Mastodawn

Jason Koebler Nov 20, 2023

New: Firefox users have reported an "artificial" 5-second delay when they try to load YouTube videos that is magically fixed if they use Chrome, which has been going viral in a few different places. I asked Google what is going on. They

1) Didn't deny the artificial wait time is happening
2) Said it's part of its war on ad blockers, not targeted at Firefox

Mozilla also told me no indication this is targeted at Firefox

https://www.404media.co/youtube-says-new-5-second-video-load-delay-is-supposed-to-punish-ad-blockers-not-firefox-users/

YouTube Says New 5-Second Video Load Delay Is Supposed to Punish Ad Blockers, Not Firefox Users

Firefox users are reporting an 'artificial' load time on YouTube videos. YouTube says it's part of a plan to make people who use adblockers "experience suboptimal viewing, regardless of the browser they are using."

404 Media

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B4ckBOne Nov 21, 2023

@jasonkoebler
What if you change the user agent?
What about different user.js setups?
Is LibreFox affected as well?
Some questions come to mind...

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emberquill

@B4ckBOne @jasonkoebler It's difficult to test because it's not universally affecting everyone in a particular group. Possibly some A/B testing going on, so some Firefox users are reporting no issues.

People who experience the issue have tracked down a particular bit of Javascript that causes the delay (and seems to have no function other than delaying the page load). Adding a custom filter to catch that script solved the issue for me. It only affected videos opened in a new tab. Seemed to still happen with adblock disabled but it could've been due to a cookie they set or something as I never tried clearing them. Never tried changing user agent because that trick mostly stopped working for me several years ago when websites found other ways to fingerprint browsers.