In a previous generation, governments would go after this blatant anti competitive behaviour.
I'm sure the EU will still.
It’s just a shame that there’s really only one government organization globally that will still stand up to corporations.
To be fair China will send you to a reeducation camp or disappear you if you try to act like a western billionaire.
China will make you disappear for many things including speaking up against the genocide of religious minorities ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
For now
Honestly with the speed new BS crops up I don’t think they will.
The current US Federal Trade Commission is quite agressive compared to other FTCs historically.
True. Though they have been stuck with 30 years of damage simply reverse too.
Think of it as 30 years of rent they're now claiming.
Yes, but they haven't fixed this specific problem that just broke in the last day or so, therefore the FTC is a corrupt useless organization that pours hot wax on kittens
Some people are reporting it happens when your accounts get flagged by YouTube for blocking ads and that using a private browsing session can be used to bypass it, so it's possible this isn't a blanket thing?
Either way, they can go fuck themselves.
If you're on Firefox and using uBlock Origin (which you should), you can add the following to your filters list to essentially disable the delay:
It doesn't fully disable it, just makes it almost instant, because Google has been doing shit like looking at what gets blocked to combat ad blockers recently.
I use youtube without logging in, and it runs normally. If I use a private window, that's when I get a delay when loading videos.
It's bizarre how blatent this is. Google has so much power over web standards that Mozilla have to work really hard to make firefox work, but YouTube don't bother being subtle or clever and just write 'if Firefox, get stuffed' in plain text for everyone to see.
this isn't much different than when microsoft added code specifically to break windows 3.1 when run under dr-dos instead of their own ms-dos. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AARD\_code
And it cost them 280 million in the 90s ouch
Something tells me they survived.
Google has been doing this kind of thing for a while. If you try to use Google Meet in Firefox, you can’t use things like background blurring. Spoofing Chrome works in that situation as well.
And the stupid thing is that all I use Chrome for is Meets... And that's it. Do they really think they win me over?
Not you or me. But most people, yeah.
That is, as always, the problem: it works for them. The average Joe isn't going to implement a new filter into ublock...
How does one "spoof" chrome?
You can change your user agent string, the text your browser uses to tell the web site you're looking at what browser it is, either via your F12 developer tools menu or via an extension.
The most convenient way is with a browser extension that changes your user agent. You can also change it in the developer options of most browsers.
So this is part of a larger adblock checker, if the ad doesn't load within 5 seconds, it fails and triggers the adblocker warning. Since the ad should load in 3, they've set it for 5. If you have ubo, you won't see the warning that it then wants to pop up, it just seems (and is) a 5 second delay. Changing the UA probably removes this from Firefox because then the clientside scripts will attempt to use builtin Chrome functions that wouldn't need this hacky script to detect the adblock. Since they don't exist, it just carries on.
I was wondering how badly out of context the above quote must be considering the UA isn't checked in the function. Above poster is trying to construe it as a pure and simple permanent delay for Firefox.
That being said, the solution is still bullshit.
That is just the timeout function, not the call stack. It is likely called in a function that uses a UA check.
I was wondering how badly out of context the above quote must be considering the UA isn’t checked in the function. Above poster is trying to construe it as a pure and simple permanent delay for Firefox.
The UA check can happen before the function is called though.
This should be illegal, Firefox being their competition (tangentially)
It honestly probably is
EU might hit them for it. I have no faith that the US government is going to do anything.
The thing that gets me is they think no one will ever find this stuff. There are hundreds of thousands of people (maybe more) who are actively looking ways to block ads and get around this behavior. There's no way it'll ever go unnoticed.
They could literally have used some variance in implementation, server side bandwidth limitations, etc, but THIS is just blatantly obvious
I wonder if it's a case of malicious compliance.
Exactly what I was thinking. Let's not say it too loud for the sake of our mole(s)
I hope so. I'd like to think we have a few people on the inside secretly fighting for the average consumer.
The world runs on the shoulders of disgruntled employees. This smells like a deliberate act backed up with a paper trail to protect the guy in charge of implementing it from taking the blame. But, I realise that also may be my imagination... It's a compelling tale regardless.
The world runs on the shoulders of disgruntled employees.
That's one hell of a phrase that should keep any CEO awake at night.
No, the full context of the code snippet doesn't appear to check the browser user agent at all. Other comments have explained that it's most likely a lazy implementation of a check for ad blockers.
This is why net neutrality is important. To prevent bullshit like this from happening.
This is literally why net neutrality needs to be regulated. Corporations will artificially make problems to induce additional earnings.
Super scummy, anti-customer behavior.
That's not what net neutrality is about. NN is about carriers and ISPs treating all services and websites equally. Don't feature creep NN. It weakens the arguments for why why we need NN.
Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act might stop any attempt to undermine browser performance.
If anything we need more laws around the tech space as a whole
Doesn't this break competition laws?
Couldn't Google/YouTube be sued over this?
Microsoft got repeatedly hit over this kind of shenanigans in MSIE during and after the anti-trust lawsuit.
Sadly, that was 20 years ago. I'm not having much faith in American justice system doing anything about this nowadays.
They really weren't that effective with Microsoft then either. The antitrust was far too late for Netscape and allowed Microsoft to hold a dominate market share with IE until they allowed the browser to deprecate and Google came in with a much better browser and took over the browser market (and are now doing the same bullshit).
As long as we keep giving these companies meaningless fines or wait until the damage is irreversible companies are going to always push the limit and look at any repercussions as just a cost of doing business.
So yeah, not much faith in anything changing.
That is why I am in favour of the financial death penalty. Fines should be 10x the damage done. If a company cannot pay it, they are required to become a non profit.
Yeah stuff like this really needs to be percentual and fined to the CEOs and the board, not the company as an entity.
Oh, Microsoft valued at 200 bil for shareholders? Well sorry C's and boardies, you gotta scrunge up 2 bil each now, personally. Those are fines they'd at least notice.
(edit)
Come to think of it, the fined-personally-to-the-decisionmaker might really be the big thing here on its own. The company did this shit under you, CEO. It was your corporate policy and hiring practices that allowed this to happen, even if you did not press the button. You pay up. You take the blame, not the people under you just following orders.
You should look into all of the anti-monopoly actions that Lina Khan has been pursuing as head of the FTC. Under her tenure the watchdogs have had more teeth than ever before. It takes time for this stuff to make a difference, but they are most decidedly doing the work (Cory Doctorow has some excellent write ups on this if you check his blog).
He lionizes her a bit much, but yes she has done far more than her predecessor.
Not in the U.S. Not as long as conservatives (incl. neo-liberals) have the power to protect them.
Our conservative politicians are bought and paid for by large anti-competitive corporations.
Bought and paid for with a pittance.
They are bribed for so little that it would be almost easier to make a dystopian sounding PAC with money raised by small dollar donations to bribe them to do what the people want instead of them doing what rich donors want.
I wonder how long it'll be before google gets sued for their anti-competitive behavior.
Oh I imagine the papers are being filed as we speak, because this is blatantly illegal.
Well you typically need standing in order to file a lawsuit, who would do it? Mozilla are probably the only ones. Why would this cause them to do it when past similar practices haven’t?
Europe will step in as usual
Perhaps YouTube premium subscribers would have standing as a class action, since Google is materially worsening the experience of a paid product if you don’t use their browser
It is being currently being sued by Epic Games for Anti-Trust behavior. Google offered millions of dollars to Epic so that Fortnite would be available in the Play Store and not in Epic's own store.
Been there, done that, and came on top.
They are already in one anti-trust trial for search engine shenanigans.
Sometimes I get curious about chromium based browsers and consider giving them a shot for a while.
