Google is intentionally throttling YouTube videos, slowing down users with ad blockers

Google is seemingly ramping up its campaign against ad blockers on YouTube. Over the past few years, it's become increasingly annoying to watch content on the social video sharing platform, as many videos are rife with multiple unskippable ads.

Last week, reports emerged about Google preventing playback on YouTube videos for users with ad-blockers installed on their devices. “Ad blockers violate YouTube’s terms of service,” added Google.

Google's aggressive campaign against ad-blockers in YouTube has now taken a turn for the worse, after reigning down on the remaining few loopholes in browsers and third-party extensions that allowed users to enjoy ad-free videos without necessarily getting the $14/month YouTube Premium subscription.

Users have flagged a new issue, indicating that Google is intentionally slowing down YouTube videos for users with ad-blockers installed on their devices (via PCWorld). According to a user on the Brave browser forum:

"Hi, been using brave to block YouTube ads and it’s technically working but most videos will be black screen for the length of an ad or two with YouTube saying “experiencing interruptions” on the bottom left corner, and one of the possible reasons being ad blockers from what it is saying, is there anything I can do."

Some users have even indicated that they received a three-video countdown asking them to disable their ad-blockers or get blocked from watching YouTube videos. Failure to disable the third-party software resulted in users being barred from watching videos until they updated and restarted their browsers. Users have shared accounts of experiencing a 5 to 10 second pause on every video with an "Experiencing interruptions? Find out why" popup.

YouTube users with ad-blockers installed on their devices are redirected to a technical support page by Google that directs them on how to troubleshoot YouTube video errors:

“Check whether your browser extensions that block ads are affecting video playback.”

An AdGuard representative referred to Google's aggressive campaign against ad-blockers in YouTube videos as "a classic cat-and-mouse game", as users are coming up with ingenious ways to bypass ads that make the viewing experience unpleasant.