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.”
“They’re the same picture.”
Also, that does not explain why:
- Chrome users who use an adblocker don’t get the issue
- Firefox users who do not use an adblocker get the issue
- FIrefox users who use an adblocker, but change User Agent to Chrome, don’t get the issue
Now, if only we knew who made Chrome and YouTube… The mind boggles.
Given that Google’s been talking about switching Chrome to a new plugin format that would limit the ability of adblockers to function on Chrome, and given that Google owns Youtube and profits from the ads Youtube displays…
Nope, I’m not connecting the dots. Not sure why Google would be wanting people switch from Firefox to Chrome at this time.
It’s more obvious than that even; their SEC paperwork states that adblockers are a risk to their profits. That’s more than enough info to assume they’re going to go to war in the near future (now) with them.
Dear God, won’t anyone think of the shareholders?
What really pisses me off is that mv3 is becoming a standard that Vivaldi, Firefox, Opera, Edge, etc. will use.
Mind you that Firefox will adjust it to be able to fully support ad blocker.
The last scenario is clearly a breach of anti-trust laws. It is time for alphabet to be broken up. Their monopoly is way worse than AT&T every was.
Alphabet’s monopoly is bad, make no mistake.
But they aren’t controlling all electronic means of communication for 90% of the continental United States, as AT&T did in the ma’ bell and pa’ bell days.
Uh… Gmail, Ad sense, search?
They’ve got like a dozen duopolies going on, they have far more control and ability to leverage it than Bell ever did
Chrome sends every single website you visit to Google. You already pay with your privacy.
I know several websites consider firefox’s built-in privacy settings an adblocker in certain configurations. I get notices on many sites and use no adblocker. Not sure if it’s the case here.
What do you mean by change user agent to chrome? Asking 4 a friend
When you browse to a website, your browser passes info about itself to the server hosting that site. This info is intended to help the server provide the best rendering code for your browser. This is called your User Agent.
However, Google is using it here to identify Firefox users, and is apparently choosing to lump them all in a box called “adblock users” instead of trying to identify an ad blocker more accurately.
For a specific how to, there’s a bunch of firefox addons that do it, but the mozilla recommended one is this
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/user-agent-string-switcher/
It’s super easy to use, just open it and it gives a bunch of options.
This is my current (fake) user agent;
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/118.0.0.0 Safari/537.36
With two or three clicks, this is my new (fake) user agent;
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; CrOS x86_64 14541.0.0) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/114.0.0.0 Safari/537.36
A few more clicks;
Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 10; HLK-AL00) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/104.0.5112.102 Mobile Safari/537.36 EdgA/104.0.1293.70
And finally;
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 10.0; Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_7_3; Trident/6.0)
Now, that last one is making it look like I’m using internet explorer… Youtube videos will not load with that last one active. Claims my browser is too old and not supported.
I don’t know why they all start with Mozilla/5.0 but the apparently a lot of websites will block your requests if you don’t have it (or a valid browser strings like it?)
Just a reminder to not use user agent switcher unless it’s absolutely necessary, and if you do, limit it only for certain sites that need it. If enough people change their user agent, website operators will be like “See, no one use Firefox anymore. We shouldn’t bother to support it anymore”.
5 seconds of silence vs 30+ seconds of ads. Tough choice Google, tough choice.
The degree in which corporations engage in psychological warfare against customers is astounding. Not surprising, just outrageous. Don’t want notifications on? We’re going to ask you to turn on notifications in the the program every single day until you do it. Don’t want to watch ads because our infinite greed has destroyed what used to be a good platform with a reasonable number of ads before we bought it? Then we’ll make the experience less pleasant until you comply. They already make multiple parts of YouTube disagree with ad blockers on purpose to break the sites features. Not that I use anything other than NewPipe and Piped anymore anyway. I’m just sick of shitty corporations acting like we’re children who can be punished.
We are in a war indeed.
I think it’s a new trend with CEOs and investors. They want infinite growth so the strategy is aquire / create, grow, squeeze, throw away, while creating new products to migrate fed up customers. Rinse and repeat.
Investors goal: maximize ROI this year.
CEO goal: infinite growth and/or increase share price to keep funds flowing.
I believe the current economic behavior isn’t sustainable. Some day things will go south.
The idea that the only real duty of corporate leadership is to drive shareholder profit is apocalyptically naive and ultimately nihilistic, and it has been since the words dribbled from Milton Friedman into the NYT magazine back in 1970.
short term. The problem is driving short term profit. In the short term, you profit by abusing your customers. If you considered long term profit, you need to also consider customer satisfaction
No, I stand by what I said.
If you build something well, it will sell itself. You won’t need financial gymnastics to make your company or the product look good.
Stupid financial tactics like stock buybacks (which, as a result of how the stock market works, have a direct positive impact on stock price) should be illegal.
The problem is the focus on profit over and above the focus on literally anything else. That’s what modern corporate leadership has come to understand as the true meaning behind Friedman’s words. And it’s killing our society, our environment, and in many cases, the companies themselves (because the tactics are obviously unsustainable).
It’s like when a teacher can’t target the bad kid so they punish the whole class instead.
Bro my position is very clear. I’d rather forget about YouTube entirely than let ads back into my life
While I think Google is a monster that needs to be destroyed, it’s silly to me that your two options are either block ads or leave. The third option would be pay for the service. If your only problem is the ads and not the tracking (which probably isn’t true, but it’s the only complaint you made in the comment), then paying for it is a valid solution. It shouldn’t be controversial to say video hosting costs money to run, which obviously includes YouTube. So giving it out for free is simply not a realistic option. You’re free to leave, but you won’t have anywhere else to go that meets the “free and no ads” requirement. If you realistically don’t want ads, you will have to pay. And if you’re fine with paying, YouTube is currently the platform with the most content to offer.
