- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
Reminder to switch browsers if you haven’t already!
- Google Chrome is starting to phase out older, more capable ad blocking extensions in favor of the more limited Manifest V3 system.
- The Manifest V3 system has been criticized by groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation for restricting the capabilities of web extensions.
- Google has made concessions to Manifest V3, but limitations on content filtering remain a source of skepticism and concern.
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Brave Chads keep on winning
Meanwhile, Firefox.
what chrome? haven’t used that in ages
Firefox is a good option.
But I will raise people one more. Waterfox. Been using it for over a year now and enjoy it.
Firefox’s marketshare is small enough relative to Chrome’s that some websites might just block it at this point, if Chrome users mean ad revenue and Firefox users don’t.
https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share
Firefox has 2.88% marketshare.
Chrome has 65.34% marketshare.
It’s gonna be interesting to see what happens…
Firefox blocks statcounter tracking by default. It’s an inherently flawed metric, though Firefox is definitely in the minority still vs Chrome
I did have some issues on firefox om some sites.
User agent switcher
Based and
incognitoprivate mode pilled
The numbers may be indicative of the general trend, but every single privacy oriented browser and so forth is spoofing the user agent, pretending to be the most widespread and popular os and browser.
Which is why privacy checks on my Linux+librewolf PC return win10 with chrome.
My worry is what the EU changes might mean for the mobile web and beyond. With iOS’s market share and only the same rendering engine Apple used in Safari being available, sites/apps had to support more than just Chrome. If forcing iOS users to Chrome is an option (either through pointing them to the browser or an app built with that rendering engine), then there’s even less of an incentive to test with anything else. It’s great that users get more choice but if providers use it as an opportunity to reduce support for other browsers then it might not be a great benefit after all.
Firefox and WebKit for all!
It doesn’t necessary cost a meaningful amount to a site to allow Firefox users to view it; it does however cost to make it compatible with non-chromium browsers. For most viewing that’s a non issue (I mean, most crms are going to work) but specific sites might stop working (YouTube already got caught throttling firefox, and tbf, streaming would cost more than reading an article or something).
But I will raise people one more. Waterfox
Never heard of it, I prefer LibreWolf
https://librewolf.net/#what-is-librewolfbut I’m gonna list some other popular forks
TOR Browser (anti-censorship enhanced fork, bundled with TOR network)
https://www.torproject.org/GNUzilla IceCat (GNU version)
https://www.gnu.org/software/gnuzilla/Pale Moon (able to use old XUL based extensions)
https://www.palemoon.org/Mullvad Browser (a security hardened fork, IIRC based on TOR, made by Mullvad VPN company)
https://mullvad.net/en/browserFennec F-Droid (Fennec version available on F-Droid, clean of propietary blobs)
https://f-droid.org/packages/org.mozilla.fennec_fdroid/
https://gitlab.com/relan/fennecbuildMull (hardened fork of Fenix)
https://gitlab.com/divested-mobile/mull-fenixIceRaven (yet another hardened fork of Fenix, able to install an extended list of extensions)
https://github.com/fork-maintainers/iceraven-browser
I think LibreWolf is going to end up being the go-to browser at this rate.
Last fuck up I installed Firefox. I left chrome in place. It’s finally time to remove chrome.
I say this a lot but get Firefox.
Thank fuck I switched to mozilla
Good thing I exclusively use Firefox.
The silver lining here is that you’d hope that more people will simply adopt Firefox. It’s user share has been too low for too long given how great it is
For work, I use Chrome, but only because Firefox’s profile management is (more or less) nonexistent. Once they have that, which I understand isn’t too far out, I’m ditching Chrome entirely.
Have you thought about installing a Firefox fork? On my Work PC I use Firefox for work and Floorp for personal browsing.
What’s this, you say? Floorp? Sounds like you’re setting me up for a Futurama joke, or something.
I’ll see what’s up, as long as it doesn’t require admin rights.
Unfortunately, I think that while ad blockers won’t work as well, they will still work good enough that most won’t bother making the switch.
https://blog.getadblock.com/how-adblock-is-getting-ready-for-manifest-v3-6cf21a7884f6
https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home/wiki/
https://adguard.com/en/blog/adguard-mv3.html
https://www.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/1067als/comment/j3h00xj/
The main issue I see is the slow update of filters (which require an extension update). This might make YouTube win the cat and mouse game. Where YouTube updates(ed?) their blocking detection multiple time a day.
