Users on Firefox are facing slow YouTube loading, with evidence suggesting an intentional delay by Google. Spoofing Firefox as Chrome eliminates the delay, revealing a “timeout” function in YouTube’s code, possibly linked to an ad-blocker crackdown. Some users report improved loading times by filtering out specific code, while no delay is observed when spoofing Chrome as Firefox.
One might assume this is simply a connection issue, but the video shows pretty clearly that this is a choice by Google. When spoofing the user agent of Firefox to make it appear to be Chrome, YouTube loads up completely as normal. There’s no wait time, and the loading as a whole is drastically faster.
I thought I was going crazy.
Is this even legal? I’m hopeing that the EU will come to our rescue once more.
A solution for us Firefox user is to install an addon like User-Agent Switcher by Erin Schlarb; Which is what I use now, and it works great.
Cited / Sourced from:
Attention from Reddit r/LinusTechTips https://www.reddit.com/r/LinusTechTips/comments/17zl69x/youtube_has_started_to_artificially_slow_down/ by user james2432
Original Post Reddit r/YouTube https://www.reddit.com/r/youtube/comments/17z8hsz/youtube_has_started_to_artificially_slow_down/ by user vk6_
Youtube has started to artificially slow down video load times if you use Firefox. Spoofing Chrome magically makes this problem go away.
byu/vk6_ inyoutube
Titled from Reddit above.
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