Google Chrome will limit ad blockers starting June 2024::The “Manifest V3” rollout is back after letting tensions cool for a year.
Firefox users who never left: feeling of smugness intensifies
I try not to express or show it though. Only good vibes to bring everyone over to Firefox.
signature look of superiority
I must admit I ditched Firefox for a while when it was considerably slower than Chrome.
feelsbadman.
Welcome back. <3
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The last time I used Chrome was a fork called Rockmelt 🥴 then moved to Maxthon, then K-Meleon, and settled on Firefox
Rockmelt is a fork of Chromium, not a fork of Chrome. Same with Maxthon. Both Chromium and Chrome are maintained by Google, but Chromium is open-sourced while Chrome is not.
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Agreed. I didn’t mean to imply chromium is a good thing, which is why I said it is maintained by Google. Lots of browsers are forks of Chromium, even Microsoft Edge, but I thought they were implying these browsers were illegal forks hacked from Chrome, so I looked them up and found they’re just more chromium forks.
I think I dropped it for a few years starting somewhere around v3.6. Also feelsbad
I’m ashamed to say I did the same and even converted quite a few non-tech savvy people as well. :(
You’re so smug that you love to smell your own farts!
The trick is to never let your smugness show, then you can be smug about your humility as well. *sniff* Ahhhh…
Same as reddit to lemmy story for me. Moving mobile browser from kiwi(chrome fork) to Firefox nightly. Already a Firefox user in pc.
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Never looked into using firefox but the enshitification has forced me to do so.
awesome browser imo. and i switched back from opera GX
Same
Which is second to the greatest feature, containers!
Google Chrome can suck a dick.
Damn, that sounds like a killer feature.
Yeah, but given the name, I bet Edge does it way better ;)
No, it sucks. Killing is illegal.
Byt what if it wasnt. Hey vsauce michael here. What is killing and how can it be legal?
If only there was an alternative. Some kinda fox. A fox that was set aflame
I wish it was for me, but Chrome is necessary for some work I do.
Edit: very weird I get so many downvotes because I need to use a specific browser. Get out more, please.
Such as?
I was doing some work on the social security site and the site i needed wouldn’t even load unless it was chrome or edge. There are sadly too many important website that are somehow allowed to gatekeep browsers. I feel like if their site follows guidelines then there’s no reason they should be restricted from browsers, but here we are.
Platforms I use don’t work reliably with other browsers, online teaching ones to be specific.
Ah, that’s a tough one.
I needed to install Ungoogled Chromium to join lectures, because the remote learning site refused to work in Firefox (wouldn’t be surprised if it was developed against a chrome-specific API)
Pretty much every internal Web application I’ve used in banking, insurance and Govt orgs.
Most of the time the site doesn’t really need chrome, it’s just that’s all they test it with, so they say it’s a requirement.
There’s an addon for Firefox called User-Agent Switcher and Manager that allows you to have Firefox identify itself to websites as chrome (among others), and it often fixes the problem.
I work in IT so I am aware of this. Maybe you’ve not worked in enough places that just build incompatible (cr)apps?
And sure, just go outside our locked down machine policies and install Firefox and unapproved extensions. That will do down well.
Yeah, “most” was probably a bit hyperbolic, especially for internal websites, and I guess it’s no surprise that the sectors you mentioned would be particularly bad for it.
The best place for my little PSA probably wasn’t in response to your post in particular.
Sorry I’m snippy as I have personal stuff going on. You are right in so far as if you have full control of your machine which isn’t the case for the orgs I mentioned.
We can pull FF into our dev environment so I’ve seen these annoying behaviours.
Edit: …
Yeah, I get “Google bad”, and agree, and am 100% on the Firefox train, but downvoting people for not using FF is kinda stinky.
So use Chrome for that work, and Firefox plus an adblocker for everything else.
My adblocker works in Chrome at the moment so will see.
Have you tried to spoof the user agent ?
I don’t know what that is
It’s a neat trick that’s been around for ages. Your browser presents a string of text to the website to identify itself. “Hi! I’m Chrome_ver_whatever.”
You can easily change it, make your browser lie to the website.
Here’s the extension for Chrome and Edge:
https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/user-agent-switcher-for-c/djflhoibgkdhkhhcedjiklpkjnoahfmg
I’m sure Firefox has the same.
