Let’s talk about again YouTube, but not for new AI features or updates regarding its battle against ad blockers. In fact, according to the latest reports from angry users, the platform for videos and shorts would tend to collapse be slower in loading when using the browser Mozilla Firefox.
YouTube on Firefox: are loads slower due to Google?
The testimony comes from the user u/vk6_who posted a video showing how much slower YouTube actually is when starting playback of a video when using the Mozilla browser. For several seconds the page appears almost empty, “populated” by a few interface elements. After those few seconds, the page then loads normally.
Is it perhaps a connection problem? Of a computer with a technical data sheet so dated that it is unable to upload a video to YouTube in the right time? The truth, unfortunately, seems to be very different: it would be an intentional choice by Google aimed at penalizing competition. Indeed, disguising the user agent of Firefox to make it look like Chrome, the platform for videos also does not return any kind of problem. The loading time anomaly? Completely disappeared.
Youtube has started to artificially slow down video load times if you use Firefox. Spoofing Chrome magically makes this problem go away.
byu/vk6_ inyoutube
According to other users who joined the discussion, the extension of the waiting time it could be linked to measures taken to hinder the use of ad blockers. And this would be precisely the truth, according to a Google spokesperson reached by the 9to5Google editorial team.
«Users who have installed an ad blocking extension may experience suboptimal viewing regardless of the browser they are using», declares the Mountain View giant.
Everything seems to be going in this direction, also because in the video on Reddit (now removed) you can see the icon of an ad-blocker. The problem, however, is that the slowdown of YouTube at the moment seems to only affect Firefox, not other browsers. And then there’s the user agent issue described above.
In short, although Google has released an official statement on the matter, the situation is not yet clear.
