Youtube has started to artificially slow down video load times if you use Firefox. Spoofing Chrome magically makes this problem go away.

Voltage , 7 months ago

The fuck?? Isn’t this anti competitive behaviour?

PerogiBoi , 7 months ago

In a previous generation, governments would go after this blatant anti competitive behaviour.

ObviouslyNotBanana , 7 months ago

I’m sure the EU will still.

PerogiBoi , 7 months ago

It’s just a shame that there’s really only one government organization globally that will still stand up to corporations.

Damage , 7 months ago

For now

psycho_driver , 7 months ago

To be fair China will send you to a reeducation camp or disappear you if you try to act like a western billionaire.

Sheeple , 7 months ago

China will make you disappear for many things including speaking up against the genocide of religious minorities ¯_(ツ)_/¯

dojan , 7 months ago

Honestly with the speed new BS crops up I don’t think they will.

rchive , 7 months ago

The current US Federal Trade Commission is quite agressive compared to other FTCs historically.

Metatronz , 7 months ago

True. Though they have been stuck with 30 years of damage simply reverse too.

tetris11 , 7 months ago

Think of it as 30 years of rent they’re now claiming.

Zoboomafoo , 7 months ago

Yes, but they haven’t fixed this specific problem that just broke in the last day or so, therefore the FTC is a corrupt useless organization that pours hot wax on kittens

4lan , 7 months ago

then why do we have like 4 conglomerates making everything in the grocery store?

s1nistr4 , 7 months ago

If you’re networked with the right people in the US, laws don’t matter

vxx , 7 months ago

Do you want to hear about the Microsoft “bug” that affected Firefox that was only recently fixed after 5+ years of getting reported?

Corporations really hate non-profit products that are superior.

rchive , 7 months ago

Is it more anti competitive than McDonald’s only selling McDonald’s burgers or preventing you from bringing Taco Bell tacos in from outside?

grue , 7 months ago

1. Yes. Yes, it is!
2. McDonald’s doesn’t actually give a shit if you bring in food from other places.

Techmaster , 7 months ago

McDonald’s probably does care, but their minimum wage employees don’t.

rchive , 7 months ago

1. How?
2. Pick a different example then. In my experience movie theaters don’t let you bring food in from outside. McDonald’s still won’t sell a Burger King burger regardless of whether you could bring one in.

agent_flounder , 7 months ago

🙄 No it would be like Ford owning gas stations and pumping faster for Ford vehicles than Chevy.

Zak , 7 months ago

Doesn’t Tesla do the equivalent of that with charging stations?

dubyakay , 7 months ago

Maybe. But Tesla doesn’t own over 50% of the charging station market share.

agent_flounder , 7 months ago

True… I think even if they don’t, it’s still potentially anti-competitive.

(Gawd, Imagine how life would be with gas station incompatibility with your car. Holy shit that would suck).

ubermeisters , 6 months ago

Tesla, you mean the one that literally made and freely distributed the open standard that almost all vehicle chargers are based on? And may have a better understanding of the technology as a result and able to charge faster accordingly? That same Tesla? What a wild notion!!

rchive , 7 months ago

That’s less restrictive than what I said. McDonald’s won’t let you bring tacos in at all, doesn’t just make you wait at the door for 2 minutes, etc.

Edit: and to anyone quibbling with my McDonald’s example saying you can in fact bring tacos in, that was just an illustration. I can find plenty of examples of one establishment not letting people bring food in from somewhere else.

agent_flounder , 7 months ago

I don’t feel your analogy quite captures what is going on here because both McDonald’s and Taco Bell are in the same business. Maybe if you explain it more.

Google owns a major web destination, YouTube, essentially a line of business in its own right, in addition to Chrome, also its own distinct product. Firefox competes with Chrome but Google is allegedly using market dominance with YouTube to make it harder for Firefox to compete.

If a company owns two products A and B and if A is used to access B, company cannot hinder competitors to A via fuckery in B.

This is the kind of thing that MS got in trouble for – using Windows to tip the scales in favor of Internet Explorer by tightly integrating it into the OS.

McDonald’s prohibiting people from using their restaurant, which is not itself a separate product with a separate market. Nobody is clamoring to go to McDonald’s restaurant spaces to sit and eat. It’s just part of the restaurant offering. So there is no leverage like there is with YouTube being used against a competitor for a totally different product. And besides, Taco Bell can do the same as McDonald’s. They’re on equal footing.

If in your analogy there were some other product that McDonald’s owned that could penalize you for going to Taco Bell your analogy would work.

• Google – Ford
• Mozilla – Chevy
• Firefox – Chevy car
• Chrome – Ford Car
• YouTube – Ford gas station

rchive , 7 months ago

Thanks for your question.

I see food preparation and dining rooms as separate industries, even if they don’t appear that way at first. The most we can see this in practice is probably mall food courts. Web content like YouTube is the food and the web browser is the place or mechanism by which we consume “food”.

Is being allowed to take tacos into McDonald’s a hill I’m going to die on? No, of course not, it’s just the first illustration I thought of. Lol. I could probably come up with a better example, that one was just easier and more visual.

To be clear, I’m not saying there’s no anticompetitiveness happening, I’m saying that all vertical integration is basically this same amount of anticompetitiveness, and vertical integration is often very good, which is why we tolerate it all the time.

