NEWS  News  January 16, 2024  Reading time: ~1 minute)

Max (RS editor)

In the ongoing saga between YouTube and ad blockers, users have recently reported a significant slowdown in site performance when using ad-blocking software. The issue has sparked frustration among users, but contrary to what was thought, Google is not to blame.

A video shared in the Reddit post vividly illustrates the problem: when an ad blocker is enabled, the video struggles to load quickly enough, resulting in playback disruptions and pauses, particularly around the 30-second mark. Users have also highlighted peculiar side effects, including lag affecting full-screen mode, comments not functioning, and difficulties loading other webpages while YouTube is open in Google Chrome.

YouTube's battle against ad blockers is not a new development. The company has employed various tactics to encourage users to disable ad blockers and subscribe to YouTube Premium. Past strategies included pop-up messages asserting a violation of YouTube's terms of service by ad blockers and the addition of a five-second delay to the initial site load for users employing ad-blocking tools. This ongoing struggle has given rise to a cat-and-mouse game between Google/YouTube and the ad blocker community.

However, recent slowdowns may be unintentional, stemming from ad blockers altering YouTube's code. Adblock Plus has acknowledged the issue, publishing a bug report on "performance issues" introduced by version 3.22 and indicating that a fix is expected in version 3.22.1. Raymond Hill, the developer of uBlock Origin, asserts that the problem is specific to Adblock Plus and its derivatives, refuting the notion of YouTube being at fault and labeling it "an incorrect diagnosis".

 COVER IMAGE: GOOGLE / YOUTUBE