Comment on YouTube Says New 5-Second Video Load Delay Is Supposed to Punish Ad Blockers, Not Firefox Users
casmael@lemm.ee 10 months agoWhat do you mean by change user agent to chrome? Asking 4 a friend
When you browse to a website, your browser passes info about itself to the server hosting that site. This info is intended to help the server provide the best rendering code for your browser. This is called your User Agent.
However, Google is using it here to identify Firefox users, and is apparently choosing to lump them all in a box called "adblock users" instead of trying to identify an ad blocker more accurately.
If you do change your user agent, I would use an extension that does it only on YouTube domains.
We want independent metrics to show rising Firefox use, not falling.
Yeah cool I’ll have a look. Any extensions spring to mind?
That's because they may use code to detect as blockers that is not legal in the EU.
To add on
You can spoof this user agent to see if a website does something shady depending on which browser you’re using.
So if you keep all other variables the same, and just toggle the user agent value, YouTube behaves differently
How can we do that?
I haven’t tried it in a while, but I think there are browser extensions for it. Might need to ask someone else for how to do it these days
chaogomu@kbin.social 10 months ago
For a specific how to, there's a bunch of firefox addons that do it, but the mozilla recommended one is this
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/user-agent-string-switcher/
It's super easy to use, just open it and it gives a bunch of options.
This is my current (fake) user agent;
With two or three clicks, this is my new (fake) user agent;
A few more clicks;
And finally;
Now, that last one is making it look like I'm using internet explorer... Youtube videos will not load with that last one active. Claims my browser is too old and not supported.
I don't know why they all start with Mozilla/5.0 but the apparently a lot of websites will block your requests if you don't have it (or a valid browser strings like it?)
redcalcium@lemmy.institute 10 months ago
Just a reminder to not use user agent switcher unless it’s absolutely necessary, and if you do, limit it only for certain sites that need it. If enough people change their user agent, website operators will be like “See, no one use Firefox anymore. We shouldn’t bother to support it anymore”.
takeda@lemmy.world 10 months ago
This is a good summary of this mess: webaim.org/blog/user-agent-string-history/
mosiacmango@lemm.ee 10 months ago
I personally like seeing Mozilla loud and proud in all the user agents.
It’s a mess, but also an echo of history.