Then Google does shit like this and I keep mainlining Firefox out of spite. Half the reasons people experience “issues” with Firefox are just dumb garbage like this (see sites / web content being developed with Chrome-based in mind)
the website DRM thing is one of the most blackpilled and evil uses of technology i've ever seen
the people in charge of developing that should be put in a padded room and never allowed to see sunlight again. fucking god.
Woah, woah, woah, slow down: Why do they get to have padding in their room?
I would assume so they cant easily hurt themself and have to live and suffer through it for as long as possible
as far as I’m aware, even after looking it up, I think you are misusing the term blackpill.
Blackpill usually refers to a manosphere/Incel or Qanon type who has given up completely and lost all hope. In the the case of an Incel it’s that there’s no hope in ever escaping Inceldom. In the case of q anon it’s that none of the predictions about the “storm” will ever arise or come true.
I looked around and couldn’t find any other contexts that it’s used.
Heck I use god damn duckduckgo out of spite nowadays
DDG is legit great and even sometimes better than Google search now. I also am a SearXNG enjoyer
DDG, even though apparently a Bing front end, gives legit better results than google
It's honestly good. It misses that "Algorithm profile" that Google has where it starts to "understand" what you mean but it's still pretty good.
(Example. If I type in "genocide" in Google, it knows I often look for Undertale related things and pushes "Undertale genocide route" related content. For DDG I need to be clearer about what I mean)
It took a bit getting used to but I prefer it this way now.
I think it's still possible to ethically use Chromium browsers, so long as it's one of them that's been reviewing and removing anything ludicrous Google adds. I don't even mind MS Edge on most of my computers for the most part. Firefox doesn't load well on my tablet.
Google has been doing this kind of thing for years, to strangle their competition. For example, back when Windows Phone existed, Google went deliberately out of their way to cripple youTube, and maps. Apparently google will do anything they can to create lock-in and faux loyalty.
Google are completely evil. Here we're talking about them using their popular products as weapons against competitors in unrelated areas. But also have a history of copying products made by others then using advertising strength to promote their version over the original. And if that somehow doesn't work... they buy out the competitors. Both youTube and google maps are examples of this.
Wow, and it's literally just "If you're using Firefox, wait five seconds."
Elon moment
Let's remember, fellas, that big tech is not a disease that needs to be eradicated.
Let us not forget that Google is a legitimate corporation, not merely a group of professional stalkers.
And let's be clear: obviously you are the crazy ones for worrying about this, naturally...
Pardon my jest; I was merely echoing the absurdities often heard.
Maybe just maybe it's time we stop with this garbage and actually stop using their services. Nothing will change if we keep using their services.
The most direct and effective strategy to inspire reform in their practices is to stop using of their platforms. Each time we use a service from Google or any similar big tech entity, we inadvertently endorse their methods.
YOU hold the power to change them by using FOSS alternatives instead.
The most direct and effective strategy to inspire reform in their practices is to stop using of their platforms.
The whole "the free market could fix it" is just neoliberal bullshit. The most hated companies in the world continue to bring in record profits and its not because people prefer their chocolate is harvested by child slaves.
They're fully aware that it never works, but they just keep suggesting it over and over again, growing richer with successive failure, all the while blaming consumers for not preventing them doing sleazy, greedy things.
The actual most direct and effective strategy is regulations. That's why they hate them and why there are so many of them in politics.
Thank you. I'm tired of hearing "it's the consumer's responsability" when we have governments and various regulatory bodies for this exact reason
Yes, but the problem is the convenience.
Google has made their services convenient, which is why everyone I like to watch content of posts their stuff on YouTube. Both alternive websites and the content on them is often of inferior quality and difficult to find.
Then use alternative youtube clients, like piped or freetube.
Or even better: spend money (if you can afford it) to host a peertube instance that automatically rips the videos off of youtube.
That's an even stronger message that you'd rather spend money than use their crappy free services.
Or even better: spend money (if you can afford it) to host a peertube instance that automatically rips the videos off of youtube.
Oh that’s amazing. I’m gonna see about doing that for channels I actively watch. Gives me an excuse to unfuck my NAS storage too since then it’ll be full faster.
Do you know of any software that does that already (I assume PeerTube itself doesn’t)?
which is why everyone I like to watch content of posts their stuff on YouTube
I'm not sure this is exactly true - like, first off, I am not a YouTuber and I only watch a very specific kind of content there (breadtube), so idk if my opinion is valid, but
From what I've heard creators say, it's not that YouTube is great, in fact it kind of sucks in a lot of ways, it's just that the alternatives don't do it better, and obviously don't have the size & reach. All the things that YouTube does badly or not at all, the competition doesn't do well either, so why bother.
You're 100% right tho that Google's success at this point hinges almost entirely on their convenience. Google drive/docs/sheets/etc are kinda garbage, but they'te fast, simple to use, and the integration is incredibly smooth. If there was any alternative that was as simple to transition into from email or whatever, I'd jump ship in a second.
Actually, the main problem isn't that they've made their services convenient. Most of them are inconvenient in multiple ways.
The really big problem, the absolutely INSIDIOUS shit is how extremely inconvenient they've made using alternatives.
Example: Google the search engine straight up sucks from an end user perspective now. Yet because it's where over 90% of all search engine searches happen, it's MORE inconvenient to use any other one, no matter how much better the algorithms and what have you.
Same with YouTube: the user experience becomes worse and worse, but since it has a de facto near-monopoly of certain types of content from certain creators, best you can do is a custom frontend. Which they're of course trying to make impossible ever since they removed the "Don't" from their original informal slogan.
Insidious
A good plug to use Invidious for sure, intentional or not.
There's a reason that doesn't appear on their site or in their docs any more. It was a canary clause.
Any organisation that needs to remind themselves not to be evil is already intrinsically evil.
Very overtly and loudly claiming a quality which should be self-evident in oneself, one's company or one's nation invariably means it's not really there.
This sounds like something that would be in the back end so likely not. But if spoofing user agents fixes the problem then I'd say it's evidence enough to warrant a deeper look.
it's pretty inconclusive if there's no context for how that code is called. I'm kinda confused why the article wouldn't have provided any additional detail other than a single line of code. why bother digging at all?
it's part of their anti-adblock code. without going into too much details, they can instantly find out whether ad-block is trying to do anything on chrome, but on firefox they need a 5 sec delay
Have you read past that screenshot of the code, though? It says the problem was not limited to Firefox, it seems Edge users reported problems as well. Anecdotally, I did experience that delay problem on Thorium this weekend as well. I have seen a variation of this problem almost a month ago, where sometimes the video would take a long time (like, over a minute, sometimes) to load, or often just not load at all. So I just chalked it up to Youtube having done something stupid on their end.
I've noticed that too, I just switch to Freetube when it happens.
Simply disgusting, but it's business as usual for Google.
I just use Freetube either way. I can't stand autoplaying videos or suggestions, popups, etc.
Is free tube just pulling YouTube’s data or it a separate site? Can you watch livestreams if it’s the former? Basically all I use YouTube for is watching a couple streamers and watching Japanese udon restaurant channels while I eat my bologna sandwich for lunch
Not noticing this change from the EU... Guess they're too afraid of pulling that shit here?
Google LOVES A/B testing so it might be just that. I haven't noticed anything either.
True, could just be lucky. I still haven't noticed any ad blocking changes either, but then again I'm using Firefox with μBlock Origin...
I'm in the EU, using Vivaldi, and have the delay since yesterday. It's not on every video though. Seems like UBlock and YouTube are fighting each other every time I open a new link.
imagine sitting down to code this and thinking you're doing the right thing
you should be able to whisteblow clearly evil technology and have some sort of economic safety net
Counter point: the code monkeys just do what they are being paid for. The fact it's so easy to circumvent is a testimony on how the people implementing this shit disagree with the corporation.
