27 ms·

Starting today, YouTube is almost unusable on Firefox

271 points by 3371 2y ago

PaulHoule 2y ago
Google has been degrading YouTube in Firefox for me for about six months. Where are the antitrust enforcers when you need them?
- supermatt 2y ago
  Have you reported it to them? I have nothing but praise for the EC on the way they have handled the few complaints I have registered regarding such things.
  - PaulHoule 2y ago
    I thought support from Google was "talk to the hand"; all the time I see posts where people got no satisfaction from Google make it to the HN front page.
    - squigz 2y ago
      I'm pretty sure GP was not suggesting reporting it to Google.
    - supermatt 2y ago
      I was referring to reporting to the European Commission - an example of the “antitrust enforcers” you were looking for. They need to know of issues to investigate them. The more reports they get the more likely it will be raised for investigation quickly.
      - PaulHoule 2y ago
        I am in the US, I don't think I can report to the European Commission but I did find https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/report-antitrust-violation https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/report-antitrust-violation which I will do right now. Thanks!
  - sunaookami 2y ago
    I complained about Chrome Web Store but they said it's not a gateekeper even though everything applies... They aren't very competent it seems
    - supermatt 2y ago
      I wholeheartedly disagree. Just because you think they meet the criteria doesn't make it true. What are the metrics on chrome web store usage that make you believe it meets the criteria? The figures I can see mentioned online would reflect only a minority of chrome users even using plugins. I dont disagree with your thoughts on the chrome web store being unfair and anticompetitive, but the DMA is VERY specific in its reach. You can still approach them with complaints unrelated to the DMA of course - but if your complaint was "they should be a gatekeeper", then you will likely be out of luck.
      - sunaookami 2y ago
        Chrome is a gatekeeper and for that gatekeeper they have another gatekeeping service where they gatekeep what add-ons are allowed and which are removed (as happened with AdNauseam). There are no seperate distribution channels for users. If this is not a gatekeeper, then the App Store can't also be a gatekeeper.
- darby_nine 2y ago
  Google may yet be forced to divest from Chrome as a result of the recent judgement.
  - zarzavat 2y ago
    .
    - gsck 2y ago
      How so? The parent comment is about Chrome separating from Google, not YouTube. YouTube would be fine without Chrome.
    - kiicia 2y ago
      why? yt as standalone service does not need specific browser to exist... or at least it should not need one, just good business plan
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - philipov 2y ago
      Forests must burn so that new life can thrive.
  - maleldil 2y ago
    Would that force them not to give Chrome preferential treatment? Even if Chrome becomes independent, it will still likely be the most used browser. Google could just do what other companies already do, and never test on Firefox anyway.
    - saynay 2y ago
      It would remove any incentive to intentionally worsen the non-Chrome(ium) experience. Relevant if you suspect they are deliberately sabotaging Firefox. (That would be a foolish move to make while they are in the middle of multiple antitrust cases and already lost one, but companies aren't immune to acting like idiots)
- safety1st 2y ago
  Well, um, er. As a matter of fact the antitrust enforcers just won their case against Google. They are in the remedy phase now. Figuring out what Google's punishment is going to be. Google no longer being allowed to pay Firefox for its default search placement is most certainly in play as part of the possible remedies. https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/boom-judge-rules-google-is-a-monopolist https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/boom-judge-rules-google-i... If you follow the money the idea that Google would sabotage Firefox doesn't make a lot of sense. It's more likely that Google kept Firefox on life support so they could plausibly deny that they had a browser monopoly. Firefox blew that by mismanaging its market share into oblivion though.
  - mort96 2y ago
    AFAIU that case is about Google's search engine monopoly, not about their browser engine monopoly, so I'm not sure how it's relevant. (Except that it might dry up Firefox's funding if Google won't pay Mozilla to be the default browser engine anymore...)
- wannacboatmovie 2y ago
  We are supposed to believe Google hires some of the most brilliant minds on the planet, but I've yet to see evidence of this. YouTube has been unusable for years and is only getting worse. When one of your flagship products is unusable for both technical people and novices alike, in my mind you have failed as a company. The front end is what the user sees and what matters. YouTube was a better product 10 years ago and they know it.
  - wilsonnb3 2y ago
    They have billions of monthly active users, many of whom are literally toddlers. I think "unusable" is a bit too much hyperbole.
  - Reubachi 2y ago
    While diminishing return products from hyper rich mega corporations is an issue, being as hyperbolically critical as possible only muddies the water and allows the slide to keep happening. "Youtube has been unusable for years and is only getting worse." I only use FF on a work laptop, and I only use brave at home. No issues, ever. In fact, YTP is the one sub service i've paid for uninterrupted over my adult life. (shill post over.) How can I help you get back to using youtube, and what about is getting worse that I can keep an eye on?
  - EasyMark 2y ago
    Can you say what in particular? Maybe you’re using it in a different way than me. tI never seem to have any issues with YouTube, albeit I’m not a heavy user, and I never post videos and I use block origin to block ads; I just consume video content. The DMCA limitations on high Rez stuff is annoying but that’s a licensing issue. It’s not exactly the fastest website on the planet, but it works fine
- bmicraft 2y ago
  I'm always hearing that, but I've yet to see a single video load slow enough to notice. And I'm using YouTube quite a lot.
  - whalesalad 2y ago
    Happens to me all the time. I switched to Chrome just due to the way Firefox sucks with YouTube. This is on Linux, 5k display, YT premium, highest quality available.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
louky 2y ago
Glad I saw this - I thought it was some local issue. Amazingly laggy for me with firefox/Debian 12. I restarted firefox thinking it was the problem, apparently not. Very high CPU usage as well.
- neilv 2y ago
  Just now, I soon saw excessive delays on Debian 12 with `firefox-esr`, more than the occasional usual-of-late several-second blank video area spinner, though the videos otherwise play OK. The noticeable first delay this session, they displayed a still image of the Chrome logo in the video area, with text saying that they recommend Chrome, and maybe a button to get Chrome. (Edit: Screenshot from reproducing this in new browser session; again, it was the first ad, blocking before playing any content video: https://i.imgur.com/GkasyRX.png https://i.imgur.com/GkasyRX.png ) (I'm wondering why they bother with this, if under antitrust scrutiny, when they have more subtle and deniable ways of leveraging their platform control.) Though, I should mention that YouTube is not showing ad videos when it seems to be trying to, which could explain some of these delays. It will overlay white text in upper left of video area, identifying an advertiser (e.g., Old Spice, Liberty Mutual?), but then not run the ad at all, and move on after several seconds. I suppose that my uBlock Origin rules might be blocking something for ad display now, though that's not my intent (and I normally see YouTube videos without having consciously changed something since then), or the ad-showing failure might be the fault of YouTube.
ilrwbwrkhv 2y ago
Yeah, it's time for Google to be broken up into pieces because of anti-competitive laws and really get back to making America into a capitalistic society once again.
- darby_nine 2y ago
  > Yeah, it's time for Google to be broken up into pieces because of anti-competitive laws and really get back to making America into a capitalistic society once again. Isn't that what got us into this mess in the first place? Seems to me that anti-competitive practices are the logical conclusion of privately-owned enterprise. EDIT: to be clear, I'm very pro breaking up google. I'm just surprised that people are coming back around to the idea that government intervention is necessary to balance a stable economy with a private one.
  - Spooky23 2y ago
    There’s a balance between allowing for the freedom to encourage innovative growth and regulatory regimes to govern behavior in more stable markets. We’d be using AT&T’s version of AOL for $150/mo without breakup of that company.
  - prartichoke 2y ago
    What got us here is a capitalistic society where antitrust laws are not implemented in practice. Time to go back to square one and change that
