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Tetra ,
@Tetra@kbin.social avatar

I've noticed that too, I just switch to Freetube when it happens.
Simply disgusting, but it's business as usual for Google.

rchive ,

I just use Freetube either way. I can’t stand autoplaying videos or suggestions, popups, etc.

JJROKCZ ,

Is free tube just pulling YouTube’s data or it a separate site? Can you watch livestreams if it’s the former? Basically all I use YouTube for is watching a couple streamers and watching Japanese udon restaurant channels while I eat my bologna sandwich for lunch

Tetra ,
@Tetra@kbin.social avatar

It does play livestreams, yes.

JJROKCZ ,

I’ve gonna look into that then thank you

victorz ,

Not noticing this change from the EU… Guess they’re too afraid of pulling that shit here?

lud ,

Google LOVES A/B testing so it might be just that. I haven’t noticed anything either.

victorz ,

True, could just be lucky. I still haven’t noticed any ad blocking changes either, but then again I’m using Firefox with μBlock Origin…

Boomkop3 ,

They’ve been caught before, but there’s no regulation for this in some regions

victorz ,

Big shame that this wouldn’t be illegal. But hopefully soon. Very anticompetitive behavior.

Boomkop3 ,

It is, just not everywhere. Like the USA

victorz ,

Yeah, the “everywhere” was implied, thank you 😊

Mrs_deWinter ,

I’m in the EU, using Vivaldi, and have the delay since yesterday. It’s not on every video though. Seems like UBlock and YouTube are fighting each other every time I open a new link.

victorz ,

That’s interesting. Could be uBlock doing its thing then, for which I’m quite thankful

_number8_ ,

imagine sitting down to code this and thinking you’re doing the right thing

you should be able to whisteblow clearly evil technology and have some sort of economic safety net

Karyoplasma ,

Counter point: the code monkeys just do what they are being paid for. The fact it’s so easy to circumvent is a testimony on how the people implementing this shit disagree with the corporation.

zalgotext ,

Hi, code monkey here - I don’t work for a large company like Google, am paid less than a Google code monkey, and the products I work on are used by orders of magnitude less people. But even still, if my lead came to me and said “hey, I need the frontend to detect when a user is using ‘XYZ Browser’ and then introduce an artificial 5 second latency whenever they try to load a page”, I’d look at him with incredulity and tell him “no, I’m not doing that. That’s stupid and you should feel bad for suggesting it.”

Code monkeys aren’t paid to simply follow instructions given to them by someone else like some sort of robot - were paid to create applications and programs that people can use, and are usually given enough creative room to do that in a way we see as the best way.

Hossenfeffer ,
@Hossenfeffer@feddit.uk avatar

I… am paid less than a Google code monkey… I’d… tell him"That’s stupid and you should feel bad for suggesting it.”

I feel like these things are connected.

zalgotext ,

Maybe it was unclear. If I get fired for insubordination or whatever, I would be in much more pain than a Google code monkey, because I’m paid much less.

Are you thinking about it another way, where because I’m paid less, I wouldn’t care if I got fired, which makes me more emboldened to push back on my higher ups?

Karyoplasma ,

Sadly, salary and loyalty to the corporation are often proportional is what they meant.

zalgotext ,

Right, gotcha. In my experience, software developers are a bit more principled (maybe fickle is a better word lol) than that. Sure there are some dedicated “company man” types, but for the most part software devs are more loyal to the work/end product than the company

Of course my experience doesn’t speak for anyone else’s, take all this with a grain of salt, etc, etc

histic ,

I mean they need money to live

erwan ,

Google developers can easily find a job elsewhere. If they stay at Google the chose to.

FontMasterFlex ,

Isn’t it one of Google’s ‘creeds’ to “Don’t be evil”?

Okami_No_Rei ,
@Okami_No_Rei@lemmy.world avatar

I heard they quietly dropped that as their motto several years ago.

SharkEatingBreakfast ,
@SharkEatingBreakfast@sopuli.xyz avatar

Gmail is almost painfully slow on my PC (I use Adblock on Firefox). Does anyone else experience this?