I agree the comparison to MS and Internet Explorer is somewhat similar. I also think that case was not decided particularly well, and it’s not as revealing as it could have been since it ended up settling out of court, and IE ended up getting crushed by Chrome just a few years later.

I wonder, if Google made a new app called YouTube that could only watch YouTube and made it the only app that could watch YouTube, sort of like Quibi, would that be more competitive or less competitive? No one is asserting that Quibi was anticompetitive at all, correct? That would be even worse for Firefox users, they’d completely lose access to YouTube unless they downloaded a 2nd app, this time YouTube instead of Chrome, but like Quibi it would seem to dodge all these competition concerns completely. I think that shows how these concerns can be selective and kind of nonsensical.

qfjp , 7 months ago

Is it more anti competitive than McDonald’s only selling McDonald’s burgers

Yeah, it’s more like the next time you go to Wendy’s, McDonald’s will follow you and try to lock the doors before you go in.

rchive , 7 months ago

No, not really. Google can’t do anything about my taking my Firefox browser and watching videos from somewhere else. There are countless other video streaming services.

agent_flounder , 7 months ago

Yes except everyone knows YouTube has a massive, massive market advantage in that space. And the channel you want to watch isn’t on the others. And you know this too.

qfjp , 7 months ago

There are countless other video streaming services.

There are government websites - including my state’s dmv - that exclusively use youtube. You’re being disingenuous when you’re saying you can just use another streaming service (and I don’t believe you don’t know it).

rchive , 7 months ago

The efficient solution to that problem is governments using a different platform that’s actually neutral. The government has full control over where they host their videos. Using that as a reason to TRY (a likely long and drawn out process) to force Google to change its policies company-wide is silly.

I’m not being disingenuous. I watch videos on a bunch of platforms. It’s easy.

qfjp , 7 months ago

The efficient solution to that problem is governments using a different platform that’s actually neutral.

First time I’ve heard public services called efficient, but ok.

I’m not being disingenuous. I watch videos on a bunch of platforms. It’s easy.

We’re not talking about you here. You’re purposely ignoring the problem, and therefore being disingenuous.

rchive , 7 months ago

Public services aren’t efficient, but they can surely change themselves more efficiently than they can force a multi billion dollar company to change its ways.

I’m surprised you’re not more worried about the government outsourcing its functions to a company you seem very suspicious of.

If the government decided to have vital public meetings only in a private venue you have to be a member of or something, the proper fix is not to force the club to accept everyone, it’s to have the government stop having vital meetings in private places.

I also don’t see a problem because everything of value these video streaming services offer is replaceable by one of the many other streaming services. The fact that YouTube is the biggest or most recognized does not change anything for me. The fact that there is some content that is only on YouTube doesn’t, either. That’s a normal thing that happens in an economy. Ford dealers only sell Ford cars, Coca Cola doesn’t sell Pepsi, etc.

qfjp , 7 months ago

Public services aren’t efficient, but they can surely change themselves more efficiently than they can force a multi billion dollar company to change its ways.

[citation needed]

I’m surprised you’re not more worried about the government outsourcing its functions to a company you seem very suspicious of.

You’re the one talking about all the alternate video services you use. I just dont want a monopoly.

If the government decided to have vital public meetings only in a private venue you have to be a member of or something, the proper fix is not to force the club to accept everyone, it’s to have the government stop having vital meetings in private places.

wut. Not having meetings in private places literally is making sure the ‘place’ accepts everyone. Do you even read what you’re saying?

I also don’t see a problem because everything of value these video streaming services offer is replaceable by one of the many other streaming services. The fact that YouTube is the biggest or most recognized does not change anything for me. The fact that there is some content that is only on YouTube doesn’t, either.

Well, you totally missed the point then.

rchive , 7 months ago

I just dont want a monopoly.

There is no monopoly in video streaming. Not even close.

wut. Not having meetings in private places literally is making sure the ‘place’ accepts everyone. Do you even read what you’re saying?

You’re misreading what I wrote. If government unfairly has vital meetings at Private Club which not everyone has access to, the solution is not to force Private Club to accept everyone, it’s to not have meetings at Private Club and have them at City Hall or something instead, somewhere that isn’t exclusive.

qfjp , 7 months ago

There is no monopoly in video streaming. Not even close.

Ah, you’re one of those people. Okay.

IHadTwoCows , 7 months ago

Is this a “gosh Wally, they’re just trying to do business! Do you expect everything for free??” post? Because that’s not how internet business works. This is not a thing that Google invented and developed on their own.

rchive , 7 months ago

Because that’s not how internet business works.

How does it work, then?

This is not a thing that Google invented and developed on their own.

I don’t know what this is referring to or what it has to do with anything.

ubermeisters , 6 months ago

How to spot a Ms employee

micka190 , 7 months ago

Some people are reporting it happens when your accounts get flagged by YouTube for blocking ads and that using a private browsing session can be used to bypass it, so it’s possible this isn’t a blanket thing?

Either way, they can go fuck themselves.

If you’re on Firefox and using uBlock Origin (which you should), you can add the following to your filters list to essentially disable the delay:

<span style="color:#323232;">! Bypass 5 seconds delay added by YouTube
</span><span style="color:#323232;">www.youtube.com##+js(nano-stb, resolve(1), 5000, 0.001)
</span>

It doesn’t fully disable it, just makes it almost instant, because Google has been doing shit like looking at what gets blocked to combat ad blockers recently.

