this post was submitted on 21 Nov 2023
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Unless you consider fighting adblockers a futile stupidity, you should first apply Occam's razor - explanation requiring least amount of assumptions is probably the correct one.
In this case spoofing user-agent string of Chrome is enough to fix all the performance issues on Firefox, meaning there is no fancy anti-adblock code or anything like that.
Right, they got caught doing some hot button issue shit with the FCC talking about renewing the NN rules and they didn't want to reignite the debate themselves. Google owns YT. Google makes money on ads, yeah, but they are also dominating the browser game with more people switching to firefox. Both explanations make sense, but only one of them calls for covering up/lying. Also, when any company gets caught doing something that they have some other excuse for, I'm liable to believe the appearance rather than the PR response.
And basing it on user agent doesn't even make any sense for fighting adblock, that only makes sense for targeting browsers, which their devs know because (I'm assuming) they're not stupid enough to not understand a core part of their technology stack
This is under the assumption that the user agent change is real. I have seen this spread time and time again, and every time I ask if there is any evidence. So I will ask you as well: do you have evidence for it, or have you experienced it first hand? I have yet to have someone prove that this is true, and I have not been able to create it myself (I tried, but never got a delay to begin with). So until there is evidence that this is true, and not just a rumor being spread, than Occam's razor cannot apply.
I saw this myself when this was news. Created empty firefox profile, installed only userscript changer plugin.
Default user agent - rotating loading circle before video starts playing. Windows/Chrome user agent - video starts immediately.
Tried with multiple videos, changing first user agent that opened the video to make sure it's not cached somewhere.
Didn't bother to install Chrome for reverse test though.
Now it's back to loading at the same speed regardless of user agent though.