YouTube said Monday that it is making it harder to use ad-blocking apps from other companies that break its rules. If you try to watch a video on one of these apps, you might get an error message saying, “The following content is not available on this app.”
YouTube Enforcement of Third-Party App Integrations Changed
With its tougher enforcement, YouTube is mainly going after mobile apps that let users watch videos without ads. The company has clarified that third-party apps blocking ads while streaming are breaking its rules and will soon be punished.
On Monday, YouTube added a new help page with new rules for third-party apps to follow. The company says that people who stream through one of these apps may have to deal with buffering or get the message “The following content is not available on this app” when they try to play a video from now on. YouTube also says that third-party apps can only use its API if they follow its API Services Terms of Service. If YouTube finds an app that doesn’t follow these rules, it will “take appropriate action to protect [its] platform, creators, and viewers.”
Internet Monetization: Encouraging Paid Services and Compliance
People have found ways to get around paying for things on the Internet for most of its history. But the Internet in the 2020s is all about getting people to pay or help pay the companies running it. NInternetnd Disney won’t let you watch with someone else’s account, and YouTube doesn’t want you to watch with ad blockers.
YouTube Promotes Premium Subscription to Avoid Ads Amid Ad Blocker Crackdown
If you want to watch YouTube without ads, the company suggests Premium, which ranges in price from $13.99 to $18.99 based on the user’s platform. Since last year, YouTube has tried different ways to stop people from blocking ads. For example, users have been asked to turn off their ad blockers before they can watch videos, and people who use ad blockers can only watch three videos at a time.
Ad Block Users Experience YouTube Performance Issues Due to Extension Bug
In January of this year, Adblock and Adblock Plus users said that YouTube wasn’t working right. This led many people to think that Google was taking more aggressive steps to stop people from blocking ads. Later, it was confirmed that the video buffering issues were caused by a bug in the extension’s engine, which made pages that dynamically load content run very slowly. BleepingComputer has asked Google to explain which kinds of apps break their API terms of service. We’ll let you know what we find out and update this post.
Conclusion
Google owns the popular video-sharing site YouTube. Recently, YouTube said it would be stricter about following its Terms of Service. It will focus on going after apps that block ads. The company confirmed in a statement that it will take action against third-party apps that break the rules of its API services by letting users watch videos without ads. The company announced a global campaign against these kinds of apps in November last year, leading to this latest decision.
