Firefox users across the internet say that they are encountering an “artificial” five-second load time when they try to watch YouTube videos that exists on Firefox, but not Chrome. Google, meanwhile, told 404 Media that this is all part of its larger effort against ad blockers, and that it doesn’t have anything to do with Firefox at all.
I’m sure it doesn’t, Google.
Just a happy coincidence that it punishes Firefox users.
I haven’t seen this yet. I wonder if google are using a subset of users as a test case?
A 5 second pause is still a better experience than seeing the ads, but it makes me wonder if they intended to “upgrade” this anti-adblock feature further. It’s a cat and mouse game.
The end game for this could be google enforcing that everything gets downloaded from their side and has the right timing (ie as though the ad were played).. The adblocker might have to waste resources downloading the ads even though they aren’t shown.
However google has to be careful not to encourage the scenario whereby they have no idea if the ads were shown or not since it might open up a lawsuits with advertisers.
This is happening even for Premium subscribers.
Ironic that the website complaining about it is itself unusably slow due to all the ads and other junk on it…
Just to clarify, I don’t mean OSAlert. What happened to the edit button?
Ah, the free hit is over. Time to pay the pusher. Ironically, I never blocked ads on Youtube before. Since Google insists on being ultra-annoying with ads lately, showing double ads before the video, after the video and multiple double interstitial ads, so that ad time is starting to overshadow the content time, I have started blocking.
We will see what havoc manifest V3 will wreak, but until that time a 5 minute load time delay is a small price to pay for not being subjected to inane BS in the form of irrelevant or fraudulent ads. I am not going to pay some schmuck for a course on making and uploading scam audiobooks on Amazon for instance.
So to me the delay doesn’t matter. 5 seconds of blissful silence. Far better than the next medical miracle cure from never heard of before institutes.
Honestly, with all these anti-consumer behaviors lately, i’ve been pulling away from Google even harder. Switched from Chrome to Firefox, and been using odysee.com more and more for content.
I’ve also upgraded my ad-blockers to ones that still block Youtube ad’s.
Next up, maybe upgrading to a Googleless Android phone like the FairPhone and /e/ os.
kallisti5,
Some sites don’t work with firefox, but most do. In spite of some missteps that I feel mozilla deserve to be criticized on, I still find firefox to be the best option for me. I just hope they can remain viable though, there marketshare is in trouble. The vast majority of consumers simply used the bundled browser, and apart from linux desktops, firefox has just about no default presence.
I’ve been using LineageOS, I might try getting a phone with /e/ next.
https://e.foundation/get-started/
I want to avoid the mobile duopoly as best I can, but honestly it makes me feel like a second class user when so few companies even acknowledging our existence. From video streaming to employers, governments, airlines, banking, stores, etc everybody’s propping up the duopoly and those of us seeking alt OS platforms are left out. I just hate being coerced into buying android and IOS just to participate in digital society.
Apple and google are sort of like the borg in that resisting their dominant products can be futile.
I didn’t know that. What’s an example of a website that doesn’t work with Firefox?
I’ve been using /e/ OS on a Pixel 4a for a couple years now and am 100% satisfied with it. I have root with Magisk, I use App Manager from f-droid to block all trackers, I use the built-in firewall to block network access to any apps that really don’t need it (I’m looking at you, keyboard…), and I use AFWall+ with a whitelist to ONLY allow apps that I approve of.
My only complaint is the name /e/ is SO HARD TO SEARCH FOR. XD
drcouzelis,
I haven’t really kept track, but several times per year. I come across something I need to load up in chromium. IIRC the last time was a grocery store whose shopping cart scripts didn’t work in FF.
The IRS payment portal was a significant one. I was infuriated enough by this that I reported it as an accessibility issue. They simply said use a different device running windows. Absolutely disgusting given that interacting with them is usually not elective. At that time simply switching user agent worked, so it wasn’t a huge impediment although it means there was no fundamental incompatibility, they were just whitelisting/blacklisting browsers.
It went from bad to worse with the IRS mandated “id.me” fiasco. I for one completely lost access to my tax account and had to resort to paper. It didn’t work for me under any browser, even under my windows VM. There was huge pushback though and they either permanently or temporarily killed it.
https://www.gobankingrates.com/taxes/filing/irs-ditch-problematic-id-me-and-facial-recognition-this-tax-season/
Take care, that site is a haven for right wing terrorists, white supremacists, transphobes, antisemitic types, vaccine “truthers” and other conspiracy nuts, due to its complete lack of moderation (which is by design).
I mean, unless that kind of thing is your jam, then carry on I guess.
Yeah, I generally just skim pass that stuff. I like the concept of Peertube more, but Odysee functionally works a lot better.
tldr; we need more video platforms than just Youtube.
also, I haven’t technically seen much of the type of stuff you mentioned on Odysee.
Hi all, registered here to let you, kallisti5 and others, know that I’ve shifted to e/OS since two years and to me there is no way back.
Another, in what concerns me, smashing feature of e/OS is that, yes finally, you can route traffic over your mobile endpoint mounted VPN layer and that through the hotspot feature — uniquely for that I’m thankful each and everyday…
I don’t mind the 5seconds delay on flutube, 90% of the contents there are so heavily filtered that it just doesn’t make any sense anymore — I’ve been using this for listening to music and as my bones are old, preferably LP’s and that is, from track A to track Z =)
As for the G, I’m out of that as much as possible although 100% these days is impov impossible…
I ad block on youtube using uBlock Origin. I keep it up to date. I’ve never seen this 5 second delay. Everything comes up immediately without ads. Using Firefox (which I update as the packages are available) on openSUSE Leap 15.5.
chriscox,
I do as well and haven’t seen this delay, however it’s likely we’re merely outside of youtube’s staging regions as the article suggests.
Also from the article…
I’m really kind of disappointed that google would chose to target firefox in this way. IMHO they should impose the same policy on crhome users. But so long as they’re not willing to target chrome users in the same fashion, switching the user agent on FF may be a workaround for now. Some Ublock users may be affected by the 5s delay as well. It could get rolled out to us too.
It’s a cat and mouse game. I experienced something similar to this on youtube about a year ago.
https://www.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/viw3tn/youtube_recently_seems_to_hang_on_video_load/
Whatever they did to youtube’s web code, it now means that youtube is unusable on my decade old beast.
Or would be, if I didn’t have minitube installed. Great move, google.