YouTube's missing comments might be yet another adblocker deterent

What you need to know

• Users on YouTube report issues with the comments section on videos, as some say this aspect has vanished for those using adblockers.
• Many reports have piled up over the past few days, and the "solution" appears to be to simply refresh the page.
• YouTube's war on adblockers has been going on for a long while, as it's gone from "throttling" videos to glitching content for users.

Over the weekend, YouTube users were noticing strange occurrences when the comments vanished, and it looks like it's the latest tactic in its adblocker war.

Users on YouTube's subreddit have been reporting issues with the service's comments section over the past few days (via PiunikaWeb). The publication notes that there have been more than a handful of threads created on Reddit about this problem. Users claim that, when interacting with a video on their PC, YouTube is delivering the following message: "Comments are turned off."

You'd typically see this quite often in videos "Made for Kids" on YouTube, as well as content with them disabled by the content creator.

The user goes on to say, "It's weird cuz when I refresh the comments return, but everytime i click on a new video same thing happens. What's wrong?" The "refreshing" aspect is what's most curious, as other users have reported that refreshing the page when a video's comments appear to be disabled fixes the problem. The publication's research discovered that this issue is plaguing users on Chrome, Brave, Edge, Opera GX (not the first time), and other web browsers; however, another report might've hit the nail on the head: this could be an anti-adblock tactic.

Another report claims this is only occurring when an adblocker is in play. Regardless, refreshing the page is still seemingly the true "fix" for what's going on. As PiunikaWeb states, this could just be a coincidence, as this problem might not have anything to do with adblockers at all.

It's been a long fight

YouTube's been waging war against adblockers for a while now, and every so often, the tactics change up, like when it was glitching videos for users. Users who had adblockers enabled noticed that their YouTube videos would either skip to the end or be muted. Those rocking AdBlock Plus noticed this issue quite consistently at the time. When this was brought to YouTube's attention, the company denied any such tactics to deter users.

The tactics changed last summer when people with adblockers noticed that their YouTube videos were slowing down. Reports said the company was "throttling" videos, as users received an "Experiencing interruptions?" message when loading content.

Android Central's Take

I feel like there's this duality of man when it comes to topics like this. On one hand, we all know ads exist and why we have them: it's to help fund the website and its many innerworkings. On the other, you have users who are tired of ads, who see them constantly, and who just want to watch their video without having something extra. It's probably unwise to think that we'll ever be rid of this "war on adblockers," as things continue to change on YouTube moving forward.