Google looks to be fully shutting down unsupported extensions and ad blockers in Chrome – which might push some folks to switch to Firefox
www.techradar.com
Manifesting a future where Firefox is more successful?

Clearly, Google is serious about trying to oust ad blockers from its browser, or at least those extensions with fuller (V2) levels of functionality. One of the crucial twists with V3 is that it prevents the use of remotely hosted code – as a security measure – but this also means ad blockers can’t update their filter lists without going through Google’s review process. What does that mean? Way slower updates for said filters, which hampers the ability of the ad-blocking extension to keep up with the necessary changes to stay effective.

(This isn’t just about browsers, either, as the war on advert dodgers extends to YouTube, too, as we’ve seen in recent months).

At any rate, Google is playing with fire here somewhat – or Firefox, perhaps we should say – as this may be the shove some folks need to get them considering another of the best web browsers out there aside from Chrome. Mozilla, the maker of Firefox, has vowed to maintain support for V2 extensions, while introducing support for V3 alongside to give folks a choice (now there’s a radical idea).

  • DarkCloud@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1805·
    2 个月前

    I downloaded Librewolf today - the privacy oriented fork of Firefox!

    Good to see there are browser variants that aren’t just Chrome.

    • Album@lemmy.caEnglish
      323·
      2 个月前

      yep firefox with arkenfox for me, same deal as librewolf. And Mull on mobile.

      Switched about 2-3 months ago thinking it might be difficult or impact me negatively or something but its been easy and great.

      • kitnaht@lemmy.worldEnglish
        298·
        2 个月前

        You know the problem I have with Librewolf? – Fuckall nobody knows how to spell it.

        The beauty of Firefox is that even the densest idiot knows how to spell those two words. And with attention spans the equivalent of a gnat, people need to have things simplified for them as much as humanly possible.

        Fortunately enough, Firefox is about the only one with a renderer that isn’t controlled by Google, but - even now they’re shifting to a pro-advertising stance and backing off of the privacy orientation that they took just a year or two ago.

        • Supervisor194@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2014·
          2 个月前

          Yes, and we will drop Mozilla when it drops uBlock as well. We will all get behind whatever open-source browser stops ads, and it will very quickly become the most widely used browser. Why? Because everybody despises fucking ads and you can’t curb-stomp them into liking ads, that’s why.

          Google can spend all the money it likes trying to piss on users and tell them it’s raining but at the end of the day, a new king will be crowned and if it isn’t Chrome and it isn’t Firefox, then it will be something else.

          And no, FOSS doesn’t need money behind it. FOSS needs a dedicated community behind it. Assertions to the contrary are FUD constantly being seeded by Google, Microsoft and their ilk to destroy competition. This is an existential necessity for Google, you can bet they are doing everything in their power to maintain the status quo.

          • WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            3·
            2 个月前

            And no, FOSS doesn’t need money behind it. FOSS needs a dedicated community behind it

            how do you imagine a Linux-sized community getting built around firefox in a few days? and even that is a bad example, because a lot of linux devs are paid by their employer from a company anywhere on the world

            • Supervisor194@lemmy.worldEnglish
              1·
              2 个月前

              Nice straw man. Nobody said the community was going to “Linux-sized” nor that it was going to be built in a “few days,” nor that it was going to have paid devs. It’s like you’re being intentionally obtuse.

              There are already multiple supported forks of Firefox and while it doesn’t take much to maintain such forks when they are being fed a large part of the codebase by Mozilla, if you think such a project would not pick right the fuck up where Mozilla left off if Mozilla tried to pull a Google and get behind Manifest V3, you are, I believe, mistaken.

              Mozilla itself owes its existence to Netscape’s failure in the face of unfair competition by Microsoft’s Explorer. Netscape released its source code, Mozilla was founded and the power of open-source created Firefox. Chrome’s halfhearted support of Mozilla is itself owed to the fact that they don’t want to get spanked over Chrome like Microsoft was over IE.

    • Kbobabob@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2010·
      2 个月前

      Until you actually need a chromium based browser. I get so annoyed when this happens.

