There have been multiple accounts created with the sole purpose of posting advertisement posts or replies containing unsolicited advertising.

Accounts which solely post advertisements, or persistently post them may be terminated.

time_fo_that ,

Firefox ftw.

I’ve actually been using Waterfox lately though because for some reason there’s a video codec issue on Firefox that makes YouTube videos not play correctly.

TheColonel ,

I watch YouTube just fine on Firefox.

Some plugins to Adblock but that’s it.

time_fo_that ,

I’m not sure why it happens. It happens on every PC I have Firefox installed on (three of them). I should probably try and reduce my extension count to see if it works lol.

VantaBrandon ,

IT guys will stop using it…

Which means they’ll stop deploying it as the default browser on some large enterprises, it won’t ship as defaults in pre-baked images going forward.

Average joes and janes will use Safari and Edge depending on OS.

Where is their growth going to come from after this change? Chromebooks? lol.

I hope they do it, it will hurt them in the long run.

You can bet 300 new uBlock replacements to spring up practically overnight, some of them scams, reducing trust in the Google ecostystem.

unrelatedkeg ,

You can bet 300 new uBlock replacements to spring up practically overnight, some of them scams, reducing trust in the Google ecostystem.

Unfortunately it’s a bigger problem.

Google doesn’t plan to block uBlock Origin itself, but the APIs it uses to integrate into Chrome in order to function. This will effectively disable all adblockers on Chrome. uBlock won’t be removed from the Chrome extension store, it will just have 90% of its functionality removed.

Additionally, this isn’t a Chrome-only change, but a change in the open source Chromium, an upstream browser of Chrome all other Chrome-based browsers use (essentially everything aside from Firefox and Safari themselves).

The change itself is involved in changing the browser’s “Manifest”, a list of allowed API calls for extensions. The current one is called Manifest v2 and the new one was dubbed Manifest v3.

Theorethically Chromium-based browsers could “backport” Manifest v2 due to the open source nature of Chromium. However that is unlikely as it’s projected to take a lot of resources to change, due mostly to security implications of the change.

Vendors of other Chromium-based browsers themselves have little to gain from making the change aside from name recognition for “allowing uBlock”, which most users either wouldn’t care for or already use Firefox, so the loss for Google isn’t projected to be large, just as the gains for other vendors.

TLDR: uBlock won’t be removed from the Chrome extension store, but the mechanisms through which it blocks ads will be blocked. The block isn’t a change in Chrome but in Chromium and affects all Chromium-based brosers (all except Firefox and Safari). Other vendors could change that to allow adblockers but it’s projected to take a lot of time and resources.

erwan ,

There is already a “lite” version of uBlock origin that conforms to the new manifest and will still work.

There are still a few features missing, some can’t be implemented but others will be.

Railing5132 ,

Is it by the same author? Nik Rols, iirc?

Plopp ,

Raymond Hill (gorhill) is the author of uBlock Origin, uBlock Origin Lite, uMatrix etc.

Railing5132 ,

I remembered… poorly.

axum ,

The ‘block element’ picker is the big one that can not be implemented in the lite version.

Also included block lists can’t update unless the extension itself updates.

ipkpjersi ,

Those seem like really big hurdles. How can those be worked around?

Is it not possible to trigger a manual block list update?

axum ,

It’s not something that can be worked around. It’s specifically a design feature of manifest v3 to restrict these types of things.

Your options are to accept this or use a different browser.

cmhe ,

IT guys will stop using it…

No, they will not, if they didn’t already. Because convenience it key.

The browser war is over, and humans lost, corporations won. Google and other huge corporations control the biggest websites and most of the access to content on the internet.

They just need to make it inconvenient to use ad-blocking browsers.

They built their business on advertiser gambling, which seem to be flawed concept, because they keep on squeezing that tube for every penny more and more, in a race to the bottom.

But they are still in control of both browers and content so they have options to keep squeezing more.

So you want to use a ad blocker? Well, the browser that supports them might not be white listed (anymore) by the bot detector, and you have to solve captchas on every site you visit, until you come to your senses and use a browser, where ad blocking is no longer possible.

Oh, and all that is ok, because of “security”. Because letting the users be in control of their devices and applications is “in-secure”. They are just doing that to protect you from spam and scams, just trust them! Trust them, because they don’t trust you!

LainTrain ,

You’re absolutely right.

That said at least I’ll take this as my cue to peace out of the mainstream web and only use Links2.

