Google to crack down on third-party YouTube apps that block ads

YouTube announced yesterday that third-party applications that block ads while watching YouTube videos violates its Terms of Service (ToS), and it will soon start taking action against the apps.

Google exposes numerous APIs allowing developers to integrate YouTube into their applications, showing videos or retrieving data about videos hosted on the platform.

However, some developers have created apps for Android and iOS with millions of users that are promoted as a way to watch YouTube videos without seeing any advertisements in videos. 

Google now says that any apps using YouTube APIs that block advertisements may soon be blocked from its developer APIs. 

The video platform also warns that users of these apps may now suffer from extended buffering or get the error "The following content is not available on this app" when trying to load a video.

YouTube says this is to protect creators, as disabling ads affects the revenue they earn.

"We want to emphasize that our terms don't allow third-party apps to turn off ads because that prevents the creator from being rewarded for viewership, and Ads on YouTube help support creators and let billions of people around the world use the streaming service," says the YouTube announcement.

For those who want to enjoy YouTube without ads, the company suggests subscribing to Premium, which costs between $13.99 and $18.99, depending on the user's platform.

YouTube has been experimenting with various methods to crack down on ad blocking since last year, including prompting users to disable their ad blockers to watch videos and restricting users of ad blockers to just three videos.

In January this year, Adblock and Adblock Plus users reported performance issues on YouTube, which many rushed to interpret as Google ramping up aggressive measures against ad blocking.

It was later confirmed that the video buffering problems were caused by a bug in the extension's engine, severely impacting performance on pages that dynamically load content.

BleepingComputer has contacted Google to clarify what types of apps violate their API terms of service and will update this post as we know more.