this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2023
740 points (96.6% liked)

Firefox

17812 readers
18 users here now

A place to discuss the news and latest developments on the open-source browser Firefox

founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Google slows down Firefox users when watching YouTube....

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] verysoft@kbin.social 13 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (5 children)

Mine instantly loads. Perhaps there's some other stuff going on with hardware/software or something this person is running?

[–] LollerCorleone@kbin.social 9 points 11 months ago

Same, I am not facing any issues too.

[–] iAmTheTot@kbin.social 5 points 11 months ago

I use YT every day and use Firefox as my main browser. I've never experienced this. Just tested out of curiosity, it loads fine.

[–] FeelzGoodMan420@eviltoast.org 1 points 11 months ago

It's just typical sensationalized bullshit with people jumping to conclusions based off random ass Reddit threads. This apparently originated from the linus tech tips forums so it's probably straight bs.

[–] buzziebee@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago

Yeah it appears on chrome as well. There isn't any evidence that it's purposely "slowing down" anything. I had a quick glance at the Reddit thread (been avoiding it as much as possible, but had to visit in incognito to confirm the source for this outrage) and it looks like it's part of a small script to check if an adblocker is present and disabling video ads from playing.

It's possible FF have a delay in playing that first video, but also the test methodology isn't super reliable because of caching.

[–] oatscoop@midwest.social 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

I've experienced this issue firsthand, although it's more like 3 to 4 seconds. Changing the user agent to Chrome causes videos to load instantly, and restoring it to the original user agent causes the "lag".

Some possibly relevant information: I'm running Firefox with unlock Origin on Linux Mint. I've also received the "playback will be disabled after 3 videos" message in the past -- so it's possibly only affecting users they strongly suspect are still using ad-blockers with workarounds.