And, yes, I know Gmail is very bad, you’re preaching to the choir. I am in the midst of switching over.

Zapp ,

Fear not friend, you are not alone. I too am slowly switching over, and these things take time. We are truly victims of a great bait and switch, with our digital lives held hostage. We never asked for this.

Hadriscus ,

What are you switching to ?

SharkEatingBreakfast ,
@SharkEatingBreakfast@sopuli.xyz avatar

Folks have suggested Proton Mail. It seems pretty good to me!

PainInTheAES ,

This is an aside, but I also want to give Proton points for their calendar app. I used to use Gsuite and Google calendar and no matter what I did it always opened in agenda mode. The Proton calendar has all the features of Google calendar (as far as I can tell) but their app has an option for default display mode. That brought me incredible joy.

MrSilkworm ,
@MrSilkworm@lemmy.world avatar

proton mail is indeed very good

TurdMongler ,

MXRoute and a domain name you own. Then you can switch provider anytime and actually own your @ email address.

Hadriscus ,

I may just do this… and for the mail itself, is Thunderbird still a good choice ? it’s been a while since I’ve used àa desktop client. What about mobile by the way ? thanks for your insights

TurdMongler ,

Thunderbird is great. MXRoute usually does a black Friday sale and its only $10 a year when I signed up 2 years ago.

For android mail client, I use FairEmail off Fdroid. I love it so much. It blocks tracking images and has a ton of other awesome features. I have it set up to get my 2 gmail accounts also and they are color coded to red so I can decide if its important and if so I go and change it to my non-google email or unsub. Going google free

Hadriscus ,

Appreciate this a lot. I found a good deal at Hostinger so I went with that and am now choosing my domain name. Am stuck on that page lol. It has to sound good and be memorable

Goodman ,

Seize the means of technology

Snowpix ,
@Snowpix@lemmy.ca avatar

Google Streetview is also ubgodly laggy. I have to refresh constantly to bring it to normal speed, and that lasts a few mins.

Alpha71 ,

I can recommend mail.com. 14 USD for a full year. but you can also use it for free. I just payed for it last month.

knacht1 ,
@knacht1@lemmy.world avatar

No slowdowns here. Using Gmail since it’s inception. Fi customer with a backup service. We have YouTube premium maybe I’m getting away with something. No ads and no buffering.

NegativeLookBehind ,
@NegativeLookBehind@kbin.social avatar

Did this dude really just link a Reddit post?

coffeebiscuit ,

In this case you could be neutral about the source.

themachine ,

Nah, Reddit source. Wait 5 seconds.

Wes_Dev ,

Bet it’s done in such a way that they can claim “We’re just optimizing for Chrome, not slowing down any competitors. It’s not our fault our competitors don’t using our web engine for their browsers.”

I mentioned similar shading behavior on another post, when using Firefox with Chrome or native user agents on the plain old Google search page.

Ultraviolet ,

It’s apparently not even subtle enough to make that claim, it checks the useragent and sleeps for 5 seconds if it’s not Chrome.

Tavarin ,
@Tavarin@lemmy.ca avatar

I was wondering why YouTube started taking a while to load pages in the last couple weeks. Fucking Google, pulling this shit.

funnystuff97 ,

Not that I don’t believe you, but do you have a source for that?

festus ,

It’s discussed in the firefox sub (link)

EDIT: There are some claims that this is related to anti-adblock.

spader312 ,

If changing your user agent to Chrome on Firefox fixes it that justification won’t fly

Cannacheques ,

You seem to be quite in the know, would you say that this happens often across the tech space or is this a case of web platform, and in some cases the browser developers acting out?

Wes_Dev ,

Oh, I have no idea. It’s just something I noticed previously, and has a similar thing to this post, so I thought I’d mention it. I don’t have any inside or expert knowledge here.

Quacksalber ,

I really hope they try this in the EU. The EU regulatory agencies have been on a roll lately.

