IMHO we have several really big problems with the web as it is today, which are intertwined:
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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
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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)
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Most people/governments/companies don’t care or don’t understand the problem of the mono culture for browsers
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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
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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.
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
I got downvoted to hell for being against a centralized authority in other threads. Good to see I’m not the only “paranoid and crazy” one.
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This is why we need Mozilla.
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.
Removed by mod
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!
Install ublock origin and open YouTube.
You won’t regret it.
DONE!
fantastic. Also, just so you don’t have all that “YoU hAvE tHrEe ViDeOs LeFt” BS copy paste this to the “my filters” tab (go to about:addons, click on uBlock, there dots, “preferences”, then “my filters”) and you should be good to go:
youtube.com##+js(set, yt.config_.openPopupConfig.supportedPopups.adBlockMessageViewModel, false) youtube.com##+js(set, Object.prototype.adBlocksFound, 0) youtube.com##+js(set, ytplayer.config.args.raw_player_response.adPlacements, []) youtube.com##+js(set, Object.prototype.hasAllowedInstreamAd, true)Also here is another that blocks shorts entirely:
www.youtube.com##ytd-guide-renderer a.yt-simple-endpoint path[d^="M10 14.65v-5.3L15 12l-5 2.65zm7.77-4.33"]:upward(ytd-guide-entry-renderer) www.youtube.com##ytd-mini-guide-renderer a.yt-simple-endpoint path[d^="M10 14.65v-5.3L15 12l-5 2.65zm7.77-4.33"]:upward(ytd-mini-guide-entry-renderer) www.youtube.com##ytd-browse[page-subtype="home"] .ytd-thumbnail[href^="/shorts/"]:upward(ytd-rich-item-renderer) www.youtube.com##ytd-browse[page-subtype="subscriptions"] .ytd-thumbnail[href^="/shorts/"]:upward(ytd-grid-video-renderer,ytd-rich-item-renderer) www.youtube.com##ytd-search .ytd-thumbnail[href^="/shorts/"]:upward(ytd-video-renderer) www.youtube.com##ytd-browse[page-subtype="subscriptions"] ytd-video-renderer .ytd-thumbnail[href^="/shorts/"]:upward(ytd-item-section-renderer) www.youtube.com##ytd-browse[page-subtype="trending"] .ytd-thumbnail[href^="/shorts/"]:upward(ytd-video-renderer) www.youtube.com##ytd-search .ytd-thumbnail[href^="/shorts/"]:upward(ytd-video-renderer) www.youtube.com##ytd-rich-shelf-renderer[is-shorts] www.youtube.com##ytd-reel-shelf-renderer m.youtube.com##ytm-reel-shelf-renderer m.youtube.com##ytm-pivot-bar-renderer div.pivot-shorts:upward(ytm-pivot-bar-item-renderer) m.youtube.com##ytm-browse ytm-item-section-renderer ytm-thumbnail-overlay-time-status-renderer[data-style="SHORTS"]:upward(ytm-video-with-context-renderer) m.youtube.com##ytm-browse ytm-item-section-renderer ytm-thumbnail-overlay-time-status-renderer[data-style="SHORTS"]:upward(ytm-compact-video-renderer) m.youtube.com##ytm-search ytm-thumbnail-overlay-time-status-renderer[data-style="SHORTS"]:upward(ytm-compact-video-renderer,ytm-video-with-context-renderer) m.youtube.com##ytm-single-column-watch-next-results-renderer ytm-thumbnail-overlay-time-status-renderer span:has-text(/^(0:\d\d|1:0\d)$/):upward(ytm-video-with-context-renderer) youtube.com##ytd-rich-grid-row, #contents.ytd-rich-grid-row:style(display:contents !important;)AND REMEMBER TO CLICK “APPLY CHANGES” BEFORE LEAVING!
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.
Linux user here, at least on my platform there are chromium alternatives that are far faster, like Brave. uBlock (and now this) are the only reason im still in firefox
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.
it’s back to being awesome
What changed?
The person you replied to was mistaken. Firefox isn’t “back to” being awesome because it never stopped being so.
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
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.
deleted by creator
Time to fly the Jolly Roger and find ways to get entire websites, not just movies and TV shows, off the high seas and past the blockade. Drink up, me hearties, yo ho!
I believe that’s the same as uBO’s cosmetic filters. They’re loaded but not shown…
The most valuable sites are already advertisement free. Anyone remaining who implements this standard just reduces their viewers. People will do without or other sites will offer an alternative. The tech is doomed to fail because the consumer is always right.
