I suspect this is less of a slowdown and more of a "we're trying to detect adblockers and in Chrome we can do most of this check on the application level which is fast, while on Firefox we have to do it the extra slow way and we CBA to optimize any of it because the delay is to our advantage."
It's a standard timeout function without any context. Most likely thing is that it tries to load an ad and if that doesn't work in these 5 seconds, then the anti adblock popup is displayed. If you don't use an adblock, the site loads instantly cause the ad is detected. If you use ublock, you see neither the ad nor the popup, so everything that's left is a 5 seconds timeout.
While it definitely is shady coding, it's an anti adblock "feature" caused by incompetent design and not an anti Firefox thing.
Not quite in practice. I can't say what they are doing, but I can say, there are 3 main web addresses that must be enabled in a whitelist firewall to view YT. If these are white listed, videos will load and play but half the time the connection is terrible. However, I never see a warning message about an ad blocker. They know the difference somehow. I don't need to run an ad blocker because I run the ultimate undesired web connection blocker. They simply manipulate my connection and it impacts things on my network even when I am no longer connected to the internet at the router by removing the wired connection. (hard booting my server/router/devices solves the problem)
It might be an anti Adblock feature caused by incompetent design, and it might be an anti Firefox thing. Or it might be something else altogether or some mixed version of the above. You don’t know, neither does anyone else.
Exactly, no one knows, but here we are on the 7th article saying Google is slowing down Firefox on purpose. That's the least likely option by far. That would get them into multiple anti consumer and anti monopoly lawsuits while probably breaching their contract with FF at the same time. Alphabets board of advisors isn't run by Elon musk, they know pretty much what they can get away with and wouldn't be stupid enough to try something this big while they are already beeing monitored by the EU.
The articles clearly say that the cause is unclear and that it’s an ongoing controversy. If you had read the one for this thread you’d see that. They were very transparent about that.
You are the one here saying it’s definitely one way and not another.
it’s an anti adblock “feature” caused by incompetent design and not an anti Firefox thing.
I’m honestly not willing to give them that much benefit of the doubt at this stage. But I also acknowledge we don’t have concrete evidence of deliberate sabotage.