Are you experiencing slow performance on YouTube? It could be due to your use of an ad-blocker.

YouTube’s war on ad blockers has become global news, and now the platform appears to be taking further action against those who use a tool that blocks ads while watching videos.

YouTube claims that blocking ads limits its ability to pay content creators, so it wants people to stop using these tools and or simply pay for the Premium service, which offers ad-free content.

A recent update suggests that many YouTube viewers will see the entire website slow down if they didn’t disable ad blockers in their browsers. The platform calls it suboptimal viewing. The fact that people see a degradation in the performance of the platform does not bode well, at least when it is widely used and has served for many decades.

Millions, actually billions, use YouTube around the world, and the company has long allowed people to use ad blockers to avoid seeing ads before and between videos.

Recently, YouTube had a three-strikes rule for videos as well, which gives people enough time to stop using the ad blocker and show ads on all videos on their profile as long as they want to use YouTube for free. The message clearly stated that the video will be blocked from playing unless you whitelist YouTube from the ad blocker app/plugin or disable the feature entirely.

Many people have even resorted to watching videos on other browsers, such as Microsoft Edge, which clearly has no problem letting ad blockers do their job. We’re not sure these loopholes will last long, but these efforts show that people are starting to get desperate to avoid paying for YouTube, but don’t want to see ads that can’t be skipped.

YouTube is likely going to go further in its efforts to get people to stop using these blockers, which means more restrictions are bound to come in the near future.