Topic summary
Adblocker
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Ad blocking.
Countermeasures
In September 2023, after a 4 month testing period, the American video hosting site YouTube began implementing countermeasures to viewers using adblocker software to watch videos on its platform. A popup message appeared warning that the user was breaching the terms of service, and may be blocked from accessing content after three videos unless they whitelisted the site, or purchased YouTube Premium. This sparked extreme controversy and backlash across the YouTube communities. In October 2023, privacy advocate Alexander Hanff filed a criminal complaint against YouTube under Irish jurisdiction due to its ad blocking detection script, which is believed to violate European Union privacy laws. In June 2024, YouTube began experimenting with server-side ad insertion, which consists of embedding ads directly into video streams, making automatic blocking significantly more difficult.