Hi, code monkey here - I don't work for a large company like Google, am paid less than a Google code monkey, and the products I work on are used by orders of magnitude less people. But even still, if my lead came to me and said "hey, I need the frontend to detect when a user is using 'XYZ Browser' and then introduce an artificial 5 second latency whenever they try to load a page", I'd look at him with incredulity and tell him "no, I'm not doing that. That's stupid and you should feel bad for suggesting it."
Code monkeys aren't paid to simply follow instructions given to them by someone else like some sort of robot - were paid to create applications and programs that people can use, and are usually given enough creative room to do that in a way we see as the best way.
I... am paid less than a Google code monkey... I’d... tell him"That’s stupid and you should feel bad for suggesting it.”
I feel like these things are connected.
Maybe it was unclear. If I get fired for insubordination or whatever, I would be in much more pain than a Google code monkey, because I'm paid much less.
Are you thinking about it another way, where because I'm paid less, I wouldn't care if I got fired, which makes me more emboldened to push back on my higher ups?
Sadly, salary and loyalty to the corporation are often proportional is what they meant.
Gmail is almost painfully slow on my PC (I use Adblock on Firefox). Does anyone else experience this?
And, yes, I know Gmail is very bad, you're preaching to the choir. I am in the midst of switching over.
Fear not friend, you are not alone. I too am slowly switching over, and these things take time. We are truly victims of a great bait and switch, with our digital lives held hostage. We never asked for this.
What are you switching to ?
Folks have suggested Proton Mail. It seems pretty good to me!
This is an aside, but I also want to give Proton points for their calendar app. I used to use Gsuite and Google calendar and no matter what I did it always opened in agenda mode. The Proton calendar has all the features of Google calendar (as far as I can tell) but their app has an option for default display mode. That brought me incredible joy.
I really hope they try this in the EU. The EU regulatory agencies have been on a roll lately.
They are doing it here to.
Bet it's done in such a way that they can claim "We're just optimizing for Chrome, not slowing down any competitors. It's not our fault our competitors don't using our web engine for their browsers."
I mentioned similar shading behavior on another post, when using Firefox with Chrome or native user agents on the plain old Google search page.
It's apparently not even subtle enough to make that claim, it checks the useragent and sleeps for 5 seconds if it's not Chrome.
I was wondering why YouTube started taking a while to load pages in the last couple weeks. Fucking Google, pulling this shit.
Not that I don't believe you, but do you have a source for that?
Ah, I was wondering why YouTube was taking so long to load recently. I thought it was just because their code was shit, and it turns out I was right, but not in the way I thought.
Yeah, the simplest the answer is usually correct. Is this a conspiracy involving hundreds of Google employees intentionally building features to slow the app down on Firefox or is it incompetence because they don't test their product on multiple browsers?
Oh, so it's shit in the way I originally thought, then.
And also shit in the second way I thought, since adblock is a symptom of how terrible they've made the experience on their platform and if they want less people to use it they should make that experience more reasonable.
Given the shit big companies have got up to in the past and continue to get up to, as exposed in past and ongoing antitrust cases, that conspiracy theory you mention really isn't all that unrealistic. Yeah, it's not what happened in this case and it isn't the simplest solution, but it's absolutely a believable thing for YouTube to do, though I think they would have hidden it better if they had.
They do the same shit for Google search results. Search weather or stock tickers with a Chrome user agent* and you get a rich, interactive chart of the weather forecast or stock history. Search with another mobile user agent and you get a static snapshot of the weather or stock price at an instant in time.
There's even an extension for Firefox for Android which changes the user agent for Google searches to Chrome, to get the rich content.
* just a user agent, not an actual browser, which proves that it isn't about browser capability, but rather abusing their monopolistic market position in search to further their web browser's market share. Sound familiar, Microsoft from the 90's?
I just tried this and confirmed it, using Firefox's recommended user agent manager:
I'm not very familiar with those services but are they not relying on YouTube, and therefore still YouTube in a way?
edit before anyone argues, I know these alternative frontends bring many privacy advantages and many usability advantages (and disadvantages). But the content still comes from YouTube which is what my argument is about. I wouldn't say an alternative frontend (or client for that matter) is not using YouTube...
"Ok, so blocking adblock hasn't worked"
"Let's just slow them down"
"That's a great idea, no-one will ever notice"
Winning lines from the competitive glue sniffing awards
Lately (few months) YouTube will not load whatsoever on my android phone nor tablet very often, activating a VPN fixes it instantly. Using basic YouTube app
Time to start copying those videos, irrespective of copyright, onto PeerTube instances.
As long as you host the instance yourself or use a special interest instance. Keep in mind that most Peertubes are ran by regular community folks and it's not very nice to paint a target for Google on them.
I've been using Firefox for about a year now, and I've definitely seen that 5 second loading delay in Firefox. Every time, the page partially loads like it does in the video, then sits for 5 seconds, then populates all the video thumb nails. It was driving me knows, made me think my Firefox was screwed up, or internet routing issues between me and Youtube.
Those assholes, how malicious!
Not happening for me currently, but that definitely sounds like something Google would do. Good thing Firefox lets you easily change your user agent.
I noticed the YouTube website sometimes has a 5 second delay or so before properly loading in with Vivaldi recently. Not sure if that's related in any way.
Antitrust lawsuit, here we go!
Not that I think Google is a great company, but why is this on its own proof of anything based on this single persons video evidence? In my single person test I don't see that 5 second delay when using Firefox and browsing around Youtube. Seems far more likely to be an issue with this persons browser setup than something Google did to me.
And this is precisely why they use an A/B architecture to implement these sorts of changes. "It's not happening on mine, must be in your setup." delays/prevents people from recognizing the bad behavior, and instead of them being called out on it or forced to behave properly, the users they abuse just give up and switch back to Chrome because it "works better", then the A/B lists are shuffled again and the process repeats.
Or, they could use an A/B architecture because it makes good design sense when you are dealing with a change that will impact millions/billions of people. But the conspiracy theory's sure are a lot more fun to wallow in I will admit.
"Conspiracy theory is sure are a lot more fun to wallow in". Did you miss the recent youtube adblock shenanigans? Do you think google is your friend? Are you aware discord is google adservices integrated? Are you under the impression google wouldn't do something like this to leverage more data from people using one of their sites? Are you unfamiliar with the recent and upcoming OTHER changes to make chrome less friendly? Do you know about google AMP? You're defending a corporation and not an individual here, really take time to consider what you're calling conspiracy theory is (the plural is theories)
This would be a good point if the problem did not immediately go away completely by simply spoofing the user agent. As soon as youtube thinks that the browser accessing it is Chrome, it behaves perfectly well. Note that the actual web engine used to render the page is not different, just the reported web engine.
The point is, it has to be reproducible. On a clean FF install on linux, I cannot replicate this. Changing user agent does not affect the page load speed. So there has to be some another aspect, maybe iser's OS configuration or smth that affects this, too.
Yeah haven't experienced any issues either. Never saw the ad block blockers as well. Almost seems more like there are power users who have conflicting extensions and are not realizing it.
I started getting the 5 second delay 2 weeks ago as well. Started out of nowhere and I thought it was my connection at first, but nope, only YouTube has this issue for me, and only in Firefox.
Is it messing up in Smarttube too? Smarttube keeps buffering for me, or maybe it's just a bug.
Ignoring all the other obvious reasons, FF is always superior to Chrome for YT because of its simple PIP.
This is a must have, especially if I’m at work and want to keep up with any myriad of live events.
