Spyke

Appreciate the title summary as opposed to standard click-bait, doing good work!

21

They're doing it on purpose.
Metal Outlaws video shows a bit of the code where it shows that it runs a 5s sleep function, and this function is only triggered if the browser has a Firefox user-agent.

16

edit4: other talked about video on subject edit3: added andriodauthority paragraph edit2: people mention only some experience this, may be adblock testing on yt part, code below may not be cause edit: added code and andriodauthority link, also in desc. of video

He talks about an artificial 5 second timeout function: Polymer script that has 5E3 (5000ms) in script

https://www.androidauthority.com/youtube-reportedly-slowing-down-videos-firefox-3387206/

https://cybernews.com/tech/firefox-users-frustrated-over-alleged-delay-on-youtube/

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

Certain discussions around the report indicate that the code could be a lazy implementation of an ad fallback if a user uses an ad blocker. The relevant code could possibly be ensuring that an ad is displayed for at least five seconds before the actual video begins showing. As mentioned, we could not confirm the functioning of the code snippet.

YouTube Has Gone Too Far This Time [10:49 | Mental Outlaw] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4gXhmzQztE

3

Rossman is right about things in the case that Google is targeting only adblock users (whether this 5 second delaying thing is this type of action or not)

Google can try all they want to throttle or restrict ad-free experiences as much as we're free to try to get around them, and using YouTube without ad or tracker is not compensating them so they don't owe us anything. Anti-competitive practices, invasive tracking and things like that we can target Google for doing.

6

You reached the end

(3 Scenarios: 1. bug, 2. on purpose not likely during anti trust case, 3.screwing with adblockers so slow)Is Youtube making firefox load slow on purpose? [17:01 | Louis Rossmann] | Spyke