      • LucidNightmare@lemm.eeEnglish
        303·
        2 个月前

        Almost 20 years and I’ve never needed a Chromium browser for anything. I’m sorry you were forced to use such garbage ass software.

        • BassTurd@lemmy.worldEnglish
          81·
          2 个月前

          I have chromium installed for the sole reason to cast some streams to my remote TVs. Otherwise it stays closed. I tried some work around with FF, but I couldn’t get it to work. It’s only once or twice a week for live sporting events, so I can stomach it.

          • LucidNightmare@lemm.eeEnglish
            144·
            2 个月前

            I understand where you’re coming from. It’s never happened to me, but if a website didn’t work with Firefox, I would just assume it’s a shit site ran by rookies who know nothing, and move on to a different site. I understand most people don’t have that kind of principle though.

            • BassTurd@lemmy.worldEnglish
              132·
              2 个月前

              It’s not that the site doesn’t work in FF, it’s that casting the stream from that site to a remote TV in the house is only possible in chromium, at least with my current device setup. If I just watch on my computer, I watch in FF.

              • LucidNightmare@lemm.eeEnglish
                41·
                2 个月前

                Ah, you did say that. I’m sorry for my misunderstanding. I’ve never tried that, and you’re the first I’ve seen to mention it. I concede to your argument.

                • BassTurd@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  4·
                  2 个月前

                  I’m in the slow process of replacing devices with HTPCs then I won’t need to cast anything. Unfortunately computers and time don’t grow on trees.

      • Supervisor194@lemmy.worldEnglish
        111·
        2 个月前

        As if installing and using something else means you can’t have Chrome lying around for that one stupid website.

        • Kbobabob@lemmy.worldEnglish
          31·
          2 个月前

          And I do. Sometimes I’ll just fire up Edge if Chrome isn’t installed since it’s chromium based.

      • skulblaka@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        144·
        2 个月前

        In what situation do you need one?

        I’ve been using Firefox for over a decade and have literally never once needed to open a different web browser. For anything, ever. This is a very common complaint that tons of people seem to have that I have never seen happen even once out in the wild.

        • suburban_hillbilly@lemmy.mlEnglish
          191·
          2 个月前

          Several government websites for the state of Pennsylvania complain and refuse to work if they detect that you aren’t using chrome/edge/safari.

          • bitwolf@lemmy.oneEnglish
            8·
            2 个月前

            You can spoof your useragent to appear as chrome. And you should as it makes your browser less “unique”

            • suburban_hillbilly@lemmy.mlEnglish
              39·
              2 个月前

              While you can do this, it’s not clear to me that you should. There are a number of additional laws having to do with perjury and misusing goverment sites and while I would undoubtedly agree with you, were you to assert the application of those laws to the utilization of a user agent switcher is a ridiculous overreach, I am just as certain I have no desire to be in the hot-seat on the day we all find out.

              • bitwolf@lemmy.oneEnglish
                3·
                2 个月前

                Oh wow I didn’t know that. I’ll have to double check for the states that are relevant for me.

                I imagine many people naively install a privacy extension and unknowingly have altered useragents

                • datavoid@lemmy.mlEnglish
                  5·
                  2 个月前

                  Imagine the government coming after someone, demanding they give Google their fair share

          • poke@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            6·
            2 个月前

            Do the sites work if you use an extension that lies to them about what browser you are using?

        • Zetta@mander.xyzEnglish
          12·
          2 个月前

          I also use Firefox on my work computer, I need to quickly authorize a login in the browser before the local “app” opens (“app” because it’s just a webpage pretending to be an app) and I just recently got a notification that slack won’t support Firefox anymore so please switch to chrome. The fucking animals.

        • Evkob@lemmy.caEnglish
          4·
          2 个月前

          I use Librewolf on desktop and Mull on mobile. I have a few extensions on both, which could definitely contribute to issues. When I have issues (usually government sites or financial stuff, sometimes DRM-related stuff for media) it’s easier to just use a Chromium-based browser with no extensions than try to troubleshoot specifically what’s causing the issues. I keep Falkon (desktop) and Vanadium (mobile) installed for this purpose.

