Ask HN: Googlers, Will Google Disable Accounts for Using Adblockers on YouTube? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Googlers, Will Google Disable Accounts for Using Adblockers on YouTube?

50 pointsgavinhoward57 comments

I use adblockers. My YouTube experience is pretty clean.

But I got the pop-up this morning saying that adblockers are not allowed on YouTube. Fair enough.

But it got me wondering: would Google go so far as to disable accounts that do this? Losing access to my Google account would be bad, even though I have degoogled as much as possible.

If Google would do this, I think I'll stop YouTube, which is fine too; my account is just too critical at this point. I would love if it weren't.

So Googlers, whether speaking for yourself and giving your own opinion, or officially, would Google do that?

For everyone else, would it even be legal for Google to do that? Why or why not?

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Even if a Googler were here to answer this question, what are the odds that they are in a position in Google to make that statement? And even if, the answer would be outdated the moment it's posted because Google can change its position on this anytime. If your account is THAT important, just use a second one for YouTube. I have a Workspace account for critical stuff and a secondary one for everything else.

This. Use Firefox containers to use different Google Accounts in different tabs. Or use Vivaldi, which can subscribe to Youtube channels and manage them alongside your RSS feeds.

Is it possible to do that on ios vivaldi? I dont see that.

I don't know if I'd trust this method with Google. Anything you even "weakly" link like a recovery email could be enough for a "suspicious" account termination.

That's why I have a paid workspace account for the important stuff. Even if not impossible, it's less likely to get blocked on a whim.

You don't even need an account. You can use RSS to 'subscribe'. I haven't logged into YouTube in 10 years.

Not a Googler, but two guesses:

1. No Googler here knows the answer to your question, because something this big is decided way up the chain. Furthermore, due to the huge backlash for such a move, I assume most Googlers would be against such a move, so it will only come to pass if forced by top management.

2. Your account is worth more to Google when you are using it, since they can better target ads at you, so disabling an account is something they want to avoid. I'm guessing they don't think it is profitable for them to disable an account that blocks ads on YT. Remember that even if you are blocking ads on YT, you might still see Google Ads elsewhere, for example on your Android device. They might just not show you the videos though?

> something this big is decided way up the chain

Not in my experience. Not even remotely true. Nobody above the level of the team of ICs writing the account abuse rules knows how it works or why. Not their manager, certainly not their director, undoubtedly not their VP or SVP. The team would have OKRs around high-level account abuse outcomes such as known stolen accounts, lockout false/true positive rates, etc.

What you are describing definitely matches my experience, but IMO a rule like "blocks ads on YT -> disabled" is a rule that could never come from the ICs on the ground since it isn't the sort of abuse they are looking for. That is, unless there's an order from above to treat blocking ads as abuse that warrants blocking.

Legally, Google can probably disable your account for any reason or no reason. Using an adblocker isn't a legally protected thing, so no legal reason not to do it.

That said, it doesn't make a lot of sense. If you have an adblocker on one device, but not others, why drop your account when they could push you to use the device they like you to use?

Especially since, despite the popup saying it won't work, video playback still works as of earlier this week when I saw it.

On that topic, I feel like when a company has gotten to the size of Google and your account with them becomes such an important part of your life that you can potentially face ruin by losing it, they should be held with legal responsibility to provide a proper support system to people losing their accounts. Especially if they're going forward with this new "passwordless" system that really just ties all your accounts to your Google account.

For all the stepping in the EU has been doing lately, I'd rather they focus on something like this before making me replace all my Lightning chargers with USB-C ones

Probably can't for EU side.

If they can detect your ad blocker then they can choose to refuse to serve video to you. I can't think of a business reason why they'd disable your account as that'd do nothing but generate negative PR.

Another cat and mouse game. I got the same message the other day. I noted it, but also ignored it.

It is possible adblockers officially became mainstream. Part of me ia happy about it. Part of me is concerned companies will respond in the worst possible way.

The whole adblock vs adblock detection thing is an arms race. If there's a risk of your account being flagged for using adblock, fewer people would risk it for fear of YouTube updating their detection and catching them.

I don't think it's a good business decision, but there's an angle.

> as that'd do nothing but generate negative PR.

Don't you think we're far past the era where this was a reason not to do something? The "break stuff, 4d chess enthusiasts will explain why later" mentality seems to have permeated product design.

Thinking of the loss of the headphone jack (objectively proven to have nothing to do with space-saving), the continuous killing of Google features, the rise of paid 'verification', the to-and-fro wins and loses in right to repair, looming loss of the ability to 'block' on Twitter (most Twitter updates post-Musk) - anti-features feel like a thing to be rationalised and waived off in 2023.

> break stuff, 4d chess enthusiasts will explain why later

I am totally stealing this to explain every instance of product crapware I can find on the internet.

Not a Googler, but hell no I don't think this will happen. It would turn into an enormous PR disaster.

