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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

#481

Post by patchguard »

no_wizard wrote: post #457
throwaw12 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fl…

Not so hard to believe tho. I work on a product that has parametrized feature flags. This means that, from a web interface, someone can say things like "activate feature X, on machines running operating system Y, at version Z, and are running product version W with license type Q". This is not a hard thing to build, and once you have it you can mix and match filters without being a software engineer or knowing how it works behind the scenes.

Re: YouTube slows down video load times when using Firefox

#482

Post by flexagoon »

vanderZwan wrote: post #472
l8rlump wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Check out the Privacy Badger extension. I believe it removes the tracking stuff from (some) links.

There are also dedicated link cleaning extensions (I use Neat Url).

You actually don't need to use any dedicated extensions for that, as this functionality is built into uBO, you just need to find a filter list (just search for "ublock origin clearurl list" or whatever)

Re: YouTube slows down video load times when using Firefox

#483

Post by 93po »

jug wrote: post #131
ayhanfuat wrote: post #3

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?

Capitalism as it exists is, at its core, anticompetitive.

Re: YouTube slows down video load times when using Firefox

#484

Post by 93po »

beej71 wrote: post #463
dewey wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I used a VPN and pay $2 a month for it, which is an acceptable trade off for using it on my phone and spending my life worrying about things that impact me more

Re: YouTube slows down video load times when using Firefox

#485

Post by immibis »

gear54rus wrote: post #125
iinnPP wrote: post #113

https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/marketing-strategies/app-and... Seems odd to do something so brazen while also publishing information that (could) prove intent. Google also modifies how business information can be accessed from Firefox Mobile. You can't read reviews easily from Firefox Mobile. At least not my install.

That's because it's not actually what's happening. I'm all for bashing bigcorps and especially ad empires but reddit folks confused correlation with causation here. The code in question is part of a function that injects a video ad (that plays before the start) and the code itself is just a fallback in case it fails to load over 5 seconds so that video page doesn't break completely. Why was this affected by user agen…

The code also returns 0 if the advert loads and 1 if it doesn't load. In other words, it detects adblockers.

Re: YouTube slows down video load times when using Firefox

#486

Post by vanderZwan »

flexagoon wrote: post #482
vanderZwan wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are also dedicated link cleaning extensions (I use Neat Url).

You actually don't need to use any dedicated extensions for that, as this functionality is built into uBO, you just need to find a filter list (just search for "ublock origin clearurl list" or whatever)

Does it work on links copied from the page for chats?
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