Someone, light the EU signal!
Lawsuit intensifies in the distance
YouTube is deliberately crippling Firefox on ARM systems
Submitted 11 months ago by whfsdude@dmv.social to technology@lemmy.world
https://social.treehouse.systems/@marcan/111567255619206929
Comments
themurphy@lemmy.world 11 months ago
rageagainstmachines@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Fuck Google. Running the internet for profit.
A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world 11 months ago
They dont want to just run it.
they want to control and dictate it.
Google needs a massive regulatory hammer to come down on it and smash it into dozens, if not hundreds, of tiny individual companies
Dee@lemmy.world 11 months ago
That needs to happen more with Alphabet than Google but either would be great.
stevedidWHAT@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Can you say Anticompetition practices?
1 lawsuit, 2 lawsuit, 3 lawsuit ah ah ah
LWD@lemm.ee 11 months ago
[deleted]Knusper@feddit.de 11 months ago
The thing is, I really don’t think, Google would care about Firefox. Firefox is sitting at negligible percentages of usage share. The only real competitor to Chrome is Safari and that’s because of iOS.
I guess, they might impact Safari on macOS with this, but someone would have to try this out to actually see, and ultimately, this could still just be a dumb mistake.Having said that, Google holds a near-monopoly in both video content and web browsers. They have a special duty to not disadvantage competitors and even if this was an honest mistake, I do think, it deserves a slap on the wrist.
SandroHc@lemmy.world 11 months ago
How much of Firefox’s dwindling market share do you think was caused by Google’s, Microsoft’s and Apple’s anticompetitive practices?
JonEFive@midwest.social 11 months ago
Google has a history of this sort of “whoops, we got caught, uhhh… That was just a bug!” behavior.
ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 11 months ago
YouTube thinks aarch64 Firefox is… a HiSense TV!!!
Ah yes, televisions are exactly where the user wants lower resolution
CosmicTurtle@lemmy.world 11 months ago
They finally made YouTube unusable for me even with ublock. Refreshing the filters didn’t work and told me I could only watch 3 videos.
Google was always going to win the war but I didn’t expect it to be like this.
I’m now using piped for all YouTube videos.
datelmd5sum@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I randomly stopped getting the anti-adblocking. On my gaming PC I never got them, on my laptop they went away after I disabled my adblocking for one video and then re-enabled it. Now I don’t get them at all. Did they give up on me?
ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 11 months ago
Using an alternative front end isn’t losing
Once they get rid of front ends they’ll have won
HerbalGamer@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
You are remembering to purge all caches before refreshing I hope?
AnAngryAlpaca@feddit.de 11 months ago
Try opening your subscription page as usual with your ublock, but then right-click “open in private window” the videos you want to watch. Works for me.
YoorWeb@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I wish Piped worked for me, I was trying to watch a Linux tutorial in full HD to see the commands better and Piped just refused to buffer the video.
Lorgres@lemmy.world 11 months ago
There are other alternatives too, like invidious. The yewtu.be instance works decently well for me but limits to 720p I think. There is a list of all running instances somewhere on the github iirc. There’s other instances that allow full HD, just have a search and you should be able to find one.
jflorez@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
What works for me is opening a new Private windows on Firefox, with ublock installed, and then login into YouTube. I do have to login every time I hope a private windows by so far I’ve been able to watch unlimited videos with an ad blocker installed
Aux@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Why are you using YouTube at all if you don’t like it so much? Go use something else.
ultra@feddit.ro 11 months ago
Same here.
Engywuck@lemm.ee 11 months ago
From what I can understand from the thread, they are nor deliberatly crippling FF.
windowsphoneguy@feddit.de 11 months ago
Oh, they also do that. Just not based on architecture. theverge.com/…/google-youtube-ad-blocker-five-sec…
Engywuck@lemm.ee 11 months ago
It looks like also this was against adblocker so, again, not specifically Firefox. Quote from the article itself
The issue was initially reported as targeting Firefox users, but users online have said they’re seeing the delay in Chrome and Edge, too. Reddit and Hacker News users who’ve examined the code that appears to be causing the delay have said they see no indication that YouTube checks what kind of browser is in use. Mozilla’s senior brand manager Damiano DeMonte wrote in an email to The Verge that “there’s no evidence that this is a Firefox-specific issue.
deweydecibel@lemmy.world 11 months ago
The way I read it is Chrome gets a pass on the architecture crippling, the others don’t.
Someone correct me if I got the wrong idea.
theKalash@feddit.ch 11 months ago
Which turned out to also have nothing to do with FF but was targeting adblockers.
UltraMagnus0001@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Hmm, anti competitive practices.
