Several Internet users have complained about heavy slowdowns on YouTube in recent days. This problem, however, seems intentional and created by the site.
Is your YouTube video running slowly despite the fact that you have an excellent connection and a high-performance PC? You are not the only one. For several days, many Internet users have been complaining about the execution speed of the famous online video site.
The most surprising thing about these slowdowns is that they seem intentional and wanted by YouTube’s parent company. On Reddit and different discussion forums, users have compared the execution speed of videos when we have an acblocker, then when the latter is deactivated. The result is quite ambiguous: the problem of slowdown disappears as soon as the ad blocker used is turned off.
We also wanted to reproduce the result, and the YouTube site becomes very slow when our “Adblock” plugin for Google Chrome is activated.
These slowdowns seem to affect several types of adblockers. The site 9to5Google notably investigated the subject and issued the following conclusion: YouTube’s source code now reacts to adblockers by acting on the buffering of videos in order to deliberately slow them down.
What is the point of YouTube?
This decision by YouTube to slow down its own website is obviously not without interest for the company. The site has long declared war on ad blockers that harm its business model. This new “feature” could well encourage users to deactivate their adblocks, or even subscribe to YouTube Premium which allows you to completely get rid of advertisements for 12.99e/month.
What solutions are available?
The most obvious way to get around this problem is to disable any ad blockers. On Reddit, Internet users report in particular that the use of several blockers further worsens the experience and tends to slow down the site even more. So do not hesitate to uninstall any adblockers that you may have in excess on your computer or smartphone.
The other solution, certainly desired by YouTube, would be to subscribe to its premium option: YouTube Premium. You would then have the entire site without advertisements as well as the possibility of downloading videos.
Finally, it is also possible that ad blocker developers are already aware of this change regarding YouTube, and are working hard to get around it. You will therefore have to be patient while waiting for your favorite adblocker to be updated.