    - ilrwbwrkhv 2y ago
      Exactly this.
- tdb7893 2y ago
  It's hard to get more capitalistic that the owners of capital trying to build monopolies since that's what maximizes value for shareholders. Turns out "free markets" (by the econ 101 definition) are bad for capital owners so they try to have the markets be as not free as possible, I'm shocked they would do this (well, not that shocked)
croisillon 2y ago
with ublock i never had problems and no ads either
- miah_ 2y ago
  Same it has worked fine for me for ages with Ublock, but this week it has been _bad_. I recently switched to 5g for home internet (i live in the woods), and thought that was the cause. But seeing others complain about it leaves me to believe some Google Manager is upset that people are A. blocking ads, and B. using Firefox.
- tgv 2y ago
  I think I only have problems when there's a chat channel.
- cholantesh 2y ago
  I have occasionally run into a weird issue when I jump from one video to another - Video 1's title, comments and description (and maybe its recommendations?) will be displayed but Video 2 will play in the container. Load times are also wonky, but that's about it.
  - croisillon 2y ago
    maybe i'm not such a heavy user
    - cholantesh 2y ago
      I feel attacked lol
eadmund 2y ago
YouTube is barely usable on Google’s YouTube app on Google’s Pixel phones running Google’s Android OS at the moment. It used to be that if one were watching one YouTube video and followed a YouTube link to another, that one would be prompted to either enqueue that video or go to it immediately. I used that all the time to enqueue an evening’s worth of videos. Now, each link interrupts the current video and starts playing. Which means that I instead have to watch the video, then go back to my list of videos to watch, then select another one. Also, it used to be that YouTube links would just open in the YouTube app. This was nice. Now, they open in an embedded version of the app, which means that my current app (say, an RSS reader) is blocked until I finish watching. It’s all so annoying. Why does Google make the experience of using its own products worse? Oh, yeah: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41337899 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41337899
- PaulHoule 2y ago
  My take is that Google products have always punished people who have bad internet connections. 10 years ago I had a crappy DSL connection which could usually handle Netflix, Amazon Video, etc. YouTube was unreliable. Google Meet never worked well for me, even after I got my ADSL upgraded to a more reasonable 20Mbps. Zoom works fine. Skype works fine. Discord works fine. The chat built into Slack... works fine. Google is a standout.
  - kccqzy 2y ago
    Your take directly contradicts my personal experience. 10 years ago I had a crappy internet connection that went down to as little as 10KB/s (severe network congestion and building management didn't care). YouTube served 144p video when every other video site went down only to 240p or even 320p, which was unusable on this connection.
- aners_xyz 2y ago
  There are significantly less bugs on the IOS version of YouTube which pretty much sums up the whole situation.
Ygg2 2y ago
I've noticed background Youtube Tabs, seem to eat memory like crazy. At one point I swear it went to 20GiB of RAM.
graemep 2y ago
Works fine for me. Firefox on Linux.
- brink 2y ago
  No, it happens for me on Linux too. Yesterday it crashed the page on my new laptop.
- tyfon 2y ago
  Same for me. I have yt premium + ublock origin, perhaps this is related to their war non premium users having adblock.
  - Narishma 2y ago
    No, it's become unusable with or without ublock origin for me.
- mmh0000 2y ago
  Starting yesterday afternoon, YouTube doesn't play anything in Firefox (+ublock +sponserblock on Linux) for me. Thankfully, youtube-dlp still works just fine, so it's a minor inconvenience.
__MatrixMan__ 2y ago
There's a lot of important stuff on YouTube. Google doesn't really feel trustworthy enough to be in charge of it. What options do we have to ensure that people can still access that information or whatever if the degradation gets to a point where it's literally unusable? Is the internet archive sufficient? I feel like I should be participating somehow...
- exe34 2y ago
  If there's something I value, I keep my own copy.
  - __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
    Do you get much value out of a youtube video the second time around? If I need to figure out which screws to remove or something like that, it's probably the first and last time I'll need that particular information. If you're not also ensuring that others can access that copy then I don't really see the point.
    - philipov 2y ago
      Many universities have lecture series posted on youtube that I watch repeatedly. I'm definitely going to be backing them up.
    - nickthegreek 2y ago
      I rewatch home/car fix videos whenever I need to eventually do some task again.
    - exe34 2y ago
      I collect a lot of random demo videos from a lot of fields - every time I fancy honing one skill in particular, there's usually 5-10 videos in my collection that will give me something to work on. > If you're not also ensuring that others can access that copy then I don't really see the point. happy to share them if you can buy me a competent enough lawyer to run interference with the litigious copyright overlords.
miroljub 2y ago
Can confirm. Google is a new Microsoft, they leverage their position to cross promote their shit browser and their shit data stealing services. Sorry guys, if your data collection website doesn't work well with Firefox and uBlock Origin, I just won't use it.
- amelius 2y ago
  Thank heavens there is https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp
  - escapecharacter 2y ago
    if only this existed for meetings
    - miah_ 2y ago
      It does, its called Jitsi https://jitsi.org/ https://jitsi.org/ "Jitsi is a set of open-source projects that allows you to easily build and deploy secure video conferencing solutions. At the heart of Jitsi are Jitsi Videobridge and Jitsi Meet, which let you have conferences on the internet, while other projects in the community enable other features such as audio, dial-in, recording, and simulcasting."
  - dspillett 2y ago
    And on mobile, things like https://grayjay.app/ https://grayjay.app/
- illegalmemory 2y ago
  Not only YouTube, but even Google Meet is completely unusable on Firefox. I've noticed memory usage spikes on Firefox, while all other video conferencing platforms work fine. On Chrome, it works perfectly.
  - throwway120385 2y ago
    It'll also randomly bug out and drop the network connection. Although it is so far the only videoconferencing platform that actually works with Pipewire.
buro9 2y ago
I found it freezes every 60 seconds, and I just click the "Share" button and "Starting at", and copied the time into the URL and reload the page... then it works. After a few times I got into the habit of "increment seconds by 60, reload page". I don't know why it has to be so hard, I seldom to never go to YouTube now because of how badly it works. Feels super anti-competitive to own YouTube and Chrome, and to punish Firefox users so aggressively.
- xnickb 2y ago
  Might as well just download videos and watch them later.
  - FriedrichN 2y ago
    This is actually what I do most of the time. I feel like that anecdote of RMS where he says he wgets web pages and e-mails them to himself.
  - cholantesh 2y ago
    The one thing you lose I guess is discovery, but the algorithm is so volatile that maybe that's not the worst thing in the world.
    - knodi123 2y ago
      Yeah, i've used tampermonkey and various other scripts to remove all discovery/suggestions from youtube, and I've never regretted it. It's great. But that's just my personal style, if you sit down and watch it like TV then I can see how that would be a sacrifice.
      - cholantesh 2y ago
        I don't, but I like the recommendations on the home screen to find stuff I might like...again though, like 75% of the time, I don't.
bell-cot 2y ago
Doing a quick test (Windows 10, Firefox, NoScript, Privacy Badger) - it seems to work fine for me. FWIW, I've got NoScript blocking most of the sites that YouTube wants to use js from.
- phaedrus 2y ago
  I have the "DF YouTube (Distraction Free)" Firefox extension installed, hiding anything to do with suggested videos. YouTube is working for me with Firefox on Windows 11 about the same way it has all month.
mrkramer 2y ago
They do it every now and then, and then they claim that it is a bug. Yea sure.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
scrlk 2y ago
Seems to be okay for me on FF 129.0.2 + uBlock Origin, running on Windows 11. Looking through the Reddit comments, users running older versions of FF may be affected? Seeing a few people commenting that they're seeing this YT issue with v88, 110, 115 ESR and 121.
- mypastself 2y ago
  Same here, with the caveat that Google has managed to successfully bully me into paying for Premium some time ago. Not sure if any Premium users are affected.
  - hightrix 2y ago
    Same setup here, but without premium. I'm seeing no issues.
- chii 2y ago
