Asklemmy

43909 readers

849 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
!lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

Would changing useragent to chrome cause me problems? (lemm.ee)

submitted 10 months ago by flashgnash@lemm.ee to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

11 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I'm hearing a lot about websites like netflix and YouTube crippling their performance in some way if you're using firefox instead of chrome/a smart TV

Is it likely to cause me problems if I just globally change my useragent to chrome instead of firefox?

Alternatively, is there an extension that automatically bypasses all of these things that people are aware of (pretends to be a smart TV for netflix, chrome for YouTube, etc automatically)

If there's not an extension, what would be involved in making one? Obviously user agent changes dependant on URL but I'm not sure what other metrics these websites might be able to use to figure out what you're using

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] thepreciousboar@lemm.ee 2 points 10 months ago

Netflix and all other streaming services use DRM to provide content. Firefox might have different DRMs from Chrome, even worse if you are on linux. As far as I know reading from other posts, there are several DRMs with different "tiers" of encryptions, lower tier are less trusted so websites only give them lower quality content, but they have more open licenses so it's easier you'll find it on an Open Source browser deployed on linux. I don't know if there are ways to use different DRMs, maybe proprietary ones