They messed up 10 years ago when for some reason it took ages for Firefox to load compared to Chrome, and sadly it never really recovered the user base even though the performance is vastly improved.
To be fair, even in 2006 the Mozilla corporation was never going to outspend Firefox
Especially not given how much Mozilla wastes on executive compensation ;)
Their user share was pretty okay for a while, but bombed when Chrome first released because it was much more performant. Unfortunately, that stigma never quite fell off and they lost a huge opportunity to overtake the market.
How was it more performant? As I remember it, Chrome was loading websites not noticeably faster than Firefox, as website loading speed depended and still depends mainly on your internet connection and hardware anyway.
As I remember it, Chrome exploded because it was pushed onto users at every possible opportunity while Firefox depended (and still depends) on users actively looking for it.
Used Google or Google products? Get ads for Chrome. Wanted to download Google Earth? You had to activly uncheck a box such that Chrome wasn’t going to be installed as well. Meanwhile no ads and not the same amount of exposure for Firefox.
That way they achieved a critical mass and snowballing did the rest. There were so many users using it that it was considered a good choice just because it was used by many people.
Regarding the performance aspect, if there even was a noticeable difference, it was worse than Firefox. Where else did the “Chrome eating RAM” memes come from?
I was a Firefox user at the time, using adblockers, and the swap was a huge improvement to my browsing experience. I can’t even remember all the ways, since this was a decade ago. But at the time, Firefox was in a lul.
Things likely swapped pretty fast, but I wasn’t aware of it at the time because I was already using Chrome.
No ads swayed me, no Google specific sites, it wasn’t side loaded with anything.
The Chrome eating ram memes came much later, after the enshitification process reached the third step. You seem to be compressing the entirety of both browsers into a single moment, and that’s not really how time works.
I understand that you made such an experience, but I can’t share it though. I’ve been a Firefox user for almost as long as Firefox exists, which is almost two decades. (I think I joined somewhere between 2005-2007). I’ve tried other browsers, sometimes I had to. However, I didn’t notice any benefits compared to Firefox. Especially not in performance. Even though benchmarks have always shown clear differences, they weren’t significant enough for me to consider switching, as the difference really didn’t impact my browsing experience.
Regarding the memes: That was just a random annectode which I found suitable here. I don’t claim it has been that way since the beginning. (Can’t relate to that anyway.) But given that it has been around for a while, I don’t see how performance can be an argument in favour of Chrome in this.
I just remember Firefox around that time and for like over a decade just felt bloated and super slow in comparison. No idea if it’s better these days or what.
Its much better, and indistinguishable from a usage standpoint against chrome (I use Google garbage at work and they deliberately hamstring it in Firefox, so I use both browsers side by side)
Biggest Firefox win is containers and privacy. Chrome probably has better absolute security (based purely on the concept that non-private security is Google’s whole schtick, not based on data) and in the last year it’s gotten better memory management (via sleeping tabs) that Firefox just hasn’t caught up with…but there’s an addon for that ;)
I’d say give it a try and see for yourself.
I can just recommend using Firefox for a multitude of reasons. However, I am biased as I have been using firefox for almost two decades and did not have many reasons to complain.
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I remember it as, Firefox was fast enough, but Chrome was shipping a weirdly quick JS engine and trying to convince people to put more stuff into JS because on Chrome that would be feasible. Nowdays if you go out without your turbo-JIT hand-optimized JS engine everyone laughs at you and it’s Chrome’s fault.
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I think you are misremembering. Chrome won at the start because it was fast as fuck and Firefox was not. Firefox caught back up in the 2016 time frame iirc and they’ve been back and forth ever since.
Ironically chrome was named so as a goal was to reduce the chrome of the UI and focus on the web content, something recent versions of chrome and Firefox have abandoned in favor of massive swaths of whitespace and giant chrome buttons (on Firefox you can enable “unsupported” compact mode to reclaim some of the space if you’re on a laptop)
agreed. chrome was bare ones and super fast when it was released. over the last two years it’s a fucking monster memory hog
I’ve been a loyal Firefox user for almost as long as Firefox has existed. So I’m probably a bit biased. However, when I used other browsers, and if it wes just to try them out, I didn’t notice any benefits in terms of loading websites and executing their scripts. This includes Chrome. In benchmarks there are obviously differences visible, but to me as a user they didn’t matter. I wasn’t so short on time that I needed those microseconds. So I really don’t get how performance could be an argument in this.
