YouTube Denies Slowing Down For Users With Ad-Blockers: Here's The Real Story

Recently it was reported that YouTube was loading slowly if people were using ad blockers. Many of you understandably felt aggrieved by this strong push from the platform to get people paying for its service.

However, a new report has come out on Wednesday, which says YouTube didn’t actually have anything to do with the platform slowing down and definitely nothing linked to using ad blockers. YouTube has commented on these allegations and assured that its efforts to stop the use of ad blockers isn’t that aggressive yet. The platform has been quoted in the report here, saying that YouTube slowing down is not related to its ad blocker detection efforts.

So, if YouTube hasn’t made any changes to slow down the loading time, then what is causing this problem? Turns out, the issue is because of ad blockers, notably, the AdBlock and AdBlock Plus tools.

The same report quotes a developer from another ad blocker platform uBlock Origin, who pointed out that the issue was because of a bug in the AdBlock ad blockers. Raymond Hill shared the details about the bug that affected AdBlock 5.17 version and AdBlock Plus 3.22 version that people are using on their web browsers to block ads.

He also explained that the bug was only causing issues for the AdBlock tools and their own uBlock Origin ad blocker is not affected, which means YouTube might be working normal for these users. The ad blockers have been updated with a patch which should fix the slowdown issue for users.

YouTube claims that blocking ads restricts its ability to pay the content creators and that’s why it wants people to stop using these tools and or simply pay for the Premium service that offers ad-free content.

We have also seen YouTube come with a three-strike rule for videos, giving people enough time to stop using ad blocker and let ads show for all videos on their profile as long as they wish to use YouTube for free. The message clearly said the video playback will be blocked unless you whitelist YouTube from the ad blocker app/extension or disable the feature completely.