YouTube is currently experiencing a problem loading the comments section under videos, as a number of users on Reddit have reported a glitch that prevents comments from being displayed, and sometimes even extends to the video description itself.
While some believe this may be a new anti-ad blocker measure, others believe it is just a temporary technical glitch.
Refreshing the page showed intermittent success in resolving the issue, supporting the hypothesis of a technical failure. However, turning off the ad blocker turned out to be the most effective solution so far, which has reinforced suspicions that the flaw is related to YouTube’s actions against these tools.
Interestingly, some YouTube Premium subscribers were also affected by the issue. Unlike previous measures that excluded paid subscribers from anti-ad blocking restrictions, the current update appears to have not differentiated between users, leading to what looks like “collateral damage.”
These developments came after a series of recent steps taken by Google, as it closed background video playback loopholes for free users, while keeping them for Premium subscribers, and also imposed restrictions on displaying song lyrics in YouTube Music, where free users can now view only five song lyrics per month.
In contrast, some individual tests showed no glitches when using Chrome with the uBlock Origin Lite extension either with or without a Premium account, indicating that the issue may not be entirely universal.