  i am using the ESR version and the slowness definitely exists here. The slowness accumulates after the infinite scroll loads a lot (e.g., the subscriptions page or the home page, or comments). Refreshing fixes it, but now you've lost the old position and have to re-scroll back (which, causes the slowness once again).
mykowebhn 2y ago
I have the latest Firefox on Mac OS, and no problems for me. I pay for Youtube Premium, though. I wonder if that makes a difference.
- danielbln 2y ago
  Same here, macOS and premium and can't tell any difference to using YouTube on Chrome.
  - faaarmer 2y ago
    I use MacOS, Youtube Premium and I can tell a difference in general usability since switching from Chrome to Firefox. Skipping 10 seconds using left and right keys is much slower in Firefox vs Chrome.
- danaris 2y ago
  I have the latest Firefox on macOS and do not pay for Premium, and I have been having no problems with YouTube.
- drpossum 2y ago
  I've got premium and am using MacOS and I've had to kill my browser several times in the last couple days because it froze up. I'm using M3s if it makes a difference.
  - entropicdrifter 2y ago
    Working fine for me over here. Firefox on M1 Pro Mac, also YT Premium. I'll check on my gaming PC (Linux Mint 22, Firefox)
- kjkjadksj 2y ago
  Even with ubo I’ve been getting a flash of ads on youtube website. I might not see the ad but I will see the keyframe as well as a black loading screen for about as long as it takes for the skip button to appear on that ad. The solution was to of course pull the video directly.
zelias 2y ago
going by Hanlon's Razor, i would guess that this is merely the result of an engineering update that nobody bothered to QA on Firefox rather than a malicious attack on a single browser that isn't _really_ winning market share let's not assume Google malice is _too_ competent
- AlwaysRock 2y ago
  No one bothered to QA the browser with the 4th largest market share? The willful negligence is the malicious.
  - thebytefairy 2y ago
    Wouldn't be surprised. The 4th largest browser is a mere 2.7% of the market. What about the fifth and sixth? If I had to decide how to allocate testing hours, I probably wouldn't put much into the 2.7% vs the top 3 with 88%.
- kccqzy 2y ago
  That's totally true, but it's still Google's fault. I found a nice article on exactly this from a former Mozilla exec: https://www.zdnet.com/article/former-mozilla-exec-google-has-sabotaged-firefox-for-years/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/former-mozilla-exec-google-has... > Gmail & [Google] Docs started to experience selective performance issues and bugs on Firefox. Demo sites would falsely block Firefox as 'incompatible' […] All of this is stuff you're allowed to do to compete, of course. But we were still a search partner, so we'd say 'hey what gives?' And every time, they'd say, 'oops. That was accidental. We'll fix it in the next push in 2 weeks.' […] Over and over. Oops. Another accident. We'll fix it soon. We want the same things. We're on the same team. There were dozens of oopses. Hundreds maybe? This latest article is basically the same thing again. Google would tell Mozilla it's a genuine bug; they would fix it soon; but Mozilla loses some users and Chrome gains some. Nothing new.
- timw4mail 2y ago
  Yeah no, this has happened too many times to be just incompetence. It's malicious, plain and simple.
BenoitEssiambre 2y ago
Imo, it's just too difficult to maintain compatibility through a natural language specification. Things like browsers need some kind of open source reference implementation to act as a spec to maintain interoperability. https://benoitessiambre.com/specification.html https://benoitessiambre.com/specification.html
- carpenecopinum 2y ago
  1) I'm reasonably confident that this issue is not an accident. Better compatibility / better specs won't help here, I'm afraid. 2) A reference implementation for browser-features is an insanely complex project. Already there are effectively only two entities on the entire planet who can produce a browser that is reasonably close to the current spec. If you forced a reference implementation to exist, it'd probably just end up being Chrome(ium), which is arguably an even worse situation than where we are now.
  - BenoitEssiambre 2y ago
    You don't think Mozilla adopting chromium or a fork of it would fix a lot of their problems?
- robin_reala 2y ago
  It existed and was called Amaya.[1] Unfortunately it was way too expensive to keep it up to date with the ever-evolving specifications, and slowing down spec development was a non-starter. So it was canned. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amaya_(web_editor) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amaya_(web_editor)
  - PaulHoule 2y ago
    WSYIWYG web editing seems to be impossible. CMS systems seem to have mostly given up on interactive HTML editors and switched to things like markdown. I want to like Dreamweaver but whenever I try to use it there is a 1-2 sec delay between me typing text in and it appearing on the screen. Most HTML editors behave like they are possessed by the devil: try to select the text in an <h1> and somehow it either selects everything but the first character or it selects all the text before the <h1> and also the <h1>.
bamboozled 2y ago
The iPhone app sucks too, am I the only one who force quits the app to get back to the search screen ?
- a1o 2y ago
  This is all browsers that aren't Safari in iPhone. I have to do this too with Chrome on my iPhone too.
KptMarchewa 2y ago
Google Flights has been broken on Firefox for as long as I can remember.
kuschku 2y ago
It works perfectly fine (everything loads instantly) when I'm logged in with an account that has YouTube Premium. But when I try using it with an account that doesn't have YouTube Premium, on the same browser, on the same hardware, everything hangs for 30+ seconds. Hmmmmmmmmm?
- entropicdrifter 2y ago
  Adtech bloatware causing issues, maybe?
bloopernova 2y ago
I don't know what the solution is to private/shareholder corporations that own a defacto public space like YouTube and Twitter. Maybe we're still in the big bang of the Internet and this will fix itself over time. Although I'd really like a public organization like the Library of Congress to support archival of public spaces. Which makes me wonder: If society decides that viewing information is a right, does that lead to government sponsorship of browsers? i.e. if viewing information is a right, then an information viewer is an important thing that must be open and unfettered by monetary interests. Considering how much gets pumped into Congressional jobs programs, a few million to hire some good software engineers seems easy to support.
robin_reala 2y ago
Oops. (context: https://archive.is/tgIH9 https://archive.is/tgIH9)
markus_zhang 2y ago
On a side note, I have been reflecting on the impact of modern Internet contents on me for the last 12 years or so. The conclusion is, for whatever the reason, the impact is mostly negative. It would do me a great favor to simply remove Youtube, social media sites and anything similar from my life. I probably have ADHD. I rarely completed any side projects. I'm anxious most if the time, biting my fingers all the time, a habit I formed before I reached teenage. Having access to the modern Internet makes everything above worse, a lot worse. Yes they also introduced a lot of ineresting things to me, but there are endless amount of interesting things in the world and I need to focus on a couple of them to get a deeper understanding. Reading new contents every day is my escape, not my medicine. Maybe I should just block myself from the Internet. I taught myself Foxbase and Foxpro back in the 90s without the Internet. I taught myself C++ in 2012 without the modern Internet (SO was the only source I inquired and the experience was bad). If I really want to achieve something meaningful in the rest of my life, which is about 3 to 4 decades based on the mortality curve, I probably should just plug off from the internet. But how do I do that? Apparently Internet is essential nowadays for day to day chores, and my family absoutely needs a high speed Internet. How can I go back to the cave? I don't have enough will power to do that.
- jarsin 2y ago
  I saw a tip once from a 3D artist on how he mastered sculpting. Everyday he would force himself to just sculpt a straight line on his model. This one line was enough to engage his brain and before he knew it he would keep sculpting. I use this in coding. Just do this one function then you can do whatever. Most of the time I won't go back to procrastinating, but end up spending an hour or so working on the project. I also think the opposite is true. If you try to force yourself to work many hours per day on side projects by disabling the internet or netflix etc. you will burn out.
- dwighttk 2y ago
  In Plato’s allegory of the cave it isn’t the cave you want to go back to, it is your family you want to awaken to the fact that they are inside he cave being entertained by shadow puppets.
- nilsherzig 2y ago
pragmar 2y ago
Became unusable for me (Firefox/Win) a few months back on my laptop with integrated intel graphics. Fine on other computers with more capable hardware. The solution was an extension called h264ify. There was something about the vp8/9 codec that was bringing Firefox to its knees. h264ify avoids those codecs altogether on Youtube.
