Can they do that? Of course they can. This s Google after all. They can do just about anything.

So what’s going on here? Well, YouTube  is telling users that they won’t be able to watch videos unless they disable any ad blockers they’re using. The initiative kicked off in June, with YouTube lightly testing the waters with their warnings to users over the past months. But in recent weeks users have reported seeing many more of them.

YouTube has spoken openly about the global effort to combat ad blockers, maintaining that they violate its terms of service.

As for the hard stats: It’s reported that almost one third of YouTube users use ad blockers. That’s a whole lot, and Google is in the business of ads, after all. So the search giant’s actions are well justified we would say.