Opera browser and Opera GX are not blocking ads on YouTube

[harlan4096]

Many Opera browser and Opera GX users have reported that the program is not blocking ads on YouTube. Just to be clear, we are talking about the browser's built-in ad blocking option and not add-ons.

The complaints state that the browser allows the ads on the video streaming service, even when the adblocker's default lists are enabled. A little searching reveals that this has been a recurring issue in the browser, and for quite some time too. I have been using both browsers for a week, because I wanted to confirm whether the issue exists, it is real and slightly complicated. The browser blocked ads on all other sites that I visited, but when it came to YouTube videos, it allowed the ads to play.

Opera GX does not allow all three of its default blocker lists to be unchecked, you can only disable 2 of the three, which seems a little odd because I wanted to use custom lists to rule out issues with the default onesSo I stuck to the default lists and used the browser primarily to watch videos. Opera GX doesn't seem to block 9 out of 10 ads. When I kept switching through videos in a large playlist, nearly every single video had an ad, but some didn't. This made me wonder whether it depends on the channel that has uploaded the video, because the ones without ads were from specific channels, and these were mostly big brand channels who were probably in it for the marketing, and not the monetization part.

I also noticed that if I kept watching videos for a while, I wouldn't get the ads until I exited the browser and came back. But this seemed completely random, one day it would work, the next day it didn't.

You may have noticed that I mentioned Opera GX so far. While ad-blocking in GX failed completely, the tests with regular Opera browser were a bit weirder. Some days it failed to block ads, sometimes it would load the ad and skip it in a split-second, sometimes I didn't get ads at all. And all these were with the block ads and block trackers options enabled.

Back to the issues with Opera, there is no explanation from the developers, even though an official thread (created by a moderator) exists at the browser's forums. The consensus among Opera GX users seems to be that something has changed on YouTube's end, which prevents the browser from blocking the ads. Well if that was true, then no ad-blocker should work, right? I use Firefox and Edge regularly every day, and also have Vivaldi and Brave on my computer, just to keep an eye on new features and changes. None of these browsers have an issue blocking ads on YouTube. One tech-savvy user on reddit mentioned that Opera's ad blocker is generic and that it does not work with YouTube's  script, specifically the Polymer framework.

That brings us to one of two workarounds for the issue. The easier way to fix the YouTube ad blocking problem on Opera is to just use an extension like uBlock Origin. This may seem like a no-brainer to experienced users, but there are a lot of people who don't know about the popular ad-blocking add-on. You can find the extension on the Opera Addons store and the Chrome Webstore. Install it, and it will take care of the problem for you.

The other way, is to add custom filter lists, which can be useful for people who don't want to install extensions, but want to block more ads. The uBlockOrigins uAssets Git Repo has a bunch of filters that you can add. Just copy the URL of each list, and paste it in the custom lists section of Opera's settings.

Let's hope Opera fixes this problem.
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