YouTube is reportedly hiding comments from users who block ads
Google uses all possible means to prevent users from watching YouTube videos with ad blockers installed on their devices. Last month, many users raised concerns about the sudden increase “This content is not available, please try again later” errors when watching YouTube videos.
At that time, there were only two ways to solve this problem: either disable the ad blockers installed in their browsers or upgrade to the $14/month Premium subscription plan. As a result, many users speculated that Google was using YouTube’s flaws on purpose as part of its broader campaign against ad blockers.
YouTube now disables comments and video descriptions from users. from r/youtube
Some of the users who flagged the issue on Reddit pointed out that the only way to fix this problem is to disable the ad-blocker on their PC. “Unfortunately this is happening to premium users who use ad blockers,” a Reddit user cried. “Not for people who specifically use YouTube’s ad blockers.”
The exact approach to dealing with the ad-blocking crowd may be new, but it’s far from the first time that ad-blockers have faced a challenge from YouTube and been able to successfully overcome it by updating their filter list — sets of rules that tell an ad-blocker exactly what to block. As with previous problems, the fix has already been applied. Once the updated filters reach users, the problem should be solved. But not everyone may have found them yet. And that’s where things get different.
AdGuard
The company says that the gap between advanced repairs and what is actually delivered to users has never been wider. Interestingly, the company says Google’s new expansion rules are to blame.
Google began transitioning Chrome extensions from Manifest V2 to Manifest V3 in 2023, a change that mostly affected ad blockers like uBlock Origin. As a result, more than 30 million Chrome users are left vulnerable to annoying ads.
Now, the Manifest V3 framework is fully functional after Google demoted V2. According to AdGuard, MV3 changed the scope of extensions, greatly reducing their permissions and limiting their capabilities.
“One of the most important changes is the replacement of the webRequest API with the declarativeNetRequest API.
While both APIs allow extensions to block unwanted content, the declarativeNetRequest API is more restrictive. It works by pre-defining a list of rules that an extension can use to block content, and these rules are applied statistically.”
As a result, AdGuard says it is impossible for ad blockers to respond to requests in real time under the MV3 framework. In addition, the ability to update the filter list and adapt to new content is disabled.
The company acknowledges that Google’s transition to the Manifest V3 framework is designed to strengthen user privacy. While the goal was achieved, it says that many extensions, especially ad blockers, are not that powerful.
Ad-blocking extensions under MV3 can’t just update their filters like they used to. Filters in MV3 are pre-built within the extension itself, meaning that filter updates can only be delivered through full updates of the extension, and updating an extension requires it to go through a full-scale update process. This means that if something breaks on a popular website (like YouTube), users can be stuck without a solution for days.
AdGuard
In context, AdGuard uses Chrome’s fast update to deliver updates to filtering rules to users without waiting for a full extension update. However, this only applies to rules that Google deems “safe.”
In such a case, the automatic extension can be delivered to the users within few hours. However, rules that do not fall under the safe category must be fully processed, which can take a week or more.
According to AdGuard:
“Unfortunately, the fixes needed to address the YouTube issues we’re discussing today cannot be delivered immediately, so until the extension goes through a lengthy review process, it won’t be available to Chrome users.”
Browsers such as Mozilla Firefox do not use Chromium, which means they continue to use the Manifest V2 framework. Therefore, extensions and ad blockers continue to work well with powerful capabilities, which may explain why there have not been many complaints about YouTube from Firefox users.
Latest Manifest V3 changes in Chromium […] is very limited in what ad blockers can do in Chromium-based browsers. You probably don’t feel it right now because we were able to work with the Chromium team and shape the API in a way that covers most of our needs. But what has been disabled is the ability to continuously improve it. Now it takes a lot of time to make changes – it may take years to introduce a new feature in MV3.
Andrey Meshkov, AdGuard Founder and CTO
Currently, AdGuard recommends a standalone, system-level ad blocker such as AdGuard for Windows or AdGuard for Mac as it is browser-independent and will filter traffic from your entire PC.
Alternatively, you can switch to a different browser that does not depend on the Manifest V3 framework, including Mozilla Firefox and other Gecko-based browsers.
Earlier this month, YouTube reportedly started killing background playback on third-party mobile browsers, restricting the popular feature to Premium users. This is on top of Google blocking playback on YouTube videos and intentionally slowing down YouTube videos for users with ad blockers.
Ironically, a YouTube ad (back) is trying to get me to join their $14/month Premium plan as I conclude this post.
WHAT ARE YOU THINKING?
Google’s bypass of ad blockers has made it impossible for free users to enjoy YouTube videos without constant interruptions from annoying ads. In addition, the promoted ads (at least for me) are not tailored to my specific wants and needs, making them ineffective.
At this point, you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t. It seems that getting a Premium subscription is the only realistic way around annoying ads as ad blockers seem to be out of the equation with the new Manifest V3 framework rules or giving up on Google Chrome altogether…
What are your thoughts on Google’s aggressive campaign against ad blockers? Let me know in the comments.
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