Sheeple , 7 months ago

Thanks I’ll get back to this later

moody , 7 months ago

I use youtube without logging in, and it runs normally. If I use a private window, that’s when I get a delay when loading videos.

ubermeisters , 6 months ago

Good God I would hate to see the Mr Beast hell that your front page must be

moody , 6 months ago

Once you start watching videos, you still get recommendations based on your viewing even if not logged in. As long as I don’t clear my cookies, I basically get the content I’m interested in.

ubermeisters , 6 months ago

I always forget other people still allow cookies etc, I’m over here like an internet hermit, using Libre browser

moody , 6 months ago

I block all third-party cookies, but I do want some basic functionality out of the internet.

agent_flounder , 7 months ago

Yes. The US DOJ has a website for reporting antitrust concerns

TheBat , 7 months ago

Yes.

https://media.tenor.com/_QMRtYkD1mYAAAAd/the-sopranos-tony-soprano.gif

RoyaltyInTraining , 7 months ago

Yes. It is. And consumers can’t do a thing about it.

VampyreOfNazareth , 4 months ago

Anti trust that evil Google

scholar , 7 months ago

It’s bizarre how blatent this is. Google has so much power over web standards that Mozilla have to work really hard to make firefox work, but YouTube don’t bother being subtle or clever and just write ‘if Firefox, get stuffed’ in plain text for everyone to see.

ares35 , 7 months ago

this isn't much different than when microsoft added code specifically to break windows 3.1 when run under dr-dos instead of their own ms-dos. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AARD_code

Lmaydev , 7 months ago

And it cost them 280 million in the 90s ouch

tetris11 , 7 months ago

Something tells me they survived.

aseriesoftubes , 7 months ago

Google has been doing this kind of thing for a while. If you try to use Google Meet in Firefox, you can’t use things like background blurring. Spoofing Chrome works in that situation as well.

Lemminary , 7 months ago

And the stupid thing is that all I use Chrome for is Meets… And that’s it. Do they really think they win me over?

chiliedogg , 7 months ago

Not you or me. But most people, yeah.

sulsaz , 7 months ago

That is, as always, the problem: it works for them. The average Joe isn’t going to implement a new filter into ublock…

FontMasterFlex , 7 months ago

How does one “spoof” chrome?

dual_sport_dork , 7 months ago

You can change your user agent string, the text your browser uses to tell the web site you’re looking at what browser it is, either via your F12 developer tools menu or via an extension.

scholar , 7 months ago

The most convenient way is with a browser extension that changes your user agent. You can also change it in the developer options of most browsers.

AlexWIWA , 7 months ago

It works for me now. Only took them 8 years

agent_flounder , 7 months ago

In my other comment I provide a link to the US DOJ anti-trust complaint center website.

the_blackwell_ninja , 7 months ago

@scholar @db0 Buy enough of the competition and pay off enough government regulators and as a company you get to do pretty much do whatever you want.

Rinox , 7 months ago

BTW, this:

https://feddit.it/pictrs/image/0e13c670-4966-4073-89df-f042fe9cc6de.webp

Meltrax , 7 months ago

This is some ultimate scumbaggery.

filcuk , 7 months ago

This should be illegal, Firefox being their competition (tangentially)

LufyCZ , 7 months ago

It honestly probably is

UnculturedSwine , 7 months ago

EU might hit them for it. I have no faith that the US government is going to do anything.

Thermal_shocked , 7 months ago

The thing that gets me is they think no one will ever find this stuff. There are hundreds of thousands of people (maybe more) who are actively looking ways to block ads and get around this behavior. There’s no way it’ll ever go unnoticed.

Natanael , 7 months ago

They could literally have used some variance in implementation, server side bandwidth limitations, etc, but THIS is just blatantly obvious

fossilesque , 7 months ago

I wonder if it’s a case of malicious compliance.

AeroLemming , 7 months ago

I hope so. I’d like to think we have a few people on the inside secretly fighting for the average consumer.

fossilesque , 7 months ago

The world runs on the shoulders of disgruntled employees. This smells like a deliberate act backed up with a paper trail to protect the guy in charge of implementing it from taking the blame. But, I realise that also may be my imagination… It’s a compelling tale regardless.

CosmicCleric , 7 months ago

The world runs on the shoulders of disgruntled employees.

That’s one hell of a phrase that should keep any CEO awake at night.

Hadriscus , 7 months ago

Exactly what I was thinking. Let’s not say it too loud for the sake of our mole(s)

Aux , 7 months ago

I believe that Google is just trolling people real hard. There are much better ways to disable any adblocks, but they are not even trying.

creditCrazy , 7 months ago

Ok so this is just client side I’d imagine I’d be pretty easy to make an addon that removes the code

the_q , 7 months ago

That’s not the point.

A2PKXG , 7 months ago

Is there something like:

If(not chrome){add_delay()}

?

