Before Facebook I used Livejournal, which was really one of the first social media sites. I still have friends from it 24 years later and Facebook is the easiest way to keep in touch with them unfortunately.
Bought Asus laptop, just 1.5 year later the product is discontinued and no support page can be found. They also stopped selling the charging brick for it.
Bought Sony headphones, a year later wanted to replace the foam. No customer support, no repair, just nada.
Bought Samsung phone. Filled to brim with bloat. Shows me ads on lockscreen. Crawling speed in 2 years. No updates.
Bought an iPhone for mom. Still getting updates after 4 years. Got battery replaced with no hassle.
These seem like cherry picked examples to an extent.
Most Asus laptops charge with basic USB C which can easily be purchased anywhere. They also use M.2 SSD’s instead of soldered one’s and standard screws vs Apple’s special shaped ones.
Apple’s only headphones + replacement pads are going to over 2x the price of even high-end Sony headphones. Plus Apple exclusively puts the Lightning jack on them instead of USB C or a 3.5mm jack
None of the Samsung phones I’ve ever used have had ads on the Lock Screen or any bloat that wasn’t easy to completely ignore. The ones that do are typically cheaper than the cheapest iPhone and an unfair comparison
Honestly I gave up on Samsung a while ago. Not generally a fan of Google’s business practices but I switched to a Pixel a year ago and it’s already leagues better than any of the Samsung phones I used.
Samsung has been becoming increasingly like Apple.
The S23 Ultra (their top of the line phone) has an excellent camera and image stabilization and a stylus. It doesn’t, however have expandable storage, an IR blaster, headphone jack. or a removable battery.
I have a Galaxy Tab A7 Lite (rooted and debloated)
I don’t like that I don’t get updates after I rooted it. Also screw Google safetynet (although this is not just limited to Samsung devices)
Also FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, Samsung, please use a standard fastboot implementation instead of Download mode/odin bs
Your bank will implement WEI API. Facebook will too, same as Gmail or Youtube. Any browser that does not support or has removed the WEI API will not be able to display or use any of those websites. It’s the same with Netflix or Spotify - if you try to use it in a more privacy-centered browser, it simply does not work - because it those browsers do not support EME API (which is a DRM that was implemented few years ago, but for media). Firefox was against it, by the way. Firefox also quickly backed down and implemented it anyway once it rolled out, because “We ArE FoRcEd tO Do It”, due to their already dwindling marketshare and people complaining and switching to other browsers because their shit ain’t working on Firefox.
Everyone keeps saying “I will never use a browser that does support WEI!”, but somehow it feels like they don’t really realize that their internet will simply stop working for most of the content they consume, since there’s no reason for Google or Facebook to not use this opportunity to forcefeed more ads to people.
That’s fine I can replace or not use all those services and I would LOVE to see my bank try it I would love to see them try it in the EU too. These is blatant monopolistic moves and I will not change my browser or OS for WEI.
You really don’t realize how stupid that take is? If Google manages to establish this all major browsers will have follow and a single complain less won’t change that…
Good point, there are few people as unlikable than redditors, who are so fragile that they need to disparage other people with words like “stupid,” or tell other people they’re “too sensitive.”
On that note, in my experience, 100% of those who call others too sensitive are colosally bad, unempathetic humans.
I don't know. I just had a discussion where someone told me it'd unrealistic to give up YouTube for the alternatives and yadda yadda yadda. It bears reminding that not everyone is as privacy-minded and make up nowhere near a majority. Not caring what happens because you aren't using chromium is dangerous. It's still about you and it's still going to affect you.
It’s not that I don’t care. I intend to do whatever I can to help prevent it. But at the end of the day, if people keep supporting platforms like YouTube, then I see the enshittification of the internet as inevitable. We’re literally welcoming it by doing so.
Been there, done that. Spoiler alert, it ends with even more people switching to chromium, Mozilla crying that it’s deeply concerned with and extremely opposing WEI and will work on figuring out a better solution, because WEI is not what Open Web should be, but is being forced to implement it, because people are switching to other browsers because their shit ain’t working.
