Having launched a global effort to encourage users to watch ads while watching videos or upgrade to YouTube Premium for an ad-free experience and beginning to disable videos for users with an ad-blocking extension enabled, last year, YouTube has now expanded its enforcement of ad-blockers to include third-party apps.
As part of the same, users who resorted to accessing and viewing ad-free videos on YouTube through a third-party ad-blocking application may encounter performance problems or error messages.
Announcing the move on one of the threads on YouTube Help, the company mentioned that viewers who are using third-party apps, especially ad blocking ones, may experience buffering issues or see the error “The following content is not available on this app” when trying to watch a video on its API.
“We want to emphasize that our terms don’t allow third-party apps to turn off ads because that prevents the creator from being rewarded for viewership, and Ads on YouTube help support creators and let billions of people around the world use the streaming service. We also understand that some people prefer an entirely ad-free experience, which is why we offer YouTube Premium,” it added.
Furthermore, the video streaming platform also mentioned that it only allows third-party apps to use its API when they follow YouTube’s API Services Terms of Service. That being said, when YouTube finds an app that violates these terms, it will take appropriate action to protect our platform, creators, and viewers.
