this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2023
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Firefox

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[–] [email protected] 208 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Mozilla is such a treasure.

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[–] [email protected] 180 points 1 year ago (4 children)

If only Firefox would have a bigger userbase. I still use it, but the vast majority of people is on Chromium.

[–] [email protected] 92 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 115 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (6 children)

I'm switching today. Right now. Because of this post.

^^maybe
EDIT: okay. I think I've done it. I'm currently editing this comment from Firefox. I already had Firefox installed. But now I have pinned it to my taskbar. I went to import my bookmarks from chrome, and found that I also had the option of importing other stuff from chrome, too (bookmarks, passwords, history and autofill data). That's sweet. My bookmark bar has the same bookmarks in the same position. I also installed ublock origin, like someone recommended. And I am going to give it a go. If it all goes smoothly, I will unpin Chrome from the taskbar.

Thanks everyone for the encouragement!

[–] Wootz 74 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Install ublock origin and open YouTube.

You won't regret it.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago (2 children)
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[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It'll cost you nothing at all.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 year ago (2 children)

And in fact will save you CPU cycles. For a bit, Chrome had a slight performance edge over Firefox. But once Google got the market share, Firefox caught up and got ahead, and Chrome didn't invest in keeping up, so Firefox is generally faster. The only exception is a few sites (especially Google ones) seem to be heavily optimised for Chrome, but not necessarily as much for Firefox. If you stay away from those sites, Firefox is generally faster.

Plus Chromium is increasingly becoming more hostile to efficient ad blocking add-on implementations - so if you want to block ads (generally recommended due to ad networks doubling as paid malware distribution networks), Firefox or other Gecko-based browsers are generally the best bet.

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[–] [email protected] 49 points 1 year ago (6 children)

Firefox is awesome now. It was great, then it lost out a bit to chrome, but it’s back to being awesome. If anyone’s reading this and isn’t using Firefox, please switch!

And importantly, their import mechanisms are great. A typical user can switch with basically no effort. Next time they ask you for help, switch your parents too, and your siblings, and that neighbour who keeps referring to the internet as “the google”. Set them up with Firefox and ublock origin and they’ll be set.

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[–] [email protected] 78 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

People's willingness to seize every opportunity and monetize everything that was once free and open is truly shocking. Every day when I read about another dogshit attempt to make the internet as a whole a worse place, I'm not even supprised anymore

[–] Asafum 23 points 1 year ago (3 children)

In our society it's literally stupid NOT to do these things. If you got rich doing it you "won." Fuck the general population, fuck "good" things, fuck literally everything, C.R.E.A.M.

I hate it so much.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Whats C.R.E.A.M.?

Edit: "Cash Rules Everything Around Me"?

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[–] [email protected] 78 points 1 year ago (8 children)

It’s unfortunate that so many people use Chrome. Google has control over the internet that no single company should hold.

[–] [email protected] 37 points 1 year ago

Same as with IE in the past. A little better with most of the source being open but not much. I wonder how we could solve this issue since people obviously don't care.

[–] NikkiDimes 20 points 1 year ago

It's like IE in the 90s/early 2000s all over.

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[–] [email protected] 59 points 1 year ago (4 children)

As a Linux user this has got me very worried. Chromium has so much market share that this change will certainly go through, and I feel like Safari won't care as it benefits them and their ecosystem to have device checks. I feel like Firefox and non standard OSes will almost certainly be blocked on a large range of websites with little impact on total users, not to mention completely blocking ad block and anti-tracking clients.

I think eventually regulators in the US will file an antitrust lawsuit and break chromium off of Google if this actually happens, but until then Fediverse/FOSS and personal websites are going to be the only places untouched by this.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago

I don't think our politicians will do anything but protect big business, personally.

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[–] [email protected] 59 points 1 year ago

This is why we need Mozilla.

[–] [email protected] 59 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I can't believe I'm witnessing the death of the internet, at least it isn't going quietly into the night.

[–] NikkiDimes 36 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

The vast majority of people will not care about or even be aware of this. They'll support it because they just want to watch their Netflix or YouTube. Things will continue on as normal, but with more ads and less end-user control.

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[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 year ago (3 children)

The web is not the whole internet. Plus isn't you being here prove that the internet is resilient?

