Getting completely annoyed by ads while watching YouTube videos is something you must have undoubtedly faced, let’s assume, but the real task is how to get around this pain point.
Since the paid YouTube Premium subscription is apparently an expensive way to skip these ads, the most likely and unwieldy solution is to implement an ad blocker, which is what seems to have started to disrupt the YouTube experience, as reported by some users on Reddit.
Some even shared screenshots showing videos with comments turned off, perhaps due to the use of ad blockers. This is something Google strongly discourages.
Although unfortunate, this explicitly conveys that using workarounds gets you out of one problem and straight into another.
To vent their frustration over the mysterious disappearance of video comments and descriptions, many users took to Reddit and other forums.
While it’s definitely triggered by the use of ad blocking, although it’s not confirmed, some tech geeks tried anyway, debating whether Google – being one of the richest companies – should have this ad thing in place, or if it’s something necessary to keep the platform running and support Google’s cash flow to creators in royalties.
While there’s a good chance that YouTube deliberately disables comments and descriptions when it detects an ad blocker in use, another possibility is the innate tendency of such tools to remove descriptions and comments from videos.
What should be noted here is that this is not the first time that ad blockers have become a headache on the platform. Creators noticed a sharp drop in views last year. This happened because impressions from users with ad blocking were not counted.
Google has even reportedly resorted to slowing playback speeds or blocking access outright for those using ad-blocking tools.
While the absence of comments isn’t the worst thing Google could have done, it would certainly hurt the community aspect of YouTube, as comments are essential to engaging with creators and many creators rely on ad revenue to support their work.
If anything, it appears to be a losing battle for Google, and thus the ongoing cat-and-mouse game between ad blockers and platforms like YouTube is likely to continue, with issues emerging and being fixed, only to re-emerge.
