YouTube’s Fight Against Adblockers Now Includes Smartphones
YouTube recently announced its new policies over third-party YouTube clients. It is revealed that viewers with third-party apps that block ads will face buffering issues. In some cases, the platform won’t play any video and will instead show the error, “The following content is not available on this app.”
YouTube mentions that it will only allow third-party apps that follow the API Terms of Service of the platform. Any attempt to block ads directly violates the policies of the company. The notice issued by YouTube also encourages users to get the official YouTube Premium subscription to remove ads.
Although YouTube has not specifically mentioned any third-party service, apps like ReVanced, NewPipe, YouTube Vanced, and many more allow users to log in from their official Google (YouTube) account and stream all the content from the platform without any ads. Such apps also include some premium features like background playback.
The Google-owned streaming giant is not happy with viewers using such workarounds to skip ads and get premium features for free. With this, YouTube encourages people to switch to the YouTube Premium subscription model. Considering the large-scale crackdown of ad blockers for desktop users over the past few months, we can expect YouTube to follow the same strict approach for taking down mobile clients.
In addition to its fight against adblockers, YouTube also made its Skip Ad button smaller and difficult to notice. The new button was spotted by some users in August 2023 and was rolled out to several users globally.