Oh, this is about the delay if you're using a full adblocker? I'd assumed this was about the awful choppy rendering performance I get in FF Mobile when it's just starting up a vid (which smooths out after about 5 seconds). I just use FF on Android to be able to run YT vids in the background or with my phone-screen locked.
Wait. Again?
sounds desperate. I'd be selling google stock if I had any, are they really so dependent on loans that interest rates are killing them or is this more AI fuelled bullshit?
I'd be selling google stock if I had any
If you did, you probably wouldn't. Unfortunate as it may be, Google is an unfathomably massive business that continues to generate value for their shareholders. Any stock sales by an average individual as a protest are meaningless. Even if you sold a million dollars worth of stock, it wouldn't mean anything to them.
Alphabet's market cap is currently 1.7 trillion dollars. With a T. $1,700,000,000,000.
We can extrapolate from there just how much money would need to move for them to pay even a little attention. For example, $170 million dollars is just 0.01%. Granted a move that large from a single investor might cause a brief drop as others sell as well, but investors are just gonna buy it all up at a discount. They'll call it a market correction and keep on going.
I'm not saying you should just roll over and accept their shit, but money is not the way to do it unless you can move more than a billion dollars.
If Chrome is known for one thing, it's absurd User-Agent strings. Why not make it even more absurd???
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/119.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 (Ahahaha; Fuck you Google; This is actually) Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:109.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/119.0
I'm A YouTube Premium subscriber, and I've been noticing this delay on my TV for a few days now - a very noticeable, long pause when opening the home screen until the thumbnails are loaded. I'll explicitly check other places too now, I'm not sure if it's also happening in Firefox for me.
Did not notice it today, but I am running ublock origin and they got my back.
I noticed a delay on Opera with uBlock. I attributed it to invisible fights between the adblock and youtube. But idk if that's relevant, I think Opera GX is chromium based.
This is starting to get into the antitrust arena. DOJ needs to take action.
They have all the decision makers in their payrolls. They will stop at nothing !
Bro.....
Honestly thought this was a glitch because it has happened before where youtube would freeze, usually from some backend error, and the whole page wouldn't load.
I'm not seeing any delays, 5 second or otherwise, when using Firefox.
This is antitrust worthy
They've done this before, a long time ago, with IE11. For those that only remember its early years, later releases of Internet Explorer were actually decently compliant - but Google still prevented them from accessing places like Google Maps for having improper support. User agent switchers caused it to display perfectly.
I haven't even noticed bc my internet is only 2 Mbps
I started noticing how sometimes youtube just seemingly refused to load fully on my phone. I thought it was just my crap internet. But since I use Iceraven, a fork of firefox, it seems that may be why.
I’ve been noticing a lot of ‘interesting’ behavior with data-hungry websites when I use more privacy-focused measures lately.
Gmail logs me out of Safari at least weekly now for no apparent reason, other than to inconvenience me.
Gmail also refuses to deliver any emails forwarded through hide my email. They simply do not arrive, not even to spam. I had to start using another email service for hide my email. (Additionally, every email I get from Apple gets tagged with a phishing warning, which is just petty and funny.)
Facebook sends an email every time I log in (once or twice a month) to tell me that Firefox is suspicious because I use ad-blockers and private windows.
>says he has a privacy focus
>uses facebook
Press 'F' to suspect...
In certain parts of the world, you quite literally do not have a choice. For example: I'm in a rural community on an island. No one uses any other website to post anything, from local classified ads to events to important city/community stuff. The choice isn't to use a better alternative but whether a person here has social contact with anyone locally at all.
No, moving is not a realistic option, especially not moving as far as we'd have to move; even the biggest city in the province doesn't use anything else.
I regret being complicit in allowing these silicon valley behemoths to reach a point where they're indelibly linked to practically every aspect of the average person's digital life.
At least the Fediverse and Lemmy are showing the way forward.
In addition to the fact that I remember this happening several years ago, I'm pretty sure this has been an issue for a while. When I decided to exclusively use Firefox about a year ago, YouTube as a whole would load slowly and it still does.
And I hate the fact that Google knows that they will benefit from this because, unfortunately, a majority of YouTube users are sheeple.
What if we are already using YouTube premium and have ublock on FF. Would user agent spoof still be needed??
I had a feeling this was the case. Youtube has been painful for the past month now.
The YouTube viewing experience on FF is terrible. I have premium no ads and still manage to break the interface occasionally by clicking a new video or seeking the video playing.
Firefox is great for YouTube. Don't support google via premium - those guys aren't exactly short of a dime. Addblockers are flawless.
Once upon a time, Google wanted to kill the user-agent.
If this is true the crowd on here that often says Firefox is really owned by Google because Google pays Mozilla to have their search engine be the default search engine on Firefox really need to look at their claim and rethink their understanding of how Mozilla and Google interact.
The fuck?? Isn’t this anti competitive behaviour?
In a previous generation, governments would go after this blatant anti competitive behaviour.
I'm sure the EU will still.
It’s just a shame that there’s really only one government organization globally that will still stand up to corporations.
To be fair China will send you to a reeducation camp or disappear you if you try to act like a western billionaire.
China will make you disappear for many things including speaking up against the genocide of religious minorities ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
For now
Honestly with the speed new BS crops up I don’t think they will.
The current US Federal Trade Commission is quite agressive compared to other FTCs historically.
True. Though they have been stuck with 30 years of damage simply reverse too.
Think of it as 30 years of rent they're now claiming.
Yes, but they haven't fixed this specific problem that just broke in the last day or so, therefore the FTC is a corrupt useless organization that pours hot wax on kittens
Some people are reporting it happens when your accounts get flagged by YouTube for blocking ads and that using a private browsing session can be used to bypass it, so it's possible this isn't a blanket thing?
Either way, they can go fuck themselves.
If you're on Firefox and using uBlock Origin (which you should), you can add the following to your filters list to essentially disable the delay:
It doesn't fully disable it, just makes it almost instant, because Google has been doing shit like looking at what gets blocked to combat ad blockers recently.
I use youtube without logging in, and it runs normally. If I use a private window, that's when I get a delay when loading videos.
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Do you want to hear about the Microsoft "bug" that affected Firefox that was only recently fixed after 5+ years of getting reported?
Corporations really hate non-profit products that are superior.
If you're networked with the right people in the US, laws don't matter
Yes. The US DOJ has a website for reporting antitrust concerns
It's bizarre how blatent this is. Google has so much power over web standards that Mozilla have to work really hard to make firefox work, but YouTube don't bother being subtle or clever and just write 'if Firefox, get stuffed' in plain text for everyone to see.
this isn't much different than when microsoft added code specifically to break windows 3.1 when run under dr-dos instead of their own ms-dos. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AARD\_code
And it cost them 280 million in the 90s ouch
Something tells me they survived.
Google has been doing this kind of thing for a while. If you try to use Google Meet in Firefox, you can’t use things like background blurring. Spoofing Chrome works in that situation as well.
And the stupid thing is that all I use Chrome for is Meets... And that's it. Do they really think they win me over?
Not you or me. But most people, yeah.
That is, as always, the problem: it works for them. The average Joe isn't going to implement a new filter into ublock...
How does one "spoof" chrome?
You can change your user agent string, the text your browser uses to tell the web site you're looking at what browser it is, either via your F12 developer tools menu or via an extension.
The most convenient way is with a browser extension that changes your user agent. You can also change it in the developer options of most browsers.
In my other comment I provide a link to the US DOJ anti-trust complaint center website.
@scholar @db0 Buy enough of the competition and pay off enough government regulators and as a company you get to do pretty much do whatever you want.
