• Some YouTube users report a message warning them that if they don’t disable their adblocker, they won’t be able to watch videos anymore.
• The platform has confirmed that it is performing an experiment.
• YouTube did however state that it would only block access to the platform in extreme cases.

Ad blockers have been used for years to avoid YouTube’s often pervasive advertising that includes unskippable and inane advertising.

Try as it might YouTube has tried to get folks to stop using ad blockers, going so far as to plead with them to purchase YouTube Premium instead. Now that it’s tried honey, YouTube is being a bit more aggressive.

This week a user posted a warning they’d received from the video sharing platform while using an ad blocker.

“Video player will be blocked after 3 videos” read the message followed by the now generic “It looks like you may be using an ad blocker”.

Of course images like this can be easily faked by YouTube confirmed to Bleeping Computer that this is part of an experiment being pushed to some users.

“We’re running a small experiment globally that urges viewers with ad blockers enabled to allow ads on YouTube or try YouTube Premium,” the platform told Bleeping Computer.

“In extreme cases, where viewers continue their use of ad blockers, playback will be temporarily disabled. We take disabling playback very seriously, and will only disable playback if viewers ignore repeated requests to allow ads on YouTube,” YouTube added.

Blocking access is an extreme move given that just a month ago YouTube was politely asking those using an ad blocker to disable it or give YouTube Premium a try. With that having been said, we are curious to find out what an “extreme case” is defined as. The screenshot suggest, users will get three strikes before their ability to watch videos is restricted, that doesn’t seem “extreme” to us but it may be to YouTube which is struggling with advertising.

That struggle is however, of YouTube’s own making. As Financial Times reported this week, advertisers are demanding refunds from YouTube after it was discovered that advertising on partner websites was essentially hidden.

Advertising analysis group Adalytics found that YouTube was running muted ads on autoplay on thousands of websites and apps. This is a problem because these ads ran under YouTube’s TrueView system where advertisers are only charged if the full clip, or 30 seconds of that clip is watched. If the ad is skipped, the advertiser doesn’t pay.

Google has said that “claims in the third-party report simply aren’t right” in a blog post but that seemingly hasn’t stopped advertisers from requesting refunds.

The message to users is clear though, pay for Premium or endure advertising if you want to continue watching content on the platform.

It’s unclear where YouTube is running this experiment or for how long but you may want to start considering alternatives to an adblocker if you watch YouTube for any length of time.