I think Google overestimates my Internet addiction and underestimates my steadfast hatred of advertisements.
Been on chrome for like 12 years. Syncs across my phone, everything. I will make the switch. I have been wondering when google was going to go evil. Why not 2023 like everything else on the internet?
Brother they went evil when they went publicly traded.
Dodge v. Ford is arguably the court case that proves all capitalist owned companies are legally required to not do the right thing. If Google was worker owned they would be a lot better.
Can you explain? Not familiar with this case
Essentially, the Supreme Court ruled that Henry Ford had to operate the company in the best interests of its shareholders, not his employees. It’s an awful ruling by the Supreme Court that has never been revisited.
It’s one of a sequence of Supreme Court decisions (starting with Dartmouth College v Woodward and culminating most recently with Citizens United) that have led us down this path of corporate dystopia. For the full background, read this:
https://reclaimdemocracy.org/corporate-accountability-history-corporations-us/
When was thar? Because if memory serves, they started sharing and selling our data shortly after 9/11.
They’ve been evil for a very long time.
2 years from now Firefox will have blocked adblockers, and there will be chromium based browsers (not Chrome) that won’t have them blocked.
I don’t see why people seem to be thinking a large company in a capitalistic landscape isn’t going to side with profits. Firefox will oppose it openly right now and take the new users and then move to the same without lube and without apologies.
Small browsers that still have some morals before going public will build browers off chromium because of its ease, and they will be able to exclude those blocks. Likely means we will be using different browsers every few years until something else changes.
Maybe I’m pessimistic here, but anyone who just moved from Reddit to Lemmy should know that Firefox isn’t the answer, it is another greed driven overlord.
Mimicking the tokens on the otherhand… those sites we will need to boycott if possible.
This is one of the dumbest things I’ve ever read.
Mozilla is a non-profit whose mission is to keep the internet freely available and privacy focused. See https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/who-we-are/
Firefox is built by open source developers who overwhelmingly have those same values. They have also been at this for many years now and have given us no real reason to doubt this commitment.
“The majority of Mozilla’s revenue is generated from search functionality included in our Firefox product through all major search partners including Google, Bing, Yahoo, Yandex, Amazon, Ebay and others.”
Everything you just said was optimistic as fuck.
750 employees, 826 million dollars in revenue a year.
So what do they choose. Fire 700 employees and go down to 26 mill revenue?
Edit: when the hivemind disperses and sees Firefox follow Google in using tokens and blocking ad blockers, you may not see it as one of the dumbest thing you’ve read before.
Makes no sense. Mozilla has no horse in the advertising race. But Google does. Almost all of Google’s profits are from ads. Ads keep the entire Alphabet house of cards afloat.
But not Mozilla. The largest connection there is them being paid for default lt search engine.
I read ~88% of its 800+ million dollar a year revenue comes from search engines.
Surely if that’s true it would have no impact on their decisions /s
I love this quote, it exactly sums up my sentiments.
I’m actually looking forward to it, because it will finally force me to go cold turkey on so many bullshit websites I don’t need in my life anyway, which I was never able to do on my own, because the addiction simply is there. But not as strong ans my hatred of fingerprinting and advertisements.
same, I think I might start reading more books again, I wanted to do that for a long time now but I never head “enough” time as I always spent so much time on the internet
For anyone who thinks they’re “stuck” with chrome, Firefox has gotten it’s shit together massively in the last few years.
Which is why Google’s next step is to effectively require chromium browsers for any websites wanting access to Google services and products.
Sounds like a good reason to stop using Google services and products. Some examples (note, I haven’t used some of these yet):
Search - DuckDuckGo
Email - ProtonMail
Drive - Dropbox
Sheets/Docs - Zoho
Some of these examples may not the best for everyone, but my point is that we do not have to let Google continue to push us around.
No, it sounds like a good reason for anti-trust regulators to make an injunction to stop Google from doing it.
It’s time for this fantasy bullshit notion that boycotts are worth a damn to end. In reality, it’s nothing but pro-corporate propaganda designed to make people think they’re “fighting the man” or whatever when they’re actually completely ineffective.
Now, don’t get me wrong: by all means, please feel free to quit using Google’s shit! That’s 100% a good thing and I fully encourage it! Just don’t delude yourself into thinking it represents even the slightest shred of a solution to the systemic problem Google’s anticompetitive strategies represent.
Sorry, our hyper partisan system has all but crippled regulation.
Regulars are too busy trying to get rid of encryption. A double edged sword in the situation with Google’s drm
It’s not you and me. It’s the websites. They’re not going to give up on having anyone with Chrome or using Google services from being able to access their sites. We’d end up with 2 Internets - one with Google and one without. And we all know that the one with Google will win.
If you like ChatGPT/care less about privacy, Bing is a great alternative.
or just use the open source open assistant io
Can you suggest a replacement for Android?
These are built from the open source version of Android and do not have Google stuff:
- LineageOS
- GrapheneOS (can be installed on Pixels)
These are based on various flavors of Linux (Android is technically a flavor of Linux too):
- PureOS (Librem 5 line by Purism)
- Ubuntu Touch (support for lots of devices, but typically not the flagships)
- Manjaro OS (on PinePhone by PINE64, an open source hardware community, which is the best way I can describe it)
Feels bad but I can’t condone this behaviour anymore and I feel ashamed that I haven’t seen the greed Google is capable of doing.
