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Re:YouTube artificially slows down video load times when usi... by n4r9 on Monday November 20, 2023 @06:25AM (#38346458)
Very good point. It's important to recognise that developers in many companies are often not fully aware of the intended use of features they're asked to create.

Another example that springs to mind is Uber, who used a tool called "Greyball" to avoid contact between drivers and authorities: https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-uber-greyball-idUKKBN16B0...

My initial reaction was astonishment that the engineers would happily implement this. And maybe that is what happened. But the alternative possibility is that product and senior management assigned different parts of the feature to different teams e.g. one team develops a pattern recognition system to detect users' professions, another team develops a spoofing system for use in demos, etc...

Re:YouTube artificially slows down video load times when usi... by brailsafe on Monday November 20, 2023 @03:05PM (#38353777)
Why would you be surprised that they'd implement this? It's their job to implement things.
Re:YouTube artificially slows down video load times when usi... by n4r9 on Monday November 20, 2023 @04:29PM (#38355098)
They were using it to evade law enforcement while flouting regulations. It's highly unethical and almost certainly illegal.
Re:YouTube artificially slows down video load times when usi... by brailsafe on Monday November 20, 2023 @08:43PM (#38357730)
Oh I thought you were referring back to the YouTube issue
Re:YouTube artificially slows down video load times when usi... by n4r9 on Tuesday November 21, 2023 @03:09AM (#38360803)
Tbh even that is ethically very questionable, if the engineers knew that the outcome would be a delay specific to Firefox.