Google restricts YouTube's work in these browsers again

An error icon on a smartphone in front of the YouTube logo. Photo: Dado Ruvic/REUTERS

Some YouTube users with ad-blockers enabled in their browsers may have noticed the banner that stops video playback and warns them not to use such content blockers. The Google banner states that such extensions violate the terms of service and asks users to disable them or upgrade to YouTube Premium.

It was reported by Neowin.

In which browsers with ad blockers Google restricts YouTube's work

Google's fight against ad blockers is nothing new. Back in 2023, the company was accused of deliberately slowing down YouTube on Firefox, although it denied it. A few months later, this happened again, but Google again turned out to be innocent, as Adblock admitted that the mistake was on their part. The company was also blamed for hiding the "skip ads" button, although it again claimed innocence.

Now the annoying banner is back in Opera browsers. It is not yet known whether this is happening in other regions or only in India, but there have been complaints from users on Reddit.

The banner warning against the use of ad blockers on YouTube. Photo: Neowin

Simply restarting the uBlock Origin extension did not solve the problem, but disabling the built-in content filtering add-on called Privacy Protection did the trick. So, it's likely that Opera's built-in ad blocker is the cause of the problem.

Similar reports from users also concerned the Firefox browser, although the authors of the publication note that they did not encounter problems on YouTube using AdGuard. At the same time, Google's own Chrome browser has also been experiencing slow performance lately when using uBlock Origin.

Different ad blockers are currently suffering from different types of problems, which indicates that Google is renewing its attempts to combat them.

As a reminder, YouTube creators may benefit from better monetization solutions. The platform is currently testing the new method of improving the accuracy of ratings, which will help speed up the process.

We also wrote that Google Drive will have the feature that has been available on YouTube for a long time. Users of the service will be able to create searchable video transcripts.