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YouTube slows down video load times when using Firefox

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Re: YouTube slows down video load times when using Firefox

#42
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trying to be charitable here: could this be a debug/test artefact that inadvertantly got into production?

Without studying the minified code I wouldn't assume malice just yet, this could be just an inexperienced developer trying to lazily fix some browser-specific bug, or something that accidentally made it to production like you say

You think they let inexperienced developers touch the YT code base without proper code review? Even if that were the case, which is an extremely charitable assumption, that itself would be malice in my opinion.

Re: YouTube slows down video load times when using Firefox

#43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not even mad about Google making my artificially wait 5s for using firefox. I'm mad that such a big company with suposelly decent engineers, are making me wait 5s with literally a sleep, how is even possible to do such thing in such a rudimentary way? I would be like damn that was smart, this feels like, seriously this is the level?

IMHO, this kind of things are not done by engineers. * Marketing/Sales asks engineers to add a feature flag to sleep N milliseconds for their research: "how slowing down impacts your revenue" * engineer adds a flag, with different control parameters * Some genius in Product figures this out and updates the experiment to slow down for competitors When company gets a backlash from public: "oops, we forgot to clean up a…

> * Marketing/Sales asks engineers to add a feature flag to sleep N milliseconds for their research: "how slowing down impacts your revenue"

“Research”

Re: YouTube slows down video load times when using Firefox

#47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For now. Google is working on making a premium internet based on their services that permeate the whole web which they plan to serve only to "trusted devices" running Chrome - I do not think this is going to work out well for them.

I hope not, but they are certainly trying. I fear they have become an uncontrollable behemoth which have failed to identify alternative business models to their unsustainable ad business, and now they are trying to perform a major power grab to basically take over the web and force people to watch ads or pay.

Why is their ad business unsustainable? seems like they just print money, and recent efforts are to simply increase printer speed... Because why wouldn't you...

Re: YouTube slows down video load times when using Firefox

#48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is interesting as I had noticed this happening to me (in Chrome) when the anti-ad-blocking started. I assumed that it was YT's way of "annoying" me still while no ads were shown... It was eventually replaced with the "You cant use Adblockers modal" and now I just tolerate the ads. So I wonder if that 5s delay has always been there.

Just install adblocker?

Meh.. I could but I have to tolerate them on TV anyway. I may look to install pi-hole one day.

Re: YouTube slows down video load times when using Firefox

#49

If you are fluent with the terminal, you don't need to suffer from the YT Web UI. Install mpv and yt-dlp. Play videos like this: mpv [--no-video] "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9zVjEZ7W8Q" Option in brackets is optional.

This is the way.

I really don't understand why any technically proficient user would willingly use any of the official YouTube frontends. You get bombarded with ads, you're constantly tracked and experimented on, and your behavior is used to improve their algorithms in order to keep you on the site for as long as possible. It's a hostile user experience, just like most of the mainstream web.

Whenever possible, I suggest using Invidious, Piped, Newpipe, yt-dlp, and anything but the official frontends.

I try to compensate the creators I follow via other means if they have an alternative income source, but I refuse to be forced to participate in an exploitative business model that is responsible for the awful state of the modern web.

Re: YouTube slows down video load times when using Firefox

#50

If you are fluent with the terminal, you don't need to suffer from the YT Web UI. Install mpv and yt-dlp. Play videos like this: mpv [--no-video] "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9zVjEZ7W8Q" Option in brackets is optional.

I think you’re missing the point. How can I browse Youtube in mpv?

What do you mean by "browsing" Youtube? Clicking new links for the purpose of entertainment?

My post was only about playing videos.

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