In the coming months I will do my best to migrate away from the Google system, even if I end up paying a tad more, maybe just in time to set up a home server for photos.
The Proton offering is a great alternative imo
Well, if you can live with the fact that you need to either use the webmailer, their mobile apps or the bridge on desktop to use standard mail/calendar/anything software. I tried for a few years to migrate to PM (with a paid plan) but failed :(
Mozzilla be suing
There is no way anything like this would ever go through. Google’s own lawyers would quickly put a stop at this. It is known that Google sometimes has used features that for Firefox is problematic at least for YouTube, but it eventually is resolved by changes in FF
Oh, but it will not be GOOGLE’s next step. I dont think it is the goal anyway. They only need to help site owners to sign up to their WEI thing, and there will be oh so many incentives. Google will be happy to license it out, or even make the toolkit fully opensource, to whoever wants to implement it in their browser, regardless of the engine used. Their obvious ultimate goal is to show the ads with no interruptions, which also happens to be the desire of most of the websites. And many websites will willingly implement it on their side, they do not really need too much encouragement.
I dont understand when people think Firefox didn’t have their shit together. Been using it since 2006 and never had an issue. Ya’ll must be doing some serious browsing.
Been using since release. I never felt like I was making some kind of compromise by using it. Firefox always had their shit together from my experience.
Now, it’s on par with Chrome or better than (tradeoffs and personal preference), even for developing web apps. Firefox dev tools pull ahead of Chrome’s, then Chrome catches up and does something new and useful, then Firefox catches up, and so forth.
Firefox is good. It’s not like “I’m leaving Photoshop for the GIMP” kind of thing-- It’s like “I’m leaving Honda for Toyota.”
When chrome was released, Firefox felt bloated visually and slow. I switched to chrome with the initial release, then tried to come back to Firefox some years later. Still felt like it was slow.
Im back trying it again. The desktop browser seems to work alright, but I’m growing weary of the Android app.
Been using FF since forever, never felt my experience was in any way slow compared to Chrome.
It was really slow before Quantum happened and it’s smooth sailing ever since imo.
i remember it looking pretty sketchy and bad back in the day while chrome looked a lot nicer and user friendly
im a firefox user now i think chrome looks ugly compared to firefox nowadays
Now you can use desktop extensions on firefox mobile. They stepped up big time.
Did they lift the “only curated extensions” bullshit yet? I’m on Kiwi just to be able to run my own (unpacked) extensions that FF doesn’t let me do so.
There is an override you can use on Firefox Nightly to run any extension you want
Not yet but it’s coming very soon!
It’s already in nightly, and usually after nightly (if everything is fine/works well/etc) then it usually take 3-6months before it’s in mainline.
(iirc)
Firefox has never not had it’s shit together. It’s worked fine. I never understood people having issues with it, unless they were running like 50 extensions and a bunch of grease monkey scripts along with a crusty old profile with a massive cache of old data.
Meanwhile everyone is complaining about Chrome eating up all their RAM
Funnily enough Chromium actually consumes less RAM and is safer due to better sandboxing.
But neither of these concern the average user. However, the main difference between the browsers user may notice is how pages that are still loading behave. Firefox has the correct behavior. Aka waiting for vast majority of the elements to finish loading versus Chromium just going “if it’s rendered it’s intractable.” This unfortunately means that Firefox feels slower even though it’s actually faster.
Also, on behalf of the dark mode enjoyers, flashing white for a moment while launching, loading web pages or updating contents of a webpage is incredibly annoying. None of the Chromium browsers flash white on dark mode.
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Any idea if Firefox has a good translation extension? Like Chrome has Google translate that actively translates the sites you enter into English.
I live in a country that I don’t speak the language of, so I often need to use websites and translate them to English, which is why I’ve been stuck with Chrome.
There are 36 pages of translation extensions. The official one works without the cloud, which is pretty unique.
Personally I like the Immersive Translate extension. You can select your preferred translation engine (cloud based, but it supports many) and it shows you both the translated text and original text by alternating the paragraphs.
Sadly the only thing it’s lacking. Saw a couple of years ago they were looking at different technologies to implement it client side for privacy reasons.
Before post edit:
While looking for the source i found this:
Firefox Tests Privacy-Friendly Web Page TranslationsIt’s coming bby!
simple translate
This was also the best alternative I could find that seemed somewhat safe to use. Chromium browsers still are better at translate, but this seemed fine for my use case
@NamesArrHard @clearleaf, better than a extension is to use this one for Desktop, so you can use it independent of the browser.
It’s FOSS, multiengine for 125 languages, customizable shortcuts, Windows and Linux
I don’t think FF supports PWAs yet. I need to use Chromium to turn some sites like Discord into PWAs, as the desktop Linux version doesn’t screen share on Wayland. I also like having YTM as an app.
I believe that there is an extension for Firefox pwa support, but the Android version definitely supports pwas natively.
Yes, FF Android does, the extension for the desktop was very janky last time I used it. Mozilla just needs to support it natively IMO.
Works pretty well for me. They patched a lot of issues over the last year, so maybe give it another try.
