this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2023
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I know everyone wants to be mad, and I'm no fan of Google. But this is almost certainly an unintentional bug.
Google, more than anything, wants watch hours for ad money. They don't want you frustrated by the alow ux. They want you watching advertisements.
Not a bug - they literally added a 5 second timer in the code: https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/17ywbjj/whenever_i_open_a_youtube_video_in_a_new_tab_its/k9w3ei4/
Yes, there is a 5s timeout in youtube's code. However, it is not aimed at Firefox users.
The same code shows up on a fresh chrome installation without any extensions. And the code does not check for the user agent. So the 5s timeout is not there to make Firefox a bad choice for youtube. Following response to your link goes a bit deeper into what the code could mean: https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/17ywbjj/whenever_i_open_a_youtube_video_in_a_new_tab_its/ka08uqj/
That doesn't explain why it stops happening when you change your user agent in Firefox.
I could believe this, but if google doesn't want me to be frustrated on youtube, why do they make it so annoying?
Pushing youtubetv in annoying new ways, putting ads in the middle of songs, serving ads with frustrating frequency, using multiple types of ads so your brain can't just tune out until you hit skip, locking basic functions like add to playlist behind premium accounts.
From their behavior it sure looks like they want me to be annoyed.
They want you making money from them. So watching ads and paying subscription fees. If you aren’t doing either of those things, you’re causing them to lose money. So yeah, they’re gonna make it annoying.
Ads which can still be blocked fairly easily on Firefox, unlike in Chrome, which is banning ublock(& likely all other blockers) browser-wide next year. They want to make the firefox experience worse so people have a reason to go back to their ad infested browser.
Nah this doesn't make sense. You, and everyone else, will sit through five seconds of loading vs watching an ad. You know this, Google know this.
Occams razor is at play here. If they want to to be conspiratorial, they have better and smarter ways to do it.
I think it's naive to think google would do this, which is so easily bypassed, when they have so many better options that wouldn't get the European courts frothing. Again, occams razor
As someone else posted, it's very much intentional: https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/17ywbjj/whenever_i_open_a_youtube_video_in_a_new_tab_its/k9w3ei4/
Well this rumor came from the linus tech tips forums so just by that I assume it's sensationalized bullshit.
Unfortunately not. It's intentional as someone else looked to the explanation below
If they are able to make you switch, you become a heck of a lot more profitable long term as they’re able to collect a loooot more data
Probably connected to them forcing v3 on chrome soon, which will gimp down completely ublock on chrome.