          I get the feeling a lot of issues people are having in Firefox might be due to extensions or settings, which gets “fixed” by using another browser (which happens to be Chromium-based because most browsers are) and they blame the issue on Firefox itself.

        • sunbeam60@lemmy.oneEnglish
          56·
          2 个月前

          Firefox is getting so small it’s starting to disappear out of the testing matrix. Confluence has issues with it, you can’t always log into Vanguard on Firefox, many news website layouts have overlapping elements on Firefox, quite a few shopping websites too (H&M in Europe has a long-standing but with putting stuff in the shopping basket until they revamped their website a couple of months ago). Etc etc. I see it ALL the time.

      • partial_accumen@lemmy.worldEnglish
        63·
        2 个月前

        There’s still Vivali which is Chromium based and still supporting V2 extension (like uBlock) until June 2025. Its not a full fix, but its a stay of execution. That said, I’m a FF primary user.

      • warm@kbin.earth
        42·
        2 个月前

        If people used other browsers, then the market share would change and this would become less and less of a problem.

      • Fonzie!@ttrpg.networkEnglish
        1·
        1 个月前

        I’ve had that once, as well as some websites running inexplicably slow on FF.

        I changed my user agent to a recent Chrome one and that solved it issue.
        Moral of the story? Websites are discriminating.

    • Thebeardedsinglemalt@lemmy.worldEnglish
      81·
      2 个月前

      I’ve been using librewolf for a several months. Be careful because streaming doesn’t always work on it due to DRM features, and YouTube has been spotty AF. With YouTube it might start the video a couple seconds into it, buffer for no discernable reason, or just skip a few random seconds.

      • Fashim@lemmy.worldEnglish
        41·
        2 个月前

        I use firefox but I have to change my useragent string to chrome with an extension to get YouTube working.

        Might be worth having a look to see if it fixes your issues

      • quissberry@lemmy.cafeEnglish
        1·
        2 个月前

        Yeah, I have noticed it too. I sometimes just use mpv instead to play YouTube videos instead, but that also has its limitations

      • Maeve@midwest.socialEnglish
        11·
        2 个月前

        Oh? I noticed that issue last couple of days using invidious on librewolf, and thought it was YT doing invidious shenanigans again.

  • sandbox@lemmy.worldEnglish
    122·
    2 个月前

    We’re going to have a serious problem on our hands soon with compatibility. I’m a software dev and I’m already seeing a few issues here and there where Chrome is being treated as the default expected browser and features don’t work on Firefox.

    Firefox doesn’t support a fair few Chrome features because of security and privacy reasons, such as WebHID, WebUSB, etc.

    Devs, please stop using those features. I know it’s tempting, but they’re basically bribes to encourage you to sell out to Google. Don’t do it.

    • katy ✨@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      51·
      2 个月前

      We’re going to have a serious problem on our hands soon with compatibility. I’m a software dev and I’m already seeing a few issues here and there where Chrome is being treated as the default expected browser and features don’t work on Firefox.

      It’s basically IE6 and ActiveX all over again.

    • spookedintownsville@lemmy.worldEnglish
      19·
      2 个月前

      Most “Chrome-only” web applications I have to use I can get around just by changing my user agent string and everything works fine. I try not to use that stuff when I can, though.

      • stoly@lemmy.worldEnglish
        13·
        2 个月前

        This is my experience. They are just taking your default agent and throwing up a message because they can’t be assed to do minimal testing in FF.

      • sandbox@lemmy.worldEnglish
        61·
        2 个月前

        Some of the older stuff is indeed that way, but there are more and more features which Firefox can’t support. Web-based custom keyboard configuration tools, tools to flash phone firmware, and one niche MiniDisc tool all are chrome-only things I’ve had to open Chrome to use

      • Frays6142@lemmy.worldEnglish
        8·
        2 个月前

        Teams works in Firefox, I sadly have to use it almost every day interacting with clients who use teams for comms.