How can I disable autoplay after user interaction on mobile? On desktop this works via about:config but there’s no such thing for mobile.
There have been quite a few questionable decisions by Mozilla though, they have focused on some very weird things, not to mention scandals about management salaries (No idea how it is now). I really really hope they will not follow suite which honestly is not as far fetched as one could think.
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Does Firefox support multiple windows on iPad OS yet? That was the reason I stayed with Chrome for so long, and also is why I’ve more recently switched to Edge as the only other cross-platform browser I could find that had that.
Firefox on ios is barely more than just a skin to Safari.
Its renderer is, yes. But not its UI, and the UI is the problem here.
I’m not sure, but Firefox on iOS isn’t true Firefox. To my knowledge, Apple doesn’t allow browsers to use anything but their Safari engine. As another user put it, “Firefox on iOS is barely more than a skin for Safari.”
I can speak to Firefox on desktop and Android, however: they’re fantastic!
tl;dr: If FF sucks on iOS, it’s Apple’s fault.
If FF sucks on iOS, it’s Apple’s fault.
Nope, not in this case. iPad OS has supported multiple windows of the same app for years now (since 2018 or 2019), and Safari naturally supported it out of the gate. Google supported it in Chrome very quickly, and Microsoft got around to it with Edge last year.
It turns out that while the rendering part of all browsers on iOS is Safari, the skin and UI elements (the “chrome” that Google’s browser was named after) are all custom to each app. And Firefox has been very poor at upgrading theirs.
That’s so weird, then, that it’d be so radically different than it is on Android. Why do you think that is?
Is it radically different? It’s a feature that iPad OS supports that the iPhone version of iOS doesn’t, and I don’t think Android does (though I’ve not used an Android tablet in nearly 10 years, so maybe tablets on Android can do it?). Obviously desktops all support multiple windows and have done forever. Technically, by not having implemented this feature it actually means it’s more similar to Android.
Firefox is rather under-resourced in terms of developer power, and they’ve been consistently prioritising other things rather than implementing this feature. I don’t think there’s much more to it than that. It’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for why they haven’t done it—any team needs to prioritise what they work on. But it’s also reasonable for a user who values that feature to choose a competitor that has delivered it over one that has not. That’s the natural trade-off.
I’m dumb, and had to reread what you wrote. I thought you meant tabs this whole time (doh). I haven’t even used an iPad before, so I didn’t know that feature existed. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen multiple windows of Firefox on Android (but you can have multiple apps open side-by-side).
I think it is unlikely Mozilla would support that feature, given the lack of resources and demand; iPad’s are niche.
Yeah and that’s fine. I’m not saying Firefox is evil for not having this feature or anything like that. I’m merely explaining why it is that I find it to be a sub-par option, and why I choose Edge instead, for the moment.
I mean this with no personal enmity: piss off with your iPad. (Don’t expect power user features to actually be good)
Umm, why? With all due respect, why would you expect me to stop using a device that does everything I want it to perfectly well? I use Edge and it syncs with my Windows desktop and Android phone perfectly well. Both Edge and Google Chrome have supported this feature. It’s only Firefox that is being a laggard.
This is not an iPad problem, it’s a Firefox one.
Nah, Apple doesn’t allow any other browser engines on iOS other than their own, so every browser available on it is just safari.
Sure, but that’s not actually my point.
Since 2018 or so, iPad OS has supported multiple windows of the same application, but only if the app developer supports it. Safari, of course, supported this immediately. Google got around to implementing it pretty quickly on Chrome. Edge took years before they finally got there last year or maybe the year before.
Firefox, last time I checked (which was admittedly a few months ago) still did not support it. Plus, on their GitHub page, there was some talk about trying to implement it in a really dumb way, with each window sharing all the same tabs—completely defeating the point of the feature, in my opinion.
When wanting sync between my desktop (Windows), phone (Android), and tablet (iPad OS), I don’t really care what renderer is used under the hood. I care what name brand is on the browser and what it’s able to sync with. Firefox syncs with Firefox, even when Firefox is secretly Safari.
Firefox is the only browser on Android which still doesn’t have tabs. Wrangling multiple tabs on a tablet or foldable is just a pain on Firefox. Chrome on standard screen sizes even has tab groups. Until then, Firefox is a no go for me.
Uhh what? I’ve been using Firefox on Android for a looong time and there are tabs…
I’m speaking of an exposed tabs bar. Like all modern browsers have… except Firefox for Android. https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/tablet-amp-mobile-ui-tab-bar-for-android/idi-p/333
That’s fine but that isn’t what you said originally. Cheers
Enjoy your chromium experience with blank spaces and cookies popups then
Sure, I’m enjoying Vivaldi right now. 👍
Google can do whatever bullshit they want, I am still not letting go of adblock
I won’t use sites with WEI or adblock blockers
I won’t use chromium
You can lead the sheep to the spyware but you can’t force them to open it
They can pry adblockers from our cold dead hands. Then other people will make new ones.
They may kill this iteration of ad blockers. But there will always be another and another. Google has a lot of smart people working for them. There are also a lot of smart people in the FOSS community that will eventually find a way around it.
At the end of the day there will still be people recording songs by holding two boom boxes together.
