Credit: Ryan Haines / Android Authority
- Users are reportedly seeing a five-second delay when loading YouTube videos in non-Chrome browsers, namely Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft Edge, despite not using any extensions or ad-blockers.
- The delay goes away when users switch their user agent to Chrome, indicating that the switch could be browser-related.
- Not all users are experiencing the delay, which indicates that it could be account-related too.
YouTube has been on a monetization push recently, as it began blocking ad-blockers and pushing users to buy YouTube Premium. That move makes sense in many ways, as the platform needs to make money to survive and compensate creators who depend on the platform for their living. But some other actions by YouTube make less sense. Users are now reporting that YouTube has begun slowing down its desktop website for some Firefox and Edge users, and we are perplexed.
Redditor vk6_ has shared a video showing a five-second delay when loading into a YouTube video on Mozilla Firefox. Upon manually changing the user agent on the browser to Chrome, the five-second delay no longer appears. The video has been reproduced below: