YouTube is automatically skipping videos if you use Adblock Plus

[harlan4096]

Google's tug of war with ad blockers continues. This time, Adblock Plus users are reporting that videos are automatically skipping to the end.

This is not the first time YouTube has annoyed users who use a content blocker, the shenanigans began about a year ago, before Google officially announced its crackdown on ad blockers. The issues were soon sorted out by ad blockers, who blocked the prompts that were displayed by the streaming service, allowing users to protect their privacy and use YouTube ad-free.

Are YouTube videos skipping to the end automatically if you use an ad blocker?

The new video-skipping behavior was reported by users on Reddit, who said that videos that they loaded ended automatically without playing. A few comments mentioned that videos were skipping forward ahead before the playback resumed. Some users also said that YouTube is automatically muting their videos. But, I couldn't help noticing that most of these complaints were from users who were using the Adblock Plus extension. It is unclear if the issue impacts other ad blockers.

A statement sent by a Google spokesperson to 9to5Google says the following: "Ad blockers violate YouTube’s Terms of Service, and we’ve been urging users for some time to support their favorite creators and allow ads on YouTube or try YouTube Premium for an ad-free experience. An unrelated push to improve YouTube’s performance and reliability may be resulting in suboptimal viewing experiences for ad blocker users."

That does seem a little confusing, since only Adblock Plus users have been experiencing issues. How do you fix this problem? Use uBlock Origin, as the extension is not impacted by this. If you still face any problems with ads on YouTube, just restart your browser, or update the filters manually from the add-on's settings.

You may or may not have experienced the issue on YouTube, as it depends entirely on the adblocker that you are using.
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