The fuck?? Isn’t this anti competitive behaviour?
In a previous generation, governments would go after this blatant anti competitive behaviour.
I’m sure the EU will still.
It’s just a shame that there’s really only one government organization globally that will still stand up to corporations.
To be fair China will send you to a reeducation camp or disappear you if you try to act like a western billionaire.
China will make you disappear for many things including speaking up against the genocide of religious minorities ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
For now
The current US Federal Trade Commission is quite agressive compared to other FTCs historically.
True. Though they have been stuck with 30 years of damage simply reverse too.
Think of it as 30 years of rent they’re now claiming.
Yes, but they haven’t fixed this specific problem that just broke in the last day or so, therefore the FTC is a corrupt useless organization that pours hot wax on kittens
then why do we have like 4 conglomerates making everything in the grocery store?
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.
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.
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Once you start watching videos, you still get recommendations based on your viewing even if not logged in. As long as I don’t clear my cookies, I basically get the content I’m interested in.
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I block all third-party cookies, but I do want some basic functionality out of the internet.
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Thanks I’ll get back to this later
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.
Yes. The US DOJ has a website for reporting antitrust concerns
Yes. It is. And consumers can’t do a thing about it.
Anti trust that evil Google
Is it more anti competitive than McDonald’s only selling McDonald’s burgers or preventing you from bringing Taco Bell tacos in from outside?
🙄 No it would be like Ford owning gas stations and pumping faster for Ford vehicles than Chevy.
Doesn’t Tesla do the equivalent of that with charging stations?
Maybe. But Tesla doesn’t own over 50% of the charging station market share.
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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.
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Yes. Yes, it is!
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McDonald’s doesn’t actually give a shit if you bring in food from other places.
McDonald’s probably does care, but their minimum wage employees don’t.
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How?
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Pick a different example then. In my experience movie theaters don’t let you bring food in from outside. McDonald’s still won’t sell a Burger King burger regardless of whether you could bring one in.
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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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
Public services aren’t efficient, but they can surely change themselves more efficiently than they can force a multi billion dollar company to change its ways.
I’m surprised you’re not more worried about the government outsourcing its functions to a company you seem very suspicious of.
If the government decided to have vital public meetings only in a private venue you have to be a member of or something, the proper fix is not to force the club to accept everyone, it’s to have the government stop having vital meetings in private places.
I also don’t see a problem because everything of value these video streaming services offer is replaceable by one of the many other streaming services. The fact that YouTube is the biggest or most recognized does not change anything for me. The fact that there is some content that is only on YouTube doesn’t, either. That’s a normal thing that happens in an economy. Ford dealers only sell Ford cars, Coca Cola doesn’t sell Pepsi, etc.
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.
Is this a “gosh Wally, they’re just trying to do business! Do you expect everything for free??” post? Because that’s not how internet business works. This is not a thing that Google invented and developed on their own.
Because that’s not how internet business works.
How does it work, then?
This is not a thing that Google invented and developed on their own.
I don’t know what this is referring to or what it has to do with anything.
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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.
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
And it cost them 280 million in the 90s ouch
Something tells me they survived.
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.
And the stupid thing is that all I use Chrome for is Meets… And that’s it. Do they really think they win me over?
Not you or me. But most people, yeah.
That is, as always, the problem: it works for them. The average Joe isn’t going to implement a new filter into ublock…
How does one “spoof” chrome?
You can change your user agent string, the text your browser uses to tell the web site you’re looking at what browser it is, either via your F12 developer tools menu or via an extension.
The most convenient way is with a browser extension that changes your user agent. You can also change it in the developer options of most browsers.
It works for me now. Only took them 8 years
In my other comment I provide a link to the US DOJ anti-trust complaint center website.
BTW, this:
This is some ultimate scumbaggery.
This should be illegal, Firefox being their competition (tangentially)
It honestly probably is
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.
They could literally have used some variance in implementation, server side bandwidth limitations, etc, but THIS is just blatantly obvious
I wonder if it’s a case of malicious compliance.
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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.