Here some for Firefox
I’m not sure that’s going to fix the technical problems I have.
Or, let’s say, a weasel frozen in ice
There’s a browser called Glacier Ferret? 🤔
Sorry, I had too.
Why would you apologise for that string of masterpieces? It’s marvellous and adorable! Marvorable! Adorallous! Both! 🥰
Those are awesome
OMFG Someone pleaae fork FF and make this one a reality
Or - ohh I don’t know - some kind of frozen bird?
I’ve tried switching so many times, most recently yesterday. Every time something just doesnt work or is missing. Yesterday it was stremios web client that refused to show the video that I was simultaneously watching in chrome.
And the fact that Firefox doesnt do tab groups. Such a convenient feature for me, and I couldnt find an extension that did the job. Maybe some of you can help?
Absolutely agree on the tab groups. I don’t get how this is not implemented yet, it’s a basic feature with great impact to usability.
Firefox actually had tab groups way back, but Mozilla, in their infinite wisdom, removed it because apparently their main mission now is to antagonize all their loyal power users.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/search/?q=Tab groups
This is definitely a feature that needs to be an addon rather than in core Firefox, as it could easily interfere with users who organise tabs in different ways (e.g. Tree tabs)
Right now there’s no built in options and it could just be deactivated.
Also the add ins I’ve seen still lack chrome’s feature of auto grouping. They just allow me to manually group.
If you refresh it generally works. I’ve had zero issues with it. Not sure though
No amount of refreshing or clearing cookies and cache has helped so far. It just says “video not supported” no matter which file I try to play.
What are you trying to play ? Probably should contact mods. Would be good for them to know. Others will have similar problems.
Do you have add one ? I need to turn off dark mode for some sites as it breaks it. Those are the only issues I’ve had.
It is probably a very specific issue, since I can’t find anyone else that has it, at least not doing the usual google-fu.
When using the Stremio web client, firefox refuses to play anything I throw at it, whereas everything plays fine in the chromium browsers I’ve tried.
No amount of turning extensions off or clearing cache or cookies or refreshing has fixed it so far.
Fire through the link and maybe folk can check it out. I know GeForce now doesn’t work on Firefox and steam doesn’t play nice.
My Firefox does tab groups. Just find an extension
Which extension are you using?
LoLL
Laughing out loud longitudinally?
Limits of Large Language (model not included)
Languishing Overcooked Linguine, Literally?
To abuse a saying…
Best time to be on Firefox? Yesterday.
Second best? Today.
This, but computer literacy rather than literal literacy
Free ad for Firefox. Funny enough can’t be blocked by ad blockers.
How long until Google starts paying sites to require chrome? The already tried rolling that concept out a few months ago. They only stopped because of the backlash that was publicly associated with it. They already pay major phone manufacturers to have google as their default or only search option.
So who’s going to stop them when we start finding that major popular sites suddenly don’t work on firefox?
People could start configuring their sites to ban Google Chrome. Give a scary message that says something like “Google Chrome is not allowed on this site for your protection. Google Chrome has severe vulnerabilities that allow for easy infection. An autistic teenager was falsely convicted of selling CP after being infected and now must register for life.”
People would switch away from Google Chrome incredibly fast if website owners started posting that.
I like the way you think, but that sounds like a lawsuit with one of the richest companies on the planet behind the prosecution. Could work for sites based outside of US jurisdiction.
They can’t sue millions of people.
It could also be made very hard for them to win. All someone has to do is make a site making that claim and their ability to win will be gone. Any defendant can claim they read that site.
They don’t sue millions of people. They sue one person and make an example out of them and the chilling effect does the rest. That’s how this kind of thing goes.
That’s only if everyone else complies.
Plenty of organizations would likely jump in. Someone could make a site alleging the bad thing that happened as the result of Google Chrome and that pretty much tanks the entire case. It would be very hard to prove reckless disregard for the truth when there’s a website that alleges the claim. Furthermore, someone could simply write the code and distribute it, and every site displaying it would have grounds for displaying it.
All someone really has to do is find one thing that could potentially be a vulnerability in Google Chrome and they have grounds for making a scary notice about it.
Hopefully the EU
They won’t pay them it will be smarter than that. Possibly with proprietary APIs that only work on chrome etc. some sites already don’t work on Firefox.
