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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

#131

From reddit discussion ( https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/17ywbjj/comment/k9... ): > To clarify it more, it's simply this code in their polymer script link: > setTimeout(function() { c(); a.resolve(1) }, 5E3); > which doesn't do anything except making you wait 5s (5E3 = 5000ms = 5s). You can search for it easily in https://www.youtube.com/s/desktop/96766c85/jsbin/desktop_pol...

How is this not blatant anticompetitive behavior?

Re: YouTube slows down video load times when using Firefox

#132

From reddit discussion ( https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/17ywbjj/comment/k9... ): > To clarify it more, it's simply this code in their polymer script link: > setTimeout(function() { c(); a.resolve(1) }, 5E3); > which doesn't do anything except making you wait 5s (5E3 = 5000ms = 5s). You can search for it easily in https://www.youtube.com/s/desktop/96766c85/jsbin/desktop_pol...

That is not correct. The surrounding code gives some more context:

    h=document.createElement("video");l=new Blob([new Uint8Array([/* snip */])],{type:"video/webm"});
    h.src=lc(Mia(l));h.ontimeupdate=function(){c();a.resolve(0)};
    e.appendChild(h);h.classList.add("html5-main-video");setTimeout(function(){e.classList.add("ad-interrupting")},200);
    setTimeout(function(){c();a.resolve(1)},5E3);
    return m.return(a.promise)})}
As far as I understand, this code is a part of the anti-adblocker code that (slowly) constructs an HTML fragment such as `https://www.youtube.com/..." class="html5-main-video">`. It will detect the adblocker once `ontimeupdate` event didn't fire for 5 full seconds (the embedded webm file itself is 3 seconds long), which is the actual goal for this particular code. I do agree that the anti-adblocker attempt itself is still annoying.

Re: YouTube slows down video load times when using Firefox

#133

From reddit discussion ( https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/17ywbjj/comment/k9... ): > To clarify it more, it's simply this code in their polymer script link: > setTimeout(function() { c(); a.resolve(1) }, 5E3); > which doesn't do anything except making you wait 5s (5E3 = 5000ms = 5s). You can search for it easily in https://www.youtube.com/s/desktop/96766c85/jsbin/desktop_pol...

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

Unlikely. Google has been breaking non-Chromium (or sometimes even just non-Google Chrome) browsers for years on YouTube and their other websites. It was especially egregious when MSFT was trying their own EdgeHTML/Trident-based Edge. Issues would go away by faking user-agent.

Re: YouTube slows down video load times when using Firefox

#134

From reddit discussion ( https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/17ywbjj/comment/k9... ): > To clarify it more, it's simply this code in their polymer script link: > setTimeout(function() { c(); a.resolve(1) }, 5E3); > which doesn't do anything except making you wait 5s (5E3 = 5000ms = 5s). You can search for it easily in https://www.youtube.com/s/desktop/96766c85/jsbin/desktop_pol...

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?

Maybe the engineer that was tasked with implementing was annoyed with the task and did it on purpose this way.

Re: YouTube slows down video load times when using Firefox

#135

From reddit discussion ( https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/17ywbjj/comment/k9... ): > To clarify it more, it's simply this code in their polymer script link: > setTimeout(function() { c(); a.resolve(1) }, 5E3); > which doesn't do anything except making you wait 5s (5E3 = 5000ms = 5s). You can search for it easily in https://www.youtube.com/s/desktop/96766c85/jsbin/desktop_pol...

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

> Trying to be charitable here [...]

There is no reason for charity with such a large power difference. For Firefox, "bugs" like this can really end up being a lost one-shot game.

It's like people walking by and casually reaching for your phone. It's always meant as a joke, unless you don't pull it away fast enough. Then suddenly it wasn't a joke - and your phone is gone.

This is not rooted in any reservation against Google in particular. If you are a mega-corporation with the power to casually crush competitors, you should really want to be held to a high standard. You do not want to be seen as the accidentally-fucking-others-up-occasionally kind of company.

Re: YouTube slows down video load times when using Firefox

#136
Oh, I noticed this yesterday and assumed it was ad blocker hostility. Which I guess it may well be -- are Firefox users more likely to use ad blockers? Possibly. Certainly on Android. That doesn't strictly matter though, presumably the Youtube people try to avoid stepping on the Chrome people's toes.

Given Google is apparently going ahead with killing extensions on Chrome it's not hard to imagine some scheme where a guy is just lookin' at'cha merchandise and happens to be carryin' a baseball bat is all -- you can't really blame him for some spillage, right? (make using Firefox painful to try and push people to Chrome). Before crippling Chrome? Sounds ridiculous, but one can't help but wonder...

Thinking about some more, the point could actually be to make users question if its because they have an ad blocker not even actively blocking anything, but simply installed. Some number of users may uninstall their ad blocking extension to see if it makes the lag go away.

Re: YouTube slows down video load times when using Firefox

#137

I've recently done a pc upgrade and am now enjoying 64 gigs of ram. Decided to watch a live stream on youtube this weekend. Firefox: 22 GB of ram usage for the youtube tab after ~15 minutes. Tab became unresponsive. Edge: Out of memory error after ~5 minutes. Chrome: working fine, the youtube tab sitting peacefully ay 400-600 MB.

Not sure what is specific in your setup but I have watched numerous live stream on firefox and tab never became unresponsive. Haven't checked the ram but my laptop had half of yours and the live were running for an hour or so.

Re: YouTube slows down video load times when using Firefox

#139

Oh, and they also falsely show "4K" in the video quality icon, but "accidentally" play a 720p or even worse quality stream. If you manually select the 4K stream quality, then and only then will YouTube deign to show 4K to you.

Enhancer for Youtube allows you to select a min quality, also great for blocking shorts.

[deleted]

Re: YouTube slows down video load times when using Firefox

#140

I've recently done a pc upgrade and am now enjoying 64 gigs of ram. Decided to watch a live stream on youtube this weekend. Firefox: 22 GB of ram usage for the youtube tab after ~15 minutes. Tab became unresponsive. Edge: Out of memory error after ~5 minutes. Chrome: working fine, the youtube tab sitting peacefully ay 400-600 MB.

I don't know what your problem is exactly but this is not normal behavior on Firefox at least. Check your extensions to begin with, or for a quick test, try watching a video in a prvivate tab.
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