Chrome is dead for those who uses ad-blockers

30 points

3 years ago

Google's block at least some users with ad-blocks enabled and I happen to be one of them. Each time I attempt to connect to YouTube using Chrome, I encounter the following error messages:

www.youtube.com is blocked www.youtube.com refused to connect. ERR_BLOCKED_BY_RESPONSE

However, when I switch to Firefox, everything works perfectly. This leads me to two possible scenarios:

    This is a Chrome-specific feature and YouTube's reaction to installed Chrome plugins.
    Some YouTube connections are blocked regardless of the browser used.

If the first scenario is true, then Google, being the developer of the Chrome browser, receives too much information about my browser setup. This could enable Google to prevent me from accessing any or selected content, effectively violating my rights to access information. This could potentially turn Google into a censorship organization.

In the second scenario, if some YouTube connections are indeed blocked regardless of the browser used, it would mean that the issue is not Chrome-specific. However, the issue of Google potentially violating users' rights to access information still stands.

In either case, the implications are troubling.

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