Time to break Google up so they can buy all the companies the government forced them to sale!

Seriously, someone needs to report this to the FCC since they just re-adopted Net Neutrality.

not defending the behavior, but is this even an example of net neutrality? it's not like ISPs are putting a slow lane for specific browsers in this case. it seems more like a shitty dark pattern type thing (which should have consumer protections as well)

Or they do A\B testing and you fell from your initial group. Due to the nature of this lag, it's hard to confirm without internal leaks or investigation. At least, it got reported.

I also noticed it. Put it down to my sometimes flakey wifi. But this makes more sense. What a bunch of babies.

Wow yeah. The delays have stopped on my end as well today.

i felt like this has been a thing since like 10 years ago. with 100 mbps connection yt would always struggle to buffer in ff

Oh I'm sure with the lugnuts running the place they've thought of that already and have it on the backburner. They just haven't figured out a way to pin it on a "glitch" yet.

Nah, just be patient and wait the 5s. They are trying to create an artificial problem to try to make users switch to their garbage Chrome browser. When they see that Firefox users are smarter and don't give a shit about their stupid tactics, or even better, use different apps like FreeTube to see the videos, they will stop. Either that or destroy the platform.

I wait the 5 secs, don't bother me at all. It's not like they are an ad... :D

Nah, wouldn't want to contribute to Chrome market share.

No, that just sweeps the issue under the rug.

I'm pretty sure it takes more effort, if not also time, to copy URL into VLC every time i find a video.

Try spoofing your user agent and see if it improves.

They actually found a 5-second sleep embedded in the JavaScript, so it's not the cache.