Google makes youtube x5 slower on non-chrome browsers by using a deprecated API - Sensationalist Headlines

DUUUURRRR Look at how much faster Youtube loads on Chrome! - Google Chrome Spokesman

you dont have to go to their website. it's not like anyone is twisting your arms. you should advocate mirrored video sources to counter this shit.

No reason to copy a functionality that's not part of the standard.

Unfortunately that isn't really a threat that can work on someone like Google. If the EU for instance issued an order than google couldn't advertise within the EU, then its very easy for Google to say, "Fine we can't earn revenue in your territory, so we're killing all service inside the EU immediately. No gmail, no youtube, no search, no DNS, no android, no anything. You're dead in the water." I'd say we're on the tipping point of entering a true cyberpunk corporatist dystopia nightmare, but honestly we hit that a while ago, companies like Google, Microsoft, and Apple just haven't felt threatened enough to prove it. Because imagine how bad shit would get if tomorrow a chunk of the internet, especially high use parts like gmail, just stopped working for Europe. Or if say Amazon chose to turn off AWS in Europe. Or ICANN, who is currently in a legal battle with the EU over GDPR. I've heard important people saying that, if the EU pushes ICANN on this, ICANN should literally cut off the EU, revoke all domains in Europe, effectively making the EU completely cease to exist on the internet. Which in theory they could do. The fallout from it would be unprecedented, and its entirely likely it would backfire on ICANN, but if they did that for just 24 hours, it would have a devastating effect on Europe and elsewhere. Like with how dependent we are on tech companies and internet services, they have a terrifying nuclear option at their disposal. So we're in this song-and-dance pageantry of companies pushing a little bit and regulators pushing a little bit, but neither really doing much to each other, and just stuck in the middle between them. And I can't exactly think of a good solution for that situation, how to protect against it and take that nuclear option away.

That sounds like an act of war, I suspect the EU would pull some strings to ruin Google and Co. for doing such destructive actions. Since it would be amount to international sabotage. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if mass extraditions of involved corporation CEOs would happen in response.

Maybe, but its just as easy for them to say, "Its simply a consequence of business. Its not cost effective to sustain operations in Europe, so we're cutting off operations." And I mean if, like he suggested as a possibility, Google is told they can't have advertisements on their EU sites and services, then yeah, they'd be making literally no revenue for operating in Europe. So arguably the appropriate response, from a business perspective, would be to simply end all operations in Europe. And at a certain point if the order is given to shut everything down, you have to have people who can bring it back up which isn't necessarily so easy. And if it appears to them that prison is unavoidable for instance, that the corporation will be dismantled, they just make the damage permanent. Order destruction of data and back ups, wipe important servers and files, so on. Now instead of just having to start up services again they have to be completely rebuilt. Like I said, its a nuclear option.

Holy shit, is this why it always took ages for anything on youtube to sort of "load?" Videos play/buffer fine but I get to stare at a black video panel/placeholder author info for a very long time.

I've noticed YouTube getting slower on Safari as well which is a shame because Chrome is totally fucked with Mojave rn and Opera too

Ok so today I go on YouTube and the video player is now changing sizes depending on the aspect ratio the source video. It is driving me crazy and I see no setting to change it and no one else is mentioning it. Is it just me? This video for example has a smaller aspect ratio then modren videos and the player is a different size to hide the black bars.