TrippaSnippa , 7 months ago

No, the full context of the code snippet doesn’t appear to check the browser user agent at all. Other comments have explained that it’s most likely a lazy implementation of a check for ad blockers.

ikidd , 7 months ago

So this is part of a larger adblock checker, if the ad doesn’t load within 5 seconds, it fails and triggers the adblocker warning. Since the ad should load in 3, they’ve set it for 5. If you have ubo, you won’t see the warning that it then wants to pop up, it just seems (and is) a 5 second delay. Changing the UA probably removes this from Firefox because then the clientside scripts will attempt to use builtin Chrome functions that wouldn’t need this hacky script to detect the adblock. Since they don’t exist, it just carries on.

localhost443 , 7 months ago

I was wondering how badly out of context the above quote must be considering the UA isn’t checked in the function. Above poster is trying to construe it as a pure and simple permanent delay for Firefox.

That being said, the solution is still bullshit.

Adalast , 7 months ago

That is just the timeout function, not the call stack. It is likely called in a function that uses a UA check.

CosmicCleric , 7 months ago

I was wondering how badly out of context the above quote must be considering the UA isn’t checked in the function. Above poster is trying to construe it as a pure and simple permanent delay for Firefox.

The UA check can happen before the function is called though.

squirrelwithnut , 7 months ago

This is why net neutrality is important. To prevent bullshit like this from happening.

eltrain123 , 7 months ago

This is literally why net neutrality needs to be regulated. Corporations will artificially make problems to induce additional earnings.

Super scummy, anti-customer behavior.

salvador , 7 months ago

deleted_by_moderator

steltek , 7 months ago

That’s not what net neutrality is about. NN is about carriers and ISPs treating all services and websites equally. Don’t feature creep NN. It weakens the arguments for why why we need NN.

ahriboy , 7 months ago

Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act might stop any attempt to undermine browser performance.

Cannacheques , 7 months ago

If anything we need more laws around the tech space as a whole

Rustmilian , 7 months ago

Doesn’t this break competition laws?
Couldn’t Google/YouTube be sued over this?

Burn_The_Right , 7 months ago

Not in the U.S. Not as long as conservatives (incl. neo-liberals) have the power to protect them.

Our conservative politicians are bought and paid for by large anti-competitive corporations.

remus989 , 7 months ago

Bought and paid for with a pittance.

mycatiskai , 7 months ago

They are bribed for so little that it would be almost easier to make a dystopian sounding PAC with money raised by small dollar donations to bribe them to do what the people want instead of them doing what rich donors want.

remus989 , 7 months ago

Only if that PAC could somehow guarantee a cushy job post politics.

umbraroze , 7 months ago

Microsoft got repeatedly hit over this kind of shenanigans in MSIE during and after the anti-trust lawsuit.

Sadly, that was 20 years ago. I'm not having much faith in American justice system doing anything about this nowadays.

Sendbeer , 7 months ago

They really weren’t that effective with Microsoft then either. The antitrust was far too late for Netscape and allowed Microsoft to hold a dominate market share with IE until they allowed the browser to deprecate and Google came in with a much better browser and took over the browser market (and are now doing the same bullshit).

As long as we keep giving these companies meaningless fines or wait until the damage is irreversible companies are going to always push the limit and look at any repercussions as just a cost of doing business.

So yeah, not much faith in anything changing.

SapphironZA , 7 months ago

That is why I am in favour of the financial death penalty. Fines should be 10x the damage done. If a company cannot pay it, they are required to become a non profit.

WldFyre , 7 months ago

Fines should be 10x the damage done

What are your monetary damages for this?

Instigate , 7 months ago

I think a better solution is one year of global revenue (not profit) as it’s really hard to determine damages in cases like this. That way, it’s legitimately a death sentence regardless of the size or scale of the company. If you set the fines at an amount not linked to profit or revenue, all you’re doing is making it extremely hard for the little guy but less hard for the big corporations - the ones you really want to go after.

SapphironZA , 7 months ago

I like it, much more practical.

Carighan , 7 months ago

Yeah stuff like this really needs to be percentual and fined to the CEOs and the board, not the company as an entity.

Oh, Microsoft valued at 200 bil for shareholders? Well sorry C’s and boardies, you gotta scrunge up 2 bil each now, personally. Those are fines they’d at least notice.

(edit)
Come to think of it, the fined-personally-to-the-decisionmaker might really be the big thing here on its own. The company did this shit under you, CEO. It was your corporate policy and hiring practices that allowed this to happen, even if you did not press the button. You pay up. You take the blame, not the people under you just following orders.

uid0gid0 , 7 months ago

This just ignores the reason that corporations exist in the first place, to shield people from personal liability. There is a mechanism by which you can go after that called “piercing the corporate veil” but it is an extremely high bar to hit.

Emma_Gold_Man , 7 months ago

the reason that corporations exist in the first place, to shield people from personal liability

Which is the problem. As parent rightly pointed out, lack of personal liability is exactly why corporations pull this kind of bullshit. The solution is to lower the bar for holding individuals, particularly executives, personally responsible for the actions of the organizations they control.

LWD , 7 months ago (edited 6 months ago)

deleted_by_author

A_Random_Idiot , 7 months ago

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shifting_baseline

axios.com/…/shifting-baselines-syndrome-climate-c…

Ensign_Crab , 7 months ago

Microsoft got repeatedly hit over this kind of shenanigans in MSIE during and after the anti-trust lawsuit.

