What you need to know
- YouTube has taken fresh measures against ad blockers by slowing down the site for users employing them, with the slowdowns prompting them to either disable their ad blockers or opt for YouTube Premium.
- Users have reported laggy and unresponsive experiences, which are resolved by disabling ad blockers.
- Ad blockers have been a popular choice to combat frequent ads on YouTube, but the platform considers it a violation of terms of service.
YouTube’s battle against ad-blockers is making headlines globally, and now the platform is stepping up its effort against users who use these tools to skip ads while watching videos.
A number of users on Reddit are sharing that YouTube is now deliberately slowing down the whole site if you’ve got an ad blocker enabled (via 9to5Google). In the Reddit thread, many users found themselves in the same boat, scratching their heads and (wrongly) blaming their internet speed for the unexpected drag.
People using ad blockers faced issues like slow previews and features like fullscreen and theater mode refusing to play nice. It turns out the fix was a simple one: just ditch the ad blocker, and suddenly everything loaded up at normal speed again.
YouTube has been throwing punches in its ongoing battle against ad blockers. In its latest jab, the service is waving a big red flag, saying ad blockers are a violation of its terms of service. So, if you’re tired of the ad invasion, YouTube’s solution is to pay for a YouTube Premium subscription.
The Google-owned video sharing site is pulling off these slowdowns with an artificial timeout hidden in its code. While it’s not exactly a new trick, it seems like more users are stumbling upon this slowdown.
Back in November, YouTube pulled a similar move and owned up to deliberately hitting the brakes on load times for users sticking with their ad blockers.
Earlier last year, the service rolled out a three-strike rule for videos, prompting users to either disable ad blockers or sign up for YouTube Premium. If three videos are viewed while an ad blocker is enabled, the video player will be blocked.
