this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2023
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[–] [email protected] 528 points 11 months ago (34 children)

The fuck?? Isn’t this anti competitive behaviour?

[–] [email protected] 335 points 11 months ago (2 children)

In a previous generation, governments would go after this blatant anti competitive behaviour.

[–] [email protected] 224 points 11 months ago (2 children)

I'm sure the EU will still.

[–] [email protected] 158 points 11 months ago (2 children)

It’s just a shame that there’s really only one government organization globally that will still stand up to corporations.

[–] [email protected] 43 points 11 months ago (1 children)

To be fair China will send you to a reeducation camp or disappear you if you try to act like a western billionaire.

[–] [email protected] 43 points 11 months ago

China will make you disappear for many things including speaking up against the genocide of religious minorities ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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[–] [email protected] 42 points 11 months ago (4 children)

The current US Federal Trade Commission is quite agressive compared to other FTCs historically.

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[–] [email protected] 137 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (7 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 58 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 381 points 11 months ago (4 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 135 points 11 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 74 points 11 months ago (1 children)

And it cost them 280 million in the 90s ouch

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[–] [email protected] 70 points 11 months ago (7 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 286 points 11 months ago (6 children)
[–] [email protected] 136 points 11 months ago (4 children)

So this is part of a larger adblock checker, if the ad doesn't load within 5 seconds, it fails and triggers the adblocker warning. Since the ad should load in 3, they've set it for 5. If you have ubo, you won't see the warning that it then wants to pop up, it just seems (and is) a 5 second delay. Changing the UA probably removes this from Firefox because then the clientside scripts will attempt to use builtin Chrome functions that wouldn't need this hacky script to detect the adblock. Since they don't exist, it just carries on.

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[–] [email protected] 103 points 11 months ago (9 children)

This is some ultimate scumbaggery.

[–] [email protected] 95 points 11 months ago (1 children)

This should be illegal, Firefox being their competition (tangentially)

[–] [email protected] 44 points 11 months ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 251 points 11 months ago (3 children)

This is why net neutrality is important. To prevent bullshit like this from happening.

[–] [email protected] 121 points 11 months ago

This is literally why net neutrality needs to be regulated. Corporations will artificially make problems to induce additional earnings.

Super scummy, anti-customer behavior.

[–] [email protected] 48 points 11 months ago (2 children)

That's not what net neutrality is about. NN is about carriers and ISPs treating all services and websites equally. Don't feature creep NN. It weakens the arguments for why why we need NN.

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[–] [email protected] 215 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (9 children)

Doesn't this break competition laws?
Couldn't Google/YouTube be sued over this?

[–] [email protected] 155 points 11 months ago (13 children)

Microsoft got repeatedly hit over this kind of shenanigans in MSIE during and after the anti-trust lawsuit.

Sadly, that was 20 years ago. I'm not having much faith in American justice system doing anything about this nowadays.

[–] [email protected] 51 points 11 months ago (8 children)

They really weren't that effective with Microsoft then either. The antitrust was far too late for Netscape and allowed Microsoft to hold a dominate market share with IE until they allowed the browser to deprecate and Google came in with a much better browser and took over the browser market (and are now doing the same bullshit).

As long as we keep giving these companies meaningless fines or wait until the damage is irreversible companies are going to always push the limit and look at any repercussions as just a cost of doing business.

So yeah, not much faith in anything changing.

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[–] [email protected] 209 points 11 months ago (6 children)

I wonder how long it'll be before google gets sued for their anti-competitive behavior.

[–] [email protected] 114 points 11 months ago (18 children)

Oh I imagine the papers are being filed as we speak, because this is blatantly illegal.

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[–] [email protected] 173 points 11 months ago (2 children)

That's an antitrust case if ever I saw one.

[–] [email protected] 57 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

EU be like: aw shit here we go again

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[–] [email protected] 130 points 11 months ago (1 children)

It could literally be a minute wait & I still wouldn't use Chrome.

[–] [email protected] 71 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Google heard you and have increased the Firefox delay to 1m 30s. Would you please consider using Chrome now please?

[–] [email protected] 48 points 11 months ago (13 children)

Best I can do is boycott YouTube.

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[–] [email protected] 119 points 11 months ago (7 children)

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)

[–] [email protected] 56 points 11 months ago (5 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 104 points 11 months ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 86 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Wow, and it's literally just "If you're using Firefox, wait five seconds."

[–] [email protected] 47 points 11 months ago

Elon moment

[–] [email protected] 80 points 11 months ago (20 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 47 points 11 months ago (1 children)

The most direct and effective strategy to inspire reform in their practices is to stop using of their platforms.

The whole "the free market could fix it" is just neoliberal bullshit. The most hated companies in the world continue to bring in record profits and its not because people prefer their chocolate is harvested by child slaves.

They're fully aware that it never works, but they just keep suggesting it over and over again, growing richer with successive failure, all the while blaming consumers for not preventing them doing sleazy, greedy things.

The actual most direct and effective strategy is regulations. That's why they hate them and why there are so many of them in politics.

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[–] [email protected] 79 points 11 months ago (17 children)

"Do no evil^1^"

^1^ unless we can make money from it.

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[–] [email protected] 76 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (12 children)

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/

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[–] [email protected] 71 points 11 months ago

Adding this to your uBlock Origin filters also makes the problem go away:

www.youtube.com##+js(nano-stb, resolve(1), *, 0.001)

[–] [email protected] 61 points 11 months ago (4 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 58 points 11 months ago (9 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 50 points 11 months ago (11 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 49 points 11 months ago (13 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 47 points 11 months ago (1 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 47 points 11 months ago (7 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 43 points 11 months ago

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

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