YouTube throttling ad blockers might explain your slow video load times

Is YouTube feeling slower than usual? If your videos take forever to start—even with a solid connection—YouTube throttling ad blockers might be to blame.

In what feels like deja vu, YouTube is back at it. Reports are piling up from Reddit, X, and tech outlets like Android Central and PhoneArena: users running ad blockers are seeing multi-second delays, black screens, or weird pop-ups before videos load. Sometimes you’ll even get a not-so-subtle message asking, “Experiencing interruptions? Find out why.” Click it, and surprise—it blames your browser extensions. Users say disabling ad blockers fixes the issue immediately.

YouTube throttling ad blockers isn’t exactly new. Last year year, the platform was caught slowing down load times for users with extensions enabled. Before that, it tried muting videos or skipping them to the end entirely. Now, it seems Google’s trying a more passive-aggressive tactic—make the experience so frustrating, you either disable your blocker or cave and pay for Premium.

The Reddit community’s reaction? Rage, mostly. Some folks are experimenting with filter updates and custom scripts. Others are choosing buffering over being force-fed ads they call intrusive or even inappropriate.

In June, YouTube was also spotted testing server-side ad injection—meaning ad blockers and tools like SponsorBlock might not even work soon. That’s a whole new level of lock-in.

So, if your YouTube videos are acting up, it’s probably not your Wi-Fi. It’s Google tightening the screws on ad blockers. The cat-and-mouse game isn’t over—but right now, YouTube’s winning.

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