Railing5132 ,

I’m looking into the possibility of moving my organization to FF. Office of about 200 endpoints. The sticky wicket that I don’t fully understand is Auth passthru to 365.

TdotMatrix ,

Does this help at all: support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/windows-sso

WhyFlip ,

“IT guys”? Chrome has a 66% market share globally.

VantaBrandon ,

Its not the IT guys themselves, its the aggregate influence. One large school campus flips the switch to Firefox on their next image deployment its a drop in a bucket, but when 1000 schools, 2000 government agencies and 5000 businesses all suddenly stop using Chrome the graph starts to move, because laypeople just accept the default.

IT guys are like browser-influencers, they tell their parents what to use, friends, and so on. We all used to recommend Chrome, I don’t anymore.

viking ,
@viking@infosec.pub avatar

Firefox my beloved.

chemicalwonka ,
@chemicalwonka@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

1000023325

rtxn ,

Librewolf, my beloved.

chemicalwonka ,
@chemicalwonka@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

❤

Lost_My_Mind ,

This is the first I’ve heard of LibreWolf. Is it compatible with Windows 7? And also, why is it good?

can , (edited )

Looks like it should run on Windows.

Edit: sorry, didn’t read far down enough. It’s only built for Windows 10, but they recommend this?

a_wild_mimic_appears ,

Main features: … Continued support for NPAPI plugins like Silverlight, Adobe Flash and Java

Picture this in your minds eye: a Windows 7 machine running a browser with still working Flash and Java plugins, connected to the internet in 2024.

what do you see?

i see a flourishing ecosystem of worms, viruses and rootkits, all trying to be the one species to get to be the one who does the most damage to the prey species, the common user.

can ,

Sounds like an interesting experience to me. Admittedly I hadn’t looked that far into it. If Win 7 is a must I’d say just go with latest Firefox.

ivn ,

You really shouldn’t connect windows 7 to the internet.

jrgd ,

librewolf.net

A summary from its site and known technical details:

  • no telemetry by default
  • includes uBlock Origin
  • has sane privacy-respecting defaults
  • prepackages arkenfox user.js
  • relatively well-maintained fork of Firefox that keeps up with upstream
  • No major controversies AFAIK

As for Windows 7, nobody should really need to install Librewolf anyway on such a device. No device running Windows 7 should have access to the internet at this point. If you are asking about compatibility intending this use case, you have bigger problems to worry about than your choice of browser. If you just need to view HTML files graphically, even Internet Explorer or an older firefox ESR will do.

Empricorn ,

You’re overreacting. Firefox knows their users. I am a huge “stan” for Firefox, but I will delete it like a time traveller if they make it impossible to ignore ads. I will salt the earth and poop on Firefox’s grave and actively avoid it everywhere… However. If I’m wrong, there will be a Next Thing…

TerkErJerbs ,

If you use a DNS solutions you can block all the telemetry shit. Frankly FF has been phoning home in a lot of undesirable ways for many years even before this, like most browsers.

chemicalwonka ,
@chemicalwonka@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

Firefox is no longer an adversary to Google for the browser market, if it ever was. FF has become a vassal of Google that with its tyranny is dictating the course of the internet, such as WEI that as far as I know it was abandoned at least for now.

TerkErJerbs ,

Yeah I know. blog.windscribe.com/windscribe-expose-mozilla/

chemicalwonka ,
@chemicalwonka@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

🧐

dohpaz42 ,
@dohpaz42@lemmy.world avatar

Not entirely true.

viking ,
@viking@infosec.pub avatar

Yeah I’m using Fennec, which doesn’t have that. But as long as it’s a flick of a switch to disable, I don’t really mind. Still a million times better than manifest v3.

pwalker ,

At least link the full article and not just the headline… smh. Here is also the follow-up article with comments from Firefox’s CTO. heise.de/…/Firefox-defends-itself-Everything-done…

Imgonnatrythis ,

Saying this about any corporation’s product is guaranteed not to age well.

Lost_My_Mind ,

Mmm mmm mmm, Bill Cosby tells me to love my puddin’ pops!

…i feel sleepy…

Chozo , (edited )

Yeah, it's strange just how readily the blinders go up wherever Mozilla is concerned. They're a corp, just like any other; if they had the money and leverage, they'd be just as aggressive as Google. Have people already forgotten that time they laid off 200+ employees and then gave all the execs bonuses?