The world runs on the shoulders of disgruntled employees.
That’s one hell of a phrase that should keep any CEO awake at night.
Is there something like:
If(not chrome){add_delay()}
?
No, the full context of the code snippet doesn’t appear to check the browser user agent at all. Other comments have explained that it’s most likely a lazy implementation of a check for ad blockers.
Ok so this is just client side I’d imagine I’d be pretty easy to make an addon that removes the code
That’s not the point.
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.
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.
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.
That’s an antitrust case if ever I saw one.
EU be like: aw shit here we go again
Just like that time that one operating was made to stop shipping with that one browser.
Doesn’t this break competition laws?
Couldn’t Google/YouTube be sued over this?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.
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.
That is why I am in favour of the financial death penalty. Fines should be 10x the damage done. If a company cannot pay it, they are required to become a non profit.
I think a better solution is one year of global revenue (not profit) as it’s really hard to determine damages in cases like this. That way, it’s legitimately a death sentence regardless of the size or scale of the company. If you set the fines at an amount not linked to profit or revenue, all you’re doing is making it extremely hard for the little guy but less hard for the big corporations - the ones you really want to go after.
I like it, much more practical.
Fines should be 10x the damage done
What are your monetary damages for this?
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Yeah stuff like this really needs to be percentual and fined to the CEOs and the board, not the company as an entity.
Oh, Microsoft valued at 200 bil for shareholders? Well sorry C’s and boardies, you gotta scrunge up 2 bil each now, personally. Those are fines they’d at least notice.
(edit)
Come to think of it, the fined-personally-to-the-decisionmaker might really be the big thing here on its own. The company did this shit under you, CEO. It was your corporate policy and hiring practices that allowed this to happen, even if you did not press the button. You pay up. You take the blame, not the people under you just following orders.
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You should look into all of the anti-monopoly actions that Lina Khan has been pursuing as head of the FTC. Under her tenure the watchdogs have had more teeth than ever before. It takes time for this stuff to make a difference, but they are most decidedly doing the work (Cory Doctorow has some excellent write ups on this if you check his blog).
He lionizes her a bit much, but yes she has done far more than her predecessor.
EU anthem intensifies
Microsoft got repeatedly hit over this kind of shenanigans in MSIE during and after the anti-trust lawsuit.
And all they had to do was drag the trial out until a favorable administration took office.
Well they also dragged out the trial so long that time and costs rendered the plaintiff (Netscape) hopeless.
You can always count on lobbiests to enshitifiy the laws
Not in the U.S. Not as long as conservatives (incl. neo-liberals) have the power to protect them.
Our conservative politicians are bought and paid for by large anti-competitive corporations.
Bought and paid for with a pittance.
They are bribed for so little that it would be almost easier to make a dystopian sounding PAC with money raised by small dollar donations to bribe them to do what the people want instead of them doing what rich donors want.
Only if that PAC could somehow guarantee a cushy job post politics.
Yes. And you can submit your complaint here
Well, can’t hurt to try.
Yeah, the fines just aren’t big enough for Google to care.
Wait for it to become equally shitty in all browsers, and then you can only watch in a special Youtube Windows app.
This is why net neutrality is important. To prevent bullshit like this from happening.
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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.
Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act might stop any attempt to undermine browser performance.
If anything we need more laws around the tech space as a whole
It could literally be a minute wait & I still wouldn’t use Chrome.
Google heard you and have increased the Firefox delay to 1m 30s. Would you please consider using Chrome now please?
Best I can do is boycott YouTube.
Piped-bot now my best friend
I swear every time i try to use those links from the piped bot, the content either never loads or has severe buffering problems.
You need to change your instance. Next time you face this, go to preferences and try changing the instance.
I didn’t know you could do that with piped, thanks
Where would one find that bot?
On here
Oh, the one that finds every YouTube link and comments a piped link in some communities? Yeah, I find that bot very useful too!
Ranting on Lemmy about a company while being addicted to (one of) their products seems to be much more effective, according to other comments in this thread. /s
Helpful comment!
