It seems that as widely speculated the recent YouTube slowdown plaguing users may not be the platform's latest anti-ad crusade. Reports of sluggish videos and loading screens flooded Reddit, with fingers pointing at YouTube's supposed crackdown on ad blockers. However, the video giant has denied any malicious tinkering, attributing the delays to glitches in popular ad-blocking
extensions
,
Adblock
and
AdBlock Plus
.
YouTube offered the official response: "These slowdowns have nothing to do with our ad-blocking efforts. We recommend checking our help center for troubleshooting tips if you're experiencing issues."
Extensions to blame, says YouTube
Turns out, the culprit might be lurking within the ad-blocking software itself. Raymond Hill, developer of uBlock Origin, pointed the finger at recent updates (version 5.17) in both Adblock and AdBlock Plus, suggesting that they're causing performance hiccups across various websites, not just YouTube.
Adding fuel to the fire, AdBlock itself admitted to a bug in its latest update, likely behind the slowdown and excessive CPU usage. The company has released a fix now. Both Adblock and AdBlock Plus released updated versions (ABP 3.22.1 and AB 5.17.1) to patch the problem.
So, its time to update your extension and see if things smooth out if you too facing the same issue on YouTube.
English (US) ·