Make software that runs on your computer that uses machine learning to detect ads on you screen and put kitties and puppy pictures over them. Browser and sites couldn’t do shit about it unless they start acting like anticheats scanning your computer for that software etc…
Hm, can we make an anti-WEI movement? Have a bunch of websites block browsers using WEI, to force it away?
I know that won’t actually work, but a man can dream…
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I mean, yeah, that’s why I said it wouldn’t work. Maybe if there was a website that was big enough that it would drive people to use non-WEI browsers if they couldn’t access it, but any website big enough to do that would also want WEI for ad venue.
The only big website that could even come close to doing this (they won’t, and if they did it wouldn’t work, but they’re big enough that the attempt would at least be noticed) is Wikipedia.
A slightly more “productive” (sort of) avenue of approach would be another large corporation for whom Google is a competitor, and who themselves doesn’t rely (as much) on advertising, interfering with WEI for their own self-interested reasons. Apple is the most likely candidate here, although again, I don’t think that’s likely to happen.
Donate to orgs like the EFF, Mozilla, and the FSF. Lobby your congressperson, your senators, and Biden to make the FTC to start doing its goddamn job again and enforce antitrust law.
The only real solution to this creeping megalomaniacal monopolistic behavior is legislative.
The real hope is the EU doing the right thing again and curb stomping the fuck out of google and hopefully the results spread across the world.
Sure hope you’re only using firefox since all the other browsers are chromium 🤣
Except safari of course (almost 20% market share).
Also, there are plenty of other browsers using Mozilla’s gecko engine. A quote from Wikipedia: “ Other web browsers using Gecko include GNU IceCat, Waterfox, K-Meleon, Lunascape, Portable Firefox, Conkeror, Classilla, TenFourFox.” (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gecko_(software))
alot of browsers also use safari webkit (e.g. epiphany)
Yes, certainly, but all of these, if they want to sync their data, or use a own selfhosted server or have to use those of Mozilla with an account, giving with it datas to Alphabet (Google) and googleanalytics. Sync is essential if you use the browser in several PC, PC and Mobile or simply as backup if the PC fails or you buy a new one and don’t want to lose your bookmarks, passwords and other data. Forks are a lot out there, also very nice ones, but most of these lacks the basic infrastructure, depending on a lot of third party services. A browser isn’t only an app to surf the web, it’s a continuos work, maintance, servers and most important, a good and active community. How many forks offer all this? There are almost 100 different browsers out there and other 70 which had said Game over for us, from people which thought “Nice, its easy to fork this engine making it to my like and gain a lot of customers”, nice short dream with a product oversaturated in the market.
Librewolf - desktop
Mull - mobile
Both firefox forks
My daily drivers! Tink! 🍻
Firefox have the same problem with the WEI filter, they also have to insert in Firefox the Google Token, same as any other, if he want to enter a Web with this fucking filter, anyway Mozilla will do this in FF precisely because several Google devs in Mozilla which are working on FF (Bad decision of Mozilla to have Google as main sponsor). Ad/trackerblocker are not the problem in Vivaldi, it has inbuild the needed filters (even those to block Cookie advices and adblocker warnings) and until now it has gutt out every Google intent with FloC, IdleAPI and others to control the Chromium base (remember, also Chromium is FOSS and customizable,above with first class devs Vivaldi has), also don’t have and don’t depends on extern inversors, but this fucking WEI DRM of websites is a greater problem and need to be avoided by ALL browser companies which are not Google in common, if there is not a genius which invent something to fake this Google Token. We’ll see.
it baffles me that people are still using Google Chrome.
Most people don’t use an ad blocker and most people don’t even know this drama exists.
Which makes it weirder why take a grudge against us.
It’s a recession and suddenly the money lost to adblockers matters.
Reddit tried to force me ads down the throat and I just stopped using it. Yeah, it’s hard, but I ended up having more time for myself. I don’t get to send silly Videos to my friends as often, but who gives a fuck. At least I get time to hoover and shit
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most people don’t even know this drama exists.
Guilty, I’m ootl. Can someone explain why my Everything feed is all about browsers?!
Here’s the TLDR version:
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Most users (at least in my observation, in the instances and communities i’m on) on Lemmy are privacy minded, open source fans, linux enthusiasts , etc.
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Google is evil and will suck up any data they can find on you and sell it to anyone that will give them a buck. Lemmy users don’t like that. (me either)
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Google also makes a lot of money selling ads that are crafted for your likes based on the data they steal from you. Lemmy users also don’t like that (me either).
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Ad blockers will hamper some (not much) of google’s ad revenue so they don’t like them. many users use Ad Blockers ( I use an ad blocking DNS server)
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Recently Google announced that their Chrome browser would not allow ad-blockers because it’s changing the functionality that ad-blockers use (Google sucks, don’t use Google stuff)
So that is why it’s showing up an Lemmy a lot right now.
I searched but could not find any announcement. Can you link where they say they won’t allow adblock?
It’s not like they actually announced it. They wouldn’t do something so suicidal. However, they have changed the code API that add-ons like adblockers use under the guise of “keeping people secure”
These changes have essentially neutered adblockers so they’re only 10-20% as effective as they once were.
Firefox has gone out of their way to speak out against this, that it doesn’t help privacy or security quite as much as they say and ensures their browser still includes the code required to make add-ons like adblockers work properly.