The only helpful thing to do is stopping using YT, if you think they behave in an unrespectufl way. Complaining/ranting on Lemmy is going to be exactly as helpful as my previous comment. But, hey, who cares? I don’t even use it. Literally, not my problem.
What are we supposed to complain about then?
I didn’t say you shouldn’t complain. I said that doing it is useless. Stop using YT if you want to send a message or just deal with it
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Edge would like a word
Sigma Edging
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.
“Do no evil1”
1 unless we can make money from it.
There’s a reason that doesn’t appear on their site or in their docs any more. It was a canary clause.
Any organisation that needs to remind themselves not to be evil is already intrinsically evil.
Not anymore: they ditched it for “do the right thing (for my wallet)” a couple years back
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/
Wow, and it’s literally just “If you’re using Firefox, wait five seconds.”
Not noticing this change from the EU… Guess they’re too afraid of pulling that shit here?
Adding this to your uBlock Origin filters also makes the problem go away:
www.youtube.com##+js(nano-stb, resolve(1), *, 0.001)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.
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.
Thank you. I’m tired of hearing “it’s the consumer’s responsability” when we have governments and various regulatory bodies for this exact reason
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.
Then use alternative youtube clients, like piped or freetube.
Or even better: spend money (if you can afford it) to host a peertube instance that automatically rips the videos off of youtube.
That’s an even stronger message that you’d rather spend money than use their crappy free services.
Or even better: spend money (if you can afford it) to host a peertube instance that automatically rips the videos off of youtube.
Oh that’s amazing. I’m gonna see about doing that for channels I actively watch. Gives me an excuse to unfuck my NAS storage too since then it’ll be full faster.
Do you know of any software that does that already (I assume PeerTube itself doesn’t)?
Peertube does indeed have that functionality
Nice!
that sounds EXPENSIVE, ima stick with piped
it’s not cheap, but it’s not prohibitively expensive either, unless you watch a prohibitive amount of youtube (i.e. you watch youtube 24/7)
You can get a 10TB hard drive for slightly under 200 dollars today, then just throw it in an old computer (even if the parts are 10+ years old, it’s fine), install a linux distro and install peertube.
Piped doesn’t work most of the time. In fact, I can’t remember a single Piped link actually loading the video. And I don’t have money to spend.
which is why everyone I like to watch content of posts their stuff on YouTube
I’m not sure this is exactly true - like, first off, I am not a YouTuber and I only watch a very specific kind of content there (breadtube), so idk if my opinion is valid, but
From what I’ve heard creators say, it’s not that YouTube is great, in fact it kind of sucks in a lot of ways, it’s just that the alternatives don’t do it better, and obviously don’t have the size & reach. All the things that YouTube does badly or not at all, the competition doesn’t do well either, so why bother.
You’re 100% right tho that Google’s success at this point hinges almost entirely on their convenience. Google drive/docs/sheets/etc are kinda garbage, but they’te fast, simple to use, and the integration is incredibly smooth. If there was any alternative that was as simple to transition into from email or whatever, I’d jump ship in a second.
You described a straight up better product. That’s not convenience. You said it yourself: alternatives have worse quality.
Offering a free convenient service is the first step of enshittification.
[Side eye at Bluesky]
Under the same logic we can say that Lemmy is in its first stage of enshittification, lol. You need to refine the criteria.
Ok, a for-profit entity offering a free product.
You must be fun at parties.
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.
Insidious
A good plug to use Invidious for sure, intentional or not.
Unintentional but very much welcomed 😁
good old fosstube
I’ve noticed that too, I just switch to Freetube when it happens.
Simply disgusting, but it’s business as usual for Google.I just use Freetube either way. I can’t stand autoplaying videos or suggestions, popups, etc.
Is free tube just pulling YouTube’s data or it a separate site? Can you watch livestreams if it’s the former? Basically all I use YouTube for is watching a couple streamers and watching Japanese udon restaurant channels while I eat my bologna sandwich for lunch
It does play livestreams, yes.
I’ve gonna look into that then thank you