Politicians always side with big business.
That’s not true at all as far as EU tech company regulations are concerned. Examples: laws for GDPR, right to repair, consolidated charging ports, minimum size & pricing roof on roaming data - and related fines for disobeying them.
There is a German ARD Video about Open Source. The EU Parlament is big in with Microsoft products and don’t want to change because they are idiots.
Same goes for local authorities. Munich even had its own Linux distro, then M$ opened a big office in the city and suddenly whole FOSS project was abandoned and everything runs on Windows.
Noone had issues, everything was fine. Everyone was against using Windows in the parlament vote. The president or smth who was part of Microsoft had the full decision and just went with it. Fucking creepy. Humanity was a mistake.
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.
It’s like IE in the 90s/early 2000s all over.
“It’s in our interest to make the Internet better and without competition we have stagnation”. From the Google Chrome comic book.
slowly switching to firefox here
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 pays to be the default search engine in Firefox.
The larger Firefox gets, the less Google is going to want that default search to be anybody OTHER than them.
Mozilla are also trying to find sources of additional funding, such as the ads (sponsored sites) that appear on the new tab page now, and their other services such as their VPN.
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 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.
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.
This is exactly why we need Mozilla, this is kind of stuff what makes them the default in the open source community.
They definitely are reference!
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
Ad blockers are more important to security than virus checkers.
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.
Is there any way to make JS safer? E.g. limiting the scope of its access to specific functions (e.g. visual/DOM changes, posting/querying a server only but no local function), or is it just inherently unsafe?
There’s always possibilities to make things safer, but that often comes at a cost of features, features that many web developers (or possibly more likely their employer) would hate to see removed or be inaccessible. At least Firefox has done some great things to keep websites separated so a tracking cookie from tracking service A on site B and site C doesn’t quite get the same possibilities to track you as before (IIRC, take it with a grain of salt). But in general I would lean more towards JS sort of being inherently “unsafe”.
You can always make yourself a lot more secure by browsing the web through a browser confined to a virtual machine, but most people won’t do that. And as with IOT, the S in World Wide Web stands for Security.
Is there any way to make JS safer? E.g. limiting the scope of its access to specific functions (e.g. visual/DOM changes, posting/querying a server only but no local function), or is it just inherently unsafe?
More like money hungry company will do money hungry things
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.
I’m doing my part using Firefox. I’ve always liked it over Chrome and I don’t like the sign into Google BS.
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”?
Cash rules everything around me, a famous Wu-Tang Clan song!
Dolla Dolla bills y’all
i hate that we value and reward greed too. because greed is, ultimately, a stupid bottomless pit that only leads to extraction and environmental destruction.
People need to be paid for their efforts. If you’re not going to pay them, who is? Advertiser are.
“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.
I can’t believe I’m witnessing the death of the internet, at least it isn’t going quietly into the night.
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.
It’ll be a problem when people are effectively banned from the internet.
But again, the average person won’t be impacted enough to care. They’ll keep browsing. I’m not saying what Google is trying to do is okay, but it certainly wouldn’t be the death of the internet.
They’ll be impacted when they can’t get online on a gosh darn iPhone because Apple doesn’t wanna play ball with Google
You think Apple with App Attest and FairPlay won’t jump on this?
It depends, if Google’s the only one who can “Choose” they’ll be all “I don’t know about that one Chief”, otherwise… Yeah I’m just practicing wishful thinking
The web is not the whole internet. Plus isn’t you being here prove that the internet is resilient?
Even if Lemmy does fight it and doesn’t accept the fingerprinting bullshit, how many other websites are going to do that? We’re just a link aggregator at the end of the day, I feel like all of the most important parts of the Internet are no longer going to be open.
Honestly, I barely go to any other websites anymore anyway, and I just read the headlines and comments here.
The problem with just reading headlines is that they’re often (almost always) misleading or just plain false.
Thankful for Mozilla, seriously!
Firefox is all I run these days.
Ffs everyone is a firefox main, how does chrome have 62% market share is a mystery
I would assume enterprise is a huge chunk
Also Chrome books, Android users that don’t care enough to change browsers, and most people who aren’t wholly in Apple’s ecosystem. Lemmy users are more knowledgeable about tech than probably 90% of the population. The demographics here definitely aren’t representative of the real world
Thank you for posting this. I’ve read five or six descriptions of the issues with Google’s proposal by now and this was the first one that was clear, concise, and not riddled with histrionics.
