The fuck?? Isn’t this anti competitive behaviour?
In a previous generation, governments would go after this blatant anti competitive behaviour.
I’m sure the EU will still.
It’s just a shame that there’s really only one government organization globally that will still stand up to corporations.
To be fair China will send you to a reeducation camp or disappear you if you try to act like a western billionaire.
China will make you disappear for many things including speaking up against the genocide of religious minorities ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
For now
Honestly with the speed new BS crops up I don’t think they will.
The current US Federal Trade Commission is quite agressive compared to other FTCs historically.
True. Though they have been stuck with 30 years of damage simply reverse too.
Think of it as 30 years of rent they’re now claiming.
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
then why do we have like 4 conglomerates making everything in the grocery store?
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:
! Bypass 5 seconds delay added by YouTube www.youtube.com##+js(nano-stb, resolve(1), 5000, 0.001)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.
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.
Good God I would hate to see the Mr Beast hell that your front page must be
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.
I always forget other people still allow cookies etc, I’m over here like an internet hermit, using Libre browser
I block all third-party cookies, but I do want some basic functionality out of the internet.
If Firefox is the only browser that allows ad blockers to run effectively, Google would have the excuse they need to slow Firefox town.
And wouldn’t you know it, Google is implementing Manifest V3, the adblock killer, on Chrome once again.
There’s a point where a monopolistic company reaches a critical mass that even “voting with your feet” and moving to Firefox won’t fix, if the vast majority of browser users are on Chrome.
Thanks I’ll get back to this later
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.
If you’re networked with the right people in the US, laws don’t matter
Yes. The US DOJ has a website for reporting antitrust concerns
Yes. It is. And consumers can’t do a thing about it.
Yes.
Is it more anti competitive than McDonald’s only selling McDonald’s burgers or preventing you from bringing Taco Bell tacos in from outside?
🙄 No it would be like Ford owning gas stations and pumping faster for Ford vehicles than Chevy.
Doesn’t Tesla do the equivalent of that with charging stations?
Maybe. But Tesla doesn’t own over 50% of the charging station market share.
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).
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!!
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.
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
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.
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Yes. Yes, it is!
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McDonald’s doesn’t actually give a shit if you bring in food from other places.
McDonald’s probably does care, but their minimum wage employees don’t.
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How?
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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.
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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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
this guy’s scared of mcdonalds security LOL
How to spot a Ms employee
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.
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
And it cost them 280 million in the 90s ouch
Something tells me they survived.
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.
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?
Not you or me. But most people, yeah.
That is, as always, the problem: it works for them. The average Joe isn’t going to implement a new filter into ublock…
How does one “spoof” chrome?
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.
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.
It works for me now. Only took them 8 years
In my other comment I provide a link to the US DOJ anti-trust complaint center website.
BTW, this:
This is why net neutrality is important. To prevent bullshit like this from happening.
Doesn’t this break competition laws?
Couldn’t Google/YouTube be sued over this?I wonder how long it’ll be before google gets sued for their anti-competitive behavior.
That’s an antitrust case if ever I saw one.
EU be like: aw shit here we go again
Just like that time that one operating was made to stop shipping with that one browser.
It could literally be a minute wait & I still wouldn’t use Chrome.
Google heard you and have increased the Firefox delay to 1m 30s. Would you please consider using Chrome now please?
Best I can do is boycott YouTube.
Piped-bot now my best friend
I swear every time i try to use those links from the piped bot, the content either never loads or has severe buffering problems.
You need to change your instance. Next time you face this, go to preferences and try changing the instance.
I didn’t know you could do that with piped, thanks
Where would one find that bot?
On here
Oh, the one that finds every YouTube link and comments a piped link in some communities? Yeah, I find that bot very useful too!
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
Helpful comment!
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.
What are we supposed to complain about then?
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)_/¯
Edge would like a word
Sigma Edging
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)
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.
Woah, woah, woah, slow down: Why do they get to have padding in their room?
I would assume so they cant easily hurt themself and have to live and suffer through it for as long as possible
But then they’ll be comfortable in there, because it’s soft and padded as opposed to cold and hard.
deleted by creator
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.
https://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.
Heck I use god damn duckduckgo out of spite nowadays
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.
I have never had a reason to switch from Firefox. I used Chrome once out of curiosity, but I didn’t like it.
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.
Wow, and it’s literally just “If you’re using Firefox, wait five seconds.”
Elon moment
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.
“Do no evil1”
1 unless we can make money from it.
There’s a reason that doesn’t appear on their site or in their docs any more. It was a canary clause.
Any organisation that needs to remind themselves not to be evil is already intrinsically evil.
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.
“People’s Democratic Republic”
“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.
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
I think they changed it didn’t they?
I think it’s “do the right thing” now
For the shareholders
Ahh, much more leeway
Right - “Do no evil” uhhh… Is that not your default setting?
Not anymore: they ditched it for “do the right thing (for my wallet)” a couple years back
Actually, their slogan was “Don’t be evil.” But they revised it recently by adding a comma after the first word.
I mean… “evil” is arbitrary, right?
Not arbitrary enough that they thought they could keep saying it. They ditched that about a decade ago.
“It’s evil not to make as much money as possible”, Google founders. C-suite and board, probably.
I feel like there’s scales of evil here Google starts to need to highlight on a whiteboard
Did someone actually investigate and find the exact place in scripts where this logic takes place?
EDIT: Yes. https://www.androidauthority.com/youtube-reportedly-slowing-down-videos-firefox-3387206/
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.
Is that easy to do?
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. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/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: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-reset-default-user-agent-firefox
When they decide to do tricks in the backend differently between browsers, there will be ways to overcome that.
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?
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
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.
I’d be more likely to believe that if spoofing your user agent didn’t immediately fix the issue.
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.
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
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
Alphabet made $50 billion in profit last year. They’ve got enough to run YouTube, but enough isn’t enough.
Adding this to your uBlock Origin filters also makes the problem go away:
www.youtube.com##+js(nano-stb, resolve(1), *, 0.001)