I think you’re ignoring the functional aspect of the integration of Chrome into the Android platform. A lot of people’s entire online life is stored within the walls of the Chrome ecosystem. And moving all of that to a completely different browser that is not fully integrated with Android is daunting to say the least.
The situation is even more dire on iPhone.
What’s the new chrome integration?
Didn’t say new, I’m assuming they refer to the WebView that many apps use which is chromium based. However if you have a calyx- or graphene- compatible phone the WebView will be non-g chromium.
it’s all inevitable. client signatures, the end of privacy, jerking off on my way home from the office. there is no God
To my shame, I’m still deeply ingrained in the Google ecosystem. I settled on it like 8-10 years ago and I’m not sure how to dig myself out of this pit. More than Chrome, I heavily use Docs, Sheets, Drive, Wallet, YouTube, Gmail, I even have a Pixel (I hate how bloated Samsung is).
I’ve used Firefox a little for work because of the nice containers feature. Is Google Drive bad too? It’s so easy to share things, I torrent a lot of books and I’ve shared with a bunch of friends, idk if there’s an alternative that others could easily use.
I did it by selling soul to apple completely, I mean I am not going to peddle another company but at least it isn’t google. However I can afford to throw some cash on their overpriced stuff. They suck but at least they aren’t google. I don’t use any google services right now. Not even maps. Without any cons because obviously I just use apple stuff for everything wallet etc
I could use framework laptop linux + graphene os but I need to live and thrive among ppl and also get that sweet social credit for not being a total nerd that yells about evil corps and how I have superior privacy in the basement left and right. However I would if it was socially acceptable.
Don’t fret, I think a lot of us are on a long-term journey to de-Google. I’ve actually found that changing browsers is one of the easiest things to do, especially with the ability to import your bookmarks and such. With Firefox Sync, you pretty much have the same functionality as you would with your Google account signed into Chrome.
Gmail is probably the hardest one to kick. I’m fine with paying for an email service if it’s functional and doesn’t siphon my personal data, but finding a quality trustworthy provider and then migrating 20 years of data to it seems so overwhelming.
Why do you need to migrate 20 years of data? Do you actually look at anything more than a month or two old?
That said, Protonmail has “Easy Switch” to copy emails and whatnot.
The harder part for me is Drive, since there just isn’t a competitor that’s anywhere near as good in terms of overall experience. I’m going to try out OnlyOffice, but I know there are a few features I just won’t have anymore.
I do occasionally need something from 10 or even 15 years ago, needing the exact date I sold a property or started a new project or even just jogging my memory of an old contact I am reaching again. While none of this is strictly necessary, I could make do without it if I had to, it does create inertia.
I really need to check out Proton, Google is just getting worse and worse and the sooner I can get away from their ecosystem the better.
Give it a shot! Worst case scenario, you just go back.
I think migrating is the hardest part. My email history has a lot of important records and notes that I don’t want to lose.
By the way, I recommend checking out this video, which makes a great point that email is inherently insecure, regardless of the provider you choose.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=iH626CXyNtE
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
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Oh my gosh thank you!! I need this exact thing but hadn’t gotten around to figuring out a solution. Much appreciated!!
Several practical solutions here but the simplest is probably to start with thunderbird on your home computer. That way storage limit shouldn’t be a worry and you can see if you find it searchable/usable enough. If so, you can do a Google takeout as a long term canonical archive, do a thunderbird backup to easily switch computers when the time comes, and then sign up for a privacy friendly service.
I bought into proton for a bit but am very very against how they bundled their services and switched my mail to posteo, which i have had no issues with in the last 1.5 years or so. Tutanota was fine but firmly a third place opt for me. I also prefer posteo because I’m anti-magic: posteo has tons of options which can get you to same or better security than proton, but it doesn’t “just work” like protons security does. Both are great.
Here’s what I did:
- switch to Firefox - works with all the Google crap, so it’s an easy switch
- get a slim wallet - I don’t need Google Wallet at all anymore, I just keep the two cards I use for everything easily accessible
- install GrapheneOS on my Pixel phone - can install sandboxed Google crap if you want (I do it in a separate profile)
- YouTube - install ad-block and use Grayjay on my phone to make it easier to watch non-YouTube channels
- forward all gmail to a new account (I picked Tuta, but Protonmail is probably better for most) - easy to configure forwards in gmail, and then I just give out my new email to family and friends; plan is to keep gmail for spam once I’m no longer getting important emails sent to my new email
I’m still stuck with Google Drive though. As you said, it’s just so convenient. I’m trying out OnlyOffice with a self-hosted NextCloud instance, but there’s a lot of sacrifices. I have some complex spreadsheets, and switching to literally anything else loses features (I like the
GOOGLEFINANCE()feature).But yeah, I wish Google didn’t suck, they have some really convenient products, I just don’t trust them anymore.
