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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

#451

Post by rjh29 »

scyzoryk_xyz wrote: post #66
dschuetz wrote: post #17

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 I suspect they will succeed. My observation is that the vast majority of people around me here in Europe see Google as completely trustworthy. It's truly profound how split-second loading delays contribute to a negative impression about digital products. I guess we're all worn out from using our devices. Most of us just want "thing" ASAP, and we'll compulsively click 'agree' to anything that happens t…

I would hope that the EU will legislate against this. (No help for the UK of course...)

Re: YouTube slows down video load times when using Firefox

#452

Post by JohnFen »

GuB-42 wrote: post #263
FoodWThrow wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it only trying to detect ads when the user agent is Firefox? https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/17zdpkl/this_behav...

Probably because there are other methods for Chrome that don't apply to Firefox. Like when I noticed that some sites did some URL rewriting trickery on Firefox and others browsers, but not for Chrome. The trick is to show you the proper URL the link points to, but as you click, it is substituted for one that is a redirection, for tracking purposes (ex: " https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http:://actualsite ..."). On Chr…

This kind of BS is why I don't ever click on links directly. I copy/paste them instead, so I can examine and trim them. Often, the actual link is through some sort of redirection service and I need to copy/paste the text the browser shows for the link rather than the actual link.

There's so much trickery and nonsense around this stuff that no link is safe to just click on.

Re: YouTube slows down video load times when using Firefox

#453

Post by 36933 »

rendaw wrote: post #371
lifthrasiir wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)})}…

Okay, I'm sold on the delay, but where's the code that detects non-chrome? Do they serve different js based on the user agent header? If they delay chrome too there's no foul.

They delayed chrome too. At least for me.

Re: YouTube slows down video load times when using Firefox

#454

Post by worik »

alias_neo wrote: post #269
vsnf wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking as someone who only very occasionally does browser related programming, what is the supposed sin committed here by implementing it this way?

In programming in general, sleeps are generally considered....(I'm lacking the word)...distasteful? If your code needs to wait for something, it's better done with some sort of event system or interrupt or similar; the reason being that a 5s wait is a 5s wait, but if, say the thing you're waiting for returned in 10ms, if you're using an alternative solution you can carry on immediately, not wait the remaining 4.99 se…

> In programming in general, sleeps are generally considered....(I'm lacking the word)...distasteful?

Hmmm.....

In programming in general, Javascript is generally considered....(I'm savouring the word)...distasteful?

Yea, nah. I put a sleep in a Javascript/Dart bridge the other day.... We can do better, I can do better,

Re: YouTube slows down video load times when using Firefox

#456

Post by gustavus »

Interesting thought that I had, that is probably not true but interesting anyway.

Is this a move by Google to boost Chrome usage numbers. Although it is a terrible way to do it, many organizations still count views by looking at User-Agent. Google makes Youtube work worse if you report a non-Chrome UA, but all you have to do is report a Chrome UA and then it works perfectly fine. Suddenly a lot of people who were using FF now look like they are using Chrome because the UA has changed.

They then use this as proof that no one should bother developing for anything other than Chrome because no one uses anything but Chrome, because all the FF users spoofed their UA to make it look like Chrome because Google purposefully cripples their site if you aren't using Chrome.

I doubt there was that much aforethought, but it is a nice win for Google regardless.

In the meantime I'll still just be sitting here telling websites I use IE 6 or Netscape Navigator to mess with web admins.

Re: YouTube slows down video load times when using Firefox

#457

Post by no_wizard »

throwaw12 wrote: post #38
kjhgksjdfhg wrote: post #27

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…

This doesn’t add up.

In order for someone to slow down the by browser they need someone to have coded the following:

- UA Detection

- Branching for when the flag is on or off

- a timeout that only runs when these two things are true

That takes an engineer to do the work. Marketing and product managers are not writing this code certainly.

If they’re abusing a differ t flag, then the real question I have is what the flags purpose is and why is it screening Firefox.

Either way there is an intention of UA checking and throttling based on the UA and that takes an engineer to do it

Re: YouTube slows down video load times when using Firefox

#458

Post by kristopolous »

asddubs wrote: post #268
kristopolous wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, that's got a risk profile. They could implement whatever your strategy is in the next release. You aren't going to necessarily get the longevity of the naive approach. Plus a Firefox dev would discover that more easily as opposed to this version which they can just dismiss as some JavaScript bug on YouTube's part

that's the beautiful thing, you make the polyfill contingent on the browser being firefox rather than probing for the feature and then you forget to remove it once they implement the feature

But why do you have to be that clever? If you're caught the consequences are the same regardless and both implementations would exhibit equivalent behavior.

The only superior approach here would be one that is consistent enough to be perceived but noisy enough to be robust to analysis.

Also it should be hidden on the server side.

Who knows, maybe there are a bunch of equivalent slow downs on the server side in the Google property space.

Given this discovery it would probably be reasonable to do some performance testing and change the user agent header string of the request.

Google docs, image search and Gmail operations would be the place to hide them.

Re: YouTube slows down video load times when using Firefox

#459

Post by brailsafe »

n4r9 wrote: post #432
brailsafe wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you be surprised that they'd implement this? It's their job to implement things.

They were using it to evade law enforcement while flouting regulations. It's highly unethical and almost certainly illegal.

Oh I thought you were referring back to the YouTube issue

Re: YouTube slows down video load times when using Firefox

#460

Post by kroltan »

TheLML wrote: post #179
jiggawatts wrote: post #37

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.

That has irked me for quite some time. I always manually select 1080p, because sometimes YT claims it's already playing 1080p, but it's obviously not and the video starts buffering anew when I select 1080p manually. Quite annoying

Get the "Enhancer for Youtube" extension, among many adjustments, it does this clicking for you.

I also had this issue, videos would frequently wobble down to like 240p or whatever, on a stable, high speed wired connection.

It's not an internet problem since I never have to buffer when using this forced setting, so it's probably YT trying to save a few bandwidth bucks when they think people aren't looking.

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