j16sdiz 2y ago
It works for me on Windows 10, Firefox Developer Edition, no addon that touches youtube. Logged in, not premium
- dncornholio 2y ago
  Try scrolling through comments or watch a video with chat. It seems the slowdowns happen in those components.
everyone 2y ago
I havent had performance issues, but I did have a very annoying issue recently where it would only show 3 videos per row. I tried a bunch of potential fixes but the one that worked for me was actually adding this custom filter to ublock origin... youtube.com##ytd-rich-grid-renderer:style(--ytd-rich-grid-items-per-row: 5 !important)
xnx 2y ago
Just tried it out and ... it works fine?
Kye 2y ago
Not to WOMM, but as a data point, it's working perfectly for me in Firefox on Windows with uBlock Origin. Is this one of those A/B test things where I'll get it eventually? I know the ad bomb rolled out slowly[0] and we know they're looking for a way to foil ad blocking without drawing bad press and regulatory scrutiny. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23769291 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23769291
- mrandish 2y ago
  I just checked and YT is normal for me in FF 129.0.2 (64-bit). YT specific add-ons: uBlock Origin, Nova YouTube (userscript with dozens of modules to fix various YT behaviors and UI annoyances), and Enhancer for YouTube (adds more playback speeds, fixes default player size & volume levels). Since YT in my FF is heavily modified to be not awful, maybe the regression is in something my add-on stack is blocking.
  - inhumantsar 2y ago
    > Nova YouTube looked this up out of curiosity. the only thing resembling a description is "Combine small plugins, expanding the possibilities of YouTube." which is pretty useless. what all does this do?
    - mrandish 2y ago
      Here is what the Nova YT interface looks like on my Firefox. Each section is a separate module. Modules don't do anything if not activated so you can choose how you want YT to behave/appear. https://i.imgur.com/lMKaJ5t.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/lMKaJ5t.jpeg After putting the number of videos in a grid row back to a useful number, things I especially like are changing video thumbnails back to a still that's actually from the fucking video, instead of a misleading click-bait image. I also like the option of changing all caps and removing emojis from video titles. It also has options to automatically remove a bunch of the stupid shit YT pushes in the UI I don't want to see. After I got it set up, I found it literally shocking how much better YT is - yet in many ways, it's just restoring YT to the way it used to appear and work when its focus was user-centric instead of user manipulative. Since about ~2016 we've all been slowly frog-boiled by YT making the site slightly more annoying every month through iterative A/B testing optimizing for ad revenue. I literally can't go back to using stock YT now. Each module has an info link which points to its entry in the wiki: https://github.com/raingart/Nova-YouTube-extension/wiki/plugins#thumbs-clear https://github.com/raingart/Nova-YouTube-extension/wiki/plug.... Since I'm not familiar with YT's terminology for labeling all their UI elements, it initially took a little experimentation to see what some of the module options do but it's quick to change a setting, tab back to YT, refresh and see the result.
dncornholio 2y ago
Conspiracy theorists on top already even though this also happened on Chrome multiple times in history. Sometimes software can be a bitch, there's no reason to believe this is intentional
wsdookadr 2y ago
NAS with lots of storage + tubesync + jellyfin. problem solved.
cut3 2y ago
Google docs blocks the ability to print in firefox, it will instead always save as pdf. Google doesnt even try to hide its anticompetitive practices at this point.
bastard_op 2y ago
It's not only windows, it's happening to me on arch linux with firefox as well. Has been for a few days now.
jeroenhd 2y ago
Took a performance benchmark in both Firefox and Brave. Both of them are unusually slow (addons/extensions disabled, fresh profile), but Firefox especially so. Source for the huge render times seems to be desktop_polymer.js, specifically the part that's registering and setting up custom web components. Once the website loads, performance becomes a lot better. My guess is that a Polymer update made Youtube slower for everyone, but SpiderMonkey isn't particularly great at the kind of excess operations that have been added. Firefox in particular seems to suffer from complete UI freezes whereas Chromium browsers seem to just have slow tabs when the browser is overwhelmed. While I certainly wouldn't be surprised if this is part of an anti-adblocker mechanism, not every slowdown on Google's websites is done out of malice. Some of it is just caused by bugs.
- IncreasePosts 2y ago
  Also, it is Firefox on the desktop. 90% of YouTube views come from mobile, and Firefox only has about 5% market share on the desktop. So desktop Firefox is a half a percent of the overall users of youtube. Is it any surprise that maintaining support for a browser that delivers less than a percent of the total users is deprioritized or just forgotten about?
  - miah_ 2y ago
    Despite those stats, if Google wants to avoid being called a monopoly they need to support it, and it needs to receive the same level of support as their own product.
    - mozempthrowaway 2y ago
      It’s not monopolistic to not support shitty browsers with little user base. This isn’t even the basis for the current antitrust ruling against Google, for what it’s worth. As the parent comment points out, if YouTube isn’t buggy for most of their users, why do they have to worry about it? We don’t expect either Microsoft or game devs to ensure their stuff works well with wine on Linux.
amelius 2y ago
"Our mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful."
MrVitaliy 2y ago
Just have two browsers. Use Chrome for only youtube and google apps. And Firefox for rest of web use.
meiraleal 2y ago
Still working fine for me, Firefox/Linux.
oglop 2y ago
Weird. Works just fine for me, in that my CPU skyrockets in usage on that process and stays pegged at 100% or higher for about 5 mins before calming down. Just a normal day on YouTube for me.
riiii 2y ago
Works for me, but the settings cog hasn't been OK for a long time, the settings menu doesn't have any text. But all my Firefox problems happen on Google owned sites. Maps navigation doesn't highlight the route (desktop). Google image search doesn't work (desktop).
vergessenmir 2y ago
I use zen. Ditched firefox and brave irrationally last week because youtube runs so much better and page loading is fast. Let's see how long this change lasts
Trebhawkins 2y ago
Why are you even allowing satanic Google access to your Firefox? Keep YouTube corralled in Chrome. No sense in consorting with satan anymore than we need to.
bArray 2y ago
There seems to be two bugs here, one that YouTube seems to have regressed on a popular browser choice, but also that Firefox allows any website to claim enough resources to make the entire browser inoperable.
- tempaccount420 2y ago
  Everyone is talking about Google breaking something, but what if this is something Firefox has to fix? If it works in Chrome and not Firefox, it should be a browser bug, not website bug.
ilaksh 2y ago
What are the alternatives to YouTube these days?
- stiltzkin 2y ago
  [dead]
reaperducer 2y ago
Coincidentally, today I tried to log in to Google AdSense for the first time in months using Firefox. Google simply will not permit it. Couldn’t sign you in This browser or app may not be secure. Learn more Try using a different browser. If you’re already using a supported browser, you can try again to sign in. I checked, and my version of Firefox is up to date. I know I could play reindeer games with the user agent, but I shouldn't have to. Surprisingly, to me, it had no problem with Duck's browser. I thought that would be on the forbidden-by-Google list, too.
lainproliant 2y ago
Never assume as malice what can more easily be explained by incompetence or accident.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
aidenn0 2y ago
Works fine for me? [edit] Just ran into the issue when clicking on a video someone else linked; yt homepage was fine though; weird.
natch 2y ago
Starting today, almost everything is unusable on Firefox. Seems like there’s been some change in DNS or maybe it’s just my ISP but Safari is fine.
Narishma 2y ago
Seems like they have reverted whatever update from yesterday that caused this. It's back to normal for me on Firefox ESR.
rldjbpin 2y ago
if it is indeed an intended user experience, then i expect non-chrome users to only prosper by either paying for premium or by turning to browser extensions to improve youtube. i'd wager that those choosing to installing firefox are more likely to go to this route themselves.
tempaccount420 2y ago
Everyone is talking about Google breaking something, but what if this is something Firefox has to fix? If it works in Chrome and not Firefox, it should be a browser bug, not website bug.
- 3371 2y ago
  Because it did not happen after a Firefox update?
stiltzkin 2y ago
[dead]