Firefox isn’t the only option, but most other browsers are based on chrome. Meaning they don’t have a lot of options. Some have opted to build their own adblockers directly into the browsers, howeever those adblockers aren’t as good options as having an unaffiliated add-on that we can swap out if it gets dirty, and starts taking money from advertisers to deliberately stop blocking specific ads from them.
brave is a particularly bad offender. It specifically actually only blocks ads that don’t come from its own ad service - using adblockers as a means to stop other ad services from competing with it.
You guys are talking about the removal of manifest v2. According to a reddit post in ublockorigin. The lite version will be very limited compared to the regular version. Fortunately, Firefox still works, and it won’t be an issue for a while(on mobile and desktop)
It, and Google’s own blog, says June.
We’re way past June and adblockers still work?
“ In June 2023, the Chrome Web Store will no longer allow Manifest V2 items to be published with visibility set to Public. All existing Manifest V2 items with visibility set to Public at that time will have their visibility changed to Unlisted. In January 2024, following the expiration of the Manifest V2 enterprise policy, the Chrome Web Store will remove all remaining Manifest V2 items from the store. “
Looks like existing ones might still work until January?
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You’ve already got some answers, but the recent drama is specifically about a Chromium-centered API, called Web Environment Integrity.
It has been found on a Google engineer’s Github account, and iirc it’s being tested on Chrome.
It’s basically web DRM.
The idea is that the API allows websites to require browsers to guarantee they are unmodified through a “third-party” attester, like Google SafetyNet (or whatever the fuck it got rebranded as) does.
Imagine if you were trying to access a mobile-only website on your PC, by changing your HTTP user agent string;
the website would refuse to serve you the page, and tell you “I don’t trust you, are you really a Google Pixel?”.
A real Pixel’s browser would ask Google Play to vouch for it, and the website would trust Google Play (due to cryptographic shenanigans and whatnot); your browser, however, would not have an attester that:- is (claiming to be) universally accepted as trustworthy;
- answers “yes, I’m a Google Pixel” on a PC;
- has the necessary cryptographic secrets to work.
That doesn’t sound too bad.
But, what if the attester can check your browser’s extensions, and tell the website that you’re running an adblocker (which is WEI’s explicit goal)?
What if it also checks your system’s running processes or applications?
What if you ran a debloater script for Windows, and the attester decided that a lack of ads in the start menu was sus?What if it detected VPN usage? I know some governments that wouldn’t like that, I bet they would like it if VPN users would be denied access to half the web…
If the comment about VPNs is true, I will lose touch of half of my friends and families that live in Iran. This is truly evil…
It’s “true” in the sense that it could happen in theory, Google is (allegedly?) planning to use WEI for forcing people to see ads rather than China-firewalling the web; also, WEI was still under development last time I checked.
Whether the attesters that end up being universally trusted will poke around to check for VPNs is up for speculation, for now.
Even then, this is just an API for websites. If you use other means of communication, you’ll be fine.
I noticed my YouTube become extremely slow. I was using edge for watching videos. Chrome eats the ram and this ad block makes it easier to just switch. The next attemp would be how to avoid them showing use chrome whenever I google or use gmail or so.
I’m from the Philippines and I can explain why, at least here, most people still use chrome. Over here, we’re much more concerned about our money and time over our rights and privacy, which means we usually just choose the most convenient and cheap money-wise, which is why the majority of us still use chrome and why the government here can get away with so much shit. we don’t care about our rights not because we’re being given bread and circuses, but because we’re too busy making a circus out of ourselves so we can buy bread.
I don’t think that’s good excuse. Firefox is free and installing it takes less than 10 minutes.
Don’t underestimate people’s lack of motivation to switch. Sadly Firefox doesn’t come pre-installed on any major phone brands.
I think you misunderstood what they are trying to convey.
Yes, it’s quick and easy to install (privacy respecting alternative). But to even get to the point that you recognize that you need that alternative is a time commitment as well. They are so busy trying to stay alive and support themselves that they don’t have the extra mental registers to devote to keeping up with privacy implications of popular software.
Not to mention, some software now suffers from IE6-itis, except this time with chromium. So if a user encounters one of those issues on an important site, they’re more likely to drift over to the chromium side again. That friction alone causes more hardship for a person in their situation than simply giving up some privacy for convenience.
They’re also not even making excuses. They’re simply telling you what the point of view is in their world.
Your current approach presents a holler-than-thou attitude that is rude and off-putting. Ultimately, it’s not your job nor mine to chastise them for their choices. If they’re reading this thread, that shows interest in the topic.
Allow them to discover it for themselves (with guided encouragement and assistance if requested) instead of being guilted into a decision. That will have a much more long-lasting impact.
I see the method you attempt all over the Internet, and it always has the same effect of contributing to a toxic, elitist culture. IMHO, that needs to stop if we have any chance of changing more minds to be privacy-aware.
Fair enough! It does take a lot of time to build an understanding of the issue here and I failed to take that into account. I realize not everyone has that sort of time, inclination or even general interest in the subject and that privacy is not exactly at the top of values for most people.
Still, I think people as individuals are still at least a little bit at fault for the way things are, though certainly the most of it falls on the system that fails to teach people about this sort of stuff and on the corporations that take advantage of that lack of knowledge.