And all they had to do was drag the trial out until a favorable administration took office.

locuester , 7 months ago

Well they also dragged out the trial so long that time and costs rendered the plaintiff (Netscape) hopeless.

themurphy , 7 months ago

EU anthem intensifies

A_Random_Idiot , 7 months ago

malicious slowdowns like this are why microsoft abandoned (non chrome) edge, too. Cause they couldnt keep up with fixing the constant fuckery google was doing, and users are idiots and blamed edge for all the problems.

Sendbeer , 7 months ago

Microsoft was kind of getting their comeuppance there. They did the exact same billshit when they dominated the market with IE.

A_Random_Idiot , 7 months ago

You’re right.

Lets let google get away with murder because Microsoft did bad a decade+ ago.

Sendbeer , 7 months ago

I don’t think that’s what I said? At least it’s not how I meant it.

Voroxpete , 7 months ago

You should look into all of the anti-monopoly actions that Lina Khan has been pursuing as head of the FTC. Under her tenure the watchdogs have had more teeth than ever before. It takes time for this stuff to make a difference, but they are most decidedly doing the work (Cory Doctorow has some excellent write ups on this if you check his blog).

tetris11 , 7 months ago

He lionizes her a bit much, but yes she has done far more than her predecessor.

creditCrazy , 7 months ago

You can always count on lobbiests to enshitifiy the laws

agent_flounder , 7 months ago

Yes. And you can submit your complaint here

www.justice.gov/atr/complaint-center

Rustmilian , 7 months ago

Well, can’t hurt to try.

Blackmist , 7 months ago

Wait for it to become equally shitty in all browsers, and then you can only watch in a special Youtube Windows app.

JigglySackles , 7 months ago

Yeah, the fines just aren’t big enough for Google to care.

PrairieRanger , 7 months ago

I wonder how long it’ll be before google gets sued for their anti-competitive behavior.

HawlSera , 7 months ago

Oh I imagine the papers are being filed as we speak, because this is blatantly illegal.

bamboo , 7 months ago

Well you typically need standing in order to file a lawsuit, who would do it? Mozilla are probably the only ones. Why would this cause them to do it when past similar practices haven’t?

Dulusa , 7 months ago

Europe will step in as usual

pup_atlas , 7 months ago

Perhaps YouTube premium subscribers would have standing as a class action, since Google is materially worsening the experience of a paid product if you don’t use their browser

bamboo , 7 months ago

I personally don’t think an argument like that would hold up. A company making its service worse in itself isn’t going to win court cases, and this is hardly the worst example of a tech company making its products worse unless you use more of their software.

pup_atlas , 7 months ago

Perhaps not, but it’s not just the act of making the service worse, it’s doing so measurably to paying customers ONLY when using a competitors product. With those caveats, I think you could at least argue standing. Winning is a whole other battle.

PersnickityPenguin , 7 months ago

Microsoft, Mozilla org, maybe apple

EFF or government

bamboo , 7 months ago

On what standing though? Mozilla potentially has standing, and if the government finds that google is a monopoly, then the government could have standing, but nobody else.

Crack0n7uesday , 7 months ago

Isn’t Mozilla a non profit? I don’t they can sue for anything along the lines of hurting profits to the company.

bamboo , 7 months ago

They do have a for-profit subsidiary that potentially could though

Fredthefishlord , 7 months ago

Can’t you sue for loss of income regardless?

TurdMongler , 7 months ago

Google funds then I’m pretty sure…

skippedtoc , 7 months ago

Of course they can. If the word profit is confusing you replace it with returns or finances.

snazzles , 7 months ago

How would Mozilla finance a court case against google though?

laurelraven , 7 months ago

Users affected by it, Mozilla, any other company that comes to support Mozilla, watchdog groups like the EFF…

It can also be brought by attorneys general and governmental regulators, the FCC and FTC might have a bit to say about it…

Antitrust suits aren’t civil cases, I don’t think, so “having standing” is a bit different

I’m not a lawyer though so I could be way off base, but the antitrust cases I’ve been aware of I don’t think they were brought by companies but by government agencies

sweeny , 7 months ago

What law are they breaking? Not trying to defend Google or anything, just curious what law is blatantly being broken here because I don’t know of one

laurelraven , 7 months ago

Blatantly anticompetitive behavior where you (ab)use your dominance in one sector (i.e. YouTube) to choke out competition in another (i.e. make it slow on competing browsers) is illegal in the US and the EU, at the very least. I don’t know the specific laws or acts in play, but that’s the sort of thing that triggers antitrust lawsuits

orrk , 7 months ago

see FTC anticompetitive-practices

HawlSera , 7 months ago (edited 6 months ago)

It’s an anti competition law, they cannot penalize you for using a competitor service. This would be like getting fined by McDonald’s because I went to Taco Bell.

Benaaasaaas , 7 months ago

They are already in one anti-trust trial for search engine shenanigans.

nfsu2 , 7 months ago

It is being currently being sued by Epic Games for Anti-Trust behavior. Google offered millions of dollars to Epic so that Fortnite would be available in the Play Store and not in Epic’s own store.

erranto , 7 months ago

Been there, done that, and came on top.

