Users complaining about YouTube slowdown when adblocker enabled

Users have taken to Reddit to complain about YouTube slowing down, particularly affecting those who have enabled ad blockers.

“I play League alongside YouTube, and I found it strange that my game had a perfect connection while Edge was freezing entirely while trying to play a video,” one user complained on Reddit.

Many said they started experiencing a YouTube slowdown at the end of last week, speculating that it’s yet another one of YouTube’s measures in its crackdown on ad blocker users.

“I was getting so worried that my computer was dying of not being able to play YouTube lmao. The funny thing is that I pay for Premium, yet I think just the existence of Adblock triggers this,” another user complained.

Some said it’s been going on for months, not days. Annoyed users also shared some advice on how to stop the slowdown without switching to YouTube Premium – some ditched Chrome in favor of Firefox, while others figured out the best ad blocker alternative that works with YouTube.

There’s no official information on the YouTube blog about recent measures to fight ad blocker users. We’ve asked YouTube whether they’ve taken any new measures recently to discourage ad blocker usage but received no reply before going to press.

Whether the slowdown for some users is intentional or not is up for speculation. However, we know for sure that YouTube is fighting against ad blockers in an attempt to make users who want YouTube without ads pay for its Premium version (starting from $13.99 in the US).

Recently, AdGuard, an adblocking company, said there were many “panic uninstalls” of adblockers when YouTube started its crackdown on users. However, this allegedly hasn’t deterred users from using adblockers. In fact, the trend is quite the opposite – AdGuard insists that “adblockers' woes were amplified in the media inadvertently boosted their popularity and helped them woo new users.”