        • frozen@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyzEnglish
          3·
          2 个月前

          One of my company’s customers is a DoD contractor that uses the government version of Teams, which does require Chromium, unfortunately. Or at least, I haven’t found a way to make it work on Firefox yet.

        • Frays6142@lemmy.worldEnglish
          11·
          2 个月前

          I’ve not had either of those issues on my laptop, using teams through Firefox. I wonder if there is something else going on there.

    • pumpkinseedoil@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      10·
      2 个月前

      I’m using Firefox as my only browser. If everything works in Firefox that’s fine for me.

      That’s the best advantage of only making websites / web applications for fun (for friend groups, video games, family etc)

      • sandbox@lemmy.worldEnglish
        181·
        2 个月前

        Yeah, but that’s my point, not everything works in Firefox now - even though admittedly it’s relatively niche stuff - and my prediction is that if we continue on our current course Firefox will either have to compromise their commitment to privacy and security or will become more and more unusable.

        • Kronusdark@lemmy.worldEnglish
          14·
          2 个月前

          I saw this quote a while back “if you only make code that works in chrome you aren’t a web developer, you are a google developer.”

    • WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      6·
      2 个月前

      Firefox doesn’t support a fair few Chrome features because of security and privacy reasons, such as WebHID, WebUSB

      I’m very serious about my opinion that we are better off without them. If the feature does not exist, it cannot be activated by a bug in the permission system, and also the lesser technically inclined people won’t allow them by reflex/accident

    • linearchaos@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      2 个月前

      Google’s working on fixing that for you right now. That’s more people switch to Firefox and there’s futures don’t work they’ll start complaining to the developers and then to Firefox. Microsoft road the it only works in IE train for a long time and it eventually buried them

      • Empricorn@feddit.nlEnglish
        141·
        2 个月前

        Some of us switched to Chrome when it was legitimately better, but are back now.

        • WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          2·
          2 个月前

          i switched to chrome when I was too young to understand anything, and I’m not even sure if it was better for any extent. have switched back 5+ years ago

    • sudo@lemmy.todayEnglish
      189·
      2 个月前

      The cool kids are switching to Librewolf because whatever is happening at Mozilla is increasingly concerning by the day.

          • dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️@lemmy.worldEnglish
            31·
            2 个月前

            No, but Librewolf and Iceweasel and all the other forks are ultimately wholly dependent on Mozilla and Firefox continuing to exist. If Mozilla techbros themselves into imploding entirely and goes bankrupt, for instance, all of those other fork projects are also by association toast.

    • Tilgare@lemmy.worldEnglish
      8·
      2 个月前

      I was pretty sure manifest v3 had already happened - but when I knew it was coming, I went ahead and switched ahead of time. Came with the extra bonus that now I’m ad free on mobile too! Mobile websites are absolutely filthy with popovers and 2 sentence paragraphs with an ad between every paragraph. I’m sick of it. And unfortunately I spend so much more time browsing the web from my phone these days than my desktop - so when I swapped on pc to Firefox, it was such a relief to have browser extensions on my phone now too.

  • MC_Lovecraft@lemm.eeEnglish
    85·
    2 个月前

    I remember the internet before Google, and how game changing it was to have all of the internet indexed in one place (even if that wasn’t actually quite true back then). If you had asked me 15, 10, even 5 years ago if I would be cheering its downfall and yearning for a return to a simpler, far less centralized internet, I would have called you crazy. And yet here we are.

    • DrGunjah@lemmy.worldEnglish
      412·
      2 个月前

      You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.

    • spector@lemmy.caEnglish
      9·
      2 个月前

      It wasn’t hard to foresee. We knew these kind of things could happen. The internet used to be very out spoken about it. That ethos is long gone. What’s equally disappointing is tech nerds selling out for bigger paychecks.

      • Billiam@lemmy.worldEnglish
        4·
        2 个月前

        That’s because the OG visionaries of tech are gone, and have been replaced by MBAs and techbros.

    • thatsnothowyoudoit@lemmy.caEnglish
      332·
      2 个月前

      For those of us who work in (or love) tech - we (myself included) grossly overestimate how much the general public cares about, or cares to be informed about, this stuff. Heck, even people in tech who know better.

