THE CLASSIC CONUNDRUM: YOUTUBE'S ADBLOCKER ARMAGEDDON

As the culture wars around adblocking continue to simmer on, there’s a well-trodden path that’s playing out again in the war between adblockers and video websites like YouTube. This time, however, YouTube is tightening its grip on adblockers. What started off recently as a disjointed series of complaints in a Reddit r/youtube thread has since become a trending story amid fears of a rising silencing of the audience by platforms: users are reporting that YouTube is retaliating against adblocking, by freezing videos for longer periods of time.

THE CLASSIC SIGNS OF BATTLE: MUTED VIDEOS AND SKIPPING GLITCHES

According to reports from the digital front lines, the traditional viewing experience on YouTube is being disrupted piece-by-piece for adblocker users, via videos that play with their audio muted or that skip directly to the end. These glitches are a new case of YouTube ‘breaking’ in the course of trying to deter adblocking. One user complained about seeing his video skip to the end without having played the meat of the content: Then if I press play, I’ll see the video jump to the end of the video and not play – as if I didn’t skip but replayed it.The usability of the classic experience has been broken with such videos.

THE SOUND OF SILENCE: A CLASSIC ADBLOCKING SIDE EFFECT

The community’s feedback adds audio issues to the list of problems caused by adblocking. Even when sound is played back, it’s often muted or the peculiar effect of sound being present only when one is adjusting the volume is noticed. Users report a kind of mutability in which increasing and decreasing the volume leads to the audio returning to silence again. ‘Let go of the volume control and it’s instant back to muted,’ one user insists. These sound issues point to the frustration that YouTube is forcing on its advertisers, which in turn signals that adblocking is a serious issue for the site.

THE CLASSIC SUGGESTION: DISABLING ADBLOCKERS FOR NORMALCY

The fix, which few who identify as opposed to ads will like, is tidy indeed – turn off the adblocker and the YouTube user experience returns, ads and all. Some users have simply switched their adblocks for other adblocks, seeking one not yet rendered useless by YouTube’s antagonising routines. But the solution is more of a sticking plaster than a remedy to the tension between user experience and the need to monetise.

YOUTUBE'S CLASSIC COUNTER: A PUSH TOWARDS PREMIUM

Meanwhile, with the intrusive push of the adblocker crackdown, YouTube has dangled another carrot in the face of its users: YouTube Premium. You guessed it: YouTube Premium has been heavily marketed as an ‘ad-free experience’, subtly suggesting to users that they should boot those pesky third-party adblockers and start paying for YouTube’s own, ad-laden revenue-generating scheme instead. Was it a coincidence that this adblocker crackdown came out just as YouTube reached a tipping point in its own business model? Of course not! But more importantly, this in-your-face show-me-the-money crackdown on violators of YouTube’s Terms of Service is exactly the kind of action that YouTube would need to initiate to mitigate the risks of the DAA-FTC agreement.

THE CLASSIC DILEMMA: NAVIGATING THE FUTURE OF CONTENT CONSUMPTION

In the noose a YouTube user is left with the classic alternative: take the ads or pay for Premium or go elsewhere a sea of alternative sources of video – making this pivot point where future trends in digital content consumption, creation and monetisation could quickly become apparent. The hand of YouTube is strongly leading the new direction, and the consequences for viewers and the revenue of content creators are structural.

UNDERSTANDING "CLASSIC"

By ‘classic’ I mean traditional or typical, evoking in the case of this article the classic or eternal nature of the kind of actual or potential user experience, strategic and value-conflict situations associated by users and machinery with YouTube and adblockers. The concept is meant to invoke both the longstanding nature of the issues and to reflect the fact that, as YouTube evolves with different add-ons, customisations, redesignings, restructurings, revampings, and reorganisations, innovating as it goes along to adapt to ever-changing market and policy environments, between servers and screens, the kind of classic challenges associated with its nature as a site for mediating user and market preference – with respect to adblockers, and with respect to its own preference for maximising revenue from its user base – enduringly occur in ever novel presentations.

THE CLASSIC PATTERN: INNOVATION AND STRUGGLE

The story of adblockers, and the platform responses (as with YouTube), fits a classic pattern of innovation, struggle and evolution: as technologies evolve, so do the tactics of both the people eager for a cleaner experience and the platforms that are incentivised to monetise. It’s a game of cat-and-mouse, with both sides always moving just a step ahead of the other. The ongoing dynamic speaks to the continuous innovation of the digital ecosystem, and to the eternal tension between free content, user experience and platform profits.