Today (November 7), a huge number of users are reporting that YouTube is down, but what’s actually happened is another step has been taken in the anti-ad block war.
If you are using ad blockers that you can get from the Chrome extension store (think Adblock Plus), the home page will not load and even if it does, videos will either not buffer or take a long time to start playing.
This is similar to what happened before, but even worse now is the reports that even uBlock Origin is not breaking through either. But there are three workarounds. To start with, though, let’s ask one key question.
How does YouTube detect an ad blocker?
YouTube has always been vague in telling users how it identifies ad blockers. That being said, though, we can take notes from what’s happened on both YouTube in the past and other websites, and make some logical assumptions.
Ad requests go missing
YouTube knows exactly which ad scripts to load when the page opens. Ad blockers prevent your browser from ever asking for those scripts (URLs). That immediate absence of the expected request is a dead giveaway that the blocker is at work, detectable almost instantly.
Your ad blocker gets baited
YouTube might also sneak in invisible "bait" ads using common ad names like .ad-container during loading. If that tiny, fake ad code immediately disappears (because your blocker stopped it), the site instantly confirms you're running an ad blocker. This trick lets them test the waters before even trying to show you a real advertisement.
Testing what extensions you have
Websites can't just read your list of installed extensions, but they can try a sneaky trick. Since every Chrome extension has a public ID, the site can attempt to quickly fetch that specific ID. If the request succeeds, it's a sure sign you have that extension (like ABP) installed.
Here's how to fix it
First thing’s first, get away from Ad Block Plus! A lot of the ad blockers you see on the Chrome extension store do offer for sites to be whitelisted for a fee, which YouTube does pay for its general advertising network.
Done that? Good! Now let’s break the three workarounds:
- Get YouTube Premium: YouTube is making an aggressive case for you to upgrade to Premium for $13.99, but in all fairness, it’s money well spent. I’ve been using it for the past year, and it’s great for music and watching hours of videos offline while flying.
- uBlock Origin Lite seems to work: This one is actually available on Chrome extension store, and doesn’t require you to fiddle with the settings every browser update to make the original Origin work.
- Switch browser: The cat and mouse game between uBlock Origin and YouTube can get tiresome — namely having to go back into experimental settings and tweak a few settings to make it work again. Instead, grab any other Chromium browser like ChatGPT Atlas, or even non-Chromium browsers that offer extension compatibility like Firefox or Opera Air, and you’ll be able to block again.
If you run into any issues with my workarounds, please fire up in the comments!
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