YouTube has been aggressively pushing for more ads on its platform. And their antics circumvent their own supposedly ad-free subscription. YouTube Premium, at a fixed price, is supposed to deliver the unaltered experience and more, like added functionality. But as I have covered before on the topic, YouTube is bad at keeping up with their own platform as-is: subtitles, PIP, multi-language support. The list goes on.

DuckDuckGo, the search engine company, has recently added YouTube ad blocking to their browser. It will now remove YouTube ads based on community-driven filter lists, in DuckDuckGo flavor. This isn’t the first adblocker taking aim at YouTube, but surely it is one of the bigger names I’ve heard in recent years. Most smaller teams and individual developers often falter in the endless arms race between ads and adblockers, so we will have to see how YouTube will react to the new challenger.

The feature comes enabled by default. If not, it’s under Menu > Settings > Ad Blocking, “Block ads on YouTube”. One thing to note: this feature is limited to the DuckDuckGo browser. It will not affect other apps on your device, such as the official YouTube app. This is not a system-wide adblocker.

YouTube Premium was already a wash when popular YouTubers had to insert sponsor segments into their videos. Nowadays, these sponsor segments have matured to the point I cannot tell them apart from ad breaks on cable. It goes to show either YouTube advertising is no longer sufficient to drive the creator economy, or YouTube Premium (a view with Premium is supposed to equate to a view without one for creators) is not pulling its weight. Either way, I believe it’s a fair assessment to say YouTube as a platform is facing challenges.