Mozilla is such a treasure.
We must plunder the treasure so no one else can have it!
Oh, wait
The treasure is being bankrolled by google, so I mean it’s someone’s Treasure that’s for sure.
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If only Firefox would have a bigger userbase. I still use it, but the vast majority of people is on Chromium.
I switched this week.
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!
It’ll cost you nothing at all.
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.
Please switch
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.
I use firefox as my sidearm browser on my work computer, but I literally just made it the default on my personal computer
I’d solely use Firefox if jetbrains had better JS debugging support for it.
So for now I use edge for that at work.
Also I really like the tab sleep and vertical tabs features on Edge.
But everything is Firefox on my personal machines
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.
I just hope that google won’t try to lobby for this API like disney does for copyright changes
They won’t need too. Chrome is the standard.
I don’t think our politicians will do anything but protect big business, personally.
Safari won’t care as it benefits them and their ecosystem to have device checks.
Apparently Apple already rolled it out in a previous update, they just didn’t call any attention to it.
It’s unfortunate that so many people use Chrome. Google has control over the internet that no single company should hold.
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.
Being fair to Chrome (which I hate doing but there is a point), they got in when more tech-people online saw them as pushing so many things forward. Was functionally faster than IE for sure, but also Firefox got stuck on their 4.0 limbo and being heavy in memory usage. Though I think the issue with memory usage also came from having almost a decade of so many extensions. Chrome was also slightly simpler than Firefox (imo even though my primary browser is and has been since before 1.5). Pair that with Google also then becoming the only (in market share) real competition to Apple’s ecosystem on Smartphones.
The best way to start taking down Chrome’s massive control over web standards is to do the same things as when IE was the default name people knew. Start using Firefox and get others to try it again or for the first time. Since so many people would trick their parents into using Chrome by changing the name and icon to IE. Most older folks kind of don’t even notice, and just think and “update” changed the look a bit. But as long as it works, they will just use it. In fact this can apply to a lot of the general public in actually scary ways. Back in the day with IE and those stacks and stacks of toolbars that I saw on almost every PC I worked on for people. I would just start removing them while they told me about why they were in (which was often caused by but not seen as to them as the issue). They would see me just OCD getting rid of them and would be shocked, and I do truly mean shocked, that those things weren’t just “part of the browser and never questioned them being there.”
Now that Chrome and Chromium are the main browser and browser base. I see soooo many BS Chromium browsers just get installed via the same kinds of tactics as the old toolbars. Even set themselves to both launch at every reboot, set themselves to always be able to run in the background, AND set themselves as the system default browser. Sometimes there may be multiple all doing the same things, but also have been made into desktop toolbars/docks of sorts. And that same shit is done by the super annoying ones skinned by the AV companies (AVG, Avast, CCleaner, and now even mainline Norton). And the person just thinks they are just part of Windows, but they only even came in because they “started having issues with wifi” or even a broken Windows update that wasn’t related.
That shit should really really get more attention in general. With so many fake things just being ignored, it means that the mass public will just never know or care about Google turning the internet into whatever it wants. Just not even know that they had actual options before they are removed. If it wouldn’t piss off the massive amount of companies that do ad business with Google. I wouldn’t be shocked if they turned ad blocking into a “premium feature” to subscribe to monthly.
I personally install Firefox as the non-Edge option when setting up someone’s new PC (so long as they didn’t specify Chrome) so they might at least try it. I never set it as the default, and will remove it if they want it gone when picking up the PC. Also do try to let some of them that ask about Chrome know that Edge is 100% compatible for their sites that mention Chrome. Which they at least then tend to be like “oh, well then I guess don’t worry about installing Chrome then.” No real pressure is put on them, just information, though Microsoft is making it hard with all the wild “HEY TRY THIS FEATURE!” pop-ups and that damn pointless desktop search bar.
slowly switching to firefox here
“It’s in our interest to make the Internet better and without competition we have stagnation”. From the Google Chrome comic book.
Example Firefox: As it is Google is funding Mozilla to make it seem that there is competition. I don’t know if I want firefox to get bigger just enough so Google cuts their funding and it disappears. If so many people want to use spyware let them, so we can have the goodies.
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.
I’m hoping the average user will be sufficient annoyed by the lack of adblocking to finally give a shit.
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.
Is there any reason Firefox or anyone else can’t just draw blank elements over the ads to block them on a separate layer? That way the site still thinks ads are being displayed. Kind of like the browser internal version of cutting out sticky notes and pasting them over your screen to cover the ads.
Firefox could get litigated for ad fraud and these trusted 3rd parties could block firefox from accessing the sites. It won’t work.
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I can’t believe I’m witnessing the death of the internet, at least it isn’t going quietly into the night.
The web is not the whole internet. Plus isn’t you being here prove that the internet is resilient?
The fact that this is even remotely controversial is stunning. Like does google not understand its not just home users that use adblock, but also businesses as well? Because google is so fucking bad they don’t understand there are viruses in their fucking ads. If this shit goes through, you think anyone’s dumb enough to believe google will be on top of the virus shit? Fuck off google
ya, using the internet without an adblocker is a security risk because Google enables scams across its services.
How about they learn to clean house first before shitting on the internet lol.
incompetent company will do incompetent things.
I think the FBI recommends the use of ad blockers for personal safety, let me find that link real quick…
Edit: FOUND IT, Third point under “Tips to Protect Yourself”
Let’s just go back to the good old days when the web worked without JS. That would remove a massive amount of attack surface. Might seem a bit shit without the interactivity, though.
Ad blockers are more important to security than virus checkers.
You really think they don’t exactly know what they are doing?
They are an ad and data company, you blocking anything isn’t something they want to make possible.
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
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.
Whats C.R.E.A.M.?
Edit: “Cash Rules Everything Around Me”?
“People’s” willingness? That’s rich, it seems you forgot who actually has the capital and power to put this nonsense into place. The people don’t have a say in this matter, even if they’d get loud. The only way to end this and ensure software freedom is to end the thing that is in the way, capitalism.
This is why we need Mozilla.
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.
welp, who isnt on firefox might want to start using it now.
It’s a little slower and a little more broken and a little less compatible, but its not google’s.
It’s not slower, and the rare incompatibilities can be solved by changing the user agent, which shows it’s artificial.
wiping_tears_with_money.gif
Only place where I’m not using Firefox exclusively is mobile, where I also use Brave to watch youtube. Please make uBO for Firefox mobile happen.
It’s already supported 👍 Sponsorblock too.
I’m still salty that they implemented video DRM (for Netflix, Amazon, etc.), but at least they’re standing against this bullshit.
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).
I don’t think OP had any nefarious purpose in it, but this title is ridiculous doublspeak. Google might have a vested interest in trying to bullshit us about this being about “web integrity,” but that doesn’t mean we have to accept its dishonest framing!
I don’t follow.
The first line of the comment is: “Mozilla opposes this proposal because it contradicts our principles and vision for the Web.”
And the proposal is called: “Web Environment Integrity API”
Chad