YouTube Acknowledges Users With Ad Blockers May Have Degraded Experience
- Laurent Giret
- Nov 21, 2023
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Google has started cracking down on the use of ad blockers on YouTube this year, and the company has admitted this week that users with ad blockers may have a degraded experience on the site. This comes after multiple users complained about YouTube being slower than usual on their web browser.
Android Authority compiled multiple reports of YouTube users experiencing YouTube slowdowns on non-Chrome browsers. Notably, Reddit user vk6_ shared a video showing a five-second delay when opening YouTube on Firefox, something that disappeared after changing the user agent to Chrome.
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Youtube has started to artificially slow down video load times if you use Firefox. Spoofing Chrome magically makes this problem go away.
byu/vk6_ inyoutube
While Android Authority was unable to reproduce this issue on Firefox, a YouTube spokesperson issued the following statement explaining that the platform doesn’t discriminate against users based on their choice of web browser choice, though having an ad blocker installed may lead to a “suboptimal” experience.
“To support a diverse ecosystem of creators globally and allow billions to access their favorite content on YouTube, we’ve launched an effort to urge viewers with ad blockers enabled to allow ads on YouTube or try YouTube Premium for an ad free experience. Users who have ad blockers installed may experience suboptimal viewing, regardless of the browser they are using,” the YouTube spokesperson said.
As you probably know, Google recently started asking YouTube users with ad blockers to disable them to watch videos. Some web browsers such as Firefox and Edge have built-in ad blockers, though it’s not exactly clear if some users may have been experiencing slowdowns because of that.
In any case, Google would really like if more YouTube users subscribe to YouTube Premium, which offers an ad-free experience and other perks. Google announced back in November 2022 that it had crossed 80 million YouTube Music and YouTube Premium subscribers, so it will be interesting to see if this recent crackdown on ad blockers will bump this number in the near future.