      I wish it wasn’t the case but look how long and hard Microsoft moved on Internet Explorer and ActiveX back in the early days of the web.

      Google and Chrome is just another bit of history repeating.

      As an aside, I’ve been using Zen for about a week and it’s been wonderful. Easy transition from Firefox because it largely is Firefox, so all my containers, extensions, and settings carried over. Zen’s workspaces provide exactly the promise I’d hoped “tab groups” brought with Safari (but never worked right). I just wish there was an equivalent to the Hush plug-in on Safari (even after a year of full-timing FF, consent-o-matic is quite poor).

      • Orygin@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        91·
        2 个月前

        Yeah I work in tech and I’m the only one that cares enough to use Firefox. All my colleagues use chrome or chrome with makeup.
        Maybe ad blocking will be what broke the camel’s back, but I doubt more than a few will care enough to switch.

    • Final Remix@lemmy.worldEnglish
      29·
      2 个月前

      I kinda have to at work. Our classroom computers reset between classes and Chrome is the only browser installed. I might ask IT about that, moving forward, given uBlock getting neutered soon.

      • WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        7·
        2 个月前

        when you ask them, don’t only mention ublock, but the privacy aspects of only allowing the browser of the largest data collection fueled ad company

        • Final Remix@lemmy.worldEnglish
          5·
          2 个月前

          Honestly, our IT peeps aren’t idiots. They’d probably agree with me. It’s admin who make the overall decisions. I might be able to swing “also Firefox” to be included when they inevitably update the repo.

      • alphabethunter@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        2 个月前

        I have a similar issue at my school as well. Chrome is the only allowed browser, and each of us have to use our own school email as our login session in chrome, so we get that much of user space, and that actually works quite decently. I had ublock installed on my user account so far, but if it breaks, I’ll just have to suffer. Although, the real problem is that the school I work in uses some digital books that only work 100% in Chrome, and all show some form of weird behaviour in non-chromiun based browsers. And there’s a 0 chance they are changing it.

      • Konala Koala@lemmy.worldEnglish
        11·
        2 个月前

        And the only place I can think of where uBlock is not getting neutered anytime soon is in LibreWolf.

          • Konala Koala@lemmy.worldEnglish
            12·
            2 个月前

            I didn’t say anything about Firefox fucking with uBlock Origin, but was merely suggesting to try LibreWolf as its a hardened Firefox fork that comes with uBlock Origin preinstalled.

    • stebo@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      271·
      2 个月前

      It’s not about intelligence it’s about what keeps you up at night. Most people aren’t bothered by cookies and ads, somehow.

        • Lemminary@lemmy.worldEnglish
          111·
          2 个月前

          And the creepiness. Advertisers can deduce many habits based on the information you give them. Some techniques can tell when people are pregnant before they do based on their pathing inside the store, for instance.

        • omarfw@lemmy.worldEnglish
          9·
          2 个月前

          It used to be worse. Pop up ads are mostly a thing of the past. The web used to be an advertisement shit hole and there were no ad blockers back then.

          Regardless, you’re right. I don’t understand why or how people could be ignorant of the existence of adblock in 2024 unless they’re boomers.

          • wewbull@feddit.ukEnglish
            51·
            2 个月前

            Since ads began, there have been ad-blockers. You just didn’t know about them.

      • A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.worldEnglish
        92·
        2 个月前

        Most people are stupid, myopic imbeciles that arent bothered by anything until it personally affects them.

        Then they’ll howl like wolves at the moon about the great injustice of it all, and how could anyone allow this to happen.

    • Daemon Silverstein@thelemmy.clubEnglish
      161·
      2 个月前

      The problem here is not just Chrome (as in Google Chrome) but Chromium, the web engine behind many browsers out there (such as Opera, Vivaldi, Edge, among many many others). For now there are two main web engines available, those being Chromium and Gecko (Firefox, Palemoon and many other Firefox forks). The deprecation of Manifest v2 is a Chromium change that includes (and focuses on) Chrome.