Kbobabob , 7 months ago

Cost of doing business

Cannacheques , 7 months ago

Trying to convince people to use your product by crippling other people’s stuff really needs to stop. Did they not do an analysis on the issue of diminishing returns?

a1studmuffin , 7 months ago

That’s an antitrust case if ever I saw one.

bruhduh , 7 months ago

EU be like: aw shit here we go again

recapitated , 7 months ago

Just like that time that one operating was made to stop shipping with that one browser.

Jaysyn , 7 months ago

It could literally be a minute wait & I still wouldn't use Chrome.

ericisshort , 7 months ago

Google heard you and have increased the Firefox delay to 1m 30s. Would you please consider using Chrome now please?

bradv , 7 months ago

Edge would like a word

db2 , 7 months ago

Sigma Edging

FartsWithAnAccent , 7 months ago

Best I can do is boycott YouTube.

Damage , 7 months ago

Piped-bot now my best friend

Xabis , 7 months ago

I swear every time i try to use those links from the piped bot, the content either never loads or has severe buffering problems.

SexualPolytope , 7 months ago

You need to change your instance. Next time you face this, go to preferences and try changing the instance.

FartsWithAnAccent , 7 months ago

I didn’t know you could do that with piped, thanks

pirat , 7 months ago

Where would one find that bot?

Damage , 7 months ago

On here

pirat , 7 months ago

Oh, the one that finds every YouTube link and comments a piped link in some communities? Yeah, I find that bot very useful too!

Engywuck , 7 months ago

Ranting on Lemmy about a company while being addicted to (one of) their products seems to be much more effective, according to other comments in this thread. /s

tetris11 , 7 months ago

Helpful comment!

Engywuck , 7 months ago

The only helpful thing to do is stopping using YT, if you think they behave in an unrespectufl way. Complaining/ranting on Lemmy is going to be exactly as helpful as my previous comment. But, hey, who cares? I don’t even use it. Literally, not my problem.

FartsWithAnAccent , 7 months ago

What are we supposed to complain about then?

Engywuck , 7 months ago

I didn’t say you shouldn’t complain. I said that doing it is useless. Stop using YT if you want to send a message or just deal with it ¯_(ツ)_/¯

FartsWithAnAccent , 7 months ago

I’m gonna boycott and complain.

pastaPersona , 7 months ago

Sometimes I get curious about chromium based browsers and consider giving them a shot for a while.

Then Google does shit like this and I keep mainlining Firefox out of spite. Half the reasons people experience “issues” with Firefox are just dumb garbage like this (see sites / web content being developed with Chrome-based in mind)

_number8_ , 7 months ago

the website DRM thing is one of the most blackpilled and evil uses of technology i’ve ever seen

the people in charge of developing that should be put in a padded room and never allowed to see sunlight again. fucking god.

FartsWithAnAccent , 7 months ago

Woah, woah, woah, slow down: Why do they get to have padding in their room?

Jiggs , 7 months ago

I would assume so they cant easily hurt themself and have to live and suffer through it for as long as possible

Draconic_NEO , 7 months ago

But then they’ll be comfortable in there, because it’s soft and padded as opposed to cold and hard.

ImFresh3x , 7 months ago

I mean this in the least condescending way:

as far as I’m aware, even after looking it up, I think you are misusing the term blackpill.

Blackpill usually refers to a manosphere/Incel or Qanon type who has given up completely and lost all hope. In the the case of an Incel it’s that there’s no hope in ever escaping Inceldom. In the case of q anon it’s that none of the predictions about the “storm” will ever arise or come true.

I looked around and couldn’t find any other contexts that it’s used.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_pill?wprov=sfti1#

I am willing to accept that I could be wrong. But I looked all over search results etc.

Sheeple , 7 months ago

Heck I use god damn duckduckgo out of spite nowadays

Amends1782 , 7 months ago

DDG is legit great and even sometimes better than Google search now. I also am a SearXNG enjoyer

phoenixz , 7 months ago

DDG, even though apparently a Bing front end, gives legit better results than google

Sheeple , 7 months ago

It’s honestly good. It misses that “Algorithm profile” that Google has where it starts to “understand” what you mean but it’s still pretty good.

(Example. If I type in “genocide” in Google, it knows I often look for Undertale related things and pushes “Undertale genocide route” related content. For DDG I need to be clearer about what I mean)

It took a bit getting used to but I prefer it this way now.

Tattorack , 7 months ago

I have never had a reason to switch from Firefox. I used Chrome once out of curiosity, but I didn’t like it.

Katana314 , 7 months ago

I think it’s still possible to ethically use Chromium browsers, so long as it’s one of them that’s been reviewing and removing anything ludicrous Google adds. I don’t even mind MS Edge on most of my computers for the most part. Firefox doesn’t load well on my tablet.

blind3rdeye , 7 months ago

Google has been doing this kind of thing for years, to strangle their competition. For example, back when Windows Phone existed, Google went deliberately out of their way to cripple youTube, and maps. Apparently google will do anything they can to create lock-in and faux loyalty.

Google are completely evil. Here we’re talking about them using their popular products as weapons against competitors in unrelated areas. But also have a history of copying products made by others then using advertising strength to promote their version over the original. And if that somehow doesn’t work… they buy out the competitors. Both youTube and google maps are examples of this.

pelicans_plight , 7 months ago

Everyone should remember that Google itself isn’t really as evil as the people who work for it, those “people” are the only thing keeping this shitty company going. They go to work every day to try and make this world a worse place, those people who enable evil need to start to be recognized for who they truly are, the ones who want total enshittification and love watching you suffer. At what point do we start to look at thr root of this problem?