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[–] SamDuede 57 points 1 year ago (10 children)

What is the web integrity API?

[–] [email protected] 111 points 1 year ago (16 children)

Basically drm for your browser

Fuck that though

[–] bappity 55 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (10 children)

this is the most batshit insane proposal... I hope nobody supports it

[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 year ago (1 children)

if google microsoft and apple support it, that already covers over 90% of the market

[–] SinningStromgald 32 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Google alone is enough. Biggest browser, search engine, advertiser, OS and some of the biggest sites on the web all owned by them.

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[–] [email protected] 58 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Some fucking greedy cunts at Google having a vision of internet being accessible only by "approved"(Chrome) browsers/clients.

[–] [email protected] 42 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They want to approve the whole environment, including os, even if virtualized or not

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago

The whole stack will need to be approved. approved browser running on approved OS on approved hardware. Good luck browsing on Linux. The end of user software choice.

[–] Goodie 17 points 1 year ago

V3 manifest got too much bad press so they had to hinder it's ability to gimp ad block.

So now their trying another approach, this time they will probably develop and push this proposal out, and have multiple adopters before anyone can do anything about it. See also: WebHID.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Orwellian doublespeak for DRMing and paywalling the web.

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[–] [email protected] 48 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Google already rolled out AMP which is overtly hostile to an open internet and faced zero repercussions from it. The same will be true for this. The average person has no idea what this means, doesn't care, and won't be bothered by it. Politicians always side with big business.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I'm hoping the average user will be sufficient annoyed by the lack of adblocking to finally give a shit.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Average users view the web raw, this will go totally unnoticed by >90% of users. If web-drm becomes a thing then it will be easy enough to block those sites and add them to the list of media that is morally acceptable to pirate.

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[–] [email protected] 41 points 1 year ago

I'm doing my part using Firefox. I've always liked it over Chrome and I don't like the sign into Google BS.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Firefox is all I run these days.

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[–] Elpinko 32 points 1 year ago

Firefox is ❤️‍

[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 year ago (11 children)

good stuff, glad to see this opposition.

Also slightly related, but I'd absolutely hate if I were an employee having to work on this project and having my name attached to this. Quite embarrassing for all those involved.

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 year ago (2 children)

IMHO we have several really big problems with the web as it is today, which are intertwined:

  1. The web (standards) is by far too complicated. If even Microsoft doesn't have (or isn't willing) to provide the resources to implement a browser, there are not many players left with the resources and the motivation

  2. Google Chrome and Safari are the only game in town. (My main browser is Firefox, but seriously, we have such a small market share that nobody gives a damn)

  3. Most people/governments/companies don't care or don't understand the problem of the mono culture for browsers

  4. The value of the web is everything which is already on the web and that one can access anything with the browser - for this reason, we can only grow in the direction of more complicated while keeping backwards compatibility

  5. Besides lip-service to the contrary, our politicians want to control communication and supervise their citizens, so for politicians it is better to have a browser controlled by a company like Google, than a really free web

Given how fundamental important the web is for modern human basic infrastructure, we (as a society) should find a better way to protect our infrastructure, freedom of speech and basic freedoms.

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (12 children)

I'm still salty that they implemented video DRM (for Netflix, Amazon, etc.), but at least they're standing against this bullshit.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think we need to try to get Firefox's user base up fast (and the user base for other browsers that are ultimately controlled by non-profits) - if non-commercial browsers dominate or even have 30+% market share, if they say no to something bad for users and the open web, it doesn't happen. While non-commercial browsers are a small minority, if they say no, services that work everywhere else follow Google / Apple and consider breaking Firefox acceptable collateral damage, and then Firefox etc... becomes an ever smaller minority, so they get forced into things like this.

The trouble is FAANG get advantage by posing an insidious threat - they treat users well when they are trying to gain market share, and invest heavily and maybe briefly offer a superior user respecting product. But when they get the market share to give them the leverage, the switch part of bait-and-switch comes out, and we see them try to take down the open web to cement their position against the non-profits, and make their browsers inferior for users to bump up revenue (enshitification, to borrow a term from Cory Doctorow).

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[–] jroid8 17 points 1 year ago
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