Hector Martin (@marcan@treehouse.systems)
social.treehouse.systems
Attached: 3 images Today I learned that YouTube is deliberately crippling Firefox on Asahi Linux. It will give you lowered video resolutions. If you just replace "aarch64" with "x86_64" in the UA, suddenly you get 4K and everything. They literally have a test for "is ARM", and if so, they consider your system has garbage performance and cripple the available formats/codecs. I checked the code. Logic: Quality 1080 by default. If your machine has 2 or fewer cores, quality 480. If anything ARM, quality 240. Yes, Google thinks all ARM machines are 5 times worse than Intel machines, even if you have 20 cores or something. Why does this not affect Chromium? **Because chromium on aarch64 pretends to be x86_64** `Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/120.0.0.0 Safari/537.36` 🤦‍♂️​🤦‍♂️​🤦‍♂️​🤦‍♂️​🤦‍♂️​ Welp, guess I'm shipping a user agent override for Firefox on Fedora to pretend to be x86. **EDIT**: The plot thickens. Pretending to be ChromeOS aarch64 *still gets 4K*. Specifically: `Mozilla/5.0 (X11; CrOS aarch64 10452.96.0) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/66.0.3359.181 Safari/537.36` still works. **EDIT 2**: OK, so the plot *really* thickens now. Chrome is not affected even if it claims to be aarch64. Turns out there is another codepath: apparently YouTube thinks aarch64 Firefox is... a HiSense TV?!?!?!?! Specifically, model 65a67gevs...????? This is *server-side* sniffing now and it's *specifically* looking for Firefox aarch64 (or at least "Gecko and not Chrome/CrOS/something else known to pretend to be Gecko"). And it's the "TV" platform that is triggering the resolution crippling.
  • Epzillon@lemmy.worldEnglish
    675·
    11 months ago

    The more bullshit like this I read about YouTube the more I despite them. I already use GrayJay on mobile and I’m using ublock Origin + ublock Matrix on Librewolf to control cookie usage on desktop. So far I’ve been able escape the video player block by clearing cache.

    I’m just waiting for the day they “force” me onto another frontend.

        • Gestrid@lemmy.caEnglish
          5·
          11 months ago

          Then your uBlock Origin filters aren’t working properly. See this thread for instructions on how to purge and update your filters to block YouTube’s ads and YouTube’s adblocker blocker.

          • Epzillon@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            11 months ago

            I mean after clearing the cache it disappears. But I’ve seen the “your video player will be blocked” 3 or 4 times during the past few months maybe.

            • Gestrid@lemmy.caEnglish
              0·
              11 months ago

              Those 3 or 4 times may have been after Google had updated their anti-adblocking stuff and before uBlock Origin had updated their anti-anti-adblocking stuff.

              Also, do you have any other adblockers installed? Does your browser have its own adblocker? Either of those can cause interference with stuff like this.

              • Epzillon@lemmy.worldEnglish
                1·
                11 months ago

                Nope, I use Librewolf with uBlock Origin, uMatrix and BitWarden. Nothing else.

                But yes, I haven’t seen it in quite some time now.

      • Abnorc@lemm.eeEnglish
        2·
        11 months ago

        It sort of does for me. I used ublock to block the popup and the overlay that prevents you from using the site. Sometimes a video will stop playing for a moment, but it resumes as soon as I hit play.

    • Nioxic@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      5·
      11 months ago

      im using librewolf too. i keep seeing the adblocker active warning instead of a video, in the video-box on youtube Plays just fine in private window though…