YouTube Says New 5-Second Video Load Delay Is Supposed to Punish Ad Blockers, Not Firefox Users

Even though it doesn't apply for me (praise Freetube and Grayjay!) I'd rather waste 5 second looking at black than any ad ever

I experience suboptimal viewing by having to watch ads. If I had to pick one or the other, I know which one I prefer.

Jesus Christ, why can't they just leave it alone. At this point they are grasping at straws. More likely, people will stop using YouTube at all than turning off adblockers or switching browsers.

Can we stop panicing every 5 seconds? Give adblockers 1-10 days and they will fix it. We have been through this a bunch of times.

Most of the articles writing about it seem to reference following reddit post: https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/17ywbjj/whenever_i_open_a_youtube_video_in_a_new_tab_its/k9w3ei4/

Following code is pointed out:

setTimeout(function() {
    c();
    a.resolve(1)
 }, 5E3);

While this is a 5s timeout, the code itself does not check for the user agent. So wherever the code is the 5s timeout will occur. The code also does not seem to be injected server side. I spoofed my user agent and for good measure installed a fresh google chrome, both times the code was present. So this code cannot be used to make any browser slower without making the other browsers slow too.

There is a response to the reddit post, which most articles seem to take their intel from. IMO this response does a good job at exploring what the code could be used for and points out that it is more than likely not for slowing down Firefox users: https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/17ywbjj/whenever_i_open_a_youtube_video_in_a_new_tab_its/ka08uqj/

I am amused by thinking that many journalists seem to take this story from a post on reddit, without even reading the direct responses - or just copy from another article.

Well, ads are usually quite a bit longer... So I really don't see what they would gain from that. Unless they lied, which is of course possible if not likely.

A mass migration to a federated YouTube alternative couldn't come sooner.

I block ads and havent noticed that

i too have a bridge to sell

What an asshole company Google is.

The Enshittification* of everything continues

* https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys

I haven't had that issue. I've heard that disabling adblockers resolves it. But people have said that spoofing their user agent to chrome also magically resolves it...

I highly recommend just downloading any videos you want to watch. Some guy made an extensions for firefox on linux that lets you click a button and it just automatically downloads and opens that video in mpv player. You can also use tube archivist, yt dlp, etc to auto download your subscriptions.

F**k you, YouTube/Google! F*******k you! 🖕🖕🖕

Oh let me splain that, it's not what you think silly!

I just moved to using Freetube.

amazing how that bing doesn't suck that much now that google's search sucks so badly

This goes against all the fundamental principles of how the Internet is supposed to work.

I don't understand how people can think getting a paid service for free shouldn't be fought against by the company losing money from the workaround.