E: Apparently y'all have forgotten. In 2021, Mozilla laid off a few hundred employees. CEO's salary doubled that year. Fuck Mozilla, they're no more your friends than Google or Microsoft; they're the same evil, just smaller-scaled evil, is all.

snooggums ,
@snooggums@midwest.social avatar

But they haven’t threatened to undercut ad blocking yet, so as a comparison they are better.

Imgonnatrythis ,

Absolutely, but Mozilla is pretty much owned by Google anyway, and falling in love with these companies as wide eyed fanboys never looks good when they eventually turn.

OpenStars ,
@OpenStars@discuss.online avatar

I wouldn’t say “owned”, but the rest… yeah:-(

Imgonnatrythis ,

Who provides the majority of their funding?

Sordid ,
@Sordid@lemmy.world avatar

It’s okay to like them while they do good and then change your mind when they turn evil.

timewarp ,
@timewarp@lemmy.world avatar

You forgot to also mention that they are a cult where you get attacked if you say anything negative about Mozilla.

TrickDacy ,
@TrickDacy@lemmy.world avatar

You forgot to not shill for an actual corporation

timewarp ,
@timewarp@lemmy.world avatar

I’m not shilling for anyone. If you want to discuss actual technical details I’m happy to do so. If you’re here just to share your feelings absent facts then I don’t care what you have to say.

TrickDacy ,
@TrickDacy@lemmy.world avatar

“this is way safer for users” may as well be feelings. It’s not backed up by anything but a clear boner for Google

timewarp ,
@timewarp@lemmy.world avatar

It is literally explained in the first part of the uBOL GitHub page:

github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home#description

It’s like you haven’t even done the most basic research that anyone with anything useful to say would do. Why?

beejjorgensen ,
@beejjorgensen@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

Looking around, I don’t think that’s true. Lots of bad things are freely said about Mozilla and the people running it.

parpol ,

deleted_by_author

    •
    pivot_root ,

    Chromium (Google Chrome’s base) is also open source.

    And yet, we’re still at a corporation’s mercy as to whether everything Chromium-based gets ruined by Google’s fuck-what-the-users-want policies. Like with Manifest V3. And JXL support. And extensions on mobile.

    timewarp ,
    @timewarp@lemmy.world avatar

    Users do want MV3. The people complaining about it are in the minority.

    Quill7513 ,

    Why the hell would a user want MV3?

    timewarp ,
    @timewarp@lemmy.world avatar

    Because it makes a majority of users that use Chrome much safer. Do you do any basic research? Do you need me to point you to the getting started guide?

    Quill7513 ,

    It doesn’t though. An adblocker is your VERY most important tool in a good security posture. Googles playing any users who ask for MV3 for fools

    Jarix ,

    The average user is and always will be an ignorant and careless user. And they are the majority. As in over 50%

    halcyoncmdr ,
    @halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world avatar

    Users don’t know what the fuck Manifest is period. They just click the internet button. And for the longest time that meant the E with a loop around it. Now that means the multicolored circle.

    timewarp ,
    @timewarp@lemmy.world avatar

    Users know that they want more security. MV3 makes a major of users that use Chrome safer from malicious extensions.

    halcyoncmdr ,
    @halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world avatar

    I get what you’re saying, but the average person has no idea what it is, why they should care, or anything about it. All they see is Google making their extensions stop working. And when that includes some of the most popular extensions, that directly affect Googles revenue, they’re going to think that’s the reason.

    The overwhelming majority of users get their extensions from the Chrome Web Store… Which Google has full control over. Users expect them to be blocking almost all malicious extensions before they’re even available to download.

    z3rOR0ne , (edited )

    This. Google is pushing MV3 to single out and neuter the more robust and customizable ad blockers, like uBO. They’re trying to appease their advertising investors by force feeding ads to you and they’re plugging the leaks/workarounds savvy developers have created to block them.

    If Firefox ever gets popular enough, what do you wanna bet money bags Google, their primary monetary contributor, will put a condition on the next round of funding that they stop support for MV2?

    Stay small and crazy customizable Firefox.

    umbrella ,
    @umbrella@lemmy.ml avatar

    the minority of people complaining about it are the only ones who know what it even is

    parpol ,

    deleted_by_author

    •
    AWittyUsername ,

    Except now you have to maintain a branch that’s missing everything after that release upstream.

    parpol ,

    deleted_by_author

    •
    AWittyUsername ,

    Yeah you can probably do periodic merge or rebase etc. But then you have the fun of merge conflicts

    AWittyUsername ,

    So is Android. So is Chromium. So is React, and Flutter. So is Java.

