Youtube has started to artificially slow down video load times if you use Firefox. Spoofing Chrome magically makes this problem go away.
Posted in r/youtube by u/vk6_ • 2,933 points and 264 comments
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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)
A company doing shitty things does not mean everything you don't like that comes out of them is some mustache twirling villain plot. You should spend more time in the real world and less time in the Lemmy/Reddit echo chamber.
I feel compelled to come back to this thread and eat my crow. Apparently they were doing it to fuck with people, just not Firefox people specifically,lol.
I feel compelled to come back to this thread and eat my crow.
Thank you for doing this. If more people owned up to their mistakes and corrected them, things would be a lot better.
I hardly use social media. Maybe you should get a broader scope on the topic you're arguing - there's no moustache twirling going on, just the exact same corporate competition and data harvesting that HAS BEEN going on for decades now. Your take is "NUH UH".
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.
Both could be true though.
They use an incremental rollout system for essentially every feature. Are you suggesting every feature of every product Google makes has some nefarious purpose?
What a wonderful example of a Fallacy of Division. It is true that A/B testing and incremental rollout are both used by Google for non-nefarious purposes, but that does not mean that every use is benign or innocent.
You made it sound like A/B testing us inherently shady. Just own up to it FFS.
I didn't, I specified an architecture that they use for a shady practice. It was a means for describing an activity, a shorthand to be used for greater clarity along with brevity. Your interpretations are outside of my control.
It would be no more me saying that Snapchat as a whole is shady to say that it is used to sell drugs, or a large variety of other similar statements.
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.
I can't reproduce it either. Android Phone, win10 PC, and private browser. All Firefox and uBlock Origin.
I did previously get that "disable it or else" message twice. I just submit feedback that I'd like the link to cancelling my Google services and it goes away for a while. I wonder if just submitting feedback disables the popup because it's instantaneously fixed.
Yeah I mean they should include a lot more info: OS (version/build) and FF version/build at least.
Also is nobody saying that of course the second video renders faster because he hits reload and most of the stuff comes from cache? D:
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.
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.