OnlyAwfulNamesLeft@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 months ago
If only there was some kind of legislation that protected an open and fair internet…
Epzillon@lemmy.world 11 months ago
The more bullshit like this I read about YouTube the more I despite them. I already use GrayJay on mobile and I’m using ublock Origin + ublock Matrix on Librewolf to control cookie usage on desktop. So far I’ve been able escape the video player block by clearing cache.
I’m just waiting for the day they “force” me onto another frontend.
Jeom@lemmy.world 11 months ago
doesnt ublock origin already block youtube’s anti adblock?
Epzillon@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Nope, I still got it after a while
Abnorc@lemm.ee 11 months ago
It sort of does for me. I used ublock to block the popup and the overlay that prevents you from using the site. Sometimes a video will stop playing for a moment, but it resumes as soon as I hit play.
Nioxic@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 months ago
im using librewolf too. i keep seeing the adblocker active warning instead of a video, in the video-box on youtube Plays just fine in private window though…
Epzillon@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Even after clearing the cache from the ublock filter settings?
lhx@lemmy.world 11 months ago
That’s gonna be a lawsuit…
Blackmist@feddit.uk 11 months ago
So Mozilla is going to take Google’s money and use that to sue Google?
It’s going to be a bug report.
MaxVoltage@lemmy.world 11 months ago
yea like if they want money just grow some balls and ask for a monthly pay for youtube they got our generation like cable had our parents
i would be willing to pay so much much money for REAL premium youtube
i thank the community for all the amazing broadcasts
Drusenija@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Out of curiosity, what would you consider “real” premium YouTube to be? Are you thinking something where the creators get a higher share of the revenue in return for better production values?
CrowAirbrush@lemm.ee 11 months ago
I wanted to get premium and while i was considering it they had 2 price increases.
No thank you, bye.
I am of the mindset: i want value out of my money, subscriptions that let you own nothing immediately falls out of my requirements so i need it to be a price i’m willing to pay. Which is a low price.
I cancelled spotify the moment they added €1 to the cost, all it gave me was a play button and a bunch of bullshit i don’t care for like a year in review. Dude, i was there…listening to that music, i already know what i played so i don’t need you to tell me.
But that’s just me and i’m the odd one out it seems.
I compare spotify like this; i bought a cd from the discount bin for €5 and got to play that for a whole life and i’d be happy if it was all i had. Spotify opens up do much music to you which is really cool BUT i used to buy a single album a year and copy that to a new cd/mp3 player to add it to the previous boughr cd’s. So my cost went from €5/€20 a year to €11 a month while i own nothing. In my head that’s automatically a waste of €112 euro’s that are spent with no real returning value.
The biggest value most subscription services offer is: they’ll stop literally pestering you with ads.
Blackmist@feddit.uk 11 months ago
User Agent String: A browser’s way of lying about what it is, in order to not trigger some server’s arcane content filtering system.
maynarkh@feddit.nl 11 months ago
User Agents should be optional. The whole idea of the Internet was that the server should respond the same way to the same request regardless of the client’s qualities.
essteeyou@lemmy.world 11 months ago
There are qualities that are useful for having different responses, like supported language, whether the browser accepts gzipped content, etc.
slimarev92@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I like how nobody actually bothered to read the thread and doesn’t understand this is a bug and wasn’t done on purpose.
maynarkh@feddit.nl 11 months ago
Having bugs for platforms outside the walled garden is a feature of the walled garden. That’s the beauty of it, they don’t need to purposefully cripple Firefox and other engines if they just don’t take it into account when creating features.
slimarev92@lemmy.world 11 months ago
How is Youtube a walled garden? It’s a website.
Fades@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Quite a reductive statement based on a very small obscured window into what Google is doing with user agent profiling but go off I guess since you’re so sure
Aux@lemmy.world 11 months ago
It’s not. First of all, the code doesn’t check for Firefox at all. Second, it blocks 4K for all Android devices. Conclusions people came up with here just show utter ignorance.
slimarev92@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Are they determining that Forefox is Hisense TV on purpose? Again, read the linked thread for a change.
sugartits@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Shhhh. We’re hating on YouTube as we want ad free videos but don’t want to pay for it and we’re hoping that bitching about it on a tiny social media platform will somehow get Google to pivot their entire business model.
We don’t need no facts here.
