• PerogiBoi@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

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

    • vxx@lemmy.world
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      1 year 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.

    • micka190@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      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.

      • moody@lemmings.world
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        1 year ago

        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.

    • rchive@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Is it more anti competitive than McDonald’s only selling McDonald’s burgers or preventing you from bringing Taco Bell tacos in from outside?

          • dubyakay@lemmy.ca
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            1 year ago

            Maybe. But Tesla doesn’t own over 50% of the charging station market share.

            • agent_flounder@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              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).

        • rchive@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          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.

          • agent_flounder@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            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
      • qfjp@lemmy.one
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        1 year ago

        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.

        • rchive@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          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.

          • agent_flounder@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            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.

          • qfjp@lemmy.one
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            1 year ago

            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).

            • rchive@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              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.

              • qfjp@lemmy.one
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                1 year ago

                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.

      • grue@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago
        1. Yes. Yes, it is!

        2. McDonald’s doesn’t actually give a shit if you bring in food from other places.

  • scholar@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    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.

    • ikidd@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      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.

      • localhost443@discuss.tchncs.de
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        1 year ago

        I was wondering how badly out of context the above quote must be considering the UA isn’t checked in the function. Above poster is trying to construe it as a pure and simple permanent delay for Firefox.

        That being said, the solution is still bullshit.

        • Adalast@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          That is just the timeout function, not the call stack. It is likely called in a function that uses a UA check.

        • Cosmic Cleric@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I was wondering how badly out of context the above quote must be considering the UA isn’t checked in the function. Above poster is trying to construe it as a pure and simple permanent delay for Firefox.

          The UA check can happen before the function is called though.

      • Thermal_shocked@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        The thing that gets me is they think no one will ever find this stuff. There are hundreds of thousands of people (maybe more) who are actively looking ways to block ads and get around this behavior. There’s no way it’ll ever go unnoticed.

        • Natanael@slrpnk.net
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          1 year ago

          They could literally have used some variance in implementation, server side bandwidth limitations, etc, but THIS is just blatantly obvious

            • AeroLemming@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              I hope so. I’d like to think we have a few people on the inside secretly fighting for the average consumer.

              • fossilesque@mander.xyz
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                1 year ago

                The world runs on the shoulders of disgruntled employees. This smells like a deliberate act backed up with a paper trail to protect the guy in charge of implementing it from taking the blame. But, I realise that also may be my imagination… It’s a compelling tale regardless.

                • Cosmic Cleric@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  The world runs on the shoulders of disgruntled employees.

                  That’s one hell of a phrase that should keep any CEO awake at night.

          • Aux@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            I believe that Google is just trolling people real hard. There are much better ways to disable any adblocks, but they are not even trying.

    • umbraroze@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      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.

  • fenrasulfr@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Let’s hope Europe stars investigating Google as a gatekeeper. That seemed to work miracles on Apple.

  • ramjambamalam@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    They do the same shit for Google search results. Search weather or stock tickers with a Chrome user agent* and you get a rich, interactive chart of the weather forecast or stock history. Search with another mobile user agent and you get a static snapshot of the weather or stock price at an instant in time.

    There’s even an extension for Firefox for Android which changes the user agent for Google searches to Chrome, to get the rich content.

    * just a user agent, not an actual browser, which proves that it isn’t about browser capability, but rather abusing their monopolistic market position in search to further their web browser’s market share. Sound familiar, Microsoft from the 90’s?

    • steltek@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      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.

  • Danny M@lemmy.escapebigtech.info
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    1 year ago

    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.

    • Tattorack@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Yes, but the problem is the convenience.

      Google has made their services convenient, which is why everyone I like to watch content of posts their stuff on YouTube. Both alternive websites and the content on them is often of inferior quality and difficult to find.

      • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Actually, the main problem isn’t that they’ve made their services convenient. Most of them are inconvenient in multiple ways.

        The really big problem, the absolutely INSIDIOUS shit is how extremely inconvenient they’ve made using alternatives.

        Example: Google the search engine straight up sucks from an end user perspective now. Yet because it’s where over 90% of all search engine searches happen, it’s MORE inconvenient to use any other one, no matter how much better the algorithms and what have you.

        Same with YouTube: the user experience becomes worse and worse, but since it has a de facto near-monopoly of certain types of content from certain creators, best you can do is a custom frontend. Which they’re of course trying to make impossible ever since they removed the “Don’t” from their original informal slogan.

      • sweeny@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        What law are they breaking? Not trying to defend Google or anything, just curious what law is blatantly being broken here because I don’t know of one

        • laurelraven@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          1 year ago

          Blatantly anticompetitive behavior where you (ab)use your dominance in one sector (i.e. YouTube) to choke out competition in another (i.e. make it slow on competing browsers) is illegal in the US and the EU, at the very least. I don’t know the specific laws or acts in play, but that’s the sort of thing that triggers antitrust lawsuits

        • Queen HawlSera@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          It’s an anti competition law, they cannot penalize you for using a competitor service. This would be like getting fined by McDonald’s because I went to Taco Bell.

  • Soggytoast@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Lately (few months) YouTube will not load whatsoever on my android phone nor tablet very often, activating a VPN fixes it instantly. Using basic YouTube app

        • spamspeicher@feddit.de
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          1 year ago

          It is possible. Maybe the peering from his ISP to YouTube is shit/ overloaded. That was an issue for Deutsche Telekom for a few years because Telekom didn’t want to pay for better peering. With a VPN it is possible to get good peering to your ISP and YouTube and in return faster load speeds.

        • ARk@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          No, but it does affect what route your traffic goes through.

  • flop_leash_973@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Not that I think Google is a great company, but why is this on its own proof of anything based on this single persons video evidence? In my single person test I don’t see that 5 second delay when using Firefox and browsing around Youtube. Seems far more likely to be an issue with this persons browser setup than something Google did to me.

    • Adalast@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      And this is precisely why they use an A/B architecture to implement these sorts of changes. “It’s not happening on mine, must be in your setup.” delays/prevents people from recognizing the bad behavior, and instead of them being called out on it or forced to behave properly, the users they abuse just give up and switch back to Chrome because it “works better”, then the A/B lists are shuffled again and the process repeats.

      • flop_leash_973@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Or, they could use an A/B architecture because it makes good design sense when you are dealing with a change that will impact millions/billions of people. But the conspiracy theory’s sure are a lot more fun to wallow in I will admit.

        • homicidalrobot@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          “Conspiracy theory is sure are a lot more fun to wallow in”. Did you miss the recent youtube adblock shenanigans? Do you think google is your friend? Are you aware discord is google adservices integrated? Are you under the impression google wouldn’t do something like this to leverage more data from people using one of their sites? Are you unfamiliar with the recent and upcoming OTHER changes to make chrome less friendly? Do you know about google AMP? You’re defending a corporation and not an individual here, really take time to consider what you’re calling conspiracy theory is (the plural is theories)

          • flop_leash_973@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            A company doing shitty things does not mean everything you don’t like that comes out of them is some mustache twirling villain plot. You should spend more time in the real world and less time in the Lemmy/Reddit echo chamber.

              • Cosmic Cleric@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                I feel compelled to come back to this thread and eat my crow.

                Thank you for doing this. If more people owned up to their mistakes and corrected them, things would be a lot better.

        • Cosmic Cleric@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Or, they could use an A/B architecture because it makes good design sense when you are dealing with a change that will impact millions/billions of people.

          Both could be true though.

  • Murdo Maclachlan@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Ah, I was wondering why YouTube was taking so long to load recently. I thought it was just because their code was shit, and it turns out I was right, but not in the way I thought.