TECH NEWS – Google explains why YouTube is not working properly, especially for people using adblockers.

A few days ago we reported about an interesting thing that was happening on the Alphabet service. Either the video would skip to the end or it would play silently in our browser. A lot of people complained about this on Reddit, and some people accused YouTube of deliberately trying to trick viewers who filter out ads, because suddenly the problem disappeared after, for example, removing uBlock Origin…

You can read YouTube’s statement on the matter at 9to5Google. YouTube claims that the bug was not caused by a crackdown on adblockers, but by processes to provide a better performing, optimized experience on the video sharing platform. Of course, they then encouraged everyone to subscribe to YouTube Premium or enable ads, as adblockers violate YouTube’s terms of service.

“Ad blockers violate YouTube’s Terms of Service, and we’ve been urging users for some time to support their favorite creators and allow ads on YouTube, or try YouTube Premium for an ad-free experience. An unrelated push to improve YouTube’s performance and reliability may be resulting in a suboptimal viewing experience for ad blocker users,” the statement reads.

Meanwhile, YouTube has launched Playables, a platform dedicated to games, with access to more than 75 PC, iOS and Android games, including Angry Birds Showdown, Words of Wonders and Cut the Rope, all available on Google’s video sharing platform. According to a blog post, Playables will be made available to more users in the coming months, so if you can’t find it now, you’ll catch up later. YouTube started testing this back in September, and according to The Verge, YouTube Premium subscribers got it in November.

But isn’t this feature creep? It’s a departure from what a video-sharing platform is supposed to be. People don’t want to play games on YouTube.

Source: WCCFTech, Gamesindustry, 9to5Google, YouTube Blog, The Verge