Why Are Your YouTube Videos Suddenly Skipping to the End?
YouTube is constantly trying to find ways to stop ad blockers from working on its site. The Google-owned website is offering new measures aimed at limiting the use of third-party apps like AdBlock Plus, from large pop-ups discrediting your use of the ad blocker to actually blocking videos . Now it looks like YouTube has taken another decisive step in this war by skipping videos to the end for some users with ad blockers installed.
On Monday, Reddit user u/SDHD4K posted a video of YouTube’s latest attempt to thwart ad blockers, showing how the video they chose to watch simply skips to the end with Adblock Plus enabled. Other comments in the thread confirmed that the problem was happening on their end, while others claimed that YouTube was muting videos when they had their ad blocker enabled. Some comments on the Reddit thread dismissed the issue, saying that the AdBlock Plus team will likely fix the problem within a few hours.
The recent increase in advertising on YouTube, as well as an increase in the cost of Google’s own YouTube Premium subscription , has likely pushed more users to install an ad blocker. Ads can be annoying, but they can also allow attackers to share malware with unsuspecting users. This is why even the FBI recommends that people install ad blockers when browsing the web.
If YouTube’s latest change sounds annoying, that’s exactly the point. The company wants to make using ad blockers so annoying that you’ll turn them off and decide to either fight the ads or pay for Premium. Luckily, for those who don’t want to watch a long ad that you can’t skip to watch a short video, there are several alternatives.
Based on user complaints, most of these problems seem to be related to programs like AdBlock or AdBlock Plus (no relation). Users using alternatives such as uBlock Origin have not reported any problems at all. Some users ditch AdBlock or even install browsers like Brave that have a built-in ad blocker to avoid these problems. This is by no means a foolproof plan, but if you’re facing this problem, you might want to try swapping and see where it takes you. It’s possible that this issue could also be unintentional behavior on YouTube’s part, but without any official communication from the site, it’s hard to prove.