The battle against ad blockers on YouTube causes significant lags and an increase in scam ads

We all are aware of the fact that YouTube has been cracking against ad blockers for the past few months. YouTube is taking a strict stand against this issue. The company is using different strategies to discourage the use of ad blockers by users. Reportedly, users are now warned that using ad blockers is against the terms of service of the firm, and the only way to avoid ads is to subscribe to YouTube Premium. Another strategy adopted by the company is slowing down the platform for users who rely on ad blockers.

In November, the company used a similar approach to discourage the practice of using ad blockers. It appears that those who are unwilling to give up ad blockers are now seeing a new wave of slowdowns. Several Reddit threads indicate that the platform is significantly lagging. The load time of videos has been increased to five minutes for some users across various browsers. The same issue is reported with users of Premium plans who are using ad blockers for other purposes.

Besides this, the platform is loaded with scam ads. One of the threads on Reddit describes the nature of bad ads that show up on YouTube. These scam ads use famous YouTubers and celebrities to scam users financially. One such advertisement, for example, shows viewers Jennifer Aniston offering a MacBook Pro for $10 in a deepfake video. According to a user, such ads are eventually removed; however, scammers still manage to publish these ads via different accounts and emails. YouTube probably won’t take any action because I’m quite sure no one actually monitors the ads that appear on their website, the user added.

In addition to scam ads, there are several porn ads on the platform. Despite the company’s action against such accounts, the ads are more widespread on the platform now perhaps due to the ad blocker ban. It’s unclear if Google intends to implement more stringent controls to stop the proliferation of deceptive advertisements on YouTube.