YouTube Slowdown: Turns Out It's AdBlock's Fault For Your Slow Streams
Google has confirmed that the slowdown is not linked to its ad blocker detection efforts.
By Sukhbir Cheema — 18 Jan 2024, 04:11 PM
Contrary to popular belief, Google is not to blame for the recent slowdown of YouTube
Previously, Reddit users began reporting how YouTube would suddenly lag and become unresponsive. When they disabled their ad blocker, however, YouTube functioned normally without any issues.
Last year, YouTube began warning users against using ad blockers on the video-sharing platform. As a result, many initially assumed that Google had a hand in YouTube's slowdown to force users to disable their ad blockers or sign up for YouTube Premium.
Google, however, has confirmed that the slowdown is not linked to its ad blocker detection efforts.
As it turns out, a bug on AdBlock and AdBlock Plus has been identified as the culprit
Eyeo, the parent company of AdBlock and AdBlock Plus, revealed that its users experienced performance-related issues on YouTube due to a bug which caused increased CPU usage. This consequently causes their YouTube videos to lag.
The company has released updates to rectify the issue in the latest versions of both ad blockers, ABP 3.22.1 and AB 5.17.1. These updates are available in the Opera, Edge, Chrome, and Mozilla extension stores.
So, if you're experiencing laggy videos on YouTube and you're using an ad blocker, there's a high chance you need to update your ad blocker.
