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To provide some clarity on this, it likely isn't targeting specifically non-Chrome browsers. Disclaimer: fmr Googler, used to work on YouTube Likely, this isn

To provide some clarity on this, it likely isn't targeting specifically non-Chrome browsers. Disclaimer: fmr Googler, used to work on YouTube Likely, this isn't necessarily targeting Firefox/Safari/Etc, but rather is using the UserAgent as part of a tuple with other factors. It _is_ however an anti-adblock measure meant to determine if the video is automatically getting skipped forward. The reason on why changing your useragent "fixes" the problem, is that you're changing the tuple and the anti-adblock system won't serve the code-at-issue until it determines whether you'd be a good candidate for the experiment. Secondarily, YouTube has no financial incentive to actively punish non-chrome useragents. They make money in their division by serving ads, regardless of the useragent.

short_throw 3y ago
> YouTube has no financial incentive... Nonsense. A Google controlled browser runs plugins Google allows with privacy settings Google creates. More data and no ad blockers is worth many billions of dollars to YouTube in the long run. They directly benefit from people thinking Firefox is slow.
- FalconSensei 3y ago
  They already made gmail slow on FF on purpose some time ago, no?
  - happymellon 3y ago
    Didn't they do the same to Maps?
LightHugger 3y ago
[flagged]
- deleted 3y ago
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- dang 3y ago
  If you keep breaking the site guidelines like this, we're going to have to ban you. We've already warned you once (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34557733 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34557733) and you've unfortunately continued to do it repeatedly, not just in this comment but in other recent ones: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38325478 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38325478 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38316844 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38316844 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38307667 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38307667 If you want to keep posting to HN, please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules. We'd appreciate it.
  - LightHugger 3y ago
    shrug. I was unnecessarily rude in two of the 5 comments, if you were just replying to those i'd understand, but i don't really understand the others (including the previous warning and the one you are replying to now), especially the one you're replying to now. I can try to be more civil but considering there are only two valid complaints out of my entire comment history, if you really want to ban me there's nothing i can do for you. You should be banning the google employee pretending they have "no financial incentive" to shut down their competition. It's obviously inflammatory and absurd. Every company has financial incentive to impede their competition. He works at google, he knows this and is lying or propagandizing or who knows.
mort96 3y ago
I mean if it is "is using the UserAgent as part of a tuple with other factors" in a way which causes Chrome UAs to get preferential treatment, isn't that specifically targeting non-Chrome browsers? Making Chrome the dominant browser has been a huge focus of Google since Chrome's inception. You may not know this, but Google owns YouTube.
gkbrk 3y ago
> this isn't targeting Firefox/Safari/etc. > rather it is using the User Agent This is literally the most common method of targeting browsers.
- plibither8 3y ago
  You're getting downvoted, but I was thinking the same thing. Could someone explain why that might not be the case?
  - FalconSensei 3y ago
    If that's an A/B test where user agents are randomly added to either control or a test group, and you change your user agent, then you are reassigned, because you changed the user agent
- qmarchi 3y ago
  To provide some clarity on this, it's not specifically coded into the system to prefer one particular browser over another, but rather, it's independent of all browsers and using the useragent as a string as part of a group. Chrome could equally be as effected by this as any other browser.
mdasen 3y ago
> YouTube has no financial incentive to actively punish non-chrome useragents. They make money in their division by serving ads, regardless of the useragent. Google has big financial incentives to punish non-Chrome user agents. First, we've seen that Google pays a large amount of money to be the default search engine in competing browsers. A big reason for funding Chrome development is so that Google doesn't have to pay someone for the majority of its search traffic. If Google is paying out 30-40% of search ad revenue from non-Chrome browsers, that's many billions of dollars if they can get more people to use Chrome. If non-Chrome browsers are a bad experience on one of the most popular sites on the internet, that pushes people to use Chrome. Second, Google is altering Chrome so that ad blockers won't be as effective. If they can push people to use Chrome, they'll get more ad revenue since ad blockers won't be as effective. Google has been pushing Chrome because people using Chrome makes them billions of dollars. Maybe YouTube itself doesn't have a financial incentive, but Google definitely does. If Chrome vanished tomorrow, Google would then face steep fees when their deals with Mozilla and Apple were up for renewal since they'd be dependent on traffic from Firefox and Safari. Instead, Google can keep paying Mozilla less and less money over time as more people use Chrome instead of Firefox.
- dontblink 3y ago
  Sometimes the simplest explanation is the most probable and there is no wide spread conspiracy. Youtube does experiments based on user-agents. I think this is well known and if not, a former Googler just let you know. In any case, for those who are complaining, it's their website. Either pay or stop using it?
  - shadowgovt 3y ago
    In addition, Google is still run disorganized-bag-of-cats management style and YouTube is so indpendent from the mothership they're almost their own company. Conspiracy is unlikely purely because Neal Mohan is empowered to tell the Chrome team to pound sand and will do so if he thinks they'd make a call that would damage YouTube's numbers.
  - crazygringo 3y ago
ShadowBanThis01 3y ago
[flagged]
- deleted 3y ago
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- ShadowBanThis01 3y ago
  [flagged]
smashed 3y ago
You are describing exactly what targeting non-chrome browsers is but somehow saying it's not?
- deleted 3y ago
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RobertRoberts 3y ago
> Secondarily, YouTube has no financial incentive to actively punish non-chrome useragents. They make money in their division by serving ads, regardless of the useragent. Until Chrome can no longer block ads... ?
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
olliej 3y ago
> To provide some clarity on this, it likely isn't targeting specifically non-Chrome browsers It's not targeting non-chrome browsers, it's just a before penalty that only applies to ... non-chrome browsers? > Secondarily, YouTube has no financial incentive to actively punish non-chrome useragents. They make money in their division by serving ads, regardless of the useragent. With Google's ongoing desire to break ad-blockers in Chrome, and make tracking a mandatory web specification via essentially monopoly browser status[1], Google has a _very_ strong financial incentive to punish non-chrome UAs - anything that pushes people to Chrome over browsers that they don't control is a win for them. [1] let's be real: the only reason many sites work in browsers other than chrome is iOS safari, that's it
qmarchi 3y ago
To provide some additional context and clarifying points that I see in the lower comments: >> Regarding financial incentives: Google is an insanely large organization, and the priorities and KPIs of one org (Chrome) largely don't impact another org (YouTube). Additionally, YouTube is a regarded as a red-headed step-child within Google and is generally outside of the general interactions with other orgs. That's based on years of working on that fine line. >> Regarding Useragent Targeting: The targeting scheme treats the useragent as a string, rather than a distinct value that the useragent is set to. Chrome is likely to hit this bug as much as any other browser vendor.

