YouTube's new anti-adblock measures

Youtube will not win this battle.

Before YouTube loses, blocking ads will be criminalized.

Capitalism always wins

Criminalized where?

Not everyone is American.

Ransomware doesn't have to be illegal in North Korea to convict a North Korean who did it, either in absence or with extradition, in the country where the damage was done

With Alphabet being from a country with extreme capitalism, the comment you're replying to seems applicable no matter where the viewers are (regardless of whether I agree with their viewpoint/outlook). YouTube's owners can choose to block or prosecute whoever doesn't comply with their terms. Not saying that's likely, just that: this isn't a matter of needing to be on the American continent

Edit: perhaps interesting to realise that, conversely, laws in North Korea might make it illegal for Alphabet to have certain terms if they want to serve consumers in their market. (A better example here would be EU with copyright legislation that makes it illegal to sign away your moral rights, for instance.) It works both ways and both could legally prosecute the other at the same time and both win in their area! But with YouTube being able to gatekeep the content here, one has more power than the other..

I mean most adblocking software is open source and easily acquired, a lot like torrenting software it’d be near impossible to actually enforce anything.

Yep, they need viewers to click the like/subscribe button. They need that so content creators keep on providing content to Google for free in exchange for popularity metrics. Which they need to close sponsorship deals (because Google isn't paying them a whole lot).

So, Google is merely optimizing the ad clicks and impressions here. If they succeed in becoming too obnoxious with their ads, viewers might leave for other platforms, and then content creators would follow. So, fighting ad blocking has diminishing returns and can actually have a negative impact on them. Which is why ad blocking is still effective in 2025 and why Youtube has thrived by being not too effective with their anti ad blocking measures. This is more about selling the notion to advertisers that they are a really good advertising platform than it is about fighting the minority of users who block their ads no matter what. It won't work. But it won't matter as long as advertisers keep on paying for advertising on Youtube.

The irony of their latest efforts is that it is driving away users from Chrome to more effective alternatives (Firefox, Brave, etc.) and it's driving content creators to depend on sponsor ship deals instead of advertising money from Google. The only reason Chrome exists is actually ads. So, more effective counter measures against ad blocking in Chrome could end up hurting their ad revenue. And Google's behavior is actually causing for increasingly stronger calls to break up Google. None of that is good for Google and their advertising revenue.