I guess I let my frustration get the better of me in my comment. Sometimes it feels like there’s this massive fire raging in the middle of the city and just a handful of us are trying to put out at least a tiny proportion if it while the rest just don’t care about it.
Anyways, thank you for the well-written response, kind stranger, and for making me self reflect!
You got it! We all need a little reminder to take context into account sometimes. And I do appreciate what you were trying to do, which is promote privacy. It’s a laudable goal, and one that I encourage you to continue. Just remember to meet people where they are, instead of where you want them to be. ;)
it’s not about how easy it is to install it’s that it has to be installed at all. Over here we prefer phones as there’s a lot of cheap phones here that only cost less than $100, and since most phones here come preinstalled with chrome, even if firefox is free and all, why go through the hassle of having to go and install it when Chrome’s already there?
most people here have a mindset of “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” which explains a lot of things wrong in this country.
Lol. The privacy bits are what always make me doubt people who say they use iOS for privacy reasons. They’ll scream that and then install every google service they can on the same phone.
Most people just use the default browser on their phone, even in developed countries. Add to that Google’s constant nagging to switch to Chrome which has a powerful effect at keeping their dominance.
Chrome is the new IE, some websites only work on it, and i keep chromium for the same reason i had ie back then, to be able to use those sites.
I use Google Docs a lot and the only reason I haven’t uninstalled Chrome is that, for whatever reason, the fonts don’t display right on Firefox. They used to years ago but I suspect they changed something to negatively impact other browsers.
Fonts look fine here under FF:
Why? It does everything a non-techie would expect from browser and it performs well, why switch to something else?
That said I think Chrome is a terrible Chromium based browser. Edge and Vivaldi in my opinion are much better options. Edge for most folk and Vivaldi for more adventurous types.
Great translate feature. Instant.
I use Chrome and Firefox it really isn’t all that baffling when certain sites just break on Firefox or a dev doesn’t use the browser to promote their product.
We use hangouts for work calls and Firefox acts weird with it so keep chrome around for that… it’s super annoying.
Thank you, it’s so weird to me that Lemmy users who were here before the reddit migration can’t just admit products do certain things better than others and vice versa its not defending or justifying Google irs being rational and seeing a bigger picture. Google is the ass hole no matter what but you can’t just say, “Firefox is perfect why are they using Chrome. When Firefox isn’t perfect but it is way better since time has come along.”
Or you could say that google’s hangouts is specifically designed to perform worse in different conditions than it’s home base.
What kinds of obscure websites do you visit
I guess guys don’t see half the Lemmy posts I do with users complaining they can’t download a piece of software like Adobe because Adobe tells them Firefox isn’t supported.
I love how Lemmy users live in this small logical fallacy bubble of, “well I don’t have it happen to me so therefore you must be the outlier instead.”
Adobe because Adobe tells them Firefox isn’t supported.
And why? It has nothing to do with Firefox. So here, You are not using Chrome for its pretending superiority, you use it because of sabotage.
Don’t get me wrong, you are totally free to do whatever you want, pal.
It doesn’t matter what finger you point where and that is my issue with Lemmy. You can support what you want but the truth is the average user that you want to use Firefox needs a web browser that is supported and works and the truth is average companies used like Adobe don’t use it or support it. I never said Firefox was the issue I said, it’s not surprising that people keep using Chrome.
Feel how you want but it comes to things just being available Chrome has that edge. I also don’t use Firefox to pretend not to use Chrome and that is the funny thing about the average Lemmy user. I use both because both have different benefits. If want to block ads and keep my privacy intact I use Firefox which is why none of my Google life is a part of Firefox. I use Proton and DuckDuckGo when using Firefox and pay for Blokada 6 for VPN usage on my OS and DNS over HTTPS when I use Firefox.
Believe it or not you can use both and remain rational and objective towards what one product does better than the other. It’s okay though. Don’t get me wrong some of us can be surprised that a product is popular. Some of us choose to understand where the value is in average consumer use case. You are als free to do whatever you want though.
Lemmy is full of users like that I keep saying make these statements, “why doesn’t the average user care about their privacy?” Or, “why does the average user still keep using Google or Facebook?” Because the average user can just find those the average user is lazy. They use what everyone is using. However, if web could have a normal discussion you would be surprised to maybe see that isn’t always the case. The product has to change and piss people off. Hence Reddit, Twitter, etc.
If you want the average user to move from Chrome to Firefox it is going to take Lemmy users not being smug and subtly saying, “why are they idiots that keep supporting bit companies that are against them.” And that is the vibe those questions give off and in return it makes things feel more inclusive and less welcoming. Instead of being “surprised” maybe you should be open to just educating a user or just ask them, “why do you use Chrome over FF?”
The issue I keep seeing is that it is the users problem but I think it is a bit of both the user and the big company. There should be an expectation of privacy but a doctor isn’t worried about a Googpe search being private a doctor is concerned with a search being accurate or available. Take DuckDuckGo for example.