They’ll also further enshitifiy their own services on non chrome browsers.
If that does happen, can’t we just spoof our user agent to be chrome?
Their web integrity API they were planning was specifically to prevent that.
I had no idea… didn’t that end up being canceled at some point or am I mistaken?
As it is customary, companies drop bomb shells to gauge their user base reaction. They pull back if the reaction is too strong and slowly reintroduce it piece by piece when the things have cooled down a bit.
The moment they announced their intention to DRM the web meant that they will try to push however they can.
With something like that, it’s usually just rebranded and pushed out after backlash calms down.
I think there are more reliable ways to identify your browser. The user-agent is self reported, so not reliable. It’s just the simplest option that’s usually good enough unless you’re doing something malicious.
Then we’ll develop add-ons that make the sites pretend Firefox is Chrome. It may not be perfect for a while, but it’ll still block ads.
Sounds like they will create a non-corporate version of the internet by accident. Sound good to me, but I feel like it won’t fly in EU to well.
When sites see the drop off of users.
Also, Chromite exists.
title as it should be: ‘google did not die a hero, it instead lived long enough to become the villain.’
such old news though
google became the villain the moment it decided to become publicly traded and chose to be the internet’s ad pimp rather than a search engine
most of us are too young to remember but there was a time when you could search for something obscure and actually find it
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Winamp wasn’t a Google project.
Winamp was Nullsoft and AOL bought it to ruin it.
It really whips the llama’s ass.
Laughs in Firefox
Came here to laugh at this.
I just can’t get used to Firefox. Last time I tried it (earlier this year), I tried for 2 months. Can’t remember all the reasons, but using the adresbar as calculator and see the results without pressing enter is so ingrained in my way of working. Just alt+d, 2+2 shows the result. Give me something better than that and I’ll give Firefox an other shot.
Edit: lol at my downvotes. That’s what I get for asking a genuine question I guess. People really looove their Firefox here. (me too, but I’m missing some features)
You can map a keyboard shortcut to the calculator in Windows and have a more robust option no matter what browser you use.
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They’re going to burn their own browser. If they stop allowing adblockers, a lot of people are just going to change browsers.
good, and good riddance too
I would love to see this happen but I suspect that the number of users who actually install ad blocker extensions and are willing to switch to a new browser once they stop working is fairly insignificant compared to the total numbers of people browsing in Chrome.
Agree, i have rarely seen people who actually use adblock outside my work. I had to practically tie up my entire family, in-laws included to get ublock installed on all their computers.
Why the hell aren’t you on Firefox?
Because bold fonts look weird in Firefox and I have not found a way to change that
Weird do you have a screen shot you can share? they look fine to me.
Could it be something withyour windows installation?
Here is a picture that demonstrates the problem. On the left is Firefox and on the right Thorium (Chromium). I’ve had this problem on Windows before but now I’m using Linux and it’s the same unfortunately.
Yea, just tested it myself and i have the same problem. but not in choromium.
Weird!
Using DuckDuckGo (Android), which is chromium-based, it has the same problem, all text weights are bolded at the maximum values.
It looks like Firefox is trying to be more respectful of the text weights, when deciding how to bold text.
Here is a picture that demonstrates the problem. On the left is Firefox and on the right Thorium (Chromium).
If I’m understanding that screenshot correctly, it looks like Thorium (Chromium) is ignoring the text values and bolding any of them at the max bolding value, where Firefox respects the text values and bolts off of that just slightly.
I did have a strange issue with that in the past, but not any more.
I think it went away after going through the Windows ClearType gubbins again.
I remember trying this as well but it didn’t help, and the problem also exists on Linux
Oh god, that menu is the worst shit. I literally downloaded an open source program to tweak it.
It’s been forever since I last looked, but can’t you actually change what fonts are used from within Firefox directly?
That’s new to me. Can you share a screenshot?
Sure, please check the other reply in this comment thread
google chrome will suck my balls
Username checks out
thanks reddit
Google Chrome has always been near my taint
Why not switch to Linux and FOSS alternatives?
I’ve done Linux desktops, and I fight with them too much. Macos is fine by me. Mad respect for Linux users though.
Non android Linux phones just don’t feel ready.
Comfy leashes I guess.
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I see so many of these comments I can’t help but wonder if it’s an ad campaign by Kagi.