I agree. A large number of people would be prevented from doing things with their phones and their email that are required for every day life now. They would upset a lot of people that would be forced to find alternatives to Google and likely never return.

I don't think Google cares about that. The bigger problem would be encouraging the use of YouTube when logged out, or from a smurf account.

...But Google still probably doesn't care. I suspect the population of YouTube adblockers is big enough for them to care about the lost revenue, but not a big enough fraction of the general population to create PR issues or to lose revenue from smurfing.

Didn't Google try that already for their real name policy back in the day?

They're too big to care.

How many people would actually stop using them due to the backlash? On Google's scale, it wouldn't even show on their usage stats.

Additionally they have bigger PR disasters than that happening practically every week.

The only reason Google would care was if such a move caused a $1B+ sanction from a Government somewhere on the planet. AdBlocker use is not a legally protected right, so there are no sanctions coming.

this kind of concern is a great reminder to backup your google account, because you never know what reason google might have to lock you out of your digital life, often we see this scenarios where even their google fi account is locked so they are even locked out of their own phone number

Yes, I do this regularly.

What about people with organizational accounts? For example, if I use ad blocker logged into my work Google account, which my employer presumably pays a per-seat cost for.

If they want to Reddit their user base, they are free to do so. If it happens I'll degoogle forever.

We tech bros can hold on to a grudge forever.

I'm still sore about google music, let alone reader. Each of those led me to de-google my tech stack a bit. Won't take much more for me to break clean away.

Reddit is still very much alive and well. It might have lost some of the nerd userbase (through a lot of them still put up with their antics while telling themselves that they will stop doing so if old.reddit.com is shut down), but it got the mainstream(-ish) userbase instead, which is not only a larger market, but also one which is easier to monetize.

Reddit is for 40 year old men/millenials. Facebook, 40 year old women.

Genz doesn't care about reddit. Neither does the next gen after them. It's dead.

> Genz doesn't care about reddit. Neither does the next gen after them. It's dead.

I know it's fun to think you're the centre of the universe while you're the age you are, but Facebook, Reddit — hell even _T.V._ in some form — will all be still around well after your generation is being told _you're_ irrelevant by the new kids.

If you're not organically growing, you need to change your business plan to extract money as if you were growing organically. That means ads, ads, ads. Which will help ensure no more organic growth occurs, which means more ads. Ads. Ads. Ads.

Then yahoo.

that's what I'm thinking too

I don't like Google, but I still use it

I absolutely refuse to use Sony, and Debian. And actively discourage both recommending alternatives. I can easily add more to that list :)

Personally, I'm wondering whether this will lead to an old style OTA TV adblocking scheme, where the adblocker "watches" the video for you, ads and all, and then clips out the ads and you watch the cleaned-up video later. Of course if they can make that client attestation thing stick, then the cleaner-upper would be denied service.

Maybe you can segment your YT activity into different browsers (or browser containers).

That's what I wound up doing; each Google account has it's own container. For most of my browsing, the only thing logged in is Kagi.

They give you the option to pay for the service and not see ads, maybe you should look into that before fantasizing out loud about them taking your account away from you.

That's not worth it to me. I did say that I would stop watching YouTube instead. That should be okay as well, right?

Edit: I've also heard that they are starting, or will start, to force Premium users to watch ads.

Well this is not a Google support forum so I don't see the point of this exercise.

Risk assessment.

If I were to pay, it would more likely be directly to the creators (like Nebula and others).

With YouTube I have zero confidence that the authors get a fair share, and the last thing I want is to give money to the parasites randomly claiming copyright (and stealing the money) over other people's work.

I don't think they would do this, seems easier to just make the videos not play.

My guess is at some point they show a message like you need to get a youtube premium subscription to keep watching without ads. Same with some news sites now which ask that you subscribe if you are blocking ads.

That's exactly what they've been showing. "Disable your ad blocker or get premium" in essence.

Maybe just create another account to use youtube with an adblocker in a different browser profile

If Googlers had that kind of insight and influence then the layoffs a) wouldn't have been a surprise and b) wouldn't have happened at all.

Personally I think it's unlikely Google would disable accounts for that. They're more likely to work around it.

I seriously doubt it. A disabled user has zero value for Google.

They will probably block video though.

Maybe an ad-blocking user has negative value.

Drives traffic.

But a disabled user cannot subscribe to Youtube premium

Seems highly unlikely. If they made that policy then a good number of their own employees would immediately lose access to their google accounts.

I have been using adblocker on youtube for years now, both browser and ios app and have not had issue yet.

Do you really expect a Googler going to make a statement here? Life is never this easy.

This is taking "make up a guy to get mad at" a little too far.

I'm not mad. I even said, "Fair enough" to them doing that. I just want to be careful so that I don't lose my Google account.

If you want to be careful, you should use a seperate google account for your Youtubing. Problem solved!

Google is known for banning multiple related accounts at once, unfortunately.

Then get YouTube premium.

I decided to stop watching YouTube instead.

I wouldn't risk it.

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