The average user isn’t worried about an open source product they have to compile on a Linux OS that they have to install to get away from Windows so they can use an open source version of photo editing products on Firefox. The average user is just going to use what is there and what is popular. Let’s imagine for a second I am an Adobe software user and I go to download Adobe on Firefox and it just doesn’t work. As a user I am going to get annoyed and sure enough I will be right back on Chrome or Edge. That isn’t the users fault or FF’s fault. It is Adobes but that pointing finger is irrelevant to the user because they want a product that gives them no hassle.
And why? It has nothing to do with Firefox.
I don’t know about the Adobe case because I don’t use Adobe web services. But it certainly could be Firefox’s fault. For a long time I was a regular heavy user of a site that made extensive use of a particular CSS property that just was not implemented on Firefox. For years it just couldn’t do the necessary behaviour for that site to work.
I don’t use the site anymore, and it looks like Firefox has eventually gotten around to implementing it so it might work. But the point stands that a site not supporting Firefox could be Firefox’s fault.
Personally, I’m of the opinion that a unified renderer is a good thing. Having all browsers be chromium based would make developers’ jobs easier and would in turn provide users with a better experience. The individual projects like Edge, Vivaldi, and Brave can and should choose not to implement shitty things that Google is doing like Manifest V3 and Web Integrity API, without needing to have their own entire rendering engine like Firefox does.
Adobe tells them Firefox isn’t supported.
ISeeThisAsAnAbsoluteWin.pdf
Again with this insufferable Lemmy user response it’s a loss because as an average user what do you think my next step is not should be. I am going to download Chrome. Call or a win but you are already missing the point of you think Adobe is losing here.
I don’t see the problem, adobe makes their site not work on google. What is firefox going to do? I would like adobe and google to be fined to literal death and have their entire companies split up and reduced to mere shells along with most other big pesudo monopolies. But that won’t happen so oh well. Also I’ve had websites not work on chrome too and in my windows days I had both installed, now I couldn’t give a fuck and just close the sites.
for real
I just use edge/chrome for twitch.tv… It’s no longer compatible with Firefox for some reason… :(
Edit: twitch does work, I meant the login doesn’t. Sorry I was too sleepy to word it correctly. After pressing login even though user and password are correct I get an error message saying my browser is not compatible.
What happens if you switch the user agent header? Most of these sites that don’t work with Firefox actually do work but are deliberately designing them not to function with Firefox.
For example, I got Bing AI to work by switching it to mimic Edge.
Twitch absolutely works with Firefox. I don’t think I’ve accessed twitch from any browser other than Firefox now that I think about it.
Maybe I that was a wrong choice of words on my end.
Twitch doesn’t let me login. I can watch still. But if I want to earn drops or something I can’t, because I can’t login. It says my browser is incompatible.
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Yeah, that’s my bad. I absolutely didn’t word that right. I was half asleep already ahaha
Twitch does work, but I can’t login. It says my browser is incompatible. The only reason I watch twitch is for twitch drops (I’m not really into live streams tbh) so that defeats the whole purpose.
I will try doing like someone else said and “spoof” my browser version and such. That would be great if it worked.
Firefox FTW
UBlock Origin is fire
Pihole goes brrrr
Spread the word brother. You’re doing lord’s work
I think I saw this mentioned in another thread, but doesn’t WEI also break pihole?
I dont see how , i use my pihole at dns level filtering !
Yes it can break pihole too, iirc. Not sure of the exact nature of it, but basically it checks that you loaded the page as intended. If resources are blocked, it didn’t load as intended.
If resources are blocked, it didn’t load as intended.
Yeah it did
It didn’t load as the feudal lords who hate your property rights and think they’re entitled to colonize your computer for their own benefit intended.
WEI doesn’t do that at all. It only can validate that the browser is what it claims to be.
That’s not to say WEI isn’t bad. It will make it near impossible for new browsers to gain market share and create privacy issues.
please help - https://lemmy.ml/c/pihole
Plus hosts. I haven’t seen an ad in many years.
Or one could use dns.adguard
Many consumer routers have Ad blocking settings also. I know Asus and UniFi both have it.
Honestly just shocked how well Adblockalypse rolls off the tongue despite being the linguistic equivalent of three kids in a trench coat
I didn’t even try as I was sure I’d fail anyways. You’re right, it’s beautiful!
We’d like to take out a hefty loan
Installs a adblock block blocker in Firefox…
Oh, I see. The “AdBlock Blocker Block Block” is about to come…
Its already a thing
This is just more of the same. Every time some company thinks they’ve thrown enough money at the problem to DRM their way to success, somebody inevitably finds a fix, workaround, or bypass. Sometimes within a single day.
The main issue is that no-one in past, be it movie, music, or gaming industry, had the control which Google has with the web.
Web is 90% Chromium, Email is 60+% Gmail, Android is 70+% mobile worldwide, and Google already provides a lot of things like Google login, oAuth, etc. for free.
This means for a web dev, making a website WEI compatible shouldn’t be much of a hassle, and if they protest, Google can totally twist their arms to get us way.
WEI is dangerous because who’s behind it, not because what it is.
Not to mention AdSense and YouTube with whatever percentages they control of their respective markets. Google holds a lot of separate monopolies for just one company
I stopped using chrome as my primary browser years ago, and everyone should do the same.
Users when company who makes billions in profit off of ads modifies their browser to forcefully show more ads: 🤯😟
For real, why even use a Google product if you don’t have to
To install Graphene OS onto a Pixel Phone.