271 points by 3371 2y ago

Google has been degrading YouTube in Firefox for me for about six months. Where are the antitrust enforcers when you need them?

supermatt 2y ago
Have you reported it to them? I have nothing but praise for the EC on the way they have handled the few complaints I have registered regarding such things.
- PaulHoule 2y ago
  I thought support from Google was "talk to the hand"; all the time I see posts where people got no satisfaction from Google make it to the HN front page.
  - squigz 2y ago
    I'm pretty sure GP was not suggesting reporting it to Google.
  - supermatt 2y ago
    I was referring to reporting to the European Commission - an example of the “antitrust enforcers” you were looking for. They need to know of issues to investigate them. The more reports they get the more likely it will be raised for investigation quickly.
    - PaulHoule 2y ago
      I am in the US, I don't think I can report to the European Commission but I did find https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/report-antitrust-violation https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/report-antitrust-violation which I will do right now. Thanks!
- sunaookami 2y ago
  I complained about Chrome Web Store but they said it's not a gateekeper even though everything applies... They aren't very competent it seems
  - supermatt 2y ago
    I wholeheartedly disagree. Just because you think they meet the criteria doesn't make it true. What are the metrics on chrome web store usage that make you believe it meets the criteria? The figures I can see mentioned online would reflect only a minority of chrome users even using plugins. I dont disagree with your thoughts on the chrome web store being unfair and anticompetitive, but the DMA is VERY specific in its reach. You can still approach them with complaints unrelated to the DMA of course - but if your complaint was "they should be a gatekeeper", then you will likely be out of luck.
    - sunaookami 2y ago
      Chrome is a gatekeeper and for that gatekeeper they have another gatekeeping service where they gatekeep what add-ons are allowed and which are removed (as happened with AdNauseam). There are no seperate distribution channels for users. If this is not a gatekeeper, then the App Store can't also be a gatekeeper.
darby_nine 2y ago
Google may yet be forced to divest from Chrome as a result of the recent judgement.
- zarzavat 2y ago
  .
  - gsck 2y ago
    How so? The parent comment is about Chrome separating from Google, not YouTube. YouTube would be fine without Chrome.
  - kiicia 2y ago
    why? yt as standalone service does not need specific browser to exist... or at least it should not need one, just good business plan
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - philipov 2y ago
    Forests must burn so that new life can thrive.
- maleldil 2y ago
  Would that force them not to give Chrome preferential treatment? Even if Chrome becomes independent, it will still likely be the most used browser. Google could just do what other companies already do, and never test on Firefox anyway.
  - saynay 2y ago
    It would remove any incentive to intentionally worsen the non-Chrome(ium) experience. Relevant if you suspect they are deliberately sabotaging Firefox. (That would be a foolish move to make while they are in the middle of multiple antitrust cases and already lost one, but companies aren't immune to acting like idiots)
safety1st 2y ago
Well, um, er. As a matter of fact the antitrust enforcers just won their case against Google. They are in the remedy phase now. Figuring out what Google's punishment is going to be. Google no longer being allowed to pay Firefox for its default search placement is most certainly in play as part of the possible remedies. https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/boom-judge-rules-google-is-a-monopolist https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/boom-judge-rules-google-i... If you follow the money the idea that Google would sabotage Firefox doesn't make a lot of sense. It's more likely that Google kept Firefox on life support so they could plausibly deny that they had a browser monopoly. Firefox blew that by mismanaging its market share into oblivion though.
- mort96 2y ago
  AFAIU that case is about Google's search engine monopoly, not about their browser engine monopoly, so I'm not sure how it's relevant. (Except that it might dry up Firefox's funding if Google won't pay Mozilla to be the default browser engine anymore...)
wannacboatmovie 2y ago
We are supposed to believe Google hires some of the most brilliant minds on the planet, but I've yet to see evidence of this. YouTube has been unusable for years and is only getting worse. When one of your flagship products is unusable for both technical people and novices alike, in my mind you have failed as a company. The front end is what the user sees and what matters. YouTube was a better product 10 years ago and they know it.
- wilsonnb3 2y ago
  They have billions of monthly active users, many of whom are literally toddlers. I think "unusable" is a bit too much hyperbole.
- Reubachi 2y ago
  While diminishing return products from hyper rich mega corporations is an issue, being as hyperbolically critical as possible only muddies the water and allows the slide to keep happening. "Youtube has been unusable for years and is only getting worse." I only use FF on a work laptop, and I only use brave at home. No issues, ever. In fact, YTP is the one sub service i've paid for uninterrupted over my adult life. (shill post over.) How can I help you get back to using youtube, and what about is getting worse that I can keep an eye on?
- EasyMark 2y ago
  Can you say what in particular? Maybe you’re using it in a different way than me. tI never seem to have any issues with YouTube, albeit I’m not a heavy user, and I never post videos and I use block origin to block ads; I just consume video content. The DMCA limitations on high Rez stuff is annoying but that’s a licensing issue. It’s not exactly the fastest website on the planet, but it works fine
bmicraft 2y ago
I'm always hearing that, but I've yet to see a single video load slow enough to notice. And I'm using YouTube quite a lot.
- whalesalad 2y ago
  Happens to me all the time. I switched to Chrome just due to the way Firefox sucks with YouTube. This is on Linux, 5k display, YT premium, highest quality available.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

louky 2y ago

Glad I saw this - I thought it was some local issue. Amazingly laggy for me with firefox/Debian 12. I restarted firefox thinking it was the problem, apparently not. Very high CPU usage as well.

neilv 2y ago
Just now, I soon saw excessive delays on Debian 12 with `firefox-esr`, more than the occasional usual-of-late several-second blank video area spinner, though the videos otherwise play OK. The noticeable first delay this session, they displayed a still image of the Chrome logo in the video area, with text saying that they recommend Chrome, and maybe a button to get Chrome. (Edit: Screenshot from reproducing this in new browser session; again, it was the first ad, blocking before playing any content video: https://i.imgur.com/GkasyRX.png https://i.imgur.com/GkasyRX.png ) (I'm wondering why they bother with this, if under antitrust scrutiny, when they have more subtle and deniable ways of leveraging their platform control.) Though, I should mention that YouTube is not showing ad videos when it seems to be trying to, which could explain some of these delays. It will overlay white text in upper left of video area, identifying an advertiser (e.g., Old Spice, Liberty Mutual?), but then not run the ad at all, and move on after several seconds. I suppose that my uBlock Origin rules might be blocking something for ad display now, though that's not my intent (and I normally see YouTube videos without having consciously changed something since then), or the ad-showing failure might be the fault of YouTube.

ilrwbwrkhv 2y ago

Yeah, it's time for Google to be broken up into pieces because of anti-competitive laws and really get back to making America into a capitalistic society once again.