With most competing browsers and the content industry embracing the W3C EME WEI specification, Mozilla has little choice but to implement EME WEI as well so our users can continue to access all content they want to enjoy.
They may kill this iteration of ad blockers. But there will always be another and another. Google has a lot of smart people working for them. There are also a lot of smart people in the FOSS community that will eventually find a way around it.
At the end of the day there will still be people recording songs by holding two boom boxes together.
Make software that runs on your computer that uses machine learning to detect ads on you screen and put kitties and puppy pictures over them. Browser and sites couldn’t do shit about it unless they start acting like anticheats scanning your computer for that software etc…
Except safari of course (almost 20% market share).
Also, there are plenty of other browsers using Mozilla’s gecko engine. A quote from Wikipedia: “ Other web browsers using Gecko include GNU IceCat, Waterfox, K-Meleon, Lunascape, Portable Firefox, Conkeror, Classilla, TenFourFox.” (en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gecko_(software))
Yes, certainly, but all of these, if they want to sync their data, or use a own selfhosted server or have to use those of Mozilla with an account, giving with it datas to Alphabet (Google) and googleanalytics. Sync is essential if you use the browser in several PC, PC and Mobile or simply as backup if the PC fails or you buy a new one and don’t want to lose your bookmarks, passwords and other data. Forks are a lot out there, also very nice ones, but most of these lacks the basic infrastructure, depending on a lot of third party services. A browser isn’t only an app to surf the web, it’s a continuos work, maintance, servers and most important, a good and active community. How many forks offer all this? There are almost 100 different browsers out there and other 70 which had said Game over for us, from people which thought “Nice, its easy to fork this engine making it to my like and gain a lot of customers”, nice short dream with a product oversaturated in the market.
Firefox have the same problem with the WEI filter, they also have to insert in Firefox the Google Token, same as any other, if he want to enter a Web with this fucking filter, anyway Mozilla will do this in FF precisely because several Google devs in Mozilla which are working on FF (Bad decision of Mozilla to have Google as main sponsor). Ad/trackerblocker are not the problem in Vivaldi, it has inbuild the needed filters (even those to block Cookie advices and adblocker warnings) and until now it has gutt out every Google intent with FloC, IdleAPI and others to control the Chromium base (remember, also Chromium is FOSS and customizable,above with first class devs Vivaldi has), also don’t have and don’t depends on extern inversors, but this fucking WEI DRM of websites is a greater problem and need to be avoided by ALL browser companies which are not Google in common, if there is not a genius which invent something to fake this Google Token. We’ll see.
I mean, yeah, that's why I said it wouldn't work. Maybe if there was a website that was big enough that it would drive people to use non-WEI browsers if they couldn't access it, but any website big enough to do that would also want WEI for ad venue.
The only big website that could even come close to doing this (they won’t, and if they did it wouldn’t work, but they’re big enough that the attempt would at least be noticed) is Wikipedia.
A slightly more “productive” (sort of) avenue of approach would be another large corporation for whom Google is a competitor, and who themselves doesn’t rely (as much) on advertising, interfering with WEI for their own self-interested reasons. Apple is the most likely candidate here, although again, I don’t think that’s likely to happen.
Donate to orgs like the EFF, Mozilla, and the FSF. Lobby your congressperson, your senators, and Biden to make the FTC to start doing its goddamn job again and enforce antitrust law.
The only real solution to this creeping megalomaniacal monopolistic behavior is legislative.
Yes it can break pihole too, iirc. Not sure of the exact nature of it, but basically it checks that you loaded the page as intended. If resources are blocked, it didn't load as intended.
You’re assuming that this will kill FF instantly instead of them finding new ways to fund themselves. Not saying the situation is good, but it’s not that bad.
We know how it will impact Firefox. They will be deeply concerned with WEI and extremely opposing it, but will implement it anyway because they are forced to do it.
