That’s an antitrust case if ever I saw one.
Just like that time that one operating was made to stop shipping with that one browser.
The fuck?? Isn’t this anti competitive behaviour?
In a previous generation, governments would go after this blatant anti competitive behaviour.
The current US Federal Trade Commission is quite agressive compared to other FTCs historically.
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
True. Though they have been stuck with 30 years of damage simply reverse too.
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.
If you’re networked with the right people in the US, laws don’t matter
deleted by creator
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:
! Bypass 5 seconds delay added by YouTube www.youtube.com##+js(nano-stb, resolve(1), 5000, 0.001)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.
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.
Yes. The US DOJ has a website for reporting antitrust concerns
Is it more anti competitive than McDonald’s only selling McDonald’s burgers or preventing you from bringing Taco Bell tacos in from outside?
Is it more anti competitive than McDonald’s only selling McDonald’s burgers
Yeah, it’s more like the next time you go to Wendy’s, McDonald’s will follow you and try to lock the doors before you go in.
No, not really. Google can’t do anything about my taking my Firefox browser and watching videos from somewhere else. There are countless other video streaming services.
There are countless other video streaming services.
There are government websites - including my state’s dmv - that exclusively use youtube. You’re being disingenuous when you’re saying you can just use another streaming service (and I don’t believe you don’t know it).
The efficient solution to that problem is governments using a different platform that’s actually neutral. The government has full control over where they host their videos. Using that as a reason to TRY (a likely long and drawn out process) to force Google to change its policies company-wide is silly.
I’m not being disingenuous. I watch videos on a bunch of platforms. It’s easy.
The efficient solution to that problem is governments using a different platform that’s actually neutral.
First time I’ve heard public services called efficient, but ok.
I’m not being disingenuous. I watch videos on a bunch of platforms. It’s easy.
We’re not talking about you here. You’re purposely ignoring the problem, and therefore being disingenuous.
Public services aren’t efficient, but they can surely change themselves more efficiently than they can force a multi billion dollar company to change its ways.
I’m surprised you’re not more worried about the government outsourcing its functions to a company you seem very suspicious of.
If the government decided to have vital public meetings only in a private venue you have to be a member of or something, the proper fix is not to force the club to accept everyone, it’s to have the government stop having vital meetings in private places.
I also don’t see a problem because everything of value these video streaming services offer is replaceable by one of the many other streaming services. The fact that YouTube is the biggest or most recognized does not change anything for me. The fact that there is some content that is only on YouTube doesn’t, either. That’s a normal thing that happens in an economy. Ford dealers only sell Ford cars, Coca Cola doesn’t sell Pepsi, etc.
Yes except everyone knows YouTube has a massive, massive market advantage in that space. And the channel you want to watch isn’t on the others. And you know this too.
deleted by creator
🙄 No it would be like Ford owning gas stations and pumping faster for Ford vehicles than Chevy.
Doesn’t Tesla do the equivalent of that with charging stations?
Maybe. But Tesla doesn’t own over 50% of the charging station market share.
True… I think even if they don’t, it’s still potentially anti-competitive.
(Gawd, Imagine how life would be with gas station incompatibility with your car. Holy shit that would suck).
That’s less restrictive than what I said. McDonald’s won’t let you bring tacos in at all, doesn’t just make you wait at the door for 2 minutes, etc.
Edit: and to anyone quibbling with my McDonald’s example saying you can in fact bring tacos in, that was just an illustration. I can find plenty of examples of one establishment not letting people bring food in from somewhere else.
I don’t feel your analogy quite captures what is going on here because both McDonald’s and Taco Bell are in the same business. Maybe if you explain it more.
Google owns a major web destination, YouTube, essentially a line of business in its own right, in addition to Chrome, also its own distinct product. Firefox competes with Chrome but Google is allegedly using market dominance with YouTube to make it harder for Firefox to compete.
If a company owns two products A and B and if A is used to access B, company cannot hinder competitors to A via fuckery in B.
This is the kind of thing that MS got in trouble for – using Windows to tip the scales in favor of Internet Explorer by tightly integrating it into the OS.