darby_nine 2y ago
> Yeah, it's time for Google to be broken up into pieces because of anti-competitive laws and really get back to making America into a capitalistic society once again. Isn't that what got us into this mess in the first place? Seems to me that anti-competitive practices are the logical conclusion of privately-owned enterprise. EDIT: to be clear, I'm very pro breaking up google. I'm just surprised that people are coming back around to the idea that government intervention is necessary to balance a stable economy with a private one.
- Spooky23 2y ago
  There’s a balance between allowing for the freedom to encourage innovative growth and regulatory regimes to govern behavior in more stable markets. We’d be using AT&T’s version of AOL for $150/mo without breakup of that company.
- prartichoke 2y ago
  What got us here is a capitalistic society where antitrust laws are not implemented in practice. Time to go back to square one and change that
  - ilrwbwrkhv 2y ago
    Exactly this.
tdb7893 2y ago
It's hard to get more capitalistic that the owners of capital trying to build monopolies since that's what maximizes value for shareholders. Turns out "free markets" (by the econ 101 definition) are bad for capital owners so they try to have the markets be as not free as possible, I'm shocked they would do this (well, not that shocked)

croisillon 2y ago

with ublock i never had problems and no ads either

miah_ 2y ago
Same it has worked fine for me for ages with Ublock, but this week it has been _bad_. I recently switched to 5g for home internet (i live in the woods), and thought that was the cause. But seeing others complain about it leaves me to believe some Google Manager is upset that people are A. blocking ads, and B. using Firefox.
tgv 2y ago
I think I only have problems when there's a chat channel.
cholantesh 2y ago
I have occasionally run into a weird issue when I jump from one video to another - Video 1's title, comments and description (and maybe its recommendations?) will be displayed but Video 2 will play in the container. Load times are also wonky, but that's about it.
- croisillon 2y ago
  maybe i'm not such a heavy user
  - cholantesh 2y ago
    I feel attacked lol

eadmund 2y ago

YouTube is barely usable on Google’s YouTube app on Google’s Pixel phones running Google’s Android OS at the moment. It used to be that if one were watching one YouTube video and followed a YouTube link to another, that one would be prompted to either enqueue that video or go to it immediately. I used that all the time to enqueue an evening’s worth of videos. Now, each link interrupts the current video and starts playing. Which means that I instead have to watch the video, then go back to my list of videos to watch, then select another one. Also, it used to be that YouTube links would just open in the YouTube app. This was nice. Now, they open in an embedded version of the app, which means that my current app (say, an RSS reader) is blocked until I finish watching. It’s all so annoying. Why does Google make the experience of using its own products worse? Oh, yeah: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41337899 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41337899

PaulHoule 2y ago
My take is that Google products have always punished people who have bad internet connections. 10 years ago I had a crappy DSL connection which could usually handle Netflix, Amazon Video, etc. YouTube was unreliable. Google Meet never worked well for me, even after I got my ADSL upgraded to a more reasonable 20Mbps. Zoom works fine. Skype works fine. Discord works fine. The chat built into Slack... works fine. Google is a standout.
- kccqzy 2y ago
  Your take directly contradicts my personal experience. 10 years ago I had a crappy internet connection that went down to as little as 10KB/s (severe network congestion and building management didn't care). YouTube served 144p video when every other video site went down only to 240p or even 320p, which was unusable on this connection.
aners_xyz 2y ago
There are significantly less bugs on the IOS version of YouTube which pretty much sums up the whole situation.

Ygg2 2y ago

I've noticed background Youtube Tabs, seem to eat memory like crazy. At one point I swear it went to 20GiB of RAM.

graemep 2y ago

Works fine for me. Firefox on Linux.

brink 2y ago
No, it happens for me on Linux too. Yesterday it crashed the page on my new laptop.
tyfon 2y ago
Same for me. I have yt premium + ublock origin, perhaps this is related to their war non premium users having adblock.
- Narishma 2y ago
  No, it's become unusable with or without ublock origin for me.
mmh0000 2y ago
Starting yesterday afternoon, YouTube doesn't play anything in Firefox (+ublock +sponserblock on Linux) for me. Thankfully, youtube-dlp still works just fine, so it's a minor inconvenience.

__MatrixMan__ 2y ago

There's a lot of important stuff on YouTube. Google doesn't really feel trustworthy enough to be in charge of it. What options do we have to ensure that people can still access that information or whatever if the degradation gets to a point where it's literally unusable? Is the internet archive sufficient? I feel like I should be participating somehow...

exe34 2y ago
If there's something I value, I keep my own copy.
- __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
  Do you get much value out of a youtube video the second time around? If I need to figure out which screws to remove or something like that, it's probably the first and last time I'll need that particular information. If you're not also ensuring that others can access that copy then I don't really see the point.
  - philipov 2y ago
    Many universities have lecture series posted on youtube that I watch repeatedly. I'm definitely going to be backing them up.
  - nickthegreek 2y ago
    I rewatch home/car fix videos whenever I need to eventually do some task again.
  - exe34 2y ago
    I collect a lot of random demo videos from a lot of fields - every time I fancy honing one skill in particular, there's usually 5-10 videos in my collection that will give me something to work on. > If you're not also ensuring that others can access that copy then I don't really see the point. happy to share them if you can buy me a competent enough lawyer to run interference with the litigious copyright overlords.

miroljub 2y ago

Can confirm. Google is a new Microsoft, they leverage their position to cross promote their shit browser and their shit data stealing services. Sorry guys, if your data collection website doesn't work well with Firefox and uBlock Origin, I just won't use it.

amelius 2y ago
Thank heavens there is https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp
- escapecharacter 2y ago
  if only this existed for meetings
  - miah_ 2y ago
    It does, its called Jitsi https://jitsi.org/ https://jitsi.org/ "Jitsi is a set of open-source projects that allows you to easily build and deploy secure video conferencing solutions. At the heart of Jitsi are Jitsi Videobridge and Jitsi Meet, which let you have conferences on the internet, while other projects in the community enable other features such as audio, dial-in, recording, and simulcasting."
- dspillett 2y ago
  And on mobile, things like https://grayjay.app/ https://grayjay.app/
illegalmemory 2y ago
Not only YouTube, but even Google Meet is completely unusable on Firefox. I've noticed memory usage spikes on Firefox, while all other video conferencing platforms work fine. On Chrome, it works perfectly.
- throwway120385 2y ago
  It'll also randomly bug out and drop the network connection. Although it is so far the only videoconferencing platform that actually works with Pipewire.

buro9 2y ago

I found it freezes every 60 seconds, and I just click the "Share" button and "Starting at", and copied the time into the URL and reload the page... then it works. After a few times I got into the habit of "increment seconds by 60, reload page". I don't know why it has to be so hard, I seldom to never go to YouTube now because of how badly it works. Feels super anti-competitive to own YouTube and Chrome, and to punish Firefox users so aggressively.

xnickb 2y ago
Might as well just download videos and watch them later.
- FriedrichN 2y ago
  This is actually what I do most of the time. I feel like that anecdote of RMS where he says he wgets web pages and e-mails them to himself.
- cholantesh 2y ago
  The one thing you lose I guess is discovery, but the algorithm is so volatile that maybe that's not the worst thing in the world.
  - knodi123 2y ago
    Yeah, i've used tampermonkey and various other scripts to remove all discovery/suggestions from youtube, and I've never regretted it. It's great. But that's just my personal style, if you sit down and watch it like TV then I can see how that would be a sacrifice.
    - cholantesh 2y ago
      I don't, but I like the recommendations on the home screen to find stuff I might like...again though, like 75% of the time, I don't.

bell-cot 2y ago

Doing a quick test (Windows 10, Firefox, NoScript, Privacy Badger) - it seems to work fine for me. FWIW, I've got NoScript blocking most of the sites that YouTube wants to use js from.

phaedrus 2y ago
I have the "DF YouTube (Distraction Free)" Firefox extension installed, hiding anything to do with suggested videos. YouTube is working for me with Firefox on Windows 11 about the same way it has all month.

mrkramer 2y ago

They do it every now and then, and then they claim that it is a bug. Yea sure.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

scrlk 2y ago

Seems to be okay for me on FF 129.0.2 + uBlock Origin, running on Windows 11. Looking through the Reddit comments, users running older versions of FF may be affected? Seeing a few people commenting that they're seeing this YT issue with v88, 110, 115 ESR and 121.

mypastself 2y ago
Same here, with the caveat that Google has managed to successfully bully me into paying for Premium some time ago. Not sure if any Premium users are affected.
- hightrix 2y ago
  Same setup here, but without premium. I'm seeing no issues.
chii 2y ago
i am using the ESR version and the slowness definitely exists here. The slowness accumulates after the infinite scroll loads a lot (e.g., the subscriptions page or the home page, or comments). Refreshing fixes it, but now you've lost the old position and have to re-scroll back (which, causes the slowness once again).