Pretty sure it is, I ended up trying the free trial because of all the yapping. Don’t bother. 99% of the results are the same as ddg.
+1 for ddg, it does everything needed from a search engine without the extra crap, and even if you don’t turn off ads, they’re reasonable and unobtrusive (and they let you turn them off very easily)
It very likely is an Astroturfing campaign to try and get more users.
Step 1: astroturf on lemmy
Step 2:?
Step 3: profit!
Lemmy is a poor choice for astroturfing, not because of small user count but because no one here is going to hesitate from removing their content or banning them from the site. On regular social media you can act like a shill and get downvoted and hated on, but here the punishments are actually handed out, and even if their home instance doesn’t ban them others likely will, effectively crippling said campaign.
These campaigns work on social media services that will protect them due to corporate interest, something that basically doesn’t happen here.
I’ll take your word for it. I discarded that notion years ago.
Everything Google does is evil. How are people still using anything they make—or control the repo for (chromium, android)
At least Android actually gives you freedom. What other alternatives (that actually work) are there? I’d rather have a phone with an OS made by an evil corp that I can actually control, than an OS that doesn’t even let me install apps not approved by the manufacturer.
Using a degoogled LineageOS was great. It’s just that the world around it has changed so much that doing certain things wasn’t really viable any more. Having a phone like that in 2010 would have been awesome, but nowadays it’s really inconvenient. Nowadays, there are some highly unfortunate software needs that don’t quite fit with this philosophy any more.
I didn’t come up with the idea that my bank requires an app, and that the app absolutely requires an OEM phone with a normal Android and GAPPS. They started requiring that nonsense, which put me in a tight spot. Do I decide to live without money or will I switch to an inferior OS.
There are also some nice to have apps that came up with similar stupid decisions. Living without them means living in the past, and I would be ok with that too. Getting a minor inconvenience in return of having more privacy is ok with me. Suffering significant inconveniences is not OK. I had to draw the line somewhere, which unfortunately meant switching away from LineageOS.
I went with iOS, because IMO it’s the least bad option out there. I made some horrible compromises, but at least I can live in 2023 like everyone else. I’m not at all happy with this decision, but at least iOS isn’t half as infuriating as it used to be 10 years ago.
I use a phone with LOS and I haven’t had any problems with it. Though I am 13, so I don’t have to worry about stuff like banks apps yet.
LOS is good for a lot of things, so keep on using it until you run into a brick wall like I did. Hopefully, someone has already figured out a solution by then or maybe you can just choose to use a different app instead.
I’m 13, I’ll probably be able to choose what banks I keep my money at and other stuff like this based on their support for my OS.
Well… for now at least. Who’s to say that won’t be the next thing on their list. They do make a pretty penny on the play store as is, and could improve that if they banned side-loading. And let’s be honest, side-loading is probably a niche thing still.
Niche for common people, but very much used by privacy concerned tech ppl. F-droid is a thing and so is obtainium, 2 play store alternatives that are side-loaded and give access to FOSS apps.
Some manufacturers limit rooting, promote their appstores, recomend to redownload a freshly installed app but now from them, have their ‘antivirus’ and ‘cache’ scanners, randomly unload background apps they think are less valuable from RAM and revoke their permissions while their own apps require additional permissions and accounts even though they just switch wallpapers or play videos. If we look at that, Google have much to implement and still have side-loading availiable, just very disencouraged.
And when they allow “sideloading” in the next version, what will your argument be?
Who knows, I might switch.
They make fantastic services that are far more functional than their oss competitors and it’s far far less effort than hosting and dealing with that bullshit.
Cannot disagree more. I’ve found Google services to be terrible in comparison to their competitors. Don’t get me started on privacy. Ironically, you’re saying they’re better in the same article that says they’re removing adblockers. Which is clearly not better.
Most folks disagree. You are in the minority.
I doubt most folks disagree, but on that note: everything the majority agrees on is factual and the correct method—right?
That seems slightly hyperbolic
How so?
It didn’t start that way, it wasn’t until they had dominance in multiple areas that they started fucking their customers, but the difference here is that it’s stupid easy to change to Firefox, Safari, or gasp Edge.
Edge is chromium. And safari is still apple only. So you’re last sentence is wrong, but it is indeed super easy to switch to Firefox, or another non-chromium based browser.
