Earlier this year, Google-owned YouTube started running “a small experiment globally” to block viewers from watching videos on the platform with ad blockers enabled. It later intensified its stance on blocking ad blockers by launching a global crackdown to discourage users from using them on the video streaming platform.
While YouTube emphasizes ads are an essential part of how the website and creators earn revenue, it is pushing users to either buy a premium version of YouTube for an ad-free experience or disable their ad blocker and allow YouTube ads.
Now, it is reported that Google has intentionally started slowing down the loading of YouTube videos on non-Chrome browsers, especially Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft Edge, with a five-second delay, even for those not using extensions or ad-blockers.
Mozilla Firefox users started sharing posts online, with some saying that their screens even turned black for a few seconds, but later, the page loaded up as usual.
On Reddit, Redditor u/vk6_ posted a video (which has now been removed) showing YouTube loading up on Firefox with a considerable delay. However, the delay no longer appears to be an issue when the user agent on the browser has been manually changed to Chrome. The video has been recreated below:
According to Redditor paintboth1234, the JavaScript code for the YouTube client on the desktop reportedly contains code that forces users to wait five seconds before the page loads. They write:
To clarify it more, it’s simply this code in their polymer script link:
setTimeout(function() { c(); a.resolve(1) }, 5E3);
which doesn’t do anything except making you wait 5s (5E3 = 5000ms = 5s). You can search for it easily in
Meanwhile, Google has confirmed that the YouTube slowdowns are part of its ad-blocking crackdown efforts and have nothing to do with Firefox specifically.
“To support a diverse ecosystem of creators globally and allow billions to access their favorite content on YouTube, we’ve launched an effort to urge viewers with ad blockers enabled to allow ads on YouTube or try YouTube Premium for an ad-free experience,” the company said in a statement to Android Authority.
“Users who have ad blockers installed may experience suboptimal viewing, regardless of the browser they are using.”
Despite the statement from Google, there is no clear explanation as to why there is a five-second delay while loading YouTube videos on Mozilla Firefox and no delay when using Google Chrome.
