A hot potato: It appears that YouTube is once again trying to convince users of adblockers to switch off the software by degrading their viewing experience on the platform. The latest punishment appears to skip YouTube videos straight to the end and occasionally play clips without audio.
YouTube has long fought a battle against ad blockers, including limiting the number of videos that users could watch and delaying video loading.
It appears that YouTube/Google's latest tactic against adblocking fans involves skipping videos straight to the end.
As shown in a video posted on Reddit (below), replaying the video still causes it to skip to the end screen, as does jumping to different sections of the clip – at one point, the video appears to load indefinitely.
New Youtube adblock weird behaviour - video automatically skips to the end
byu/SDHD4K inyoutube
Other users commented that YouTube videos were playing with no audio. It was only after they disabled Adblock that it started playing normally. Adjusting the volume slider brought the audio back but only for a second before it muted again.
While this does look like another move by YouTube and owner Google to force people into watching ads or subscribing to YouTube Premium, it could be an issue related to the adblocker itself.
The video skipping appears to only be affecting Adblock/Adblock Plus users, with uBlock Origin users reporting that they aren't experiencing any problems with YouTube videos.
In January, it was reported that users of Adblock and Adblock Plus were finding that YouTube was being laggy and unresponsive. This was initially assumed to be the platform's doing, but it transpired that a bug in the adblocking software was causing the issues.
YouTube's initial efforts involved warning people via popups that using ad blockers violated its terms of service, forcing them to disable the software or go Premium to continue.
It was back in November that YouTube's previous ad-blocking methods moved from the experimental stage to a full-blown global effort to stop users from avoiding its slew of ads – or make them sign up for YouTube Premium – by preventing them from viewing content. It led to a surge in the number of people uninstalling their adblockers.
In April, YouTube expanded its crackdown on adblockers to cover third-party apps that let users stream YouTube videos while skipping all advertising.