Have you found YouTube slow for some time? You are not the only one. This is a new measure put in place by the platform when it detects an ad blocker to force you to abandon it.
Since last November, YouTube has generalized the blocking of ad blockers on its platform. So, when you use one, the platform displays an annoying pop-up window that asks you to deactivate it or subscribe to the YouTube Premium subscription – for 12.99 euros per month, it removes advertisements, allows you to download videos for offline and background playback, and provides access to the music streaming service YouTube Music. And you can’t close the window until 30 to 60 seconds have passed! Suffice to say that this makes watching and listening to it somewhat laborious… Fortunately, some ad blockers are still effective, such as Ublock Origin and Ghostery (see our article). But Google hasn’t said its last word! The Mountain View firm has decided to simply slow down its platform if an extension of this type is detected on your browser. War is declared !
Ad Blockers on YouTube: much longer loading times
As spotted by a user on Reddit, when you have such a blocker, the video loads much slower, to the point of giving the impression that YouTube is suffering from technical problems. It turns out that the platform has a line of code that detects the use of ad blockers and creates an artificial timeout – up to thirty seconds – that simulates a poor internet connection. Result: in addition to having videos that take a long time to load, previews are not displayed and Theater and Full Screen modes do not work correctly. The only way to fix this problem is to turn off the ad blocker or upgrade to YouTube Premium.
For now, it seems that this sneaky technique is still in the testing phase and therefore does not concern all users. However, there is a good chance that it will become widespread, like the pop-up window before it. This is hardly surprising when we know that YouTube also slows down its platform if you use it from Firefox or Edge, according to the testimonies of some Internet users and a line of code discovered on the streaming site. Still, Google seems determined to optimize its revenues, even though it has once again laid off hundreds of employees. To do this, the company is banking on advertising – it actually made the decision last May to insert more ads into Gmail – and the development of artificial intelligence.