YouTube now says latest browser slowdowns aren’t part of its ad blocking crackdown

YouTube’s crackdown on ad blockers has had a lot of effects for users, but according to YouTube, the latest wave of browser slowdowns aren’t actually a result of the company’s actions after all. Back in November , YouTube users with ad blockers enabled found that their browsers were slowing to a crawl whenever YouTube.com was loaded up.

It wasn’t a particularly widespread issue at the time, but YouTube directly took responsibility for it, saying: Fast forward to last week, and what appeared to be a new, aggressive form of this action rolled out. Users have noticed over the past couple of weeks that YouTube has been very slow when an ad blocker is installed, as our Andrew Romero first reported this weekend .

It was also noted by PC Gamer that the latest browser slowdowns on YouTube were spiking CPU usage on some machines. But, now, YouTube says that this latest browser slowdown actually isn’t its own doing after all. Speaking to Android Central , YouTube says that these slowdowns are “unrelated” to its ad blocker detection.

It’s also pointed out that the popular ad blocker, AdBlock, has found a bug in its latest updates that seem to be the culprit for these slowdowns. On GitLab , a member of the AdBlock team says that the issue is being fixed in response to users who have found slowdowns on YouTube and other pages around the web including Google Translate, some Microsoft websites, and more.

A developer for uBlockOrigin also notes that , apparently, the slowdown never affected that ad blocker. More on YouTube: Follow Ben: Twitter/X , Threads , and Instagram.