this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2026
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Nah, this is dumb as fuck. No reasonable person reading the ToS would assume the creators themselves are restricted from inserting sponsored segments and that YouTube is somehow liable for removing them. Where would this even end? Would GamersNexus quickly advertising their t-shirts count?
Seems likely to fail unless YouTube themselves are failing not to insert ads on Premium.
—A religious SponsorBlock user
Edit: So looking at the ToS, if we scroll down to section 7, we see the word "features" hyperlinked to. This page then reads:
So unless they just changed it in response to this lawsuit, it categorically addresses it even though a reasonable person would likely understand without this disclaimer.
Edit 2: Just to make sure this wasn't changed in resoonse to the suit. Lawsuit was filed July 14, 2026. This was the ToS page on December 30, 2025, which still includes the link to "Features". Looking at an archive captured Christmas 2025, the features page still states:
Frivolous-ass, lying-ass lawsuit.
You can't advertise one thing and then just add "nah j/k" in the ToS and think you're off the hook
Youtube Premium has YouTube remove the ads that they have control over. YouTube only has control of the ads that they add to the uploaded video, on either end or mid-rolls. They do not have control of the video content itself which is where creators add their own sponsorship stuff.
We really want YouTube to have unilateral control to determine what is and isn't an ad, and to remove sponsored advertising that they are not a part of in uploaded content? Something that would also clearly be a conflict of interest as they are an advertising partner.
Forcing them to label adsegements and autoskipping them is possible and protects consumers from shadow ads that are increasingly more common nowadays.
Still that is not what I expect from YouTube premium.
Technically the "often skipped" section is the sponsored content.
But I suspect this is fed through user behaviour and not content detection
It's also not mandatory labeling of ads. Which YouTube could force on their creating users and should for consumer protection.
And they have tools available to mark the video as "sponsored"
I don't think anyone want youtube to remove the ads. They just want Youtube to advertise honestly. If it can't remove all ads, don't advertise completely ad-free videos.
If you go to YouTube to watch a commercial (here is an example for Orangina https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrkUDm9pnIw), should the whole video be blocked? YouTube provide a video hosting service and they add commercials on top of that.
I find it unreasonable to demand that YouTube essentially remove content from within the video. That would just end back in the EU "protect-the-children"-Chat Control area of the debate. You could have uploaders mark their videos as containing marketing (and perhaps they do) but enforcement would still be difficult given the sheer volume of videos.
I already wrote no one is demanding they remove all ads. But they can't describe premium as "removes all ads".
No one reasonable will demand I sell them the statue of liberty. I can't do that. But I am still not allowed to advertise that I have Statue of Liberty for sale. The issue isn't youtube not removing these ads. The issue is they claimed they would for premium.
I always understood "removes all ads" and removing all ads placed in their product by them. With this understanding, I think asking them to remove all ads would mean to in some way enforce uploaders to not have ads in their videos if you are showing them to a premium user.
But I can understand how someone else interprets "removes all ads" as delivering an experience free from all ads of any kind, including those placed in the video by uploaders.
Well, it is what it says on the label. Sure, you may have enough knowledge to understand it is impossible, but some people being able to spot a scam doesn't make it less of a scam. And it doesn't mean the people who don't know that much about how youtube works and get scammed should be unable to sue.
That's called content moderation.
YouTube also provides a pretty handy tool for getting past those. There's a DOT located right where the sponsored section of any YouTube video ends that you can fast forward right to.