It is no secret that Google, primarily through YouTube, has declared war on ad blockers. Many people have experienced new warnings that ad blockers are against YouTube's terms of service. And now YouTube users are facing annoying delays every time they use the ad blocker.

The strange new phenomenon is that users face a five-second delay when they try to watch a video with the ad blocker turned on. Initial reports came from the YouTube subreddit, initially from Firefox users, but later from users viewing in Edge, Brave, and Safari; Chrome also seems to be affected, but reports seem to be much less frequent.

One Reddit user claims to have found javascript code in the YouTube desktop client. In other words, this is not a specific browser issue, but a YouTube one; Android Authority notes that a snippet of this code exists, but cannot find any direct evidence that it is adding latency.

A statement from YouTube to the site sheds some light on the situation, and the company understandably blames the delay on the ad blocker.

"To support our diverse ecosystem of creators around the world and ensure that billions of people have access to their favorite content on YouTube, we've decided to allow viewers who have ad blockers enabled to either allow ads on YouTube or to try ad-free YouTube Premium. Users with ad blockers installed may experience less than optimal viewing regardless of the browser they are using.

It would be easy to assume that YouTube intentionally added this code to force people to watch ads or subscribe to YouTube Premium, but this statement does not exactly admit that. It just means that the ad blocker may make the YouTube experience a little crappier than it otherwise would be.

Then again, having watched the ever-increasing number of cringeworthy, sketchy, and often unskippable ads on YouTube, I would definitely prefer the awkward five-second delay. But if that's too much for you, Tom's Hardware has a workaround for those using Firefox and uBlock Origin that reduces the latency to 0.01 milliseconds.

It would not be surprising if this was a deliberate step to further drive people away from ad blockers. However, given that Google reportedly generated $224.47 billion in ad revenue in 2022, compared to $279.8 billion in total revenue, it would be telling enough that it would do everything in its power to crack down on threats to that revenue stream.

It would also not be the first time Google has attacked ad blockers in some form. YouTube already has warnings trying to keep people away from ad blockers, and Google itself has previously announced plans to prevent many ad blocking extensions from working on Chrome.

Given how dangerous the Internet as a whole is, it makes sense to block ads whenever possible. Malware spreads easily through ads, and there is no shortage of scams and sleazy behavior propagated through ads. The obvious downside is that many sites and services, including Tom's Guide, depend on advertising revenue. Blocking these ads would deprive them of important revenue.

But given the dangers and the fact that ads are so annoying, it is no wonder they are so popular; even the FBI recommends using the best ad blockers to keep you safe online. Apparently, Google is having trouble finding ad blockers.