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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

#241

Post by pbhjpbhj »

d3w4s9 wrote: post #203
qwery wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the use of the "E" notation common in JS? I can see that it (could be) less bytes, obviously more efficient for bigger values... Looking at the script I can see it is minified or whatever we call that these days. I guess my question really is: did someone write "5E3" or did the minifier choose it? (Sorry this is heading into the weeds, but I'm not really a web developer so maybe someone can tell me!)

Because 5E3 is shorter than 5000, just like you can often see !0 to get "true" in minimize code because it saves two characters.

In js I thought 1==true, and 1 is shorter than !0 ??

Never seen the use of exponential notation for numbers in js though (not a surprise, I'm not really a programmer), it seems sensible to me from the point of shifting the domain from ms to seconds.

Re: YouTube slows down video load times when using Firefox

#243

Post by blueflow »

jasode wrote: post #202
imiric wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sugg…

>I really don't understand why any technically proficient user would willingly use any of the official YouTube frontends. I'm a technically proficient user that's written custom bash scripts for youtube-dl combined with ffmpeg to download videos locally and I still use the official Youtube desktop web browser UI every day for several reasons: + transcripts and close-captioning (use Ctrl+F search for text to find the…

> + many videos have index of chapters (deep links)

In mpv, you can use PgUp and PgDown to select chapters.

> + external links mentioned

Video description is in audio/video file if yt-dlp gets a --embed-metadata. mpv prints that if present.

Re: YouTube slows down video load times when using Firefox

#244

Post by bool3max »

varispeed wrote: post #224

I don't understand this. If people don't want to or need to buy anything and they don't want to see ads, because this is pure simply a distraction and won't sway them into buying anything, then what is the point of forcing them to watch ads? Furthermore, I wish regulators have gone at YouTube like a ton of bricks. The ads they show are mostly from various kind of scam artists. My friend is a bit naive, but fortunatel…

> I don't understand this. If people don't want to or need to buy anything and they don't want to see ads, because this is pure simply a distraction and won't sway them into buying anything, then what is the point of forcing them to watch ads?

Age-old question. It's not that simple. Those ads have an effect on you whether you "want to or need to buy anything" or not.

Re: YouTube slows down video load times when using Firefox

#246

Post by kevincox »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #197
neonsunset wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> It was especially egregious when MSFT was trying their own EdgeHTML/Trident-based Edge. Issues would go away by faking user-agent. Why is there more than one user-agent? Does somebody still expect to receive different content based on the user-agent, and furthermore expect that the difference will be beneficial to them? What was Microsoft trying to achieve by sending a non-Chrome user-agent?

User agents are useful. However they tend to be abused much more often than effectively used

1. They are useful for working around bugs. You can match the user agent to work around the bugs on known-buggy browser versions. Ideally this would be a handful of specific matches (like Firefox versions 12-14). You can't do feature detection for many bugs because they may only trigger in very specific situations. Ideally this blacklist would only be confirmed entries and manually tested if the new versions have the same problem. (Unfortunately these often end up open-ended because testing each new release for a bug that isn't on the priority list is tedious.)

2. Diagnosing problems. Often times you see that some specific group of user-agents is hammering some API or fails to load a page. It is much easier to track down if this user agent is a precise identifier of the client for which your site doesn't work correctly.

3. Understanding users. For example if you see that a browser you have never heard of is a significant amount of traffic you may want to add it to your testing routine.

But yes, the abuse of if (/Chrome/.test(navigator.userAgent)) { mainCode() } else { untestedFallback() } is a major issue.

Re: YouTube slows down video load times when using Firefox

#249

Post by chatmasta »

varispeed wrote: post #224

I don't understand this. If people don't want to or need to buy anything and they don't want to see ads, because this is pure simply a distraction and won't sway them into buying anything, then what is the point of forcing them to watch ads? Furthermore, I wish regulators have gone at YouTube like a ton of bricks. The ads they show are mostly from various kind of scam artists. My friend is a bit naive, but fortunatel…

The point of forcing ads onto users who don't want to see them and won't buy anything from them, is that the advertisers will still pay Google. In the long run, their CTR will suffer, but it will be consistent across advertisers. If they're paying per click then nobody loses except the user, who Google is betting actually will click on some ads (meaning they're basically engaging in psychological warfare, or at least rewarding the advertisers who do). And if they're paying per impression, then advertisers will see conversions go down in the long run, but Google might think the increased volume will make up for it.

Re: YouTube slows down video load times when using Firefox

#250

Post by thaumasiotes »

kevincox wrote: post #246
thaumasiotes wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It was especially egregious when MSFT was trying their own EdgeHTML/Trident-based Edge. Issues would go away by faking user-agent. Why is there more than one user-agent? Does somebody still expect to receive different content based on the user-agent, and furthermore expect that the difference will be beneficial to them? What was Microsoft trying to achieve by sending a non-Chrome user-agent?

User agents are useful. However they tend to be abused much more often than effectively used 1. They are useful for working around bugs. You can match the user agent to work around the bugs on known-buggy browser versions. Ideally this would be a handful of specific matches (like Firefox versions 12-14). You can't do feature detection for many bugs because they may only trigger in very specific situations. Ideally th…

Only option 1 is something that users, who are the people who decide what user-agent to send, might care about. And as you yourself point out, it doesn't happen.
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