Google Slows Down Firefox Users When Watching YouTube
fosspost.org
If you are using the open source Firefox web browser to browse YouTube and watch its videos, then you might have noticed that there is an artificial delay

Google slows down Firefox users when watching YouTube…

  • echo64
    7026·
    2 years ago

    I know everyone wants to be mad, and I’m no fan of Google. But this is almost certainly an unintentional bug.

    Google, more than anything, wants watch hours for ad money. They don’t want you frustrated by the alow ux. They want you watching advertisements.

    • Hegar@kbin.social
      293·
      2 years ago

      I could believe this, but if google doesn’t want me to be frustrated on youtube, why do they make it so annoying?

      Pushing youtubetv in annoying new ways, putting ads in the middle of songs, serving ads with frustrating frequency, using multiple types of ads so your brain can’t just tune out until you hit skip, locking basic functions like add to playlist behind premium accounts.

      From their behavior it sure looks like they want me to be annoyed.

      • SuiXi3D@kbin.social
        162·
        2 years ago

        They want you making money from them. So watching ads and paying subscription fees. If you aren’t doing either of those things, you’re causing them to lose money. So yeah, they’re gonna make it annoying.

    • Perfide@reddthat.com
      243·
      2 years ago

      wants watch hours for ad money

      Ads which can still be blocked fairly easily on Firefox, unlike in Chrome, which is banning ublock(& likely all other blockers) browser-wide next year. They want to make the firefox experience worse so people have a reason to go back to their ad infested browser.

      • echo64
        614·
        2 years ago

        Nah this doesn’t make sense. You, and everyone else, will sit through five seconds of loading vs watching an ad. You know this, Google know this.

        Occams razor is at play here. If they want to to be conspiratorial, they have better and smarter ways to do it.

          • echo64
            21·
            2 years ago

            I think it’s naive to think google would do this, which is so easily bypassed, when they have so many better options that wouldn’t get the European courts frothing. Again, occams razor

    • FeelzGoodMan420@eviltoast.orgEnglish
      154·
      2 years ago

      Well this rumor came from the linus tech tips forums so just by that I assume it’s sensationalized bullshit.

    • Bremmy@lemmy.ml
      72·
      2 years ago

      Unfortunately not. It’s intentional as someone else looked to the explanation below

    • Kidplayer_666@lemm.ee
      5·
      2 years ago

      If they are able to make you switch, you become a heck of a lot more profitable long term as they’re able to collect a loooot more data

  • Extras@lemmy.today
    392·
    2 years ago

    Might be a very dumb financial decision but maybe it’s time to rethink that whole google search contract renewal coming up in a year or so. Feeling like a toxic relationship

    Edit: the time frame is just an assumption due to it being a 3 year contract made in 2020. I would try to seek a relationship with bing tbh, it sucks with privacy but would be a kick to google’s balls. Plus the majority of firefox users who start giving a crap about their privacy, change to duckduckgo in the beginning of their journey so it wont be a massive shift from bing imo in terms of searching experience.

    • GrapesOfAss
      7·
      2 years ago

      I would be willing to donate if they dropped ties with Google to help supplement the less of revenue

      • spaduf@slrpnk.net
        23·
        2 years ago

        Google paying them an absolute shitload of money (still pretty small compared to what Google pays Apple). It’d be pretty hard to get the donations to make up a missing half billion.

    • Kidplayer_666@lemm.ee
      6·
      2 years ago

      The biggest problem is the loss of users that that incurs… it would be long term damage for temporary financial boost. I think they already tried once to switch to yahoo and it was an unmitigated disaster

      • Extras@lemmy.today
        6·
        2 years ago

        Yeah I expect that would be the case but I honestly think out of all the other longterm rivals with deep pockets, bing is firefox’s best chance of maintaining most of it’s current userbase and maybe even growing it in the longterm especially if bing ai’s features keep expanding. Else why would bard be a thing if google didn’t feel a bit threatened. Again just my thoughts would like to hear what other opinions are out there.

        Edit: would also be a big win for microsoft since a respectable browser is now using it’s search engine and not just a butt of the joke like edge is, so maybe firefox can leveage a good chunk of change from them to keep their browser running for a while unlike the deal they did with google. Think it would ultimately destroy edge though but since edge can now be user uninstalled thats bound to happen in a couple of years anyways and with this deal bing will still get some traffic so still a win for microsoft.

  • SasquatchBanana
    29·
    2 years ago

    Has space bar stopped working for anyone else with Youtube? I keep spamming it and it sometimes doesn’t work.

  • BombOmOmEnglish
    291·
    2 years ago

    Ah, even more reason for me to use less Youtube.

