Shit, I thought it was just me.. what a joke.
YouTube slows down video load times when using Firefox
461–470 of 486 posts
Re: YouTube slows down video load times when using Firefox
#462Shit, I thought it was just me.. what a joke.
I remember some years ago, when I had an android phone and was using Firefox on it, Google Images would render differently on Chrome and Firefox. On Chrome, I could long press to get the context menu to download an image. If I did the same in Firefox however, an obnoxious transparent box would block the image and force me to go to source site before I could download it.
Re: YouTube slows down video load times when using Firefox
#463Earlier 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. - Because I don't see ads with YouTube Premium - Because I add things to my playlists - Because I more often than not find interesting things to watch there - Because I like using it on my phone or TV There's a lot of reasons why someone would prefer the official apps over some third party app th…
> - Because I don't see ads with YouTube Premium
I was in that boat. But after a while I realized I could no longer in good conscience give Google any more money when they were pushing so many initiatives that went against my interests.
Re: YouTube slows down video load times when using Firefox
#464Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Check out the Privacy Badger extension. I believe it removes the tracking stuff from (some) links.
Re: YouTube slows down video load times when using Firefox
#465If 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.
Thanks for this pointer--I hadn't heard of mpv, but it works amazingly smoothly.
Re: YouTube slows down video load times when using Firefox
#466If 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.
Or use any of the many alternative YouTube frontends: https://github.com/mendel5/alternative-front-ends#youtube
Are there any alternatives for iOS?
Re: YouTube slows down video load times when using Firefox
#467Earlier quoted context omitted.
As I said, the decisions are locally reasonable. However, if not supporting Firefox potentially exposed my company to scrutiny over anti-competitive behavior, then, yes, I would absolutely invest in testing procedures to mitigate that. It's also worth emphasizing that it isn't difficult to support Firefox. I'm pretty sure that many of the sites that I visit do so largely by accident. I do a fair bit of web developmen…
Serious question - does anti-competitive behavior even apply to open source? Also, it's the open source chromium, not necessarily the browser Chrome, that dominates the browser market. The largest players in the industry, except for Apple, have lined-up to support chromium. Firefox is going against the grain. Is it Google's job to help them with their mission? Loosely speaking, in anti-competitive scenarios you have…
The thing is that Firefox is the biggest project for an independent fully open source browser not tied to a big commercial company. Google having almost a monopoly is not good for the users, because Google therefore has a lot of leverage to push certain browser technologies that mostly benefit them and not necessarily the users. It's important to have an independent browser that is not optimized for 1 particular company's technology and needs. So we can view the web from a somewhat more neutral view. And yes, I think it's Google's responsibility to adhere to the webstandards and at least test their stuff in Firefox so they adhere to this neutrality. Otherwise they are only providing their websites for the Chromium-web, and not the Open Web.
Re: YouTube slows down video load times when using Firefox
#468Earlier quoted context omitted.
Should Italians feel offended that Japanese businessmen adopted the western (Italian-style) suit?
"No, because Italians are white and white people can't experience discrimination" . That is an actual response I've heard more than once. To be fair, I agree with the "cultural appropriation folks" when they correctly point out that sometimes people intentionally mock other cultures and that's a dick thing to do. But conflating mockery and insult with an appreciation of other cultures is not helpful, and that's what…
> No, because Italians are white and white people can't experience discrimination"
Tell them about the Yugoslav wars merely 30 years ago to blow their minds.
Re: YouTube slows down video load times when using Firefox
#469I just want to say thank you to everyone who is doing tests and contributing to this, you are truly unsung heroes (not sarcasm)
Re: YouTube slows down video load times when using Firefox
#470Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
Tbh even that is ethically very questionable, if the engineers knew that the outcome would be a delay specific to Firefox.