Honestly, I’m thankful paying is an option. I wish Google would offer a paid package overall to stop the tracking/data collection. I would literally just give them my money for actual privacy with their services.
I would pay for the service if it weren’t an absolutely ridiculous price.
$14 a month is bonkers.
I value YouTube, at most, at about $5 a month. I can easily do without it.
I value YouTube, at most, at about $5 a month. I can easily do without it.
There you have it. If the cost of the service is not worth it, then users won’t buy it. Either enough users will pay for it that the service will stay as it is for the price it is, they will decrease the cost of the service, or improve the service they are offering. Or, given Google’s track record, just kill of the service entirely.
I will also point out that many users pay for Spotify for $11 USD a month. YouTube premium includes YT Music, which is a direct competitor to Spotify. So for users who pay for Spotify, it would be virtually $3 for ad-free YouTube. Of course this doesn’t work if you don’t pay for a music streaming service, but as far as services go it certainly isn’t unreasonably priced. Sure, it may be unfair that they don’t offer just a YT ad-free package, perhaps with all this backlash they will. Or perhaps not. It’s Google, they’ll do whatever they fuck they want.
Oh wow, I just opened lemmy because a YouTube video was taking extra time to open in Firefox lol.
That’s already been confirmed to be bullshit…And what I mean by that is that youtube’s claim is bullshit.
This is why I refuse to pay for YouTube. They are literally actively making the experience worse, rather than trying to make the paid experience better. This is laughable.
Freetube, Newpipe, Indivious. All great.
I’m nervous about how long it’ll be until those stop working
That might be hard unless they start requiring logins.
Twitter has already moved in that direction.
I don’t mind ads, I understand that websites need to finance themselves to cover their costs (and maybe build up some capital to expand). But I do mind tracking, user profiling, personalization / user targeting, trading this data with dubious companies worldwide, and obnoxious ads, for example pop-ups or auto-play videos with a 1 micron sized close button, or a forced timed ad which is hiding the content.
It’s like having a bunch of people following you around, taking note of everything you do, evaluating that data, making statistics, dicsussing it with other people you don’t know, etc… Then, when you want to make yourself a sandwich, step in between you and your sandwich, taking up a megaphone and scream into your face : “OH, WE NOTICED THAT YOU ARE MAKING A SANDWICH. CAN WE INTERST YOU IN NEW FANCY BUTTER KNIVES FOR ONLY 59,99 €?” [Then going on about it for 3 minutes before they are stepping out of your way].
There are laws against that in real life, and in the digital realm this is missing. Considering how much time a lot of people spend online this is something which needs to be taken seriously.
It’s really scary sometimes. There was a time when I was stupid enough to use facebook, just to stay in touch with friends. Once I talked with a friend about allergies and asthma, and I told them I have a pollen allergy. A short time later an ad showed up on my facebook feed, advertising some nasal spray for allergies. Wtf?! And that’s just the surface. “Harmless” ads. Who knows what else happens with that data?
And then we get stuff like Cambridge Analytica.
I find this so weird. Like, I want the exact literal opposite of what you want - I want personalized ads about shit I might conceivably click on.
I want usable personalized internet that knows where I am and offers me local deals and hotspots.
The hell are you so afraid of? Honestly?
Filter bubbles are one thing, which I find is a huge disadvantage to personalization. You’ll never learn about new stuff, because it will never be presented to you, since someone assumes that you blong to a specific box.
Another is that I value my privacy. It’s no one’s business what I do, when, where, with whom and how. Apart from that, there is no guarantee that this information is not being misused.
For example, I’m thinking about political campaigns, which target specific user groups on the one hand, or spread misinformation and distrust to others. I see such forms of information steering as detrimental to democratic societies. Free and unbiased information is crucial for critical thinking.
So you want to constantly be a slave to your consumerist impulses as you uncritically consume everything thrown at you, despite all the evidence that these companies can literally manipulate your perception of reality through targeted political advertising and echo chambers? Enjoy your terrifying dystopia, but at least you think you’re getting a ‘local deal’ so who cares, right?
So you want to constantly be a slave to your consumerist impulses as you uncritically consume everything thrown at you,
Holy shit dude what happens to you when you see an ad??
You need to inform yourself about advertising. Go and look up Edward Bernays. You literally can’t stop ads affecting you, except by eliminating them. You think you’re being a critical consumer, but you’re right where they want you.
I know more about advertising than you do man, sorry
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5 second ad delay in blessed silence
5 seconds of someone screaming into my ear “BUY! BUY! BUY!”
Oh, no! Better disable my ad blocker quick!
So what? I have to wait about 5 seconds anyway because I have a slow internet connection. No big deal. 5 seconds of not watching a youtube video is probably good for you.
They forced our hands in creating and using adblockers. Remember how awful the web was getting before we could adblock? Pop ups, force play videos with full sound, entire webpages full of ads with a tiny bit of content in the middle.
I’m using Firefox but is it not possible to block ads in chrome too?
Not when they roll out manifest v3
If they haven’t already, Google is in the process of disabling ad block extensions on all chrome based browsers. There have been a ton of posts about this on Lemmy.
Random article that came up on search
https://www.androidauthority.com/google-chrome-manifest-v3-changes-3386506/
It won’t be possible in the future. It should be happening soonish if I’m remembering correctly. There’s a change to how add-ons will be allowed to work in chrome.
