Google has began cracking down on using advert blockers on YouTube this yr, and the corporate has admitted this week that customers with advert blockers could have a degraded expertise on the positioning. This comes after a number of customers complained about YouTube being slower than standard on their internet browser.
Android Authority compiled a number of studies of YouTube customers experiencing YouTube slowdowns on non-Chrome browsers. Notably, Reddit person vk6_ shared a video exhibiting a five-second delay when opening YouTube on Firefox, one thing that disappeared after altering the person agent to Chrome.
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Youtube has began to artificially decelerate video load instances in the event you use Firefox. Spoofing Chrome magically makes this drawback go away.
byu/vk6_ inyoutube
Whereas Android Authority was unable to breed this subject on Firefox, a YouTube spokesperson issued the next assertion explaining that the platform doesn’t discriminate towards customers primarily based on their alternative of internet browser alternative, although having an advert blocker put in could result in a “suboptimal” expertise.
“To assist a various ecosystem of creators globally and permit billions to entry their favourite content material on YouTube, we’ve launched an effort to induce viewers with advert blockers enabled to permit adverts on YouTube or strive YouTube Premium for an advert free expertise. Customers who’ve advert blockers put in could expertise suboptimal viewing, whatever the browser they’re utilizing,” the YouTube spokesperson mentioned.
As you in all probability know, Google just lately began asking YouTube customers with advert blockers to disable them to look at movies. Some internet browsers comparable to Firefox and Edge have built-in advert blockers, although it’s not precisely clear if some customers could have been experiencing slowdowns due to that.
In any case, Google would love if extra YouTube customers subscribe to YouTube Premium, which provides an ad-free expertise and different perks. Google introduced again in November 2022 that it had crossed 80 million YouTube Music and YouTube Premium subscribers, so it is going to be attention-grabbing to see if this current crackdown on advert blockers will bump this quantity within the close to future.
