YouTube seemingly intentionally slow loading on Firefox while Google Chrome works fine [Update]

Update: Google has provided an explanation for the slow loading of YouTube on Firefox.

Original article below.

Back in March, we covered an interesting browser report wherein Russian software Yandex alleged that its browser was being intentionally devised to crash up to five times more often and eat up more memory on systems running AMD graphics cards or integrated graphics. The problem was not a Chromium-based issue as a "chrome.exe" file workaround would fix the issue. You can read about the report in full in this article here.

Reports and allegations like these often pop up from time to time and it is hardly surprising since browser companies are always at war trying to one-up each other to gain market share or increase user base.

The latest such incident seems to be happening right now as there are several user reports online which suggest that YouTube is being intentionally crippled on Firefox and is being made to load up slower.

At first glance, if your internet connection is fine, it will seem like the issue could be related to performance and hardware optimization on Firefox's behalf, perhaps poor or sub-optimal hardware acceleration support or the improper utilization of the available processor threads, among other system resources. However, users found that the issue—a 5-second delay when loading a YouTube video on the Firefox browser—goes away when YouTube is tricked into thinking that it is running on Google Chrome using a User Agent switcher.

A Redditor paintboth1234 suggests the problem is due to a five-second delay, which is in the code. They write:

To clarify it more, it's simply this code in their polymer script link:

setTimeout(function() {
    c();
    a.resolve(1)
 }, 5E3);

which doesn't do anything except making you wait 5s (5E3 = 5000ms = 5s). You can search for it easily in

https://www.youtube.com/s/desktop/96766c85/jsbin/desktop_polymer_enable_wil_icons.vflset/desktop_polymer_enable_wil_icons.js

Apparently, the problem does not occur when uBlock Origin is used, so if you are annoyed by the five-second loading of YouTube on Firefox and don't want to use a User Agent swither workaround, you can always use the good ol' uBlock Origin.

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Thanks for the tip, anonymous tipster!