YouTube might slow down your videos if you block ads

It’s fairly easy to block the constant, incessant advertising that appears on YouTube. Google would prefer that you don’t, or pay up (quite a lot) to make them go away. Last weekend, the company started its latest campaign to try and badger ad-block users into disabling their extensions. Since then, it looks like YouTube has escalated things and is now intentionally slowing down videos.

Posters on Reddit and the Brave browser forum have observed videos being blacked out on first load, approximately for the length of pre-roll ads, with a pop-up link that directs users to the ad-blocking section of this technical support page. “Check whether your browser extensions that block ads are affecting video playback,” suggests Google. “As another option, try opening YouTube in an incognito window with all extensions disabled and check if the issue continues.” PCWorld staff has seen this in action, using uBlock Origin Lite.

Google

Ad-block extension developers quickly got around the pop-up issue earlier this week, with one AdGuard representative calling the process “a classic cat-and-mouse game.” But if Google wanted to instigate a more serious crackdown on users blocking ads without paying up, it could do so easily—and we’ve seen it pull this same move before. Posters on the latest issue speculate that the slowdowns might be tagged to specific Google or YouTube user accounts that were detected blocking ads previously, which would bypass any kind of interaction with a specific browser or extension.

I can’t independently confirm that’s happening, but it wouldn’t surprise me. It also wouldn’t shock me if Google is seeing a larger percentage of YouTube users blocking advertising, as is the case all across the web, as the quantity of advertising rises while quality takes a nosedive. YouTube video creators are having to get, well, creative to seek alternate revenue beyond basic AdSense accounts, as sponsored videos are now constant across the platform and more channels put new videos behind paywalls on YouTube itself or via other platforms like Patreon.

YouTube is attacking the issue from other angles as well. Tech-focused creators that show how to use third-party tools to block ads or download videos from the site (again, without paying the steep fees for YouTube Premium) are getting their videos taken down and their accounts flagged, for violation of the extremely vague policy around “harmful and dangerous content.”

If I may editorialize a bit: Google, if you want more people to subscribe to YouTube Premium and remove advertising, you need to make it cheaper. Charging $14 per month just to get rid of ads is the same cost of a premium subscription from other sources where users can watch full movies and series. YouTube as a platform is a much lower bar and just doesn’t compete at that level. I’m not going to pay that much to get rid of ads, not when it doesn’t actually get rid of all the ads—those sponsored and subscriber-only videos are still all over the place—and the site is filling up with AI slop. “Premium Lite,” which neuters the offerings for mobile and music-focused users, doesn’t make the cut either.

And to be clear, I have no problem paying for the stuff I watch. I already pay more than $15 a month to support the individual YouTube channels I enjoy, like Second Wind, Drawfee, and several tech podcasts. But I do it via Patreon because sending that money through YouTube feels gross. If Google wants people to pay up, it needs to lower the price enough so that it’s no longer worth the hassle of blocking them.

It’s a lesson that the music, movie, and game industries learned a long time ago as they fought the initial wave of internet piracy… and now seem to be forgetting again.