YouTube is taking measures to make sure you only watch it the way they say you should, which is understandable, and also annoying.

As some of you know, watching YouTube with Brave Browser means you're YT experience is 100 percent ad free. Totally and completely ad free. Zero ads. Nada. Net. Nulla. Nista. Okay, sorry. I guess you get the point.

I heard other browsers like DuckDuckGo work the same way but I can't speak to that because I only use Brave.

I've been using Brave and Brave only for about two years now and had zero issues. But as of recent, YouTube pop-up messages are appearing a lot more frequently. In short, these messages read something along those lines: "adblockers aren't allowed, do something about it or you won't be able to watch YouTube".

I tried ignoring the message and that worked for about, say, two or three weeks. Then today, for the first time, YouTube followed through with its promise. After watching three videos, my YouTube stopped working.

When you're on Brave, there's a little lion-shaped favicon to the left of where the URL is. You can click on that and disable ad protection. That way, ads will be allowed (temporarily or permanently, depending on how you set it) for that specific website.

I disabled ad protection for YouTube and everything seems fine, and yes, this means ads are back.

Pity. I totally understand where they (YouTube) are coming from. But it still sucks.