McDonald’s prohibiting people from using their restaurant, which is not itself a separate product with a separate market. Nobody is clamoring to go to McDonald’s restaurant spaces to sit and eat. It’s just part of the restaurant offering. So there is no leverage like there is with YouTube being used against a competitor for a totally different product. And besides, Taco Bell can do the same as McDonald’s. They’re on equal footing.
If in your analogy there were some other product that McDonald’s owned that could penalize you for going to Taco Bell your analogy would work.
- Google – Ford
- Mozilla – Chevy
- Firefox – Chevy car
- Chrome – Ford Car
- YouTube – Ford gas station
How to spot a Ms employee
-
Yes. Yes, it is!
-
McDonald’s doesn’t actually give a shit if you bring in food from other places.
-
Adding this to your uBlock Origin filters also makes the problem go away:
www.youtube.com##+js(nano-stb, resolve(1), *, 0.001)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.
When they decide to do tricks in the backend differently between browsers, there will be ways to overcome that.
Is that easy to do?
Yes. User Agent is a http header that is part of every request you send to a server. As such, it is 100% client side and it can be whatever you want, it’s just a text string. For layman users, I’d recommend using an addon for it, e.g. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/user-agent-string-switcher/
Of course, you can also change the user agent string in the browser config manually. The official Mozilla support page describes the process in detail: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-reset-default-user-agent-firefox
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
Which is honestly to Firefox’s credit. Making it harder to find out stuff about your browser is a good thing, unless it has to do with feature support.
But the fact that they don’t give a shit and are willing to ruin the user experience for it, that’s despicable.
I’d be more likely to believe that if spoofing your user agent didn’t immediately fix the issue.
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.
that half sentence in the aa article though
“That move makes sense in many ways, as the platform needs to make money to survive…”
should we also start a gofundme for youtube, i am suddenly worried for them /s
not saying we should worry for them, but youtube is run at a loss so they do actually need money from SOMEWHERE to maintain youtube. youtube still sucks and this is definitely not the way to win over users but thems the facts
Alphabet made $50 billion in profit last year. They’ve got enough to run YouTube, but enough isn’t enough.
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.
That’s interesting. Could be uBlock doing its thing then, for which I’m quite thankful
They’ve been caught before, but there’s no regulation for this in some regions
Big shame that this wouldn’t be illegal. But hopefully soon. Very anticompetitive behavior.
It is, just not everywhere. Like the USA
Yeah, the “everywhere” was implied, thank you 😊
deleted by creator
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
I believe that Google is just trolling people real hard. There are much better ways to disable any adblocks, but they are not even trying.
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.
Everyone should remember that Google itself isn’t really as evil as the people who work for it, those “people” are the only thing keeping this shitty company going. They go to work every day to try and make this world a worse place, those people who enable evil need to start to be recognized for who they truly are, the ones who want total enshittification and love watching you suffer. At what point do we start to look at thr root of this problem?
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.
I smell a spicy lawsuit
One that will outlive Firefox, as this will turn users away while lawyers build a case. Fuckers.
Firefox isn’t going to die because of this. There are already workarounds and even if there weren’t, an open source browser isn’t dependent on bringing in revenue to stay in development.
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.
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.
Let’s hope Europe stars investigating Google as a gatekeeper. That seemed to work miracles on Apple.
Stop using youtube. It is made of poop.
that’s where the content is and content is king
Removed by mod
my comment wasn’t referencing any character or profile called content king as I don’t know about them. It’s more so referring to the fact that most people will go to where the most content is. There is no point in using other services if you aren’t finding what you are looking for…
- https://piped.video/
- https://api.invidious.io/
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 they’re doing the same thing as that time they killed Edge and stretched its skin over chromium?
stretched its* skin
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.
Fair
True, thank you.
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
Using a VPN on a shitty network won’t magically make your network connection better.
It is possible. Maybe the peering from his ISP to YouTube is shit/ overloaded. That was an issue for Deutsche Telekom for a few years because Telekom didn’t want to pay for better peering. With a VPN it is possible to get good peering to your ISP and YouTube and in return faster load speeds.
Well crap, I didn’t consider that, thanks!
No but it can definitely work around issues like a congested link between isp and Google, resolving network-related YouTube performance issues.
No, but it does affect what route your traffic goes through.
just use ReVanced?
