from Hacker News

Starting today, YouTube is almost unusable on Firefox

by 3371 on 8/28/24, 1:50 PM with 242 comments

  • by jeroenhd on 8/28/24, 2:44 PM

    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.

  • by markus_zhang on 8/28/24, 2:29 PM

    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.

  • by PaulHoule on 8/28/24, 1:51 PM

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

  • by Kye on 8/28/24, 2:34 PM

    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

  • by zelias on 8/28/24, 2:20 PM

    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

  • by louky on 8/28/24, 2:04 PM

    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.

  • by buro9 on 8/28/24, 2:11 PM

    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.

  • by miroljub on 8/28/24, 2:09 PM

    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.

  • by __MatrixMan__ on 8/28/24, 2:09 PM

    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...

  • by kuschku on 8/28/24, 2:25 PM

    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?

  • by mykowebhn on 8/28/24, 2:16 PM

    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.

  • by scrlk on 8/28/24, 2:15 PM

    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.

  • by bell-cot on 8/28/24, 2:12 PM

    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.

  • by bloopernova on 8/28/24, 2:28 PM

    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.

  • by reaperducer on 8/28/24, 4:05 PM

    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.

  • by mrkramer on 8/28/24, 2:13 PM

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

  • by bArray on 8/28/24, 3:37 PM

    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.

  • by KptMarchewa on 8/28/24, 2:25 PM

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

  • by graemep on 8/28/24, 2:07 PM

    Works fine for me. Firefox on Linux.

  • by cut3 on 8/28/24, 2:40 PM

    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.

  • by natch on 8/28/24, 8:08 PM

    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.

  • by croisillon on 8/28/24, 2:02 PM

    with ublock i never had problems and no ads either

  • by pragmar on 8/28/24, 2:32 PM

    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.

  • by everyone on 8/28/24, 2:32 PM

    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)

  • by xnx on 8/28/24, 2:33 PM

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

  • by bamboozled on 8/28/24, 2:24 PM

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

  • by MrVitaliy on 8/28/24, 2:45 PM

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

  • by riiii on 8/28/24, 3:05 PM

    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).

  • by aidenn0 on 8/28/24, 6:41 PM

    Works fine for me?

    [edit]

    Just ran into the issue when clicking on a video someone else linked; yt homepage was fine though; weird.

  • by lainproliant on 8/28/24, 5:45 PM

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

  • by tempaccount420 on 8/29/24, 11:18 AM

    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.

  • by oglop on 8/28/24, 2:59 PM

    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.

  • by wsdookadr on 8/28/24, 2:36 PM

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

  • by vergessenmir on 8/28/24, 3:09 PM

    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

  • by eadmund on 8/28/24, 2:04 PM

    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

  • by Narishma on 8/28/24, 10:18 PM

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

  • by bastard_op on 8/28/24, 2:42 PM

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

  • by Ygg2 on 8/28/24, 2:05 PM

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

  • by j16sdiz on 8/28/24, 2:32 PM

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

  • by robin_reala on 8/28/24, 2:29 PM

    Oops.

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

  • by rldjbpin on 8/29/24, 9:08 AM

    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.

  • by ilaksh on 8/28/24, 3:56 PM

    What are the alternatives to YouTube these days?

  • by meiraleal on 8/28/24, 2:51 PM

    Still working fine for me, Firefox/Linux.

  • by dncornholio on 8/28/24, 2:35 PM

    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

  • by amelius on 8/28/24, 2:45 PM

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

  • by ilrwbwrkhv on 8/28/24, 2:02 PM

    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.

  • by Trebhawkins on 8/28/24, 3:22 PM

    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.

  • by BenoitEssiambre on 8/28/24, 2:23 PM

    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