With most competing browsers and the content industry embracing the W3C EME WEI specification, Mozilla has little choice but to implement EME WEI as well so our users can continue to access all content they want to enjoy.
Someone will most likely create a fork to remove this or an option to disable it will probably be baked into about:config. I don’t visit many sites that use DRM. When I do visit sites that require it, I’ll usually shift to Ungoogled Chromium or Brave.
Another one of my major fears with this change is whether Google will decide to make Chromium closed source and the implications it can have for other chromium based browsers.
Someone will most likely create a fork to remove this or an option to disable it will probably be baked into about:config.
But that’s the issue - if WEI passes, EVERY webpage will be able to use DRM. So, just like you have to switch to Chromium for DRMed media content, you will now have to switch for every website that has decided to implement it. So, your bank (because google is pushing it as a security feature), Youtube, Gmail… Just like you are not able to play DRM media, you won’t be able to visit DRMed websites without WEI API supported. It’s not something you turn off.
I’d be fine ditching youtube and gmail instead of having to use their shitty services with ads that lead to fake software that compromise your computers. Also my bank could try this, I would quickly turn into their most annoying customer also it could get to the point that unless you run a specific OS these pages won’t work and it would start being problematic legally for them. But until then I will pray everyday that the EU will take a hammer to WEI and break it’s legs.
Everything on iOS uses Safari tho, Apple doesn’t allow other browser engines but at least they don’t nerf the Webkit version for third parties anymore!
If a dedicated team wanted to work on it, there is the Servo engine which is currently developed by The Linux Foundation but is apparently entirely volunteer driven.
I’m not smart enough to do this kinda shit, but I’m sure there are plenty of others who would gladly work on it to make it bigger than it already is. You could then make your own browser based on that engine. Sure it would take years if not closer to over a decade, but the payoff for privacy and free web would be enough to make me spend all that time doing it.
Truly. I don’t get this new “switch to Firefox!!” hype, are the people writing this very young, or am I missing something? I’ve been using Firefox since beta, I’ve never seen a reason to switch since it’s always been the superior browser, why have people been running anything else in the first place?
IMO any of the forks are inherently weaker than the main and there’s nothing stopping you from making Firefox work exactly like whichever flavor of fork you prefer, but with security updates the day they come out.
UBlock is much more reliable than no script in my experience. It’s also usually obvious when it breaks; no script sometimes isn’t obvious until you hit submit and notice none of what you typed actually got sent.
You can go through all the sites the initial HTTP request calls out to and decide which ones get a pass. This is how I ensure sites like gstatic, googletagmanager, etc. don’t collect data even though the rest of the site works.
If that’s too much, just open the flood gates for that site and trust everything there. At least it isn’t just sending all your data out by DEFAULT.
That still breaks a lot of sites. For example, Wikipedia gets broken if you click any link and then navigate back. NoScript is just crap. If you want to actually block scripts for something without breaking everything else, use DevTools.
Yeah these days literally every website uses JavaScript in some format as modern reactive design is easier to do if you can execute client side code. Blocking JavaScript is a sledgehammer solution to the problem.
Same here. I used NoScript in the past and remembering whitelisting way too often so dumped it in the end. Now I just use uBlock with I think some built-in javascript block of known bad hosts.
Add-ons are a pretty huge security risk, though. Someone was just posting an article about how tempting it is to sell out with your extension, and how many offers you actually get.
The best solution is actually not Firefox, but Mullvad. No need for extensions, based on Tor Browser and can be bundled with a VPN that’s full of other people using the same browser - so you have exactly the same fingerprint, and they can’t tell you apart. Not by extensions, not by IP.
Based on his history it seems unlikely that gorhill, the creator of uBlock Origin would sell out.
And if something did change, there would be enough news about it to notify you. (Like the extension Avast bought a while ago)
It’s pretty shitty to lump uBlock Origin in with those other, shittier ad blockers blindly. After all, anyone who knew the first thing about ad blockers even back then knew that there were plenty of bad ones around but that uBO wasn’t one of them.
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