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?)
This is a good summary of this mess: webaim.org/blog/user-agent-string-history/
Comment on YouTube Says New 5-Second Video Load Delay Is Supposed to Punish Ad Blockers, Not Firefox Users
chaogomu@kbin.social 11 months agoFor 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;
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/118.0.0.0 Safari/537.36
With two or three clicks, this is my new (fake) user agent;
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; CrOS x86_64 14541.0.0) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/114.0.0.0 Safari/537.36
A few more clicks;
Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 10; HLK-AL00) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/104.0.5112.102 Mobile Safari/537.36 EdgA/104.0.1293.70
And finally;
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 10.0; Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_7_3; Trident/6.0)
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?)
takeda@lemmy.world 11 months ago
mosiacmango@lemm.ee 11 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.
redcalcium@lemmy.institute 11 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”.