A lot of people are spending today (August 11) claiming that YouTube is down — at least that’s what you’d think when looking at Down Detector. But what’s actually happened is that YouTube seems to have quietly bricked its website for anyone using the Adblock Plus Chrome extension (ABP).
Honestly? I was just as baffled as you may have been when I logged on to YouTube. I cleared the cache and still nothing — even though the service was working on an incognito tab. So I went to my usual process of disabling extensions, to see if any were messing up the site loading, and when I disabled Adblock Plus, everything was rosy.
I took to Reddit to make sure I wasn’t losing my marbles, and sure enough, it seems like it could very well be a shadow update to the way YouTube interacts with Adblock Plus. And in my investigation, I have found a workaround.
How does YouTube detect Adblock Plus?
There hasn’t been a clear answer from YouTube as to how it identifies ad blockers — it’s doubtful anyone will actually say how the sauce is made. But we can make some logical assumptions based on what’s happened before both on YouTube and other websites.
Missing ad requests
YouTube will know exactly what ad scripts should be requested when you load a page. Ad blockers usually work by never requesting those ad URLs. It’s a dead giveaway that an ad blocker is intercepting it, which can be identified in milliseconds.
Baiting you with elements
YouTube could also be injecting invisible “fake ads” into the code that loads when you access the website — just to see if it will run into any problems serving you ads. If said bait (using common ad names like .ad-container) disappears, then it knows you’re blocking.
Chrome extension resource path tests
No, websites can’t directly read what extensions you have installed, but they can try loading extension IDs as part of the site load to see if you have it. Every Chrome extension has a public ID, so if YouTube attempts to fetch its public ID and succeeds, then it’ll know you have ABP.
What are the workarounds?
For this, you’ve got two options. First of all, YouTube Premium is the safest and easiest way to skirt ads, and it's clear that the company is making the case for this in its most aggressive way yet.
But regardless of the nasty surprise Adblock Plus users are waking up to, there are definitely benefits to getting this $13.99/month YouTube Premium subscription. First and foremost, there are no ads, which means no more playing cat-and-mouse with YouTube’s constant whack-a-mole tactics.
Second, your favorite creators aren’t earning anything from YouTube when you use an ad blocker, as they’re paid from ad impressions. And finally, there are some legitimately good features like downloading videos to watch offline, playing in the background on mobile, and access to YouTube Premium Music (no need for Spotify).
That said though, there is one ad blocker that still works. Two words: uBlock Origin. Yes, I know that Google has blocked it from its Chrome Extension store, but there is still a way to get uBlock Origin on Chrome that our how-to extraordinaire Kaycee has detailed.
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