Google denies YouTube slowdowns are caused by ad blocker use

The slowness reported by many users on YouTube recently, It’s not a result of the company’s latest crackdown on the use of ad blockers. This is what Google said on Monday (15).

in contact with Android Centrala Google spokesperson said Delays in video playback on the platform last week have nothing to do with the company detecting ad blocks. It is worth remembering that since the end of last year the fight against the use of the tool has been intensified.

“Recent reports of users experiencing loading delays on YouTube are not related to our ad blocker detection efforts. Our help center offers troubleshooting tips for users experiencing issues.” A Google representative emphasized this in a statement.

Again, according to him, The latest YouTube slowdown is reportedly due to a bug in the latest update released for AdBlock and AdBlock Plus blockers. Therefore, anyone using such tools may experience delays in accessing the video streaming service.

Fix in development

A member of the AdBlock developer team acknowledged the existence of the bug, responding to users on GitLab complaining about slowness when accessing YouTube with an ad blocker. Room stated that the issue was fixed but did not set a deadline for finding the solution.

The team member also said: The decrease in performance may affect other websites accessed with the blocker enabled in the browser. Services such as Microsoft Pages and Google Translate are experiencing the same slowdown, and this slowdown will be fixed soon.

There’s been a lot of talk in the last few days about how slow YouTube is due to content blockers.

These performance issues only affect the latest version of Adblock Plus (3.22) and AdBlock (5.17) and affect more than just Youtube.

uBO is *not* affected.https://t.co/O3g48d2DT9

— R. Hill (@gorhill) January 13, 2024

Seems like, Video playback delays on YouTube only affect AdBlock and AdBlock Plus users. uBlock Origin developer R. Hill said on X/Twitter that his blocker has not suffered from the reported issue since last week.