    Been substituting it with Nebula, Odysee, and just watching less video content.

    • MylesRyden@social.vivaldi.net
      10·
      2 years ago

      @BombOmOm @furycd001
      I am sort of in a content slump right now. The YouTube adblocker blocker has me watching much less and noticing the content actually kinda sucks.

      Most news sites are either paywalled or adblocked blocked or so stuffed with ads it’s unreadable.

      Even my library app doesn’t have books newer than like 2019.

      This DRM shit totally sucks.

      • H3L1X@lemmy.mlEnglish
        2·
        2 years ago

        I am in a similar situation. I did just start using RSS and that has been interesting. Nice to get everything in one spot, with no ads, and it’s specifically what I’m interested in.

      • FoshezeEnglish
        2·
        2 years ago

        What ad blocker are you using? I’m using ublock origin and I still haven’t seen the ad blocker blocker thing on anything.

        • MylesRyden@social.vivaldi.net
          3·
          2 years ago

          @Fosheze
          I use PiHole at home for sytem wide blocking and Vivaldi as my main browser.

          I get the adblocker blocker on my main google account, but I have a couple of others for hobbies and I have not seen the blocker there.

          • FoshezeEnglish
            1·
            2 years ago

            Even though Pi hole doesn’t block youtube ads, that’s probably what is triggering the ad blocker blocker. Unfortunately I don’t know a way around that but I’m sure someone in one of the pihole communities has figured it out.

          • BombOmOmEnglish
            21·
            2 years ago

            Vivaldi looks like it supports extensions. Try out UBlock Origin for it. I use that add-on and a PiHole and have had no issues.

    • krigo666
      9·
      2 years ago

      Try FreeTube viewer, still in alpha but already works great. You can create profiles with the channels you want in each one.

      https://freetubeapp.io

      On mobile (Android) you have NewPipe, GrayJay or SkyTube.

  • ToxicWaste@lemm.ee
    18·
    2 years ago

    Guys relax. Most of the ‘research’ comes from this reddit post: https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/17ywbjj/whenever_i_open_a_youtube_video_in_a_new_tab_its/k9w3ei4/

    It points out following code in youtube’s polymer script:

    setTimeout(function() {
    c();
    a.resolve(1)
 }, 5E3);

    But exactly this code does show up on a stock installation of chrome too, and it does not check for the user agent. One of the responses goes a bit deeper into what the code above could do: https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/17ywbjj/whenever_i_open_a_youtube_video_in_a_new_tab_its/ka08uqj/

    It is rather clear, that this code is not aimed at firefox users to slow down their loading time.

  • verysoft@kbin.social
    163·
    2 years ago

    Mine instantly loads. Perhaps there’s some other stuff going on with hardware/software or something this person is running?

    • iAmTheTot@kbin.social
      5·
      2 years ago

      I use YT every day and use Firefox as my main browser. I’ve never experienced this. Just tested out of curiosity, it loads fine.

    • buzziebee
      1·
      2 years ago

      Yeah it appears on chrome as well. There isn’t any evidence that it’s purposely “slowing down” anything. I had a quick glance at the Reddit thread (been avoiding it as much as possible, but had to visit in incognito to confirm the source for this outrage) and it looks like it’s part of a small script to check if an adblocker is present and disabling video ads from playing.

      It’s possible FF have a delay in playing that first video, but also the test methodology isn’t super reliable because of caching.

    • oatscoop@midwest.socialEnglish
      22·
      2 years ago

      I’ve experienced this issue firsthand, although it’s more like 3 to 4 seconds. Changing the user agent to Chrome causes videos to load instantly, and restoring it to the original user agent causes the “lag”.

      Some possibly relevant information: I’m running Firefox with unlock Origin on Linux Mint. I’ve also received the “playback will be disabled after 3 videos” message in the past – so it’s possibly only affecting users they strongly suspect are still using ad-blockers with workarounds.

    • FeelzGoodMan420@eviltoast.orgEnglish
      77·
      2 years ago

      It’s just typical sensationalized bullshit with people jumping to conclusions based off random ass Reddit threads. This apparently originated from the linus tech tips forums so it’s probably straight bs.

  • CrowAirbrush@lemm.ee
    61·
    2 years ago

    I wonder what would happen if Google manages to destroy itself with increasing shenanigans like this.

    I mean, so much of digital based stuff relies on them for some extent.

  • middlemanSI
    51·
    2 years ago

    First thing that comes to mind is user agent spoofer. Anyway I say let them, it’s their company with userbase content and it’s based in US. They can do whatever they want with it because terms of service. I can just look at my sexy John Oliver poster on the wall for 30 min and replace their service.