If YouTube videos are loading at a snail’s pace, try disabling your ad blocker: the platform has recently started slowing down the entire web when ad blockers are used. This slowdown in loading the YouTube website is affecting many users, and the only solutions to this situation are to disable the ad blocker or upgrade to YouTube Premium, the company’s subscription service.
Internet users have been using ad blockers for years to deal with the increasing number of ads on YouTube, something that, according to the company, is considered a violation of the terms of service. YouTube’s pre-roll and mid-roll ads are a huge source of revenue for the service, and the only way to avoid them without using a third-party application is to directly pay YouTube for their Premium service.
Since the launch of this monthly subscription service, YouTube has started to discourage the use of ad blockers in various ways. The first was with a pop-up message that says: “Ad blockers are not allowed on YouTube” and suggests disabling the ad blocker or subscribing to YouTube Premium. If the user does not do so, they will not be able to continue watching the video.
The second method, which is starting to reach more YouTube users, consists of slowing down the entire web when an ad blocker is used, something that the company refers to as “suboptimal viewing”.
According to a post on Reddit, several users noticed that, apparently, YouTube became slow and unresponsive all of a sudden. Shortly after, it was discovered that everything went back to normal if ad blocking was disabled.
And it is that YouTube would have included in its code an artificial waiting time to act as a slow Internet connection if the user uses an ad blocker when browsing its website. A measure that affects more and more users of the platform and that will surely generate a lot of discussion in the coming months.
