YouTube Threatens to Block, Thousands of People Delete Tech Applications – 4 hours ago

Jakarta, CNBC Indonesia – YouTube is aggressively banning the use of ad blockers on its platform.

The video app company has started showing warnings to people who try to activate ad blockers when watching videos on its website.

As a result, hundreds of thousands of users uninstalled ad blockers because they received warnings from YouTube.


One ad blocker company, AdGuard, said that more than 11,000 people have uninstalled its Chrome extension every day since October 9. That compares with 6,000 uninstalls per day before YouTube implemented the change.

“On October 18, 52,000 people uninstalled AdGuard,” company CTO Andrey Meshkov told Wired, quoted from Engadget, Monday (6/11/2023).

However, installations of the paid version of AdGuard, which was not affected by YouTube’s crackdown, saw an increase.

Another ad blocking company, Ghostery, said its usage in October was due to seeing 3 to 5 times the number of daily installs and uninstalls.

According to a survey of customers about why they uninstalled the product, 90 percent did so because the tool no longer worked with YouTube.

Since YouTube’s crackdown appears to only affect users who access its website via Chrome on laptops and desktops, some users are also trying to use other browsers as a workaround.

Ghostery said that Microsoft Edge browser installations increased by 30 percent in October compared to September.

YouTube ads are increasingly making a larger contribution to Google’s overall revenue.

The company sold more than $22 billion in ads on the platform from the start of this year through September.

But the streaming platform is also trying to encourage more people to pay for ad-free YouTube Premium, allowing people to download videos, stream videos in higher quality, and access YouTube Music.

Earlier this year, the company raised the price of YouTube Premium by US$2 to US$14 per month.

[Gambas:Video CNBC]

(dem)