mykowebhn 2y ago

I have the latest Firefox on Mac OS, and no problems for me. I pay for Youtube Premium, though. I wonder if that makes a difference.

danielbln 2y ago
Same here, macOS and premium and can't tell any difference to using YouTube on Chrome.
- faaarmer 2y ago
  I use MacOS, Youtube Premium and I can tell a difference in general usability since switching from Chrome to Firefox. Skipping 10 seconds using left and right keys is much slower in Firefox vs Chrome.
danaris 2y ago
I have the latest Firefox on macOS and do not pay for Premium, and I have been having no problems with YouTube.
drpossum 2y ago
I've got premium and am using MacOS and I've had to kill my browser several times in the last couple days because it froze up. I'm using M3s if it makes a difference.
- entropicdrifter 2y ago
  Working fine for me over here. Firefox on M1 Pro Mac, also YT Premium. I'll check on my gaming PC (Linux Mint 22, Firefox)
kjkjadksj 2y ago
Even with ubo I’ve been getting a flash of ads on youtube website. I might not see the ad but I will see the keyframe as well as a black loading screen for about as long as it takes for the skip button to appear on that ad. The solution was to of course pull the video directly.

zelias 2y ago

going by Hanlon's Razor, i would guess that this is merely the result of an engineering update that nobody bothered to QA on Firefox rather than a malicious attack on a single browser that isn't _really_ winning market share let's not assume Google malice is _too_ competent

AlwaysRock 2y ago
No one bothered to QA the browser with the 4th largest market share? The willful negligence is the malicious.
- thebytefairy 2y ago
  Wouldn't be surprised. The 4th largest browser is a mere 2.7% of the market. What about the fifth and sixth? If I had to decide how to allocate testing hours, I probably wouldn't put much into the 2.7% vs the top 3 with 88%.
kccqzy 2y ago
That's totally true, but it's still Google's fault. I found a nice article on exactly this from a former Mozilla exec: https://www.zdnet.com/article/former-mozilla-exec-google-has-sabotaged-firefox-for-years/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/former-mozilla-exec-google-has... > Gmail & [Google] Docs started to experience selective performance issues and bugs on Firefox. Demo sites would falsely block Firefox as 'incompatible' […] All of this is stuff you're allowed to do to compete, of course. But we were still a search partner, so we'd say 'hey what gives?' And every time, they'd say, 'oops. That was accidental. We'll fix it in the next push in 2 weeks.' […] Over and over. Oops. Another accident. We'll fix it soon. We want the same things. We're on the same team. There were dozens of oopses. Hundreds maybe? This latest article is basically the same thing again. Google would tell Mozilla it's a genuine bug; they would fix it soon; but Mozilla loses some users and Chrome gains some. Nothing new.
timw4mail 2y ago
Yeah no, this has happened too many times to be just incompetence. It's malicious, plain and simple.

BenoitEssiambre 2y ago

Imo, it's just too difficult to maintain compatibility through a natural language specification. Things like browsers need some kind of open source reference implementation to act as a spec to maintain interoperability. https://benoitessiambre.com/specification.html https://benoitessiambre.com/specification.html

carpenecopinum 2y ago
1) I'm reasonably confident that this issue is not an accident. Better compatibility / better specs won't help here, I'm afraid. 2) A reference implementation for browser-features is an insanely complex project. Already there are effectively only two entities on the entire planet who can produce a browser that is reasonably close to the current spec. If you forced a reference implementation to exist, it'd probably just end up being Chrome(ium), which is arguably an even worse situation than where we are now.
- BenoitEssiambre 2y ago
  You don't think Mozilla adopting chromium or a fork of it would fix a lot of their problems?
robin_reala 2y ago
It existed and was called Amaya.[1] Unfortunately it was way too expensive to keep it up to date with the ever-evolving specifications, and slowing down spec development was a non-starter. So it was canned. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amaya_(web_editor) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amaya_(web_editor)
- PaulHoule 2y ago
  WSYIWYG web editing seems to be impossible. CMS systems seem to have mostly given up on interactive HTML editors and switched to things like markdown. I want to like Dreamweaver but whenever I try to use it there is a 1-2 sec delay between me typing text in and it appearing on the screen. Most HTML editors behave like they are possessed by the devil: try to select the text in an <h1> and somehow it either selects everything but the first character or it selects all the text before the <h1> and also the <h1>.

bamboozled 2y ago

The iPhone app sucks too, am I the only one who force quits the app to get back to the search screen ?

a1o 2y ago
This is all browsers that aren't Safari in iPhone. I have to do this too with Chrome on my iPhone too.

KptMarchewa 2y ago

Google Flights has been broken on Firefox for as long as I can remember.

kuschku 2y ago

It works perfectly fine (everything loads instantly) when I'm logged in with an account that has YouTube Premium. But when I try using it with an account that doesn't have YouTube Premium, on the same browser, on the same hardware, everything hangs for 30+ seconds. Hmmmmmmmmm?

entropicdrifter 2y ago
Adtech bloatware causing issues, maybe?

bloopernova 2y ago

I don't know what the solution is to private/shareholder corporations that own a defacto public space like YouTube and Twitter. Maybe we're still in the big bang of the Internet and this will fix itself over time. Although I'd really like a public organization like the Library of Congress to support archival of public spaces. Which makes me wonder: If society decides that viewing information is a right, does that lead to government sponsorship of browsers? i.e. if viewing information is a right, then an information viewer is an important thing that must be open and unfettered by monetary interests. Considering how much gets pumped into Congressional jobs programs, a few million to hire some good software engineers seems easy to support.

robin_reala 2y ago

Oops. (context: https://archive.is/tgIH9 https://archive.is/tgIH9)

markus_zhang 2y ago

On a side note, I have been reflecting on the impact of modern Internet contents on me for the last 12 years or so. The conclusion is, for whatever the reason, the impact is mostly negative. It would do me a great favor to simply remove Youtube, social media sites and anything similar from my life. I probably have ADHD. I rarely completed any side projects. I'm anxious most if the time, biting my fingers all the time, a habit I formed before I reached teenage. Having access to the modern Internet makes everything above worse, a lot worse. Yes they also introduced a lot of ineresting things to me, but there are endless amount of interesting things in the world and I need to focus on a couple of them to get a deeper understanding. Reading new contents every day is my escape, not my medicine. Maybe I should just block myself from the Internet. I taught myself Foxbase and Foxpro back in the 90s without the Internet. I taught myself C++ in 2012 without the modern Internet (SO was the only source I inquired and the experience was bad). If I really want to achieve something meaningful in the rest of my life, which is about 3 to 4 decades based on the mortality curve, I probably should just plug off from the internet. But how do I do that? Apparently Internet is essential nowadays for day to day chores, and my family absoutely needs a high speed Internet. How can I go back to the cave? I don't have enough will power to do that.

jarsin 2y ago
I saw a tip once from a 3D artist on how he mastered sculpting. Everyday he would force himself to just sculpt a straight line on his model. This one line was enough to engage his brain and before he knew it he would keep sculpting. I use this in coding. Just do this one function then you can do whatever. Most of the time I won't go back to procrastinating, but end up spending an hour or so working on the project. I also think the opposite is true. If you try to force yourself to work many hours per day on side projects by disabling the internet or netflix etc. you will burn out.
dwighttk 2y ago
In Plato’s allegory of the cave it isn’t the cave you want to go back to, it is your family you want to awaken to the fact that they are inside he cave being entertained by shadow puppets.
nilsherzig 2y ago

pragmar 2y ago

Became unusable for me (Firefox/Win) a few months back on my laptop with integrated intel graphics. Fine on other computers with more capable hardware. The solution was an extension called h264ify. There was something about the vp8/9 codec that was bringing Firefox to its knees. h264ify avoids those codecs altogether on Youtube.

j16sdiz 2y ago

It works for me on Windows 10, Firefox Developer Edition, no addon that touches youtube. Logged in, not premium

dncornholio 2y ago
Try scrolling through comments or watch a video with chat. It seems the slowdowns happen in those components.

everyone 2y ago

I havent had performance issues, but I did have a very annoying issue recently where it would only show 3 videos per row. I tried a bunch of potential fixes but the one that worked for me was actually adding this custom filter to ublock origin... youtube.com##ytd-rich-grid-renderer:style(--ytd-rich-grid-items-per-row: 5 !important)

xnx 2y ago

Just tried it out and ... it works fine?