DepressedCoconut ,

They are doing it here to.

badbytes ,

Yeah, user agent switch to chrome made YouTube vid instantly load. Real shitty google!

MurdoMaclachlan ,
@MurdoMaclachlan@lemmy.world avatar

Ah, I was wondering why YouTube was taking so long to load recently. I thought it was just because their code was shit, and it turns out I was right, but not in the way I thought.

MrSqueezles ,

Yeah, the simplest the answer is usually correct. Is this a conspiracy involving hundreds of Google employees intentionally building features to slow the app down on Firefox or is it incompetence because they don’t test their product on multiple browsers?

Edit: www.404media.co/youtube-says-new-5-second-video-l…

MurdoMaclachlan ,
@MurdoMaclachlan@lemmy.world avatar

Oh, so it’s shit in the way I originally thought, then.

And also shit in the second way I thought, since adblock is a symptom of how terrible they’ve made the experience on their platform and if they want less people to use it they should make that experience more reasonable.

Given the shit big companies have got up to in the past and continue to get up to, as exposed in past and ongoing antitrust cases, that conspiracy theory you mention really isn’t all that unrealistic. Yeah, it’s not what happened in this case and it isn’t the simplest solution, but it’s absolutely a believable thing for YouTube to do, though I think they would have hidden it better if they had.

nfsu2 ,
@nfsu2@feddit.cl avatar

They are really the worst scumbags ever. They want world domination.

15liam20 ,

“Don’t be evil.”

nfsu2 ,
@nfsu2@feddit.cl avatar

xd

Agrivar ,

Hasn’t been their motto for some time… and it shows.

Smacks ,
@Smacks@lemmy.world avatar

I smell a spicy lawsuit

some_guy ,

One that will outlive Firefox, as this will turn users away while lawyers build a case. Fuckers.

johannesvanderwhales ,

Firefox isn’t going to die because of this. There are already workarounds and even if there weren’t, an open source browser isn’t dependent on bringing in revenue to stay in development.

ramjambamalam ,

They do the same shit for Google search results. Search weather or stock tickers with a Chrome user agent* and you get a rich, interactive chart of the weather forecast or stock history. Search with another mobile user agent and you get a static snapshot of the weather or stock price at an instant in time.

There’s even an extension for Firefox for Android which changes the user agent for Google searches to Chrome, to get the rich content.

  • just a user agent, not an actual browser, which proves that it isn’t about browser capability, but rather abusing their monopolistic market position in search to further their web browser’s market share. Sound familiar, Microsoft from the 90’s?
TangledHyphae ,

I just tried this and confirmed it, using Firefox’s recommended user agent manager:

addons.mozilla.org/…/user-agent-string-switcher/

It’s the only one I could find so far that doesn’t have a security warning.

Infiltrated_ad8271 , (edited )
@Infiltrated_ad8271@kbin.social avatar

I didn't see it, I guess ublock again saved my ass before I could realize it.

SamVergeudetZeit ,
@SamVergeudetZeit@feddit.de avatar

This cant be legal

BritishDuffer ,

It’s certainly not something I would do if I was in the middle of an antitrust lawsuit. Maybe that’s why I’m not a billionaire.

F_Haxhausen ,
@F_Haxhausen@lemmy.world avatar

Stop using youtube. It is made of poop.

maddenim ,

that’s where the content is and content is king

vsh ,
@vsh@lemm.ee avatar

Content king was sentenced for being pedo to 14 year olds. I smell Andrew Tate syndrome.

maddenim ,

my comment wasn’t referencing any character or profile called content king as I don’t know about them. It’s more so referring to the fact that most people will go to where the most content is. There is no point in using other services if you aren’t finding what you are looking for…

American_Jesus ,
maddenim , (edited )

I’m not very familiar with those services but are they not relying on YouTube, and therefore still YouTube in a way?

edit before anyone argues, I know these alternative frontends bring many privacy advantages and many usability advantages (and disadvantages). But the content still comes from YouTube which is what my argument is about. I wouldn’t say an alternative frontend (or client for that matter) is not using YouTube…

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