YouAreLiterallyAnNPC@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Did YouTube make all of those videos? If not, then how much should YouTube get from hosting them? This whole argument that people just want free shit isn’t just wrong, it’s also annoying. People have proven time and again that we’re willing to pay for quality and convenience. And not in that order. Once again it’s an issue about access, how they’re fighting tooth and nail to gatekeep that access to continue to control the flow of capital so they can also play the kingmakers in digital media. Messages like yours are so off base that it’s hard to believe you’re not projecting your own shitty world view, but also somehow think that because you’ll gargle some shitty ads every once in a while that you have some moral high ground. AKA; one of those people who believe they’re right and that’s all that matters and you don’t actually have to think any deeper. PS: I hope I’m wrong. Please feel free to correct my own world view if I am.
senorblackbean@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Switched to Freetube/Invidious. Like the sun, I’m never looking directly at Youtube.com ever again.
fosforus@sopuli.xyz 11 months ago
Steelman: perhaps no ARM Linux system was capable of playing 4K reliably until Asahi Linux came along?
Flaky@iusearchlinux.fyi 11 months ago
Someone on the Hacker News cross-post mentioned it, but it seems like they assumed any ARM Linux device that wasn’t detected as running Android was some low-power device like a Raspberry Pi, and didn’t anticipate more powerful devices running bog-standard Linux until Apple Silicon and thus Asahi came along.
whfsdude@dmv.social 11 months ago
It’s probably the case that this was good intent given the lack of desktop ARM computing hardware, but they really should let the client decide the video quality.
lud@lemm.ee 11 months ago
True, but I would guess that the clients didn’t handle that well and this was just a stupid quick fix.
MacNCheezus@lemmy.today 11 months ago
Apple Silicon has entered the chat
Clbull@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Asahi Linux?
They named a distro after a beer brand?
autokludge@programming.dev 11 months ago
Asahi means “rising sun” in Japanese, and it is also the name of an apple cultivar. 旭りんご (asahi ringo) is what we know as the McIntosh Apple, the apple variety that gave the Mac its name.
zalgotext@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
… They named Macs after a beer brand?
violetraven@lemmy.blahaj.zone 11 months ago
That was fascinating. Thank you for sharing 💖
bruhduh@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Lina asahi is steamer who reverse engineering apple m1 chip for Linux, so asahi linux was distro for apple m1 at first
muzzle@lemm.ee 11 months ago
Joke is on them, i only ever use NewPipe (or freetube on desktop)
ShaunaTheDead@kbin.social 11 months ago
It might just be a coincidence but I've had a lot of trouble using Invidious or Piped lately too. Videos load and titles load, but video thumbnails don't load for me.
Sprokes@jlai.lu 11 months ago
I think they want everyone to use user agent switcher so that Firefox share will drop and then nobody will support it and will die.
NaoPb@eviltoast.org 11 months ago
Disgusting!
pelespirit@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
Stupid question, what about 2 in 1 tablets?
joyjoy@lemm.ee 11 months ago
Here we go again…
Rosco@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
And that’s why I use mpv and yt-dlp, folks.
mydude@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Rumble ftw!
DontMakeMoreBabies@kbin.social 11 months ago
Fuck Google.
Searching a tracking number from Chrome using Google? Finds a package.
Same search on Google from Firefox leads to nothing.
postmateDumbass@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Hell net neutrality laws might even have relevance if they keep this up.
elbarto777@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Sorry, I’m all for net neutrality, but behavior based on browser usage, while dickish, has nothing to do with it.
lud@lemm.ee 11 months ago
It also does that with other unrecognised user agents.
Personally I don’t understand why someone would still use Google when duckduckgo has more features and is just as good for searching and in the very rare case it isn’t you can easily switch back temporarily by just adding the prefix “!g” to your query.
ruckblack@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
I tried duckduckgo for a while and kept coming back to Google for “real” searches at work. It’s not as good for searching in my experience. Yet.
ByteJunk@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I really want to ditch Google, but DuckDuckGo aint there my brother.
It may work for some simpler/lazy searches, but for real stuff, nah.
The “good” thing is that Google search is going the way of Amazon, so with Google shooting themselves in the foot and DDG catching up a bit, maybe soon they’ll level
DontMakeMoreBabies@kbin.social 11 months ago
I've switched most defualts over to DDG but Google is still better for some things. Feels sort of like the late 99s/early 00s with Altavista, Ask Jeeves, etc.
slumberlust@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Isn’t ducksuckgo just paying for google search with a privacy wrapper/obfuscation layer on top?
MonkderZweite@feddit.ch 11 months ago
ddg always drops one of at least two troublesome terms. Which is infuriating.
Might have to do with my settings, in which case it is a bug.
pineapplelover@lemm.ee 11 months ago
I get results with DDG
BrownKong@lemm.ee 11 months ago
It’s stupid we need an extension to fix this but there’s an extension to fix this