Kye 2y ago

Not to WOMM, but as a data point, it's working perfectly for me in Firefox on Windows with uBlock Origin. Is this one of those A/B test things where I'll get it eventually? I know the ad bomb rolled out slowly[0] and we know they're looking for a way to foil ad blocking without drawing bad press and regulatory scrutiny. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23769291 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23769291

mrandish 2y ago
I just checked and YT is normal for me in FF 129.0.2 (64-bit). YT specific add-ons: uBlock Origin, Nova YouTube (userscript with dozens of modules to fix various YT behaviors and UI annoyances), and Enhancer for YouTube (adds more playback speeds, fixes default player size & volume levels). Since YT in my FF is heavily modified to be not awful, maybe the regression is in something my add-on stack is blocking.
- inhumantsar 2y ago
  > Nova YouTube looked this up out of curiosity. the only thing resembling a description is "Combine small plugins, expanding the possibilities of YouTube." which is pretty useless. what all does this do?
  - mrandish 2y ago
    Here is what the Nova YT interface looks like on my Firefox. Each section is a separate module. Modules don't do anything if not activated so you can choose how you want YT to behave/appear. https://i.imgur.com/lMKaJ5t.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/lMKaJ5t.jpeg After putting the number of videos in a grid row back to a useful number, things I especially like are changing video thumbnails back to a still that's actually from the fucking video, instead of a misleading click-bait image. I also like the option of changing all caps and removing emojis from video titles. It also has options to automatically remove a bunch of the stupid shit YT pushes in the UI I don't want to see. After I got it set up, I found it literally shocking how much better YT is - yet in many ways, it's just restoring YT to the way it used to appear and work when its focus was user-centric instead of user manipulative. Since about ~2016 we've all been slowly frog-boiled by YT making the site slightly more annoying every month through iterative A/B testing optimizing for ad revenue. I literally can't go back to using stock YT now. Each module has an info link which points to its entry in the wiki: https://github.com/raingart/Nova-YouTube-extension/wiki/plugins#thumbs-clear https://github.com/raingart/Nova-YouTube-extension/wiki/plug.... Since I'm not familiar with YT's terminology for labeling all their UI elements, it initially took a little experimentation to see what some of the module options do but it's quick to change a setting, tab back to YT, refresh and see the result.

dncornholio 2y ago

Conspiracy theorists on top already even though this also happened on Chrome multiple times in history. Sometimes software can be a bitch, there's no reason to believe this is intentional

wsdookadr 2y ago

NAS with lots of storage + tubesync + jellyfin. problem solved.

cut3 2y ago

Google docs blocks the ability to print in firefox, it will instead always save as pdf. Google doesnt even try to hide its anticompetitive practices at this point.

bastard_op 2y ago

It's not only windows, it's happening to me on arch linux with firefox as well. Has been for a few days now.

jeroenhd 2y ago

Took a performance benchmark in both Firefox and Brave. Both of them are unusually slow (addons/extensions disabled, fresh profile), but Firefox especially so. Source for the huge render times seems to be desktop_polymer.js, specifically the part that's registering and setting up custom web components. Once the website loads, performance becomes a lot better. My guess is that a Polymer update made Youtube slower for everyone, but SpiderMonkey isn't particularly great at the kind of excess operations that have been added. Firefox in particular seems to suffer from complete UI freezes whereas Chromium browsers seem to just have slow tabs when the browser is overwhelmed. While I certainly wouldn't be surprised if this is part of an anti-adblocker mechanism, not every slowdown on Google's websites is done out of malice. Some of it is just caused by bugs.

IncreasePosts 2y ago
Also, it is Firefox on the desktop. 90% of YouTube views come from mobile, and Firefox only has about 5% market share on the desktop. So desktop Firefox is a half a percent of the overall users of youtube. Is it any surprise that maintaining support for a browser that delivers less than a percent of the total users is deprioritized or just forgotten about?
- miah_ 2y ago
  Despite those stats, if Google wants to avoid being called a monopoly they need to support it, and it needs to receive the same level of support as their own product.
  - mozempthrowaway 2y ago
    It’s not monopolistic to not support shitty browsers with little user base. This isn’t even the basis for the current antitrust ruling against Google, for what it’s worth. As the parent comment points out, if YouTube isn’t buggy for most of their users, why do they have to worry about it? We don’t expect either Microsoft or game devs to ensure their stuff works well with wine on Linux.

amelius 2y ago

"Our mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful."

MrVitaliy 2y ago

Just have two browsers. Use Chrome for only youtube and google apps. And Firefox for rest of web use.

meiraleal 2y ago

Still working fine for me, Firefox/Linux.

oglop 2y ago

Weird. Works just fine for me, in that my CPU skyrockets in usage on that process and stays pegged at 100% or higher for about 5 mins before calming down. Just a normal day on YouTube for me.

riiii 2y ago

Works for me, but the settings cog hasn't been OK for a long time, the settings menu doesn't have any text. But all my Firefox problems happen on Google owned sites. Maps navigation doesn't highlight the route (desktop). Google image search doesn't work (desktop).

vergessenmir 2y ago

I use zen. Ditched firefox and brave irrationally last week because youtube runs so much better and page loading is fast. Let's see how long this change lasts

Trebhawkins 2y ago

Why are you even allowing satanic Google access to your Firefox? Keep YouTube corralled in Chrome. No sense in consorting with satan anymore than we need to.

bArray 2y ago

There seems to be two bugs here, one that YouTube seems to have regressed on a popular browser choice, but also that Firefox allows any website to claim enough resources to make the entire browser inoperable.

tempaccount420 2y ago
Everyone is talking about Google breaking something, but what if this is something Firefox has to fix? If it works in Chrome and not Firefox, it should be a browser bug, not website bug.

ilaksh 2y ago

What are the alternatives to YouTube these days?

stiltzkin 2y ago
[dead]

reaperducer 2y ago

Coincidentally, today I tried to log in to Google AdSense for the first time in months using Firefox. Google simply will not permit it. Couldn’t sign you in This browser or app may not be secure. Learn more Try using a different browser. If you’re already using a supported browser, you can try again to sign in. I checked, and my version of Firefox is up to date. I know I could play reindeer games with the user agent, but I shouldn't have to. Surprisingly, to me, it had no problem with Duck's browser. I thought that would be on the forbidden-by-Google list, too.

lainproliant 2y ago

Never assume as malice what can more easily be explained by incompetence or accident.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

aidenn0 2y ago

Works fine for me? [edit] Just ran into the issue when clicking on a video someone else linked; yt homepage was fine though; weird.

natch 2y ago

Starting today, almost everything is unusable on Firefox. Seems like there’s been some change in DNS or maybe it’s just my ISP but Safari is fine.

Narishma 2y ago

Seems like they have reverted whatever update from yesterday that caused this. It's back to normal for me on Firefox ESR.

rldjbpin 2y ago

if it is indeed an intended user experience, then i expect non-chrome users to only prosper by either paying for premium or by turning to browser extensions to improve youtube. i'd wager that those choosing to installing firefox are more likely to go to this route themselves.

tempaccount420 2y ago

Everyone is talking about Google breaking something, but what if this is something Firefox has to fix? If it works in Chrome and not Firefox, it should be a browser bug, not website bug.

3371 2y ago
Because it did not happen after a Firefox update?

stiltzkin 2y ago

[dead]