- 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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Long live Firefox.
hear ye
Pretty great outcome for firefox really.
I don’t think firefox numbers will get a huge & immediate bump, but I think that over time it will support a reputation for firefox as being cool different and just plain better.
I can’t imagine raw-dogging the internet without an ad blocker in 2024. I’m aware that most people aren’t bothered by ads, but surely… surely some people might be interested in blocking them if they become aware that it’s possible and easy.
firefox extensions are the best patches i have for enshittification
won’t stop pihole
Man for real.
And they never will.
You sweet summer child.
How long do you think Chrome will let DoH be opt-in?
What does google expect users to do once they realize they get better extensions with firefox?
Imagine ad blockers not working on youtube only on chromium browsers, or tracking cookies/pixels/scripts not being blockable only on chromium browsers.
They expect most users to not care, and sadly they’re right.
I think people just genuinely don’t know that firefox (and I suppose Safari) is the only true alternative browser i.e. Not based on chromium.
I do my best to transition people I know across, but people are retty comfortable on chrome. If ad blockers stop working, I think there will be people who care just enough to switch.
Used Firefox on and off since it came around, not a fan. But if chromium blocks ad-blockers, I’m switching instantly. I doubt many people know or care enough to switch.
Now we gotta have websites developing for all web browsers instead of Google Chrome like it’s Internet Explorer 2.0.
It’s weird that I’ve been on firefox for the vast majority of my life and I always had this perception that “everyone” was using it. Here in lemmy you hear about it all the time, my friends use it, I see it on my newsfeeds etc
But when you check the market share it around 2.8% while chrome is 65.1% https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share
I remember a point around 2015ish where a lot of web apps went from recommending Firefox and Chrome for the best experience to just Chrome. Now I often see “don’t use Firefox” as a support tactic.
I was at my parents house last week because i had to help them with their laptop. I told my mom about firefox and she was very confused because she doesn’t seem to understand that google chrome is a browser and that every browser can access google search or their banking site.
It took a bit of effort to explain that firefox works the exact same but is safer and faster.
She is now using firefox on her phone because i showed her ublock origin works with it to block ads.
A lot of people don’t seem to understand that google chrome isn’t the internet and what exactly a browser is.
I feel like “most people” only learn “one technology per category”. They know of, one operative system, one browser, one app to mindless scroll, one program to edit text. As a developer it shocks me a little because I’m always eager to try new programming languages, technologies and ways to interact with things. I guess most people only know about edge/safari because they come pre-installed
How is that shocking?
I use Linux, Firefox, Lemmy, nano. Why would I change?
A lot of people don’t seem to understand that google chrome isn’t the internet and what exactly a browser is.
It’s been that way for a lot longer than chrome has been the big one, it used to be the same with internet explorer…
I would even go as far as saying that the left meniscus of the gaussian thinks google chrome is “google” and the “thing that finds webs”
Might have to do with the fact that Firefox was the dominant browser for quite awhile until Chrome arrived on the scene.
Iirc it peaked at around 30% market share. I think IE was around 60% at the time. So never dominant, but definitely very very widespread.
Yeah I’ve been using it for at least a decade now. It’s great.
I guess average user cares mostly about how fast and smooth the browsing is. Chrome definitely has the edge on that over firefox.
I’m forced to use Chrome quite a bit (workplace silliness) and exclusively use Firefox at home. I seriously cannot see this edge that you claim Chrome has. Do you mean in loading speed? Scrolling speed?
I second you, I don’t see any advantage on using Chrome over Firefox.
Oh no! Wait, I don’t use that shit because of shit like this.
I’m sorry. I’ve seen this so many times today and I can’t stand it anymore.
I hate this article photo. What the fuck is that shit?? Gloveless fingers? Digit warmer? Turtlefinger sweater?
Finger sweatbands for epic googling activities
Agreed, but also
How can you not kinda love it
i’m with you it’s really camp
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Other groups don’t agree with Google’s description, like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which called Manifest V3 “deceitful and threatening” back when it was first announced in 2019, saying the new system “will restrict the capabilities of web extensions—especially those that are designed to monitor, modify, and compute alongside the conversation your browser has with the websites you visit.”
Google, which makes about 77 percent of its revenue from advertising, has not published a serious explanation as to why Manifest V3 limits content filtering, and it’s not clear how that aligns with the goals of “improving the security, privacy, performance and trustworthiness.”
Like Kewisch said, the primary goal of malicious extensions is to spy on users and slurp up data, which has nothing to do with content filtering.
Google now says it’s possible for extensions to skip the reviews process for “safe” rule set changes, but even this is limited to “static” rulesets, not more powerful “dynamic” ones.
In a comment to The Verge last year, the senior staff technologist at the EFF, Alexei Miagkov, summed up Google’s public negotiations with the extension community well, saying, "These are helpful changes, but they are tweaks to a limited-by-design system.
For a short period, users will be able to turn them back on if they visit the extension page, but Google says that “over time, this toggle will go away as well.”
The original article contains 692 words, the summary contains 230 words. Saved 67%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
netscape was the standard back then when expolorer was crap…fast forward today,firefox(netscape’s successor) is still the standard when other browsers are still crap.
edit: spelling firefox and netscape…god damn butter fingers…
NetScape!
Firefox
it’s all inevitable. client signatures, the end of privacy, jerking off on my way home from the office. there is no God
We killed god and replaced it with Google.
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
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 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)
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 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.
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.
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.
This post reminded me to try out Brave. It’s based on Chromium but purports to block ads and trackers…
Anybody else use it?
Edit: Interesting. Anyone care to explain the downvotes? I know nothing about this browser other than it purportedly blocks Youtube ads, which are driving me nuts.
Edit2: Well shit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brendan_Eich
I had no idea about this guy. Ok, so completely not an option.
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…
User agent switcher
Based and
incognitoprivate mode pilled
I use Firefox everywhere which means I have ads blocking everywhere, including and especially on Android. All my tabs are synced and are easily transferred between devices.
If we want to be honest, Firefox on Android has way worse performance than Chrome.
(But I still use it instead of Chrome)
It depends I think. I found Chrome to be a tiny bit faster but then ads bogged the page down so most of the time, Firefox is faster for me.
In some very rare cases when I need to disable ads blocking, Chrome is indeed faster but I’d rather abandon websites rather than disable ads blocking.
So if you love ads, Chrome is better. If you hate ads like I do, Firefox is miles ahead.
There are other ways to block ads. Adguard does a great job on Android. It establishes a local VPN, so it can do HTTP[S] content filtering in addition to DNS blocking.
Can’t use my VPN and adguard at the same time iirc, unless android has two active VPN “slots” now. Can’t bring a pihole with me 24/7 either as much as I would like to.
There’s always nextdns.io that can be configured to use ad blocking filters on the dns level. You can set it up on your phone as well
Can I use it in conjunction with my normal VPN? AFAIK android has only one active VPN slot available at a time.
Yes because there is no need to setup another VPN. You only configure the DNS settings (Private DNS). I know that Mullvad on PC has an option to use custom DNS server
