this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2024

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466

Google disrupted YouTube video playback on Firefox, again - gHacks Tech News (www.ghacks.net)

submitted 5 months ago by cloudless@fedia.io to c/firefox@fedia.io

104 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Some Firefox users noticed playback issues on YouTube for several months. These affected high resolution videos only, from 1080p and up. To make matters worse, no clear pattern could be identified.

Some videos played fine, others would stop abruptly when they ran out of buffer.

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[–] DmMacniel@feddit.de 142 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Clearly this isn't an anti-competition effort.

[–] nul9o9@lemmy.world 47 points 5 months ago (1 children)

We need to being back trust busting.

[–] entropicdrift@lemmy.sdf.org 10 points 5 months ago (1 children)

FTC is already on Google's case

[–] M0oP0o@mander.xyz 21 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Yeah that $1000 fine should fix things (or whatever amount they pick)

[–] jawa21@lemmy.sdf.org 15 points 5 months ago (1 children)

75% of annual revenue until the issue is addressed would actually work.

[–] eric5949@lemmy.world 11 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Yes well that's pie in the sky.

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[–] stormesp@lemm.ee 84 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Oh lol so that was it, yesterday all of a sudden 1440p and 4k videos were unwatchable, it was a stutter fest and thought something was wrong with my gpu.

[–] Zetta@mander.xyz 16 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Ya I've had this issue for months now, the video will freeze when the original 10 seconds of buffer is used, and it'll play fine if I skip another 10 seconds but just buffer indefinitely otherwise.

[–] casmael@lemm.ee 10 points 5 months ago (2 children)

You can get an extension to easily change your browser ‘user agent’ to make YouTube think you’re on chrome lol

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[–] hushable@lemmy.world 15 points 5 months ago

I've noticed that 60fps videos struggle a lot, even at 720p, suspiciously, no issues on chrome

[–] Matriks404@lemmy.world 41 points 5 months ago (4 children)

I have had the same issue for at least a month now. I use YouTube Premium, the fuck am I paying for?

[–] Etterra@lemmy.world 17 points 5 months ago (1 children)

You're posting for your inability to download ublock.

[–] Matriks404@lemmy.world 17 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I already have an uBlock dude, it's just I like to support content creators on YouTube by having Premium.

[–] winkerjadams@lemmy.dbzer0.com 15 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Support them directly instead of whatever peanuts google decides to graciously give them.

[–] Matriks404@lemmy.world 9 points 5 months ago (1 children)

That's a lot of effort, given how many people I am subscribed to. And I wouldn't say that it' "peanuts", after all they redistribute 55% of YouTube Premium earnings, that's a lot more than what other similar subscriptions give.

[–] Brickardo@feddit.nl 4 points 5 months ago

Would you support that kind of business model if you were at the other end, knowing full well you could be earning more? Then again, this is an age-old question...

[–] SGG@lemmy.world 9 points 5 months ago

For your experience to only be degraded a little.

For an slightly better but still degraded experience they want you on Google Chrome. But remember please use 360p or lower so their poor servers don't have to work so hard, they even help you do this by default on mobile!

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[–] JPAKx4@lemmy.blahaj.zone 35 points 5 months ago (6 children)

Reminder for everyone to use a user-agent spoofing extension to make their Firefox appear to be chrome/another browser to Google

[–] noodlejetski@lemm.ee 53 points 5 months ago (1 children)

sadly, skewing stats like that gives Google more reason not to support Firefox in the long run.

[–] petrol_sniff_king@lemmy.blahaj.zone 20 points 5 months ago

Well.. yes, but I assume that this specifically was sabotage. Like how Intel products have been throttling amd cpu performance for years.

[–] pineapplelover@lemm.ee 12 points 5 months ago

Absolutely not, I want them to know I'm using Firefox on my Linux computer. I'm doing my best to boost up marketshare.