      • baggachipz@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        111·
        2 个月前

        I know people who I thought brilliant until they said they were voting for trump. Way to shatter my opinion of you, jagoff.

    • Stern@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      2 个月前

      I’m only using it atm for extensions that are, ironically enough, blocked on Firefox… Though thats only one website in particular.

  • Harvey656@lemmy.worldEnglish
    43·
    2 个月前

    While this will drive some users to Firefox, we all know it won’t be enough. Too many people simple don’t know, or don’t care, it won’t affect their lives in any meaningful way, or so they will believe. Google will be harming the tech illiterate and normies (sorry for the slur) because money, bullshit, and to drive the stake deeper into the monopoly. If you have older family members using chrome, sit them down and explain to them the dangers of the internet without adblock.

    • SSTF@lemmy.worldEnglish
      18·
      2 个月前

      It gets me thinking. Tech literate people are the types to install blockers, and would be the same type of people both motivated and knowledgeable about how to switch browsers. On the line of thinking it seems like it is just going to drive them away from Chrome. Tech illiterate people remain unaffected since they are getting ads anyway.

      But then on the other hand, if someone is tech literate then why are they even still using Chrome? Does such a person value whatever advantage Chrome theoretically provides over their ad-blocking?

      • shneancy@lemmy.worldEnglish
        171·
        2 个月前

        as a chromium browser user - i’ve been meaning to switch to firefox, and i know it’ll take me maybe a day, but it feels like so much workkkk. In a similar fashion i’ve been meaning to switch to Linux for ages too. I guess it just hasn’t gotten bad enough for me to take action

        as long as my adblockers & script blockers work, i’m not forced to upgrade to win11, and win10 still has security updates i don’t think it’s pushing on my discomfort buttons strong enough. I know the day will come, but like with a lot of things in my life - why do something today when i can do it tomorrow?

        • WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          5·
          2 个月前

          if that helps, switching browsers is a lot easier than switching your OS. the automatic import brings over most of your data (bookmarks, passwords, history, …), and you only need to handle the addons, if you had any, and the browser settings if you need anything from there

        • jape@infosec.pubEnglish
          4·
          2 个月前

          I feel you. It’s vey much a convenience thing, and sitting down with something you’re used to.

        • wewbull@feddit.ukEnglish
          51·
          2 个月前

          What do you mean “work”? What is it that needs to move?

          You just fire up Firefox and start using it. It’ll even scrape your chrome setup to move bookmarks and stuff over.

          It’s not an OS. It’s an application.

          • shneancy@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            2 个月前

            i don’t use chrome itself. i have a lot of saved things, roughly a million tabs open at every moment, and passwords saved which i do not remember

            • wanderingmagus@lemm.eeEnglish
              2·
              2 个月前

              There’s extensions to export all your open tabs and then a similar extension to import those tabs and open them as a session in Firefox. Source: I, too, have a million tabs open at every moment, and had to do that to transition myself. Same for exporting/importing passwords.

            • Hadriscus@lemm.eeEnglish
              1·
              2 个月前

              This is all mostly automatically transfered over… I don’t know about passwords though

              • Billiam@lemmy.worldEnglish
                4·
                2 个月前

                I’m not sure if Firefox pulls passwords when you import your data, but you can manually export passwords from Chrome and import them into Firefox.

            • wewbull@feddit.ukEnglish
              13·
              2 个月前

              If you have tabs like that, they’re not “open”. They are crumbs left as you wandered the internet. You’re not going back to them. Do yourself a favour and close them.

              It’s like having thousands of unread emails in your inbox. At some point you have to stop kidding yourself you’re going to read them.

        • Yi K@lemmy.worldEnglish
          52·
          2 个月前

          That’s some procrastination going on. Sometimes you should force yourself to start doing something for a minute or so and things will eventually change.

