YouTube’s Load Times Are Slower For Users With Ad Block And The Video Giant Has Nothing To Do With It

For a while, we’ve been witnessing tech giant Google speak about sub-optimal performance and speeds across its YouTube app and the plethora of complaints that were generated with it from viewers.

There was an entire conspiracy theory that had to do with the search engine giant intentionally making the app slow for those having Mozilla Firefox while things worked at a smooth pace on the Chrome browser. Many felt that was a smart move to have more people use Chrome.

With time, the rumors started to die down and people were made aware of how it was not just Firefox that was subjected to the claims of poor loading times but it was happening on any browsers in the market today. On that note, the Android maker was quick to chime in and claim that the installed ad blockers were the biggest cause of the misery.

Now that we’re into a new year, we saw more reports and complaints from viewers and creators about the poor speed due to adblockers. And again, people did not hesitate once to blame and shame Google.

Thanks to users on Reddit who were the first to make the claims, we saw a whole thread blow up in this regard and so many individuals started to chime in and mention how they had trouble with the app’s load speed and needed a solution very soon.

But now, new reports are proving that there was actually a bug inside Adblock and Adblock Plus’ recent version that was causing the misery. So it was not Google or the YouTube app after all.

Those having the 5.170 variant of Adblock or Adblock Plus were told to make updates. However, if you were making use of features such as uBlock Origin then you probably remained unaffected by this chaos and didn’t notice any difference to your speed.

The news comes after developers at Adblock Plus noted the major performance error and spoke about it through GitLab to make others aware.

They confirmed slow response ever since this particular update was rolled out and blamed the issue on the extension engine since all those impacted experienced similar problems with the 1.1.1 variant for this extension engine.

Thankfully, the bug has been fixed and the newest Eyeo’s Web Extension Advertising blocking Toolkit, which happens to be where the change was noticed, is now finally reverted.

If you also experienced such a hassle using the Adblock or the Adblock Plus, we do recommend making the update for the extension as soon as possible. Similarly, we advise you not to run several content filters or any adblockers across the browser if you’re facing major issues linked to performance.

We’re glad that the matter has finally come to a conclusion and the right culprit was unveiled because Google has had accusations thrown in its direction for quite some time now.

Adblock and Adblock Plus versions 5.170 blamed for YouTube app woes; bug fixed, update recommended for users.
Photo: Digital Information World - AIgen

Read next: AI-Penned Product Descriptions: A Cost-Saving Revolution or a Potential Threat to Consumer Experience?
Previous Post Next Post