Kate Mills
Nov 20, 2023
YouTube's recent sluggishness and crackdown on ad-blockers are drawing attention, particularly affecting users on Mozilla's Firefox browser. Loading the platform has become noticeably slower, raising suspicions of a deliberate move by Google.
A Reddit user, u/vk6_, shared a video demonstrating YouTube's delayed loading specifically on Firefox. The page remains blank for a few seconds before eventually populating. However, when the user agent is changed to mimic Chrome, the platform loads instantly without any delay. The video was recently removed by r/youtube.
This delay appears to be an intentional decision by Google, evidenced by code found on YouTube.com that enforces a five-second delay before page loading. Though the code doesn't specifically target Firefox, some users have noticed improvements in loading times by filtering this code. Intriguingly, spoofing Chrome to act as Firefox doesn't trigger this delay.
The rationale behind this deliberate slowdown remains unclear. It arrives amid Google's crackdown on ad-blockers and Chrome's removal of Manifest V2 extensions, posing compatibility issues for certain ad-blockers. Firefox, known for being a refuge for users amid these changes, seems to be experiencing this issue prominently.
However, this could potentially be a technical glitch associated with Firefox's Gecko browser engine, unlike Blink on Chrome, Edge, or WebKit on Safari. Spoofing the browser doesn't alter the underlying engine, suggesting a browser-specific concern. Speculations range from a mistaken testing code making it to the production version to broader technical difficulties.
Despite the frustrations faced by users, Google has yet to acknowledge or address this issue. The reason behind the deliberate slowdown on Firefox remains elusive, leaving users perplexed and YouTube's intentions uncertain.
