YouTube clarifies ‘loading delays’ aren’t part of its ad-blocking crackdown

SAN FRANCISCO — Google-owned YouTube said on Wednesday that the latest browser slowdown is not part of the company’s ad-blocking crackdown.

Recently, several users on Reddit shared that YouTube is deliberately slowing down the whole site if they have an ad blocker enabled, reports Android Central.

However, the company clarified that the loading delays faced by Adblock and AdBlock Plus users are not caused by its ad blocker detection efforts.

“Recent reports of users experiencing loading delays on YouTube are unrelated to our ad blocker detection efforts. Our help centre offers troubleshooting tips for users experiencing issues,” YouTube was quoted as saying.

As per uBlock Origin developer Raymond Hill, the latest updates to Adblock and Adblock Plus extensions (version 5.17) seem to be causing some performance problems.

“Those performance issues affect only the latest version of both Adblock Plus (3.22) & AdBlock (5.17), and afflict more than just YouTube,” he posted on X.

The report also noted that AdBlock has found a bug in its latest updates that appears to be causing the slowdown issue.

Eyeo, the team behind AdBlock, has said that it has fixed the issue that was messing with users’ YouTube experience and causing higher CPU use when browsing the web, according to the report.

“AdBlock and Adblock Plus users have recently experienced a slowdown in performance and a higher use of CPU when browsing on YouTube and other websites,” Gertrud Kolb, Chief Technology Officer at Eyeo, was quoted as saying.

“Our engineering team fixed the problem and released ABP 3.22.1 and AB 5.17.1,” she added.

Last year, YouTube doubled down on its effort to crack down on users with ad blockers on its platform globally.

An increasing number of YouTube users started seeing a warning, asking them to turn off ad blockers and watch ads or pay $14 for a YouTube Premium subscription, according to Android Authority.

Also read: YouTube ends cheaper ad-free ‘Premium Lite’ subscription plan