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Comment by ricardobeat

9 hours ago

YouTube is crippled in Firefox, has been for years. It doesn’t force you to use Chrome, just a little nudge

How so? I use Firefox for all leisure activities, including extensive YouTube usage, and have never noticed any issue. I’m running uBlock Origin and Sponsor Block. I’m logged into a dedicated Google account I made solely for browsing YouTube (so I can keep the viewing history without linking it too obviously to my main Google account).

  • Page load takes twice as long as Chrome, videos buffer more slowly, and memory usage grows much faster. After a dozen tabs it starts visibly lagging when you press play/pause, the exact same session works flawlessly in Chrome.

    It doesn't seem to affect everyone equally. Pretending to be Chrome sometimes helps - not too long ago someone found a piece of code that introduced seconds of busy delay for any non-Chrome user agent.

In what way is it crippled?

  • Takes forever to load anything

    • Not for every YouTube Premium subscriber in populated areas of California with decent internet connections watching popular videos, even with a userscript automatically selecting highest quality. Always instant, zero wait, very few exceptions.

      It’s non-Google sites where Firefox may not be as well supported as Chrome, IME.