        • alphabethunter@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          2 个月前

          I use Opera for myself, but I have to use Chrome for work reasons (user profiles for different work areas based on whatever email is being used at the company computer). Thing is, Firefox also lacks the feature that makes me use Opera: speed dial. My Opera starting page is my speed dials, and speed dials are 10x better than just bookmarks, and I wouldn’t want to go through all the trouble of transfering literally hundreds of saved pages to standard bookmarks. But, if ublock fully stops working, guess I’ll have no choice.

          • WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            1·
            2 个月前

            I don’t know what exactly speed dialsare in opera, but firefox’s homepage can show website tiles in multiple rows

    • forgotaboutlaye@lemmy.worldEnglish
      9·
      2 个月前

      If you have older family members, you could try just installing Firefox for them and tell them it’s their internet now. This worked for me parents.

    • ikidd@lemmy.worldEnglish
      465·
      2 个月前

      Make sure to shit on them every fucking time anyone says the name “Mozilla”, that’ll help us not have anything except Chrome in a couple years.

      • Lemminary@lemmy.worldEnglish
        317·
        2 个月前

        It’s fine, there are open source projects underway. If any one of them gains traction, it could happen to Mozilla what happened to Unity with Godot. Here’s to hoping they get their act straight sooner tan later.

        • ikidd@lemmy.worldEnglish
          293·
          2 个月前

          Oh, bullshit. There is nothing that has 1/100th of the effort that goes into gecko, because maintaining a web browser is ridiculously difficult. You’re living in a dreamworld if you think any other project is within a lightyear of Firefox.

          • gwen@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
            172·
            2 个月前

            idk why people think that these foss projects will be fully finished super quickly every time mozilla or google does some stupid shit. firefox exists solely because of googles funding due to web browsers being expensive/difficult to maintain. the effort being made for ladybird is amazing, but holy shit we are NOT gonna be at the ‘firefox and chrome alternative’ level unless they gain massive funding.

            maybe i should get back into gemini

      • Allah@lemmy.worldEnglish
        62·
        2 个月前

        People completely misunderstand this feature (which is only a temporary prototype anyways), and I think that’s entirely Mozilla’s fault. They do a really poor job explaining it.

        Usually ad networks implement sophisticated tracking, which works in a highly invasive way. They need the telemetry to watch their campaigns. Firefox now offers the option to collect a minimal amount of data for them and inform the network indirectly.

        This is a good thing for the end user. The trackers are not needed, you gain privacy. Disabling the option makes it so you’re instantly tracked MORE.

        Mozilla shouldn’t have staged this as an opt-out of the new system. You actually OPT-IN to networks running their old scripts on your machine to collect your telemetry:

        [ ] Allow ad networks to run their own telemetry

        (Beta functionality, some advertisers may still run their own trackers, even when this option is disabled.)

        That would be the same thing, but communicate what it’s doing.

        The fact that advertisers like Meta might be on board with this should be exciting to people. That they are even considering giving up so much data and now only receive a single number of impressions per campaign is very unexpected.

        Also, none of this matters if you block ads anyways. If you don’t load the ad, neither the networks script runs its telemetry, nor does Firefox increase the counter for the campaign id.

        If you’re wondering what’s every involved party’s gain in this, an interesting read is the IPA white paper, where the overall design targets for the system are stated: Interoperable Private Attribution (IPA), 2022

        In particular:

        In designing IPA, we set out to find a win-win-win solution for cross platform attribution measurement that met our goals across privacy, utility, and competition.

        • ⁠Privacy: data collected about the user is minimized, protecting the end-users privacy. • ⁠Utility: the telemetry process is unified and simplified across all platforms, reducing the costs • ⁠Competition: it will be an open, standardized system, accessible to everyone

        Just to be clear, I dislike the way Mozilla rolled this out. They already have a “Studies” checkmark that people can enable if they wish to participate in stuff like this. That Mozilla treats this prototype differently is actually not ok, and breaks trust with their users. But as far as I’m concerned, this is a completely separate topic from the update content, which I wish to be successful.

        • ipkpjersi@lemmy.mlEnglish
          2·
          2 个月前

          Firefox now offers the option to collect a minimal amount of data for them and inform the network indirectly.

          This is a good thing for the end user.

