YouTube Clarifies The Recent Slowdown Issue – It Was Caused By An Extension Bug

YouTube Clarifies The Recent Slowdown Issue – It Was Caused By An Extension Bug

Recently, the Internet was lifting its figurative pitchforks on the alleged decision from YouTube to impose artificial slowdowns when the website detects an ad blocker in use. Turns out there is a plot twist: the slowdown wasn’t intentional, and it technically wasn’t the video-sharing platform’s fault.

Currently, the ad block detection will show this prompt to users with extensions enabled.

The issue was eventually traced back to users of Adblock and Adblock Plus, to which the makers of the extension have clarified that it was a bug on their part. “With our latest update published last week, some of our users began to experience a slowdown on YouTube and other sites across the web. This slowdown was due to a bug that caused performance issues for some users, including a lag when watching YouTube videos and browsing other websites,” it said in a blog post.

Thankfully, the bug has since been resolved with a new update, and users simply need to make sure the extension is updated to solve the performance issue. Those with automatic updates turned off can do so by reinstalling the extension.

On YouTube’s end, the company has told Android Central that the slowdowns experienced by the aforementioned extensions were not a part of their ad blocker detection efforts. “Recent reports of users experiencing loading delays on YouTube are unrelated to our ad blocker detection efforts,” the company noted.

Pokdepinion: We can breathe a sigh of relief, for now.