Why did YouTube videos suddenly end?

As a reminder, users have noticed that videos they start at some point skip to the end or freeze in the middle of playback. In some cases, the same thing happened when viewers tried to rewind the video to a specific section.

They took to Reddit to share their crash experiences, but found that there were already many such cases. People accused YouTube of deliberately creating issues that strangely stopped appearing when the ad blocker was disabled. So this was seen as a well-thought-out move by Google to stop people from using blockers.

YouTube is taking steps to enable users to watch ads or purchase ad-free subscriptions. Yes, the company has previously announced that it will turn off video viewing if it detects a blocker in the browser. This function has not yet left the testing period, but in its latest version it allowed you to watch three videos, after which the player was overlapped with a banner and informed about the need to turn off the ad blocker.

So, when users noticed that their videos suddenly ended and all the relevant media started writing about it, Google came out with a comment to clarify the situation. The company says the issue is not related to combating ad blockers, but resulting from processes aimed at providing improved performance. The company reiterated that the use of ad blockers is still frowned upon and against its terms of service, and suggested ways to allow ads to run with existing ad blockers on its support page.

All accusations were denied in the platform’s statement:

Ad blockers violate YouTube’s Terms of Service, and we’ve long encouraged our users to support their favorite creators by allowing ads on YouTube or trying Premium for ad-free viewing. A disinterested effort to improve YouTube’s performance and reliability can result in a less-than-ideal viewing experience for users who block ads.
– says the description.

Did it become clear after this? Actually, not at all. The company doesn’t explain how its performance optimization interacts with ad blockers, but one thing is clear: While YouTube wasn’t directly behind this, it indirectly caused it to happen by adding conflicting code.

This means the problem can probably be fixed fairly quickly, but this will require blocker developers to figure out exactly what is causing their extensions to work and then make changes.