BTW, this:
So this is part of a larger adblock checker, if the ad doesn't load within 5 seconds, it fails and triggers the adblocker warning. Since the ad should load in 3, they've set it for 5. If you have ubo, you won't see the warning that it then wants to pop up, it just seems (and is) a 5 second delay. Changing the UA probably removes this from Firefox because then the clientside scripts will attempt to use builtin Chrome functions that wouldn't need this hacky script to detect the adblock. Since they don't exist, it just carries on.
I was wondering how badly out of context the above quote must be considering the UA isn't checked in the function. Above poster is trying to construe it as a pure and simple permanent delay for Firefox.
That being said, the solution is still bullshit.
That is just the timeout function, not the call stack. It is likely called in a function that uses a UA check.
The UA check can happen before the function is called though.
This is some ultimate scumbaggery.
This should be illegal, Firefox being their competition (tangentially)
It honestly probably is
EU might hit them for it. I have no faith that the US government is going to do anything.
The thing that gets me is they think no one will ever find this stuff. There are hundreds of thousands of people (maybe more) who are actively looking ways to block ads and get around this behavior. There's no way it'll ever go unnoticed.
They could literally have used some variance in implementation, server side bandwidth limitations, etc, but THIS is just blatantly obvious
I wonder if it's a case of malicious compliance.
Exactly what I was thinking. Let's not say it too loud for the sake of our mole(s)
I hope so. I'd like to think we have a few people on the inside secretly fighting for the average consumer.
The world runs on the shoulders of disgruntled employees. This smells like a deliberate act backed up with a paper trail to protect the guy in charge of implementing it from taking the blame. But, I realise that also may be my imagination... It's a compelling tale regardless.
That's one hell of a phrase that should keep any CEO awake at night.
Ok so this is just client side I'd imagine I'd be pretty easy to make an addon that removes the code
Is there something like:
If(not chrome){add_delay()}
?
No, the full context of the code snippet doesn't appear to check the browser user agent at all. Other comments have explained that it's most likely a lazy implementation of a check for ad blockers.
This is why net neutrality is important. To prevent bullshit like this from happening.
This is literally why net neutrality needs to be regulated. Corporations will artificially make problems to induce additional earnings.
Super scummy, anti-customer behavior.
That's not what net neutrality is about. NN is about carriers and ISPs treating all services and websites equally. Don't feature creep NN. It weakens the arguments for why why we need NN.
Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act might stop any attempt to undermine browser performance.
If anything we need more laws around the tech space as a whole
Doesn't this break competition laws?
Couldn't Google/YouTube be sued over this?
Microsoft got repeatedly hit over this kind of shenanigans in MSIE during and after the anti-trust lawsuit.
Sadly, that was 20 years ago. I'm not having much faith in American justice system doing anything about this nowadays.
They really weren't that effective with Microsoft then either. The antitrust was far too late for Netscape and allowed Microsoft to hold a dominate market share with IE until they allowed the browser to deprecate and Google came in with a much better browser and took over the browser market (and are now doing the same bullshit).
As long as we keep giving these companies meaningless fines or wait until the damage is irreversible companies are going to always push the limit and look at any repercussions as just a cost of doing business.
So yeah, not much faith in anything changing.
That is why I am in favour of the financial death penalty. Fines should be 10x the damage done. If a company cannot pay it, they are required to become a non profit.
What are your monetary damages for this?
Yeah stuff like this really needs to be percentual and fined to the CEOs and the board, not the company as an entity.
Oh, Microsoft valued at 200 bil for shareholders? Well sorry C's and boardies, you gotta scrunge up 2 bil each now, personally. Those are fines they'd at least notice.
(edit)
Come to think of it, the fined-personally-to-the-decisionmaker might really be the big thing here on its own. The company did this shit under you, CEO. It was your corporate policy and hiring practices that allowed this to happen, even if you did not press the button. You pay up. You take the blame, not the people under you just following orders.
You should look into all of the anti-monopoly actions that Lina Khan has been pursuing as head of the FTC. Under her tenure the watchdogs have had more teeth than ever before. It takes time for this stuff to make a difference, but they are most decidedly doing the work (Cory Doctorow has some excellent write ups on this if you check his blog).
He lionizes her a bit much, but yes she has done far more than her predecessor.
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And all they had to do was drag the trial out until a favorable administration took office.
Well they also dragged out the trial so long that time and costs rendered the plaintiff (Netscape) hopeless.
EU anthem intensifies
Not in the U.S. Not as long as conservatives (incl. neo-liberals) have the power to protect them.
Our conservative politicians are bought and paid for by large anti-competitive corporations.
Bought and paid for with a pittance.
They are bribed for so little that it would be almost easier to make a dystopian sounding PAC with money raised by small dollar donations to bribe them to do what the people want instead of them doing what rich donors want.
Yes. And you can submit your complaint here
https://www.justice.gov/atr/complaint-center
Yeah, the fines just aren't big enough for Google to care.
Wait for it to become equally shitty in all browsers, and then you can only watch in a special Youtube Windows app.
I wonder how long it'll be before google gets sued for their anti-competitive behavior.
Oh I imagine the papers are being filed as we speak, because this is blatantly illegal.
Well you typically need standing in order to file a lawsuit, who would do it? Mozilla are probably the only ones. Why would this cause them to do it when past similar practices haven’t?
Europe will step in as usual
Perhaps YouTube premium subscribers would have standing as a class action, since Google is materially worsening the experience of a paid product if you don’t use their browser
How would Mozilla finance a court case against google though?
Microsoft, Mozilla org, maybe apple
EFF or government
It is being currently being sued by Epic Games for Anti-Trust behavior. Google offered millions of dollars to Epic so that Fortnite would be available in the Play Store and not in Epic's own store.
Been there, done that, and came on top.
They are already in one anti-trust trial for search engine shenanigans.
Cost of doing business
That's an antitrust case if ever I saw one.
EU be like: aw shit here we go again
Just like that time that one operating was made to stop shipping with that one browser.
It could literally be a minute wait & I still wouldn't use Chrome.
Google heard you and have increased the Firefox delay to 1m 30s. Would you please consider using Chrome now please?
Best I can do is boycott YouTube.
Piped-bot now my best friend
I swear every time i try to use those links from the piped bot, the content either never loads or has severe buffering problems.
You need to change your instance. Next time you face this, go to preferences and try changing the instance.
I didn't know you could do that with piped, thanks
Edge would like a word
Sometimes I get curious about chromium based browsers and consider giving them a shot for a while.
Then Google does shit like this and I keep mainlining Firefox out of spite. Half the reasons people experience “issues” with Firefox are just dumb garbage like this (see sites / web content being developed with Chrome-based in mind)
the website DRM thing is one of the most blackpilled and evil uses of technology i've ever seen
the people in charge of developing that should be put in a padded room and never allowed to see sunlight again. fucking god.
Woah, woah, woah, slow down: Why do they get to have padding in their room?
I would assume so they cant easily hurt themself and have to live and suffer through it for as long as possible
I mean this in the least condescending way:
as far as I’m aware, even after looking it up, I think you are misusing the term blackpill.
Blackpill usually refers to a manosphere/Incel or Qanon type who has given up completely and lost all hope. In the the case of an Incel it’s that there’s no hope in ever escaping Inceldom. In the case of q anon it’s that none of the predictions about the “storm” will ever arise or come true.
I looked around and couldn’t find any other contexts that it’s used.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_pill?wprov=sfti1#
I am willing to accept that I could be wrong. But I looked all over search results etc.
Heck I use god damn duckduckgo out of spite nowadays
DDG is legit great and even sometimes better than Google search now. I also am a SearXNG enjoyer
DDG, even though apparently a Bing front end, gives legit better results than google
It's honestly good. It misses that "Algorithm profile" that Google has where it starts to "understand" what you mean but it's still pretty good.