As with others, I use Firefox for my main browser, and Brave when I need a Chromium-based browser for something. I don’t see many ads…
Consider ungoogled chromium instead. Brave is not great, it just has the advantage of being heavily promoted by the middle part of the (privacy nerds) and (want privacy because their beliefs are rejected by most of human society) venn diagram.
I use that on my personal computer, but at work I’ll occasionally hit sites other than what I’m debugging, and Chromium has ineffective ad-block, whereas Brave has reasonable ad-block. I can’t control the network at work like I can at home, so I can’t really rely on something like a pi-hole or whatever.
As a web browser with an embedded ad-blocker, it works fine. I’m not going to stop using something because someone distasteful is using it, I’ll stop using it if it no longer meets my needs. It blocks ads and renders as Chrome would, so it works well enough for me.
I disable the crypto nonsense and pretty much only use it for debugging work stuff. Sometimes that means I need a JSON formatter or something, and those sites are riddled with ads w/o an ad-blocker.
oh, hrm. Im not sure what specific build you’re using, but the one I’m using has mechanisms for installing normal adblockers like ublockorigin. note: afaik, this doesn’t solve the problem indicated in this thread – I’m operating on the basis that the blocking functionality will be nerfed. However for me, I use it purely for (stuff that doesnt work in firefox) and my jellyfin server (since firefox is kinda particular about hevc videos…you can kinda get them to work in windows, but in many cases I dont fully understand jellyfin still tries to transcode to 264).
worth stating that “because someone distasteful is using it” is a reasonable misunderstanding due to me assuming some knowledge. Brave was created because firefox kicked a homophobe out and he wanted to make a browser. Said person is also clearly a cryptonut, which makes him a yet more negative person in my book. Now, unrelated to that base, you have a lot of people out there who are promoting it by my personal experience in more privacy centric groups is that these promoters are often quite…unsavory. Is that enough to stop using software? not necessarily. Is it enough when there are far better options out there? to me, absolutely.
At home, it’s whatever ships with my Linux distribution. I use it mostly for web dev testing (I dev on Firefox, test on chromium) for personal projects, and for my kids to play certain games (Firefox works most of the time for that).
Brave was created because firefox kicked a homophobe out and he wanted to make a browser.
Sort of, but I don’t think that’s really telling the whole story.
Brendan Eich was the CEO of Mozilla for many years and was the initial creator of JavaScript. He was ousted because he made a private donation to block gay marriage legalization in California. There is no evidence that he was or is a homophobe, just that he didn’t believe that gay marriage was something that state should legally recognize. By all counts, he was pleasant to work with regardless of sexual orientation, the issue was that someone found out about his donation. He didn’t harm anyone and wasn’t unfair, he just made a private donation.
I think he was a great CEO, and Mozilla needs a technical CEO imo (in fact, everything started going downhill around when he left). I disagree with him politically, but if I avoided every product where I disagreed with the executive team politically, I’d have to avoid pretty much every product (and quit my job).
So I need a better reason to avoid Brave. I’m not sure what the plan is for their cryptocurrency, and I honestly see it as more of a gimmick than anything. It’s easy to disable, so whatever, it existing doesn’t impact me.
I also don’t actively recommend it to anyone, I always recommend Firefox or a Firefox derivative. The only time I recommend it is if someone needs a Chromium-based browser and wants ad-blocking, and Brave works well for that. If they just need Chromium and don’t need ad blocking, I recommend Chromium.
If you have a better alternative, I’m interested. I literally just need a Chromium-based browser that works on macOS (what I use for work) with proper ad blocking. I don’t need to sync anything, it’ll only ever exist on that one device. I also need something for Linux, and open source is more important than ad blocking there.
I’m also interested in Brave Search since it uses its own index. I currently use DDG, but search results are kinda crappy so I’m looking for alternatives.
I’ve long ago stopped using Chrome on my computer because it was getting too bloated.
They already don’t let you add ublock origin to chrome on mobile. I had to teach my elderly mother to use Waterfox with the extension, but as a plus side she can now turn on desktop-site and and turn the screen off without interrupting her hokey crystal meditation flute music [3 hours].