short_throw 3y ago

> YouTube has no financial incentive... Nonsense. A Google controlled browser runs plugins Google allows with privacy settings Google creates. More data and no ad blockers is worth many billions of dollars to YouTube in the long run. They directly benefit from people thinking Firefox is slow.

FalconSensei 3y ago
They already made gmail slow on FF on purpose some time ago, no?
- happymellon 3y ago
  Didn't they do the same to Maps?

LightHugger 3y ago

[flagged]

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
dang 3y ago
If you keep breaking the site guidelines like this, we're going to have to ban you. We've already warned you once (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34557733 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34557733) and you've unfortunately continued to do it repeatedly, not just in this comment but in other recent ones: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38325478 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38325478 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38316844 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38316844 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38307667 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38307667 If you want to keep posting to HN, please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules. We'd appreciate it.
- LightHugger 3y ago
  shrug. I was unnecessarily rude in two of the 5 comments, if you were just replying to those i'd understand, but i don't really understand the others (including the previous warning and the one you are replying to now), especially the one you're replying to now. I can try to be more civil but considering there are only two valid complaints out of my entire comment history, if you really want to ban me there's nothing i can do for you. You should be banning the google employee pretending they have "no financial incentive" to shut down their competition. It's obviously inflammatory and absurd. Every company has financial incentive to impede their competition. He works at google, he knows this and is lying or propagandizing or who knows.

mort96 3y ago

I mean if it is "is using the UserAgent as part of a tuple with other factors" in a way which causes Chrome UAs to get preferential treatment, isn't that specifically targeting non-Chrome browsers? Making Chrome the dominant browser has been a huge focus of Google since Chrome's inception. You may not know this, but Google owns YouTube.

