PETALING JAYA: YouTube will begin blocking users who use ad blockers on its platform, a measure outlined in its recent blog post with the goal of ensuring fair compensation for content creators from the advertisements accompanying their videos.

According to YouTube’s official support page, this decision comes after careful consideration and numerous reports that ad blockers are negatively impacting the revenue streams of both YouTube and its content creators.

“We want to emphasise 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,“ the blog post read.

To discourage the use of ad blockers, users with ad blockers enabled will see a message urging them to disable the software. If they choose not to, they will be unable to view videos until they comply with the new guidelines.

“Viewers who are using these third-party apps may experience buffering issues or see the error “The following content is not available on this app” when trying to watch a video.”

The video streaming platform has also assured users that it is committed to maintaining a user-friendly environment and will continue to offer premium services like YouTube Premium for an ad-free experience.

“We also understand that some people prefer an entirely ad-free experience, which is why we offer YouTube Premium,“ it stated.