And safari is still apple only
Gnome Web (Epiphany Browser)
If you are into WebKit (is a port, I’m aware), that browser looks worth giving a shot, what features do you like about it?
I’ve only really used it to check how my portfolio site would render on a non-Chromium and non-Gecko browser, and actually found a few issues with the site that needed fixing. Would have used Safari if I had it, but the only apple device in my household runs Linux 🤫.
Aside from that, it’s a very lightweight browser and fits in well with the Gnome DE design style. Personally I wouldn’t use it as a primary browser since I’ve got all my extensions, bookmarks and container tabs all set up in Firefox, however the simplicity and clean design of Epiphany is quite appealing imo. The last time I tried it there was an option in the browser settings to block ads, pretty nice to have that OOTB
Chromium isn’t as bad as Chrome, Google actively tries to get you to use Chrome by blocking some features in Chromium (like account syncing).
That’s like equating evil and evil, both are still Google, both are gonna have mv2 removed (eventually) making web filtering a nightmare. I have all kinds of add-ons that prohibit any scripts from running on a website without my explicit authorization. Mv3 will break that level of security. Chromium=chrome both owned and maintained by Google.
You are aware that Chromium is an open source project and isn’t owned by anyone, right? Google created the engine/framework and are the biggest contributors to it, but that’s akin to saying “Red Hat (or Linus himself) owns Linux”.
Google has full control over Chrome which is closed source and has their specific tweaks, they don’t have full control over Chromium. I could fork the Chromium repo and there is nothing that Google can do to add in any of their tracking because I have a full copy of the source code and can modify it as I see fit.
Chromium is not Chrome. Just like Edge isn’t Chrome.
Forking chromium and stripping out all the google tracking is near impossible(for smaller dev teams). I am aware there are valiant attempts at de-googleing chromium but every one of them that i tried was either still phoning home, or ran like shit, or were so behind on security updates that it was dangerous to use them.
Money corrupts everything
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School/university online classes and messaging/collaboration
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Business enterprise messaging/collaboration locked to Google services
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Business enterprise sites locked to Chromium based browsers
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Government sites locked to Chromium based browsers
Nothing is locked forever.
Remember when government websites only worked on IE6, well into the late 2000s? I even remember Hillary Clinton proposing that government employees only be allowed to use Internet Explorer when she was a senator.
Anyone advocating for IE in the early 2000s was because the web sucked back then and IE could run ActiveX. Granted, thinking back, giving a web app direct hardware access did lead to a lot of security issues. However, and theoretically, if the software is clean (like internal government software should be), it was pretty powerful.
Additionally, I challenge your Clinton remark, and ask you provide a source.
As of my last update in April 2023, there was no record or credible report of Hillary Clinton, the former U.S. Secretary of State and 2016 Democratic presidential candidate, advocating for Internet Explorer to be the only web browser used in government settings. Hillary Clinton’s tenure in government, both as a Senator and as Secretary of State, did involve discussions and decisions about technology use in government. However, these discussions were typically centered around issues of security, information management, and diplomatic communication rather than endorsing specific software products like web browsers. In the public domain, there was no evidence to suggest that she made any statements or policy decisions specifically favoring Internet Explorer over other web browsers for government use.
I misremembered, it was when she was secretary of state:
https://www.theregister.com/2009/07/13/firefox_and_us_state_department/
I don’t know what your quote is from, is it chatgpt?
She never said it. She said,
Clinton responded with bewilderment. “Well, apparently, there’s a lot of support for this suggestion. I don’t know the answer. Pat, do you know the answer?” she said, turning to under Secretary Pat Kennedy.
Clearly pushing the issue to the other guy, because it’s not her fucking job.
Fuck Hillary, but get your facts right or go back to Truth Social where you came from.
Not forever - maybe - but until then, government employees trying to log onto government services like iFTDTL or NSIPS or half a dozen other sites, as well as students logging into their university email or corporate employees logging into enterprise networks are stuck on Google apps or Google-adjacent like Edge.
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In other news: Firefox installs are breaking records.
Is that true? I would love for more people to experience Firefox
I want to switch but I really like Vivaldi even though it’s still chromium based…
Vivaldi feels like its filled with bloat tbh.
Vivaldi is nice. I don’t just it but I’ve tried it.
I was in your same exam position until someone recommended me Floorp. Jump on in, the water is great.