gkbrk 3y ago

> this isn't targeting Firefox/Safari/etc. > rather it is using the User Agent This is literally the most common method of targeting browsers.

plibither8 3y ago
You're getting downvoted, but I was thinking the same thing. Could someone explain why that might not be the case?
- FalconSensei 3y ago
  If that's an A/B test where user agents are randomly added to either control or a test group, and you change your user agent, then you are reassigned, because you changed the user agent
qmarchi 3y ago
To provide some clarity on this, it's not specifically coded into the system to prefer one particular browser over another, but rather, it's independent of all browsers and using the useragent as a string as part of a group. Chrome could equally be as effected by this as any other browser.

mdasen 3y ago

> YouTube has no financial incentive to actively punish non-chrome useragents. They make money in their division by serving ads, regardless of the useragent. Google has big financial incentives to punish non-Chrome user agents. First, we've seen that Google pays a large amount of money to be the default search engine in competing browsers. A big reason for funding Chrome development is so that Google doesn't have to pay someone for the majority of its search traffic. If Google is paying out 30-40% of search ad revenue from non-Chrome browsers, that's many billions of dollars if they can get more people to use Chrome. If non-Chrome browsers are a bad experience on one of the most popular sites on the internet, that pushes people to use Chrome. Second, Google is altering Chrome so that ad blockers won't be as effective. If they can push people to use Chrome, they'll get more ad revenue since ad blockers won't be as effective. Google has been pushing Chrome because people using Chrome makes them billions of dollars. Maybe YouTube itself doesn't have a financial incentive, but Google definitely does. If Chrome vanished tomorrow, Google would then face steep fees when their deals with Mozilla and Apple were up for renewal since they'd be dependent on traffic from Firefox and Safari. Instead, Google can keep paying Mozilla less and less money over time as more people use Chrome instead of Firefox.

dontblink 3y ago
Sometimes the simplest explanation is the most probable and there is no wide spread conspiracy. Youtube does experiments based on user-agents. I think this is well known and if not, a former Googler just let you know. In any case, for those who are complaining, it's their website. Either pay or stop using it?
- shadowgovt 3y ago
  In addition, Google is still run disorganized-bag-of-cats management style and YouTube is so indpendent from the mothership they're almost their own company. Conspiracy is unlikely purely because Neal Mohan is empowered to tell the Chrome team to pound sand and will do so if he thinks they'd make a call that would damage YouTube's numbers.
- crazygringo 3y ago

ShadowBanThis01 3y ago

[flagged]

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
ShadowBanThis01 3y ago
[flagged]

smashed 3y ago

You are describing exactly what targeting non-chrome browsers is but somehow saying it's not?

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

RobertRoberts 3y ago

> Secondarily, YouTube has no financial incentive to actively punish non-chrome useragents. They make money in their division by serving ads, regardless of the useragent. Until Chrome can no longer block ads... ?

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

olliej 3y ago

> To provide some clarity on this, it likely isn't targeting specifically non-Chrome browsers It's not targeting non-chrome browsers, it's just a before penalty that only applies to ... non-chrome browsers? > Secondarily, YouTube has no financial incentive to actively punish non-chrome useragents. They make money in their division by serving ads, regardless of the useragent. With Google's ongoing desire to break ad-blockers in Chrome, and make tracking a mandatory web specification via essentially monopoly browser status[1], Google has a _very_ strong financial incentive to punish non-chrome UAs - anything that pushes people to Chrome over browsers that they don't control is a win for them. [1] let's be real: the only reason many sites work in browsers other than chrome is iOS safari, that's it

qmarchi 3y ago

To provide some additional context and clarifying points that I see in the lower comments: >> Regarding financial incentives: Google is an insanely large organization, and the priorities and KPIs of one org (Chrome) largely don't impact another org (YouTube). Additionally, YouTube is a regarded as a red-headed step-child within Google and is generally outside of the general interactions with other orgs. That's based on years of working on that fine line. >> Regarding Useragent Targeting: The targeting scheme treats the useragent as a string, rather than a distinct value that the useragent is set to. Chrome is likely to hit this bug as much as any other browser vendor.