YouTube has declared war on ad blockers and has been testing ad blocking measures since May. Reports of these measures have increased recently, and now YouTube has confirmed that it has launched a new "global effort" to stop people from using ad blockers on its platform.

You may have already encountered these warnings claiming that ad blocking violates YouTube's terms of service. These warnings urge users to unblock ads or subscribe to YouTube Premium.

In some cases, these messages can be closed, but some noticed a timer that does not allow them to do this immediately. This option is likely to go away eventually, if not already.

Even if the messages could be turned off, having them appear on every video would become annoying after a while. The question is whether the annoyance will be more annoying than the ads themselves.

In a statement to The Verge, YouTube communications manager Christopher Lawton confirmed the expansion of new efforts to crack down on ad blockers, saying that YouTube ads "support a diverse ecosystem of creators around the world and are a vital part of the billions of people who use YouTube to share their favorite content. billions of people have access to their favorite content on YouTube," is the official statement.

That's a fair point: YouTube is a business, and the ads you see help keep the site profitable. Likewise, the ads help pay YouTube creators and provide an incentive to keep creating content you enjoy.

Unfortunately, YouTube ads have become annoying over time. There are more ads, longer display times, fewer skip buttons, or a combination of these. In my experience, YouTube ads on my phone and laptop are increasingly gambling, or advertising products and services that seem increasingly sketchy, leading me to suspect that this is a deliberate ploy to lure people to YouTube Premium.

With that in mind, it's no wonder people are turning to ad blocking. And instead of dealing with what they call an "adpocalypse," YouTube puts the proverbial gun to its users' heads when they try to avoid that kind of advertising.

Needless to say, Google's crackdown on ad blockers will not end soon. Other members of the Tom's Guide staff have not had this problem so far with their own ad blockers, albeit inconsistently.

However, there is a workaround for this. People have already discovered that you can get around the anti-ad block messages by tricking YouTube into thinking you are using Windows Phone, and the ad blocker itself will probably find a way to bypass the warning at some point.

Then the whole cat and mouse game begins as YouTube tries to block that process and developers look for ways around the latest block. This will surely happen in the future.

If you can't sit back and wait for the best ad blockers to bypass YouTube's anti-ad blocking tactics, you have two choices: deal with the ads or subscribe to YouTube Premium. It's $14 a month, or $140 for a year.