Joining Android Authority can earn us a commission. Learn more.
Update, November 21, 2023 (2:13 a. m. ET): YouTube provided a factor, clarifying that the factor is similar to ad blockers and not browsers:
This doesn’t at all explain how the five-second delay disappears when using Google Chrome, but it does give us intelligent clarity on the behavior. Users facing this delay are requested to allow YouTube classified ads or subscribe to YouTube Premium.
Original article, November 20, 2023 (9:19 a. m. ET): YouTube recently introduced a monetization campaign, starting to block ad blockers and trick users into buying YouTube Premium. This move makes sense in many ways, as the platform wants to make money. visit and pay creators who rely on the platform for a living. But some of YouTube’s other moves make less sense. Users are now reporting that YouTube has started slowing down its online page for some Firefox and Edge users, and we’re stumped.
Redditor vk6_ shared a video showing a five-second delay when loading a YouTube video to Mozilla Firefox. When manually converting the user agent in the browser to Chrome, the five-second delay no longer appears. The video plays below:
Other Redditors echoed that YouTube videos take time to load in Firefox and Edge.
Redditor vk6_ extra points out that this isn’t a bug in Firefox. Reportedly, YouTube’s consumer JavaScript code on the desktop adds a synthetic five-second delay. Others chimed in, pinpointing precisely where to place this code snippet.
We can verify that the code snippet discussed above exists. However, we can’t check if the code adds a five-second wait after verifying the user’s selected browser.
You can discover the life of the code by examining this YouTube Javascript record and locating the following code snippet using the Search function (press Ctrl and F to open the Finder):
For me, YouTube works similarly on Chrome, Firefox, and Edge. Other team members also couldn’t reproduce this lagging habit across browsers.
However, several users have reported the same thing in Firefox and Edge. Users claim to have experienced the lag without any extension enabled, indicating that the lag may occur on a per-account basis. The delay doesn’t start once, either; it will be triggered every time YouTube links are opened in a new tab.
Some discussions surrounding the report indicate that the code may simply be a deferred implementation of an alternative ad if a user is an ad blocker. Applicable code can potentially ensure that an ad is displayed for at least five seconds before the video starts playing. . As mentioned, we may not be able to verify how the code snippet works.
We’ve reached out to Google for comment. We will update this article when we get their response.