YouTube has made a couple of stealthy updates to how ads work on mobile, and netizens say they’re more frustrating than ever.
In the past few months, YouTube has implemented a series of new ad changes, each more divisive than the last.
Back in September, the Google-owned video platform finally added pause-screen ads after years of warning. They followed this up by hiking the price of YouTube Premium, the surefire way to use the app without getting a commercial every few minutes.
Now, YouTube has made a couple of additional updates to ads, specifically on mobile devices – and users are not happy at all.
As reported by Androidpolice and Redditors on r/YouTube, the mobile app is now hiding the “skip ad” button, along with the amount of time a commercial will last. In fact, the button is only appearing for some after a bit of waiting.
“Thought it was a glitch, but on multiple devices I’ve had to tap on the video ad itself for the length and the skip button to show up,” explained a user.
Others shared their issues with the changes: “I saw this and I didn’t skip an ad until much later in than normal because I couldn’t tell how long it had been. Wonder if that might be the plan or what.”
“Has happened to me a lot, just wish that I could punch YouTube in the face,” blasted someone else.
These two updates also arrived just as YouTube started to hide the “skip ad” button on desktops by covering it with a gray square.
So far, YouTube hasn’t done away with the “skip ad button” entirely, but viewers argue that this continues a troubling trend with Google finding more and more ways to profit off its popular video platform.
Back in June, the site attempted to break adblockers forever by adding a new feature to prevent software from distinguishing and filtering out ads.