About a month ago, we reported that YouTube had started testing server-side ads, and now users are reporting that they’re seeing a black screen when trying to watch videos.
YouTube has been cracking down on ad blockers quite aggressively since last year, encouraging users to switch to YouTube Premium, which starts at $13.99 per month.
A quick rundown of YouTube’s fight against ad blockers
The streaming service is said to have started delaying videos, creating artificial delays on browsers other than Chrome and Edge, but the issue reportedly affected users who had ad blockers installed.
The Mountain View company revealed in April that it was showing anti-adblocking prompts to ad-blocking users, encouraging them to subscribe to a premium subscription. But ad blockers again came to the rescue, allowing users to bypass the warning screen. Less than a month later, Google appeared to double down by automatically skipping videos if it detected an ad blocker, but it turned out to be a bug related to Adblock Plus. Firefox users have accused YouTube of deliberately providing a poor experience on non-Chromium browsers, but that has never been conclusively proven.
Either way, Google’s shenanigans didn’t end there: YouTube decided to insert server-side ads into videos, meaning that unlike ads that run separately, these new ads are embedded directly into the video stream, making them harder to block, but not an impossible task for good old ad blockers.
Are you experiencing a black screen on YouTube? You’re not alone.
Mashable reports that users on YouTube were met with a black screen that remained there for around six seconds before the video began playing. The issue reportedly affected multiple browsers, including Firefox, Edge and Vivaldi.
Some users joked that they would rather see a black screen than ads. It’s certainly a better experience, but it’s a waste of valuable time. A simple workaround for YouTube’s black screen is to refresh the page and press F5 as soon as the page starts to load. uBlock Origin’s filters have been updated with a patch that resolves this issue, and the add-on will update the filters automatically. If you’re still experiencing the black screen issue, open the extension’s dashboard and update the filters manually. This tug-of-war is tiring, but it seems to me that Google’s efforts are actively promoting the use of ad blockers rather than attracting new subscribers.
I didn’t encounter this issue in Firefox, mainly because I don’t use it for YouTube anymore. I can confirm, however, that a similar issue occurred on FreeTube around the same time: videos would not load when using LocalAPI. This bug was quickly fixed in an update, but I think the two issues may have been related to each other. If you’re experiencing the auto-scrolling window issue on FreeTube, here’s how to get around this pesky bug.
Incidentally, Google Chrome users may notice a warning that says “These extensions may soon no longer be supported.” Read Martin’s article for more details.
summary
Article Title
YouTube server-side ads cause ad blocker users to see a black screen
explanation
Are you getting a black screen when trying to play a video on YouTube? That’s because you have an ad blocker.
author
Ashwin
the publisher
Ghacks Technology News
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