Users of the YouTube mobile app and website have reported serious issues this week. Some users had earlier reported that the interface buttons are disappearing from the Shorts player. And now, desktop users with ad blockers are experiencing a full-blown outage, as the YouTube website is not loading properly.
YouTube is not loading for many desktop users with ad blockers
This week, YouTube saw a surge of outage reports, with many users believing the service was down. The cause for the website outage was largely the ad blockers interfering with YouTube’s ads and playback verification system. For desktop users with ad blockers installed, the website shows a blank home page and even stalls.
YouTube has always been against ad blockers. And this new outage seems to be another crackdown from the tech giant. To resolve the issue, many users have reported that disabling the ad blocker, switching browsers, or reinstalling the YouTube app restored access. Since the problem is largely related to an extension, and not the platform itself, it’s easier to fix.
Several users are facing buttons disappearing on the Shorts player
In related news, mobile users of YouTube’s Shorts feature reported another issue: key interface buttons such as like, comment, share, and subscribe were not visible. The issue seems to be affecting a lot of users. If not fixed as soon as possible, it might even end up affecting the views and metrics of the creators.
But thankfully, YouTube has acknowledged the issue. Users can expect a patch update to be rolled out in the coming days. Now, regarding the ad blocker issue, don’t expect things to return to normal. The best option to get rid of such annoying problems is to remove the ad blocker extension. Google doesn’t want its users to use ad blockers in any possible way. It might be the time to get YouTube Premium.