          I’m not sure that collecting data is actually a good thing for the end user, but to each their own I suppose.

      • PriorityMotif@lemmy.worldEnglish
        61·
        2 个月前

        Before chrome became massively popular, Firefox was very popular. ie was still the most used browser back then

    • Konala Koala@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      2 个月前

      What about waiting for Google to shoot their own foot again, even though that already has happened numerous times?

  • 🖖USS-Ethernet@startrek.websiteEnglish
    38·
    2 个月前

    When is this happening? I’ve been telling my wife and kid that they need to stop using chrome for a year, but ublock is still working for them and blocking YouTube ads. They are the type that won’t switch until it becomes a problem for them.

    • LWD@lemm.eeEnglish
      15·
      2 个月前

      I think that’s the point: Google has been shutting down Manifest V2 extensions one step at a time, and it’s been experimenting with anti-ad-block tech on YouTube with one user group at a time.

  • portside@monyet.ccEnglish
    311·
    2 个月前

    I’ve fully switched to Firefox everywhere. The only thing I’m missing is a lightweight browser which is not based on chromium for my potato tablet. jQuarks viewer is a good one but can be dumb sometimes, it opens image instead of the link for eg.

  • vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    266·
    2 个月前

    I find it funny how so many people are switching back to firefox but its been my default since I was like 10. I had crappy laptops when I was young and it was the only one that worked, it works amazingly for my modern computer.

    • stoy@lemmy.zipEnglish
      233·
      2 个月前

      Yeah, I remember when Chrome was first released, I was already on Firefox, and I downloaded and tried Chrome…

      I absolutely hated the UI, and kept on using Firefox.

      Over the years, I have seen many articles about how Chrome is better because it is faster, I never had an issue with Firefox, so I kept using it.

      The only time I swiched from Firefox since version 1.0 was when they launched the Australis redesign as it made it look like a boring chrome copy.

      I swiched to Pale Moon, a Fitefox fork which kept the old UI, then when they released the Quantum redesign, I switched back.

      • nul9o9@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        2 个月前

        My biggest gripe with Firefox is that if I’m too fast and start typing into the address bar when it first launches, it’ll clear the auto text selection and start prepending my input onto the URL.

    • prole@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      36·
      2 个月前

      yt-dlp is the gold standard. Not only for YouTube either. Check out the man page, the amount of shit it can do is insane.

    • rem26_art@fedia.io
      32·
      2 个月前

      yt-dlp is what i normally use, tho its only got a command line interface. I think someone’s made a GUI for it, but I’ve never tried it.

    • Grangle1@lemm.eeEnglish
      5·
      2 个月前

      A great privacy focused client for YouTube is FreeTube. Uses a native API or Invidious for playback, and you can download and share videos from it. Doesn’t give any identifying info to Google/YouTube and I’ve never once dealt with an ad. For mobile, Grayjay and NewPipe are similar apps.

      • JaggedRobotPubes@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        2 个月前

        The downloading on freetube is so bad as to be functionally broken, and based on what reading I did to try to get it good, it sounds like it’s gonna stay how it is forever.

        Basically it should be considered a lie to advertise freetube as having a working download function, even if it can technically do it. I wish it were better because it’s a neat little program for viewing without mucking up recommendations!

    • blind3rdeye@lemm.eeEnglish
      7·
      2 个月前

      I sure hope so. I’ve been on team Mozilla for a long time, but right at this critical moment they are starting to wobble. Their CEO seems to be steering them in a direction that I don’t agree with.

      (I still believe Firefox is the best option right now; but I’m a little concerned for the future.)

    • buddascrayon@lemmy.worldEnglish
      11·
      2 个月前

      I switched to Firefox over the summer and have been mostly happy with my decision.

      However, there have been a LOT of issues with video playback on certain sites and I really don’t know how to fix them. Searches have been just about useless in regards to finding a fix. The worst one is Nebula. The video often just freezes while the audio just keeps trucking along like nothing is wrong. This has happened to a more limited extent with some YouTube videos as well. And the TAB crash on some sites is quite infuriating.