YouTube has become even more serious in its fight against ad blockers and, from now on, will reduce video loading times for people who use ad blockers to watch videos without overlay banners or ad breaks. This means that when watching videos, playback may be slower, with skips or viewing issues due to slower loading speeds.
This is a measure that deepens the ban on ad blockers that YouTube already announced in October 2023. The company is aware that many users use ad blockers to avoid advertising on YouTube and watch content without having to endure commercial breaks, so it began displaying a warning message.
Those who use ad blockers then began to see a pop-up window stating “Ad blockers are not allowed on YouTube.” At the same time, it warned them that if they want to continue using the YouTube platform without seeing ads, they have the option to subscribe to YouTube Premium, which costs $13.99 per month.
However, there are still ways to use an ad blocker on YouTube and watch content without ads. Therefore, the company has decided to take action and has rewritten its code to make it possible to reduce video loading speeds as a measure to discourage users from using ad blockers.
So, if YouTube is running slowly for you, one of the causes may be that you are using a system to avoid seeing ads on the platform. In fact, some users have already posted on social networks like X that their experience on the site speeds up once they disable ad blockers.
