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YouTube vs. ad blockers is no new thing. It has taken various measures to tackle them. Notably, it sent a legal notice leading to the shutdown of Vanced. Despite these efforts, it seems the war against ad blockers continues. According to reports, YouTube might’ve implemented measures to tackle ad blockers. These measures, including slowing down the platform for affected users, are now impacting a wider audience. This has led to complaints of longer loading times for some viewers, who may now have to choose between disabling their ad blockers or subscribing to YouTube Premium.
Those with ad blockers on, say YouTube has slowed down
Many users reported experiencing a slowdown in streaming videos with ad blockers installed. One user even shared a video of their experience on Reddit. It is likely because YouTube doesn’t like when people block ads, as it causes a sharp decline in its revenue system. Plus, it also affects content creators. Because no ads mean no check.
More importantly, YouTube thinks using ad blockers breaks their rules. For people who want to watch videos without ads, YouTube has a special paid service — YouTube Premium — that also makes them a lot of money.
It’s just slow and sluggish
People on Reddit noticed YouTube getting slow, as 9to5Google reported. The site becomes hard to use, but users found that turning off their ad-blocker makes it work normally again.
It seems YouTube is making the site slow on purpose by adding delays or limits, pretending there’s a slow internet connection. Videos take longer to load, previews don’t show up, and fullscreen mode doesn’t work without refreshing the page, as per reports. This makes YouTube tough for people with ad blockers installed on their browsers.
In an update to Android Central, YouTube clarified that it is not responsible for the recent slowdown on the platform. It added that this is not a part of its war against ad blockers. Nevertheless, users have faced this issue.