this post was submitted on 13 Mar 2024
1086 points (93.9% liked)

Technology

59673 readers
3166 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] OrangeCorvus 344 points 8 months ago (27 children)

Yeah but Brave? Why not Firefox or Vivaldi.

[–] [email protected] 237 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Forgive them. They aren't used to choosing their browser yet.

[–] [email protected] 80 points 8 months ago (9 children)

They're Apple users. They aren't used to making any decisions when it comes to how their phones work

[–] Nurgle 12 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I’d defend myself, but I work in digital marketing so I’m not going to dissuade anyone from using AdWords.. I mean Android.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Funny, I see far more ads on iOS than I do Android

[–] [email protected] 22 points 8 months ago

Don't tell them about all the different ad blockers we can use!

[–] KoalaUnknown 11 points 8 months ago
load more comments (8 replies)
[–] OrangeCorvus 6 points 8 months ago

Ok you get a free pass, make sure it doesn't happen again :)

[–] [email protected] 94 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Well the Brave Twitter account is likely a bit biased toward the Brave browser. 🙂

I'm sure the others were impacted too.

Edit: Firefox installs jumped 50%.

https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/13/24100066/firefox-saw-an-increase-in-users-following-apples-default-browser-changes-in-the-eu

[–] [email protected] 40 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

Vivaldi is a proprietary rebranding of Chromium. Can't say I'd recommend it over (or in addition to) Firefox.

We need less forks of Chromium. Any one company (Google in this case) having total control over browser engines is dangerous, and is a big reason why the whole Apple/Safari/Webkit situation is such a big deal to begin with.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Remember kids, if it's Chromium based, it's still part of the problem. The Chromium project only exists to provide the illusion of choice. Don't let Google have the power to dictate web standards at will.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 8 months ago (1 children)

The worrisome thing is that there's no alternative other than Firefox, or Safari on Apple platforms. Every single other browser is Chromium.

We must defend Firefox at all costs, it's the last glimmer of freedom.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

Every single other browser is Chromium.

One exception I'm aware of: GNOME Web (aka epiphany-browser) uses WebKitGTK, which is based on Apple's WebKit rather than Google's Chromium/Blink. But it's Linux desktops first and foremost. Not on mobile platforms, not exactly intended for Windows (might be usable with Cygwin/WSL) or macOS (seems to be on MacPorts) either, and even on non-GNOME desktops like KDE it might seem a bit out of place.

I daily drive Firefox but Epiphany is my first choice fallback on the rare occasion I encounter a site that's broken on Firefox.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] topinambour_rex 14 points 8 months ago

Firefox +50% in Germany, +30% in France

[–] hOrni 12 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Vivaldi is my go to browser. Brave does a better job with blocking ads. I'm switching to Brave whenever I need to stream something on a site loaded with ads, or when YouTube manages to detect my Adblock for a few days.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 8 months ago (7 children)

Not like uBlock Origin is a thing?
Can it really get better than that and consent-o-matic?

load more comments (7 replies)
[–] [email protected] 11 points 8 months ago

Still better than Edge or Chrome

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago

as someone said, its randomised, and I'm sure that other browsers also saw more downloads

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (3 children)

Vivaldi is extremely slow on IOS and 2gb+ big. Firefox has no extensions so no Adblock. Generally there are few privacy friendly/Foss browsers on IOS.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Firefox has no extensions so no Adblock.

That's because so far every browser on iOS had to use WebKit as it's HTML rendering engine, meaning that even if you installed another browser manually you were basically still using Safari under the hood. IIRC the new DMA rules include allowing other browser engines like Gecko, so Mozilla is probably already working on making addons available. I mean they are available on Android, so why wouldn't they make them available on iOS now that they finally can?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

I wouldn’t be sure because of how stupid Apples compliance is. But if they do I would definitely switch. I guess it’s just going to be Firefox focus until then.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

You can get one but not the other. Orion has been pretty solid for me, has all the lovey iOS integration so the happy chemicals Apple spent R&D on does it’s magic while blocking all sorts of things, but it’s closed source :/

[–] abhibeckert 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (4 children)

Generally there are few privacy friendly/Foss browsers on IOS.

Um, Safari is so privacy friendly that Google regularly asks me if I'm human. For example it has "private relay" which is similar to TOR* so trackers don't even know your IP address — combine that with blocking third party cookies (and even some first party cookies) by default and providing false data to fight fingerprinting even if you don't block trackers entirely - and blocking them entirely is as simple as installing an extension. Private Relay also adds a layer of encryption on top of DNS queries and otherwise unencrypted http traffic.... so your ISP/Cellular provider/Work/School/abusive husband/etc can't track you

99.99% of the Safari's code is FOSS — dual licensed under LGPL and BSD.

It's not the browser I use - pretty lacking in the feature department, but it's definitely more pro-privacy than Brave or FireFox. I've never had to jump through a captcha to use Google in those browsers.

(* if anything, it's better than TOR... with that service there's a risk your entry/exit nodes are tracking you. With Private Relay it's always one of Apple's servers for the entry node and a reputable cloud company like Akamai for the exit node. Both would have to be compromised in order to identify you... maybe a nation state can do that, but a big data tracking company definitely can't)

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Private relay is more like a VPN than tor.

[–] smolyeet 5 points 8 months ago

I mean they did say few. Generally speaking, every browser is basically safari (WebKit) on iOS and apple doesn’t allow support for 3rd party browser extensions (least natively, Orion supports this somehow). So you’re already limited in that regard. If you don’t use safari , a browser like FF + VPN is IMO a better experience. You also have the option of just using wireguard and controlling your traffic at home/VPS if you’re into that.

WebKit might be open source but the browser deployed by apple is not. That’s like saying chrome is open source. They both use open source engines.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Man imagine being so far up apples butt that you actually think Safari is safer than tor

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

it’s definitely more pro-privacy than Brave or FireFox. I’ve never had to jump through a captcha to use Google in those browsers.

You have this backwards. Google showing you captchas is basically them saying they can't match your browser to any know (shadow) profile they have already stored. So they aren't sure you are a human and if so which one specifically. Getting harassed with a captcha is essentially like a badge of honour for your browsers privacy settings.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago (2 children)

No they don’t, that’s exactly what they said. Safari makes them do CAPTCHAs so it is the most privacy friendly. It is true that it has better blocking features than Firefox on iOS (because Firefox doesn’t have extensions).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Firefox is deliberately gimped by Apple on iOS, along with every other browser. It's not a fair comparison. It's basically Safari without a ton of extra features that Mozilla was never going to be allowed to implement, which is why the EU decided Apple was being anti-competitive.

Firefox doesn't even need extensions to match Safari, but it does need gecko and all the settings it supports on other platforms.

Apple is a shady company and trusting them with your data is a big mistake.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

I don’t disagree that Firefox is deliberately gimped, and it’s built in blocking features on desktop match Safari on iOS. I’m not sure I really agree that Apple is a “shady company,” in many respects they are doing a good job with end to end encryption and ensuring that they don’t have access to your data in the first place (not to excuse their extreme walled garden approach, which stifles competition and limits good options like Firefox [real Firefox] with uBlock Origin [or uMatrix]).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Oh you are right, I misread that. Thanks for pointing it out.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (18 replies)