[–] michael_palmer@lemmy.sdf.org 9 points 5 months ago

Just add flag in about:config page

[–] oce@jlai.lu 8 points 5 months ago (4 children)

It seems Netflix is able to detect that spoofing, and sends this error when trying to play videos, "Sorry, something went wrong. Please try again later.". I had to disable my add-ons one by one to identify that it was User Agent Switcher causing it.

[–] Sestren@lemmy.world 32 points 5 months ago (4 children)

Simple solution is to not pay Netflix and just pirate their content. They go out of their way to make the experience worse for paying customers on a regular basis. Sonarr+Jellyfin on an old computer with no video card and you've got a better Netflix where your content doesn't just magically disappear or fail to play on some devices.

[–] brbposting@sh.itjust.works 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

This ends with $500/mo Netflix subscriptions. An employee comes to your house and holds a laptop up in front of your couch while looking for hidden cameras camming the show.

Bathroom breaks are allowed, but they’ll pause the show.

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[–] Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world 7 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Any you recommend? I tried this during during the first round of YouTube fuckiness on Firefox, and it didn't seem to make a difference.

I'm also probably the least techy person on Lemmy, so chances are high that I fucked something up.

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[–] ms_lane@lemmy.world 33 points 5 months ago (5 children)

I stopped watching on their website due to this. It's faster and I get better scalers on ytdl(p)+mpv

[–] eskimofry@lemmy.world 6 points 5 months ago (3 children)

Are Piped or vanced affected as well?

[–] 30p87@feddit.de 9 points 5 months ago

I exclusively use Piped, and never have any problems. No ads, no bullshit, sponsorblock and DeArrow.

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[–] t0fr@lemmy.ca 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

You browse YouTube in the browser then use a handler to send it to MPV?

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[–] Potatisen@lemmy.world 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

What is this?

[–] GodsKillerKirb@sh.itjust.works 9 points 5 months ago (1 children)

mpv? yt-dlp? mpv is a media player, kind of like VLC but more powerful and lightweight.
yt-dlp is a CLI (command line interface) tool that allows you to download youtube videos as videos, videos without audio, or just as audio files.

[–] ChicoSuave@lemmy.world 10 points 5 months ago

More powerful and lightweight than VLC? I didn't know such things existed.

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[–] orhtej2@eviltoast.org 26 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I solved a lot of performance issues I had with yt playback by disabling Ambient Mode (it's hidden under cog menu in the player). No clue why, but it was causing massve CPU usage.

[–] TBi@lemmy.world 10 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Yeah. I hate ambient mode. Kills battery life on all systems.

[–] Sabata11792@ani.social 10 points 5 months ago (1 children)

It's also really ugly and distracting.

[–] TheOakTree@lemm.ee 8 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I'm not sure why, but ambient mode also introduces a lot of color banding for me. I find it odd because it doesn't occur in similar dark-gradient scenes while gaming, just YouTube.

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[–] YurkshireLad@lemmy.ca 24 points 5 months ago (1 children)

For months I’ve had problems with YouTube videos in Firefox, at any resolution. They would play at really low FPS. Sometimes the player would pause and continue at the correct FPS, but usually not. Skipping backwards or forwards usually fixes it but not always. Another step in their monopoly to destroy competition.

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[–] bolexforsoup@lemmy.blahaj.zone 9 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I love freetube

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[–] Doof@lemmy.world 8 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I happens to me but all i thought was that YouTube was bad not Firefox.

[–] Blackmist@feddit.uk 9 points 5 months ago

It is.

"This problem is triggered by bad muxed VP9 bytestream served by Youtube, so it's not a regression on our side, this issue can also be reproduced on old versions Firefox".

[–] FuryMaker@lemmy.world 7 points 5 months ago (1 children)

If it doesn't load quickly or properly, I just don't watch it, which ultimately hurts Google.

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[–] MonkderDritte@feddit.de 6 points 5 months ago

No such problems with yt-dlp + mpv. And still no injected ads.

[–] Blackmist@feddit.uk 6 points 5 months ago

Badly muxed VP9 stream? Is that where they tried to stuff ads into it?

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