Nougat , 7 months ago

Wow, and it's literally just "If you're using Firefox, wait five seconds."

baked_tea , 7 months ago

Elon moment

dannym , 7 months ago

Let’s remember, fellas, that big tech is not a disease that needs to be eradicated. Let us not forget that Google is a legitimate corporation, not merely a group of professional stalkers. And let’s be clear: obviously you are the crazy ones for worrying about this, naturally…

Pardon my jest; I was merely echoing the absurdities often heard.

Maybe just maybe it’s time we stop with this garbage and actually stop using their services. Nothing will change if we keep using their services.

The most direct and effective strategy to inspire reform in their practices is to stop using of their platforms. Each time we use a service from Google or any similar big tech entity, we inadvertently endorse their methods.

YOU hold the power to change them by using FOSS alternatives instead.

Tattorack , 7 months ago

Yes, but the problem is the convenience.

Google has made their services convenient, which is why everyone I like to watch content of posts their stuff on YouTube. Both alternive websites and the content on them is often of inferior quality and difficult to find.

dannym , 7 months ago

Then use alternative youtube clients, like piped or freetube.

Or even better: spend money (if you can afford it) to host a peertube instance that automatically rips the videos off of youtube.

That’s an even stronger message that you’d rather spend money than use their crappy free services.

force , 7 months ago

that sounds EXPENSIVE, ima stick with piped lest my wallet get piped

dannym , 7 months ago

it’s not cheap, but it’s not prohibitively expensive either, unless you watch a prohibitive amount of youtube (i.e. you watch youtube 24/7)

You can get a 10TB hard drive for slightly under 200 dollars today, then just throw it in an old computer (even if the parts are 10+ years old, it’s fine), install a linux distro and install peertube.

Frost752 , 7 months ago

Didnt know this could be done, looks like ive got something new to throw on the home server.

2xsaiko , 7 months ago

Or even better: spend money (if you can afford it) to host a peertube instance that automatically rips the videos off of youtube.

Oh that’s amazing. I’m gonna see about doing that for channels I actively watch. Gives me an excuse to unfuck my NAS storage too since then it’ll be full faster.

Do you know of any software that does that already (I assume PeerTube itself doesn’t)?

dannym , 7 months ago

Peertube does indeed have that functionality

2xsaiko , 7 months ago

Nice!

Tattorack , 7 months ago

Piped doesn’t work most of the time. In fact, I can’t remember a single Piped link actually loading the video. And I don’t have money to spend.

Brutticus , 7 months ago

This is true. I have been having a GREAT time with Freetube

jeremyparker , 7 months ago

which is why everyone I like to watch content of posts their stuff on YouTube

I’m not sure this is exactly true - like, first off, I am not a YouTuber and I only watch a very specific kind of content there (breadtube), so idk if my opinion is valid, but

From what I’ve heard creators say, it’s not that YouTube is great, in fact it kind of sucks in a lot of ways, it’s just that the alternatives don’t do it better, and obviously don’t have the size & reach. All the things that YouTube does badly or not at all, the competition doesn’t do well either, so why bother.

You’re 100% right tho that Google’s success at this point hinges almost entirely on their convenience. Google drive/docs/sheets/etc are kinda garbage, but they’te fast, simple to use, and the integration is incredibly smooth. If there was any alternative that was as simple to transition into from email or whatever, I’d jump ship in a second.

Viking_Hippie , 7 months ago (edited 7 months ago)

Actually, the main problem isn’t that they’ve made their services convenient. Most of them are inconvenient in multiple ways.

The really big problem, the absolutely INSIDIOUS shit is how extremely inconvenient they’ve made using alternatives.

Example: Google the search engine straight up sucks from an end user perspective now. Yet because it’s where over 90% of all search engine searches happen, it’s MORE inconvenient to use any other one, no matter how much better the algorithms and what have you.

Same with YouTube: the user experience becomes worse and worse, but since it has a de facto near-monopoly of certain types of content from certain creators, best you can do is a custom frontend. Which they’re of course trying to make impossible ever since they removed the “Don’t” from their original informal slogan.

Rentlar , 7 months ago

Insidious

A good plug to use Invidious for sure, intentional or not.

Viking_Hippie , 7 months ago

Unintentional but very much welcomed 😁

Wiz , 7 months ago

Offering a free convenient service is the first step of enshittification.

[Side eye at Bluesky]

deur , 7 months ago

Under the same logic we can say that Lemmy is in its first stage of enshittification, lol. You need to refine the criteria.

Wiz , 7 months ago

Ok, a for-profit entity offering a free product.

You must be fun at parties.

steltek , 7 months ago

You described a straight up better product. That’s not convenience. You said it yourself: alternatives have worse quality.

nutsack , 7 months ago

good old fosstube

PoliticalAgitator , 7 months ago

The most direct and effective strategy to inspire reform in their practices is to stop using of their platforms.

The whole “the free market could fix it” is just neoliberal bullshit. The most hated companies in the world continue to bring in record profits and its not because people prefer their chocolate is harvested by child slaves.

They’re fully aware that it never works, but they just keep suggesting it over and over again, growing richer with successive failure, all the while blaming consumers for not preventing them doing sleazy, greedy things.