Stopped even looking at chrome since yrs. If they force their services even via chrome based browsers, I will dump their offerings as much as possible.
Google has kicked up such a revolt that I find it easy to convince everyone to use Firefox. If they think they can keep abusing their userbase like this, then they are in for a surprise.
Kiss my sexy Klingon ass, Google. I will forever battle ads.
Perhaps today is a good day to die!
Well said, we must never give up in the battle with ads.
As long as this doesn’t impact Firefox, I don’t care…
The problem is they have the lion’s share of users, so they can force websites to adhere to their policies and those sites will stop working in FF.
Google is the source of most of the funding to Firefox. Can go 100 to 0 anytime basically
You’re assuming that this will kill FF instantly instead of them finding new ways to fund themselves. Not saying the situation is good, but it’s not that bad.
Don’t they pay for firefox just so they don’t get hit with antitrusts?
I feel like that might trigger an anti-trust lawsuit somewhere.
The issue beyond them trying to change chromium to not have it but they are trying to make it so part of websites have the “security” built in as well
We know how it will impact Firefox. They will be deeply concerned with WEI and extremely opposing it, but will implement it anyway because they are forced to do it.
It’s going to go exactly like this. Again.
With most competing browsers and the content industry embracing the W3C
EMEWEI specification, Mozilla has little choice but to implementEMEWEI as well so our users can continue to access all content they want to enjoy.And that is almost a direct quote.
Someone will most likely create a fork to remove this or an option to disable it will probably be baked into about:config. I don’t visit many sites that use DRM. When I do visit sites that require it, I’ll usually shift to Ungoogled Chromium or Brave.
Another one of my major fears with this change is whether Google will decide to make Chromium closed source and the implications it can have for other chromium based browsers.
Someone will most likely create a fork to remove this or an option to disable it will probably be baked into about:config.
But that’s the issue - if WEI passes, EVERY webpage will be able to use DRM. So, just like you have to switch to Chromium for DRMed media content, you will now have to switch for every website that has decided to implement it. So, your bank (because google is pushing it as a security feature), Youtube, Gmail… Just like you are not able to play DRM media, you won’t be able to visit DRMed websites without WEI API supported. It’s not something you turn off.
I’d be fine ditching youtube and gmail instead of having to use their shitty services with ads that lead to fake software that compromise your computers. Also my bank could try this, I would quickly turn into their most annoying customer also it could get to the point that unless you run a specific OS these pages won’t work and it would start being problematic legally for them. But until then I will pray everyday that the EU will take a hammer to WEI and break it’s legs.
It will impact Firefox.
Well, they’re trying to make it impact FF…
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Refuse? Why?
According to my kids there’s a few flash game sites like y8 (perhaps not flash, IIRC that got killed off, but you get the idea) where you’re blocked for adblocking. As soon as I have white listed a site they’ll find a new one. So they have ublock origin installed, but permanently switched off.
And for some reason at least one kid actually likes youtube ads smh
Kids these days with their loving ads and what not. I came from a simpler time where we hated ads with a passion. :shakes fist:
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My 2 year old knows how to hit the okay button on the remote when the Skip ad badge turns white.
Everyone hates commericals.
@BigDanishGuy @schrodingers_dinger, ??? Y8 (Html5, WebGl) works flawless for me in Vivaldi with the inbuild Ad/Trackerblocker
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As a zoomer I can never convince my friends to install AdBlock, they think it’s too much of a hassle.
You literally install and forget it’s there, it’s not hard at all. Tell your friends their basic. 😆 Also, thank you for fighting the good fight. ✊
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Yeah, who would’ve thought that the advertising company would modify their software so that it doesn’t work if you block the advertisements.
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Just because it’s built on Chromium doesn’t mean it has to follow Chromes rules. I know that’s hard for you Firefox fanboys to admit though. Google will die but there’s Edge, Opera, Brave, Vivaldi, and more.
But any browsers that use Chromium have to obey google even if they like it or not
No, Chromium is FOSS and every compay or dev is free to modify it to their like. Do you think that Windows with EDGE follow the rules of Google in this Chromium? Or the Chinese Opera? Vivaldi also don’t with its gutted Chromium, But Mozilla does, even with Google devs working on Firefox, because Google is its major sponsor. Sends Data to Alphabet and Google analytics, because Mozilla made the mistake of making a contract with the devil, losing independence by relying on outside investors, above the worst one.
I know that the Firefox fanboys are going to pepper me with downvotes now, because life is hard and so is the truth. The enemy is Google not the engine. Chromium folds to Google only if you use it as-is, without bothering to remove the GoogleAPIs it contains by default.
Google needs to sponsor Firefox because if Firefox goes away, they will get hit with the monopoly stick of the EU and get bigger restrictions.
Just like what happened with Internet Explorer.
So it is imperative to Google to keep Firefox afloat whatever the cost. And Firefox has to do nothing in return other than exist.
Mozilla does not send any data to Google, which you can not say from any of the Chromium-based browsers like Edge.
Edge the last one, in EDGE all telemetries go to MS, Towerdata (the worst one, which use even keyloggers) and other afiliate sites. Firefox need the money from Google, because to maintan its Infrastructure, servers, bread and water for its devs. etc