    Open source doesn’t mean FOSS.

    bamboo ,

    Open source does mean FOSS. It doesn’t mean community-oriented.

    AWittyUsername ,

    No it doesn’t. Different licenses dictate what you can and can’t do with open source software. Some are more restrictive than others. Open source simply means that the source code is freely available.

    bamboo ,

    It absolutely does. Open source is not simply source-available, it means that it follows the open source definition. opensource.org/osd

    Boozilla ,
    @Boozilla@lemmy.world avatar

    I’m grateful for FF, but they also annoy me at times. Just little stuff probably not worth bitching about in detail. But also a peek at the potential for problems that you’re talking about.

    So of course I’ll bitch about it.

    I call it the “stop whatever you think you’d rather do right now and pay attention to our product” type shit.

    Imagine you have a combination wrench and whenever you take it out of the toolbox it starts yammering at you about how great of a wrench it is and all if its shiny features. Fucking ridiculous, right?

    So why do we tolerate software that does that?

    Way too much software does this pushy shit. Just stay outta my face and do your actual job, software.

    Blaster_M ,

    Because people have the attention span of a goldfish and if you aren’t reminding them every 5 seconds of the features they have available they’ll forget they do in fact use them and then complain to support because they can’t spend 5 seconds on the help page.

    I say this, not in defense of mozilla, but in frustration at having to deal daily with these kinds of issues. You can put giant screen-size arrows on where to go / what single “do the thing” button to press and people will still forget 5 seconds later.

    Boozilla ,
    @Boozilla@lemmy.world avatar

    Good point. That’s true, there is definitely that side of it. I think what you’re talking about is less obnoxious than the stuff that feels forced and make-the-boss-happy promotional. Push notifcations for no reason, etc. It’s a spectrum from necessary to uneccessary, and there’s too much of the latter IMO.

    Quill7513 ,

    We’re so fucking used to ads we don’t even always realize we’re getting pushed propaganda

    viking ,
    @viking@infosec.pub avatar

    Firefox is a foundation, not a corporation. And I’m already using Fennec instead of the official release.

    Imgonnatrythis ,

    No. Firefox is a product. Mozilla is a corporation AND a foundation.

    en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation

    JohnDClay ,

    Anyone else been having issues of not being able to load YouTube videos past the first few seconds on Firefox using ublock? I couldn’t find any recent information online. I don’t know if this is part of the war on ad blockers, or unrelated.

    snooggums ,
    @snooggums@midwest.social avatar

    I watched several videos today on Firefox with ublock origin and no issues. Haven’t run into issues with ads yet.

    errorlab ,

    Yeah, yesterday. I just kept refreshing. FF + unlock + not signed in, seems to trigger it

    viking ,
    @viking@infosec.pub avatar

    It’s been a side effect of the server side ads apparently, but reloading the page fixes it for me.

    TrickDacy ,
    @TrickDacy@lemmy.world avatar

    Haven’t had that issue, nope

    Matriks404 ,

    Besides the fact that Mozilla sucks, Firefox is an amazing piece of software. It’s PITA that it’s about to be enshittified.

    hal_5700X , (edited )

    Yeah, we saw this coming. When Manifest v3 first talked about.

    Google an ad company are killing ad blockers. Yeah, that sounds right.

    partial_accumen ,

    Google an ad company are killing ab blockers Chrome browsers. Yeah, that sounds right.

    FTFY

    DivineDev ,

    I wish, but I don't see it happening. Most people are just content with seeing ads absolutely everywhere, I just don't get it.

    Rolder ,

    I wouldn’t mind the basic shit like a banner here or a side bar there. But the fucking obnoxious mid page ads, auto playing videos, scam link shit can go die in a hole.

    partial_accumen ,

    I wouldn’t mind the basic shit like a banner here or a side bar there.

    Since those are semi-regularly vectors for malware now, even those are not safe to allow.

    Rampsquatch ,

    I used to not mind them, now I do. They over did it and I can’t go back. I will block ads untill I can’t and then I’ll probably climb a clock tower with an Uzi.

    I won’t really climb a clock tower with an Uzi.

    grysbok ,
    @grysbok@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

    It’s things like this that keep me using an ad blocker. I was researching when sunflowers develop their seeds, for crying out loud. Screenshot of a plug-in which has blocked ”127 ads" on this pageