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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

#91

Post by xxs »

enlyth wrote: post #29
andyjohnson0 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Without studying the minified code I wouldn't assume malice just yet, this could be just an inexperienced developer trying to lazily fix some browser-specific bug, or something that accidentally made it to production like you say

As the saying goes: "we like naked girls, not naked sleep". Even the interns should know that, naked sleep is just bad - not fixing anything.

Re: YouTube slows down video load times when using Firefox

#92

Post by asddubs »

enlyth wrote: post #29
andyjohnson0 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Without studying the minified code I wouldn't assume malice just yet, this could be just an inexperienced developer trying to lazily fix some browser-specific bug, or something that accidentally made it to production like you say

there is such a thing as overextending the benefit of the doubt, to the point that malicious actors will abuse it.

Re: YouTube slows down video load times when using Firefox

#93

Post by amelius »

frankjr wrote: post #39

I have a hard time believing that's actually what's happening. If they wanted to slow down other browsers, why would they choose this easily discoverable way? They could have easily slowed down serving of JS files (and other assets) based on the user agent to a similar effect. It seems more likely this is just a debug snippet that has made it into production by accident.

> They could have easily slowed down serving of JS files (and other assets) based on the user agent to a similar effect.

And that is /not/ easily discoverable??

Re: YouTube slows down video load times when using Firefox

#94

Post by toldyouso2022 »

Youtube is a very toxic environment. Even "informative" content is often toxic, but in a very subtle manner.

At google They may be not respecting the web but they are doing firefox users a favor. If you really need to see a video, five seconds won't make a difference. If you don't need it, five seconds may remind you that you don't really need it.

Try to see the positives

Re: YouTube slows down video load times when using Firefox

#95

Post by qwery »

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...

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!)

Re: YouTube slows down video load times when using Firefox

#96

Post by kristopolous »

asddubs wrote: post #89
kristopolous wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it works. Good engineering isn't about being obtuse and convoluted, it's about making stuff that works.

when the purpose is to abuse your monopoly to further your business interests in another area, being obtuse and convoluted to get plausible deniability is good engineering. This is just sloppy.

I dunno. How long has it been there without anybody noticing?

5 years? 7? Longer?

No matter how they approached it, you could demonstrate the pattern through the law of large numbers regardless. Might as well make the implementation straight forward.

Re: YouTube slows down video load times when using Firefox

#97

Post by actionfromafar »

HlessClaudesman wrote: post #67
lotsofpulp wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> * Marketing/Sales asks engineers to add a feature flag to sleep N milliseconds for their research: "how slowing down impacts your revenue" “Research”

Researching how best to fuck with your competitors.

Next: researching regulatory capture?

Re: YouTube slows down video load times when using Firefox

#98

Post by n4r9 »

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…

Very good point. It's important to recognise that developers in many companies are often not fully aware of the intended use of features they're asked to create.

Another example that springs to mind is Uber, who used a tool called "Greyball" to avoid contact between drivers and authorities: https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-uber-greyball-idUKKBN16B0...

My initial reaction was astonishment that the engineers would happily implement this. And maybe that is what happened. But the alternative possibility is that product and senior management assigned different parts of the feature to different teams e.g. one team develops a pattern recognition system to detect users' professions, another team develops a spoofing system for use in demos, etc...

Re: YouTube slows down video load times when using Firefox

#99

Post by asddubs »

frankjr wrote: post #39

I have a hard time believing that's actually what's happening. If they wanted to slow down other browsers, why would they choose this easily discoverable way? They could have easily slowed down serving of JS files (and other assets) based on the user agent to a similar effect. It seems more likely this is just a debug snippet that has made it into production by accident.

ah yes, the fact that they are sabotaging other browsers in a very obvious way is actually proof that they didn't meant to sabotage other browsers!

Re: YouTube slows down video load times when using Firefox

#100

Post by sebzim4500 »

qwery wrote: post #95
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...

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!)

Almost certainly the minimizer
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