The actual most direct and effective strategy is regulations. That’s why they hate them and why there are so many of them in politics.

Hadriscus , 7 months ago

Thank you. I’m tired of hearing “it’s the consumer’s responsability” when we have governments and various regulatory bodies for this exact reason

Aceticon , 7 months ago

“Do no evil^1^”

^1^ unless we can make money from it.

HiddenLayer5 , 7 months ago

Any organisation that needs to remind themselves not to be evil is already intrinsically evil.

Aceticon , 7 months ago

Very overtly and loudly claiming a quality which should be self-evident in oneself, one’s company or one’s nation invariably means it’s not really there.

Excrubulent , 7 months ago

“People’s Democratic Republic”

Aceticon , 7 months ago

“The Greatest Democracy In The World” - Lots of US politicians, including those activelly engaged in gerrymandering and passing vote supression laws.

The dictum, supposedly from Einstein, about only the universe and human stupidity being infinite, needs to be ammended to include hypocrisy.

Excrubulent , 7 months ago (edited 7 months ago)

The country with the most Freedom™*

*Freedom™ must be redeemed in Freedom™ tokens; sufficient Freedom™ tokens entitles you to trample others’ Freedom™; insufficient Freedom™ tokens entitles you to die in the gutter

tegs_terry , 7 months ago

I think they changed it didn’t they?

HiddenLayer5 , 7 months ago

I think it’s “do the right thing” now

DEngineer , 7 months ago

For the shareholders

tegs_terry , 7 months ago

Ahh, much more leeway

JonEFive , 7 months ago

Right - “Do no evil” uhhh… Is that not your default setting?

Cannacheques , 7 months ago

I feel like there’s scales of evil here Google starts to need to highlight on a whiteboard

SendMePhotos , 7 months ago

I mean… “evil” is arbitrary, right?

Aceticon , 7 months ago

“It’s evil not to make as much money as possible”, Google founders. C-suite and board, probably.

jonne , 7 months ago

Not arbitrary enough that they thought they could keep saying it. They ditched that about a decade ago.

JonEFive , 7 months ago

There’s a reason that doesn’t appear on their site or in their docs any more. It was a canary clause.

Boomkop3 , 7 months ago

Not anymore: they ditched it for “do the right thing (for my wallet)” a couple years back

trent , 7 months ago

Actually, their slogan was “Don’t be evil.” But they revised it recently by adding a comma after the first word.

rdri , 7 months ago

Did someone actually investigate and find the exact place in scripts where this logic takes place?

EDIT: Yes. androidauthority.com/youtube-reportedly-slowing-d…

sulgoth , 7 months ago

This sounds like something that would be in the back end so likely not. But if spoofing user agents fixes the problem then I’d say it’s evidence enough to warrant a deeper look.

tegs_terry , 7 months ago

Is that easy to do?

Senshi , 7 months ago

Yes. User Agent is a http header that is part of every request you send to a server. As such, it is 100% client side and it can be whatever you want, it’s just a text string. For layman users, I’d recommend using an addon for it, e.g. addons.mozilla.org/…/user-agent-string-switcher/

Of course, you can also change the user agent string in the browser config manually. The official Mozilla support page describes the process in detail: …mozilla.org/…/how-reset-default-user-agent-firef…

rdri , 7 months ago

When they decide to do tricks in the backend differently between browsers, there will be ways to overcome that.

fernandofig , 7 months ago

Have you read past that screenshot of the code, though? It says the problem was not limited to Firefox, it seems Edge users reported problems as well. Anecdotally, I did experience that delay problem on Thorium this weekend as well. I have seen a variation of this problem almost a month ago, where sometimes the video would take a long time (like, over a minute, sometimes) to load, or often just not load at all. So I just chalked it up to Youtube having done something stupid on their end.

fosho , 7 months ago

it’s pretty inconclusive if there’s no context for how that code is called. I’m kinda confused why the article wouldn’t have provided any additional detail other than a single line of code. why bother digging at all?

_thisdot , 7 months ago

it’s part of their anti-adblock code. without going into too much details, they can instantly find out whether ad-block is trying to do anything on chrome, but on firefox they need a 5 sec delay

victorz , 7 months ago

Which is honestly to Firefox’s credit. Making it harder to find out stuff about your browser is a good thing, unless it has to do with feature support.

But the fact that they don’t give a shit and are willing to ruin the user experience for it, that’s despicable.

DolphinMath , 7 months ago

I’d be more likely to believe that if spoofing your user agent didn’t immediately fix the issue.

lipilee , 7 months ago

that half sentence in the aa article though

“That move makes sense in many ways, as the platform needs to make money to survive…”

should we also start a gofundme for youtube, i am suddenly worried for them /s

businessfish , 7 months ago

not saying we should worry for them, but youtube is run at a loss so they do actually need money from SOMEWHERE to maintain youtube. youtube still sucks and this is definitely not the way to win over users but thems the facts

billiam0202 , 7 months ago

Alphabet made $50 billion in profit last year. They’ve got enough to run YouTube, but enough isn’t enough.

Delta_V , 7 months ago

Adding this to your uBlock Origin filters also makes the problem go away:

www.youtube.com##+js(nano-stb, resolve(1), *, 0.001)