(Example. If I type in "genocide" in Google, it knows I often look for Undertale related things and pushes "Undertale genocide route" related content. For DDG I need to be clearer about what I mean)
It took a bit getting used to but I prefer it this way now.
I think it's still possible to ethically use Chromium browsers, so long as it's one of them that's been reviewing and removing anything ludicrous Google adds. I don't even mind MS Edge on most of my computers for the most part. Firefox doesn't load well on my tablet.
Google has been doing this kind of thing for years, to strangle their competition. For example, back when Windows Phone existed, Google went deliberately out of their way to cripple youTube, and maps. Apparently google will do anything they can to create lock-in and faux loyalty.
Google are completely evil. Here we're talking about them using their popular products as weapons against competitors in unrelated areas. But also have a history of copying products made by others then using advertising strength to promote their version over the original. And if that somehow doesn't work... they buy out the competitors. Both youTube and google maps are examples of this.
Wow, and it's literally just "If you're using Firefox, wait five seconds."
Elon moment
Let's remember, fellas, that big tech is not a disease that needs to be eradicated. Let us not forget that Google is a legitimate corporation, not merely a group of professional stalkers. And let's be clear: obviously you are the crazy ones for worrying about this, naturally...
Pardon my jest; I was merely echoing the absurdities often heard.
Maybe just maybe it's time we stop with this garbage and actually stop using their services. Nothing will change if we keep using their services.
The most direct and effective strategy to inspire reform in their practices is to stop using of their platforms. Each time we use a service from Google or any similar big tech entity, we inadvertently endorse their methods.
YOU hold the power to change them by using FOSS alternatives instead.
The whole "the free market could fix it" is just neoliberal bullshit. The most hated companies in the world continue to bring in record profits and its not because people prefer their chocolate is harvested by child slaves.
They're fully aware that it never works, but they just keep suggesting it over and over again, growing richer with successive failure, all the while blaming consumers for not preventing them doing sleazy, greedy things.
The actual most direct and effective strategy is regulations. That's why they hate them and why there are so many of them in politics.
Thank you. I'm tired of hearing "it's the consumer's responsability" when we have governments and various regulatory bodies for this exact reason
Yes, but the problem is the convenience.
Google has made their services convenient, which is why everyone I like to watch content of posts their stuff on YouTube. Both alternive websites and the content on them is often of inferior quality and difficult to find.
Then use alternative youtube clients, like piped or freetube.
Or even better: spend money (if you can afford it) to host a peertube instance that automatically rips the videos off of youtube.
That's an even stronger message that you'd rather spend money than use their crappy free services.
Oh that’s amazing. I’m gonna see about doing that for channels I actively watch. Gives me an excuse to unfuck my NAS storage too since then it’ll be full faster.
Do you know of any software that does that already (I assume PeerTube itself doesn’t)?
Didnt know this could be done, looks like ive got something new to throw on the home server.
that sounds EXPENSIVE, ima stick with piped lest my wallet get piped
I'm not sure this is exactly true - like, first off, I am not a YouTuber and I only watch a very specific kind of content there (breadtube), so idk if my opinion is valid, but
From what I've heard creators say, it's not that YouTube is great, in fact it kind of sucks in a lot of ways, it's just that the alternatives don't do it better, and obviously don't have the size & reach. All the things that YouTube does badly or not at all, the competition doesn't do well either, so why bother.
You're 100% right tho that Google's success at this point hinges almost entirely on their convenience. Google drive/docs/sheets/etc are kinda garbage, but they'te fast, simple to use, and the integration is incredibly smooth. If there was any alternative that was as simple to transition into from email or whatever, I'd jump ship in a second.
Actually, the main problem isn't that they've made their services convenient. Most of them are inconvenient in multiple ways.
The really big problem, the absolutely INSIDIOUS shit is how extremely inconvenient they've made using alternatives.
Example: Google the search engine straight up sucks from an end user perspective now. Yet because it's where over 90% of all search engine searches happen, it's MORE inconvenient to use any other one, no matter how much better the algorithms and what have you.
Same with YouTube: the user experience becomes worse and worse, but since it has a de facto near-monopoly of certain types of content from certain creators, best you can do is a custom frontend. Which they're of course trying to make impossible ever since they removed the "Don't" from their original informal slogan.
A good plug to use Invidious for sure, intentional or not.
Offering a free convenient service is the first step of enshittification.
[Side eye at Bluesky]
"Do no evil^1^"
^1^ unless we can make money from it.
There's a reason that doesn't appear on their site or in their docs any more. It was a canary clause.
Any organisation that needs to remind themselves not to be evil is already intrinsically evil.
Very overtly and loudly claiming a quality which should be self-evident in oneself, one's company or one's nation invariably means it's not really there.
"People's Democratic Republic"
I think they changed it didn't they?
I mean... "evil" is arbitrary, right?
I feel like there's scales of evil here Google starts to need to highlight on a whiteboard
Actually, their slogan was "Don't be evil." But they revised it recently by adding a comma after the first word.
Did someone actually investigate and find the exact place in scripts where this logic takes place?
EDIT: Yes. https://www.androidauthority.com/youtube-reportedly-slowing-down-videos-firefox-3387206/
This sounds like something that would be in the back end so likely not. But if spoofing user agents fixes the problem then I'd say it's evidence enough to warrant a deeper look.
it's pretty inconclusive if there's no context for how that code is called. I'm kinda confused why the article wouldn't have provided any additional detail other than a single line of code. why bother digging at all?
it's part of their anti-adblock code. without going into too much details, they can instantly find out whether ad-block is trying to do anything on chrome, but on firefox they need a 5 sec delay
Have you read past that screenshot of the code, though? It says the problem was not limited to Firefox, it seems Edge users reported problems as well. Anecdotally, I did experience that delay problem on Thorium this weekend as well. I have seen a variation of this problem almost a month ago, where sometimes the video would take a long time (like, over a minute, sometimes) to load, or often just not load at all. So I just chalked it up to Youtube having done something stupid on their end.
Adding this to your uBlock Origin filters also makes the problem go away:
www.youtube.com##+js(nano-stb, resolve(1), *, 0.001)I've noticed that too, I just switch to Freetube when it happens.
Simply disgusting, but it's business as usual for Google.
I just use Freetube either way. I can't stand autoplaying videos or suggestions, popups, etc.
Is free tube just pulling YouTube’s data or it a separate site? Can you watch livestreams if it’s the former? Basically all I use YouTube for is watching a couple streamers and watching Japanese udon restaurant channels while I eat my bologna sandwich for lunch
It does play livestreams, yes.
Not noticing this change from the EU... Guess they're too afraid of pulling that shit here?
Google LOVES A/B testing so it might be just that. I haven't noticed anything either.
True, could just be lucky. I still haven't noticed any ad blocking changes either, but then again I'm using Firefox with μBlock Origin...
I'm in the EU, using Vivaldi, and have the delay since yesterday. It's not on every video though. Seems like UBlock and YouTube are fighting each other every time I open a new link.
They've been caught before, but there's no regulation for this in some regions
imagine sitting down to code this and thinking you're doing the right thing
you should be able to whisteblow clearly evil technology and have some sort of economic safety net
Counter point: the code monkeys just do what they are being paid for. The fact it's so easy to circumvent is a testimony on how the people implementing this shit disagree with the corporation.
Hi, code monkey here - I don't work for a large company like Google, am paid less than a Google code monkey, and the products I work on are used by orders of magnitude less people. But even still, if my lead came to me and said "hey, I need the frontend to detect when a user is using 'XYZ Browser' and then introduce an artificial 5 second latency whenever they try to load a page", I'd look at him with incredulity and tell him "no, I'm not doing that. That's stupid and you should feel bad for suggesting it."
