this post was submitted on 21 Nov 2023
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Firefox users are reporting an 'artificial' load time on YouTube videos. YouTube says it's part of a plan to make people who use adblockers "experience suboptimal viewing, regardless of the browser they are using."

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Idk, this one is pretty easily explained by Hanlon's razor. I'm sure others will disagree, which is fine, but it seems not only plausible, but likely that they intended for this to target all ad block users and not just FireFox. Google has waged a war with adblockers, and they are making quick retaliatory changes as the adblockers block the adblocker blockers. It's literally Google making changes and people changing the adblockers back. It genuinely seems more realistic for them to have tried to target all adblockers than just FireFox...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Yeah except changing your user agent to chrome bypasses the load slowdown lol

Thanks to HTTP being a complete mish mash and meme of protocols and standards, there's no way for google to easily target ad blockers without either significantly changing the entire youtube API, or trying to enforce stupid DRM bullcrappary by updating or pushing for a new web standard.

Even crunchyroll doesn't crackdown on ad block even with DRM playback enabled.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Yeah except changing your user agent to chrome bypasses the load slowdown lol

Did you test this yourself? Rather than just ask your source, I was going to test it myself. However, I cannot get a slow down at all. Everything is loading instantly and ad-free. Perhaps the servers providing my instance of YouTube don't have the change, I'm not sure, but I have not been able to personally create this. So without a reliable source or evidence, I cannot just take your word for it that changing the user-agent alone fixed the issue.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

Rossmann tested it in latest video. No difference between browsers. And that dude is strong ad block and none Google browser supporter.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Pretty much. Doesn't help that Firefox is the best browser for customizing your browsing experience. So all adblockers are very good on it.

Probably some summer trainee tasked with solving the Firefox + ublock Origin combo made an oopsie.

With all that said: fuck Google for even beginning their crusade against adblockers.