Code monkeys aren't paid to simply follow instructions given to them by someone else like some sort of robot - were paid to create applications and programs that people can use, and are usually given enough creative room to do that in a way we see as the best way.
I feel like these things are connected.
Maybe it was unclear. If I get fired for insubordination or whatever, I would be in much more pain than a Google code monkey, because I'm paid much less.
Are you thinking about it another way, where because I'm paid less, I wouldn't care if I got fired, which makes me more emboldened to push back on my higher ups?
Sadly, salary and loyalty to the corporation are often proportional is what they meant.
I mean they need money to live
Google developers can easily find a job elsewhere. If they stay at Google the chose to.
Gmail is almost painfully slow on my PC (I use Adblock on Firefox). Does anyone else experience this?
And, yes, I know Gmail is very bad, you're preaching to the choir. I am in the midst of switching over.
Fear not friend, you are not alone. I too am slowly switching over, and these things take time. We are truly victims of a great bait and switch, with our digital lives held hostage. We never asked for this.
What are you switching to ?
Folks have suggested Proton Mail. It seems pretty good to me!
This is an aside, but I also want to give Proton points for their calendar app. I used to use Gsuite and Google calendar and no matter what I did it always opened in agenda mode. The Proton calendar has all the features of Google calendar (as far as I can tell) but their app has an option for default display mode. That brought me incredible joy.
proton mail is indeed very good
Seize the means of technology
Google Streetview is also ubgodly laggy. I have to refresh constantly to bring it to normal speed, and that lasts a few mins.
I can recommend mail.com. 14 USD for a full year. but you can also use it for free. I just payed for it last month.
I really hope they try this in the EU. The EU regulatory agencies have been on a roll lately.
They are doing it here to.
Bet it's done in such a way that they can claim "We're just optimizing for Chrome, not slowing down any competitors. It's not our fault our competitors don't using our web engine for their browsers."
I mentioned similar shading behavior on another post, when using Firefox with Chrome or native user agents on the plain old Google search page.
It's apparently not even subtle enough to make that claim, it checks the useragent and sleeps for 5 seconds if it's not Chrome.
I was wondering why YouTube started taking a while to load pages in the last couple weeks. Fucking Google, pulling this shit.
Not that I don't believe you, but do you have a source for that?
It's discussed in the firefox sub (link)
EDIT: There are some claims that this is related to anti-adblock.
Yeah, user agent switch to chrome made YouTube vid instantly load. Real shitty google!
They are really the worst scumbags ever. They want world domination.
"Don't be evil."
Hasn't been their motto for some time... and it shows.
Ah, I was wondering why YouTube was taking so long to load recently. I thought it was just because their code was shit, and it turns out I was right, but not in the way I thought.
Yeah, the simplest the answer is usually correct. Is this a conspiracy involving hundreds of Google employees intentionally building features to slow the app down on Firefox or is it incompetence because they don't test their product on multiple browsers?
Edit: https://www.404media.co/youtube-says-new-5-second-video-load-delay-is-supposed-to-punish-ad-blockers-not-firefox-users/
Oh, so it's shit in the way I originally thought, then.
And also shit in the second way I thought, since adblock is a symptom of how terrible they've made the experience on their platform and if they want less people to use it they should make that experience more reasonable.
Given the shit big companies have got up to in the past and continue to get up to, as exposed in past and ongoing antitrust cases, that conspiracy theory you mention really isn't all that unrealistic. Yeah, it's not what happened in this case and it isn't the simplest solution, but it's absolutely a believable thing for YouTube to do, though I think they would have hidden it better if they had.
I smell a spicy lawsuit
They do the same shit for Google search results. Search weather or stock tickers with a Chrome user agent* and you get a rich, interactive chart of the weather forecast or stock history. Search with another mobile user agent and you get a static snapshot of the weather or stock price at an instant in time.
There's even an extension for Firefox for Android which changes the user agent for Google searches to Chrome, to get the rich content.
* just a user agent, not an actual browser, which proves that it isn't about browser capability, but rather abusing their monopolistic market position in search to further their web browser's market share. Sound familiar, Microsoft from the 90's?
I just tried this and confirmed it, using Firefox's recommended user agent manager:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/user-agent-string-switcher/
It's the only one I could find so far that doesn't have a security warning.
I didn't see it, I guess ublock again saved my ass before I could realize it.
This cant be legal
It's certainly not something I would do if I was in the middle of an antitrust lawsuit. Maybe that's why I'm not a billionaire.
Did this dude really just link a Reddit post?
In this case you could be neutral about the source.
Nah, Reddit source. Wait 5 seconds.
Let's hope Europe stars investigating Google as a gatekeeper. That seemed to work miracles on Apple.
So they're doing the same thing as that time they killed Edge and stretched its skin over chromium?
Seriously who downvotes a bot.
Nobody's getting hurt by a small grammar correction. People may even learn from it and be better off.
I will downvote a bot advocating for no tits every time.
True, thank you.
Stop using youtube. It is made of poop.
that's where the content is and content is king
Works with any browser, no monopoly needed
I'm not very familiar with those services but are they not relying on YouTube, and therefore still YouTube in a way?
edit before anyone argues, I know these alternative frontends bring many privacy advantages and many usability advantages (and disadvantages). But the content still comes from YouTube which is what my argument is about. I wouldn't say an alternative frontend (or client for that matter) is not using YouTube...
So, how to spoof chrome?
Use agent switcher plugin
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/uaswitcher/
👍 thanks
Spoofing the agent only makes it look like Firefox is being used less, and websites will care even less about it.
"Ok, so blocking adblock hasn't worked" "Let's just slow them down" "That's a great idea, no-one will ever notice"
Lately (few months) YouTube will not load whatsoever on my android phone nor tablet very often, activating a VPN fixes it instantly. Using basic YouTube app
Likely just a network-related issue
Bruh. I thought that was uBlock bypassing the ad or something.
Reminds me of the "Netscape Navigator has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down" errors that Windows 98 used to throw.
It would only throw one, and you could just move it out of the way and keep using Netscape.
Holy fuck I hope they get the pants sued off of them
Best we can do is 0.001% of their profit from last fiscal year and no prison time.
I noticed logging out of your YouTube account helps.
I just opened a private window in Firefox.
This actually helps with a lot of things on YouTube lately. It is slowly devolving into a truly crappy site.
blocking youtube cookies makes a lot of their shenanigans go away :)
But yeah, any site that tells me what browser I have to use instantly goes on my shitlist. That isn't how this works.
Huh, I noticed YouTube videos taking a little extra longer to load.
Time to start copying those videos, irrespective of copyright, onto PeerTube instances.
As long as you host the instance yourself or use a special interest instance. Keep in mind that most Peertubes are ran by regular community folks and it's not very nice to paint a target for Google on them.
It's long past time to flesh out our antitrust laws to deal with these greedy tech giants.
What’s why it sucked ass this weekend?!? Fuckers.
There's me thinking I had stuffed up my pFsense config. It had me duped into thinking I was responsible!
Seems that FF is not the target:
https://old.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/17zq1jj/youtube_is_reportedly_slowing_down_videos_for/ka0utpq/
Why would they spend resources to enrage 3% (at most) of their users?
I've been using Firefox for about a year now, and I've definitely seen that 5 second loading delay in Firefox. Every time, the page partially loads like it does in the video, then sits for 5 seconds, then populates all the video thumb nails. It was driving me knows, made me think my Firefox was screwed up, or internet routing issues between me and Youtube.
Those assholes, how malicious!
Not happening for me currently, but that definitely sounds like something Google would do. Good thing Firefox lets you easily change your user agent.
I noticed the YouTube website sometimes has a 5 second delay or so before properly loading in with Vivaldi recently. Not sure if that's related in any way.
Antitrust lawsuit, here we go!
Not that I think Google is a great company, but why is this on its own proof of anything based on this single persons video evidence? In my single person test I don't see that 5 second delay when using Firefox and browsing around Youtube. Seems far more likely to be an issue with this persons browser setup than something Google did to me.
And this is precisely why they use an A/B architecture to implement these sorts of changes. "It's not happening on mine, must be in your setup." delays/prevents people from recognizing the bad behavior, and instead of them being called out on it or forced to behave properly, the users they abuse just give up and switch back to Chrome because it "works better", then the A/B lists are shuffled again and the process repeats.
Or, they could use an A/B architecture because it makes good design sense when you are dealing with a change that will impact millions/billions of people. But the conspiracy theory's sure are a lot more fun to wallow in I will admit.
"Conspiracy theory is sure are a lot more fun to wallow in". Did you miss the recent youtube adblock shenanigans? Do you think google is your friend? Are you aware discord is google adservices integrated? Are you under the impression google wouldn't do something like this to leverage more data from people using one of their sites? Are you unfamiliar with the recent and upcoming OTHER changes to make chrome less friendly? Do you know about google AMP? You're defending a corporation and not an individual here, really take time to consider what you're calling conspiracy theory is (the plural is theories)
This would be a good point if the problem did not immediately go away completely by simply spoofing the user agent. As soon as youtube thinks that the browser accessing it is Chrome, it behaves perfectly well. Note that the actual web engine used to render the page is not different, just the reported web engine.
The point is, it has to be reproducible. On a clean FF install on linux, I cannot replicate this. Changing user agent does not affect the page load speed. So there has to be some another aspect, maybe iser's OS configuration or smth that affects this, too.
Yeah haven't experienced any issues either. Never saw the ad block blockers as well. Almost seems more like there are power users who have conflicting extensions and are not realizing it.
I started getting the 5 second delay 2 weeks ago as well. Started out of nowhere and I thought it was my connection at first, but nope, only YouTube has this issue for me, and only in Firefox.
Don't be evil.Don'tbe evilIs it messing up in Smarttube too? Smarttube keeps buffering for me, or maybe it's just a bug.
Ignoring all the other obvious reasons, FF is always superior to Chrome for YT because of its simple PIP.
This is a must have, especially if I’m at work and want to keep up with any myriad of live events.
Oh, this is about the delay if you're using a full adblocker? I'd assumed this was about the awful choppy rendering performance I get in FF Mobile when it's just starting up a vid (which smooths out after about 5 seconds). I just use FF on Android to be able to run YT vids in the background or with my phone-screen locked.
Wait. Again?
sounds desperate. I'd be selling google stock if I had any, are they really so dependent on loans that interest rates are killing them or is this more AI fuelled bullshit?
If you did, you probably wouldn't. Unfortunate as it may be, Google is an unfathomably massive business that continues to generate value for their shareholders. Any stock sales by an average individual as a protest are meaningless. Even if you sold a million dollars worth of stock, it wouldn't mean anything to them.
Alphabet's market cap is currently 1.7 trillion dollars. With a T. $1,700,000,000,000.
We can extrapolate from there just how much money would need to move for them to pay even a little attention. For example, $170 million dollars is just 0.01%. Granted a move that large from a single investor might cause a brief drop as others sell as well, but investors are just gonna buy it all up at a discount. They'll call it a market correction and keep on going.
I'm not saying you should just roll over and accept their shit, but money is not the way to do it unless you can move more than a billion dollars.
If Chrome is known for one thing, it's absurd User-Agent strings. Why not make it even more absurd???
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/119.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 (Ahahaha; Fuck you Google; This is actually) Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:109.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/119.0I'm A YouTube Premium subscriber, and I've been noticing this delay on my TV for a few days now - a very noticeable, long pause when opening the home screen until the thumbnails are loaded. I'll explicitly check other places too now, I'm not sure if it's also happening in Firefox for me.
Did not notice it today, but I am running ublock origin and they got my back.
I noticed a delay on Opera with uBlock. I attributed it to invisible fights between the adblock and youtube. But idk if that's relevant, I think Opera GX is chromium based.
i was wondering about this! very dumb.
@db0
This is starting to get into the antitrust arena. DOJ needs to take action.
They have all the decision makers in their payrolls. They will stop at nothing !
Bro.....
Honestly thought this was a glitch because it has happened before where youtube would freeze, usually from some backend error, and the whole page wouldn't load.
Really getting desperate lol.
Use Invidious or Piped in combination with LibRedirect, that will solve the issue
I'm not seeing any delays, 5 second or otherwise, when using Firefox.
This is antitrust worthy
They've done this before, a long time ago, with IE11. For those that only remember its early years, later releases of Internet Explorer were actually decently compliant - but Google still prevented them from accessing places like Google Maps for having improper support. User agent switchers caused it to display perfectly.
I haven't even noticed bc my internet is only 2 Mbps
I started noticing how sometimes youtube just seemingly refused to load fully on my phone. I thought it was just my crap internet. But since I use Iceraven, a fork of firefox, it seems that may be why.
Fuck Google
I’ve been noticing a lot of ‘interesting’ behavior with data-hungry websites when I use more privacy-focused measures lately.
Gmail logs me out of Safari at least weekly now for no apparent reason, other than to inconvenience me.
Gmail also refuses to deliver any emails forwarded through hide my email. They simply do not arrive, not even to spam. I had to start using another email service for hide my email. (Additionally, every email I get from Apple gets tagged with a phishing warning, which is just petty and funny.)
Facebook sends an email every time I log in (once or twice a month) to tell me that Firefox is suspicious because I use ad-blockers and private windows.
>says he has a privacy focus
>uses facebook
Press 'F' to suspect...
In certain parts of the world, you quite literally do not have a choice. For example: I'm in a rural community on an island. No one uses any other website to post anything, from local classified ads to events to important city/community stuff. The choice isn't to use a better alternative but whether a person here has social contact with anyone locally at all.
No, moving is not a realistic option, especially not moving as far as we'd have to move; even the biggest city in the province doesn't use anything else.
No wonder why YouTube got weird for me
I regret being complicit in allowing these silicon valley behemoths to reach a point where they're indelibly linked to practically every aspect of the average person's digital life.
At least the Fediverse and Lemmy are showing the way forward.
In addition to the fact that I remember this happening several years ago, I'm pretty sure this has been an issue for a while. When I decided to exclusively use Firefox about a year ago, YouTube as a whole would load slowly and it still does.
And I hate the fact that Google knows that they will benefit from this because, unfortunately, a majority of YouTube users are sheeple.
What if we are already using YouTube premium and have ublock on FF. Would user agent spoof still be needed??
How annoying.
What is the extension they use in the video to spoof Chrome?
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/uaswitcher/
Does changing the user agent fix this? Anyone tried? I keep forgetting to try it myself.
Spoofing = setting user agent
The title says so, and the video shows it.
I had a feeling this was the case. Youtube has been painful for the past month now.
The YouTube viewing experience on FF is terrible. I have premium no ads and still manage to break the interface occasionally by clicking a new video or seeking the video playing.
Firefox is great for YouTube. Don't support google via premium - those guys aren't exactly short of a dime. Addblockers are flawless.
Does not happen for me Safari or Firefox.
They may not be deploying this to all users
Any extensions you'd recommend for having Firefox spoof chrome?
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/user-agent-string-switcher/
This is what I use and it's worked great so far.
Once upon a time, Google wanted to kill the user-agent.
If this is true the crowd on here that often says Firefox is really owned by Google because Google pays Mozilla to have their search engine be the default search engine on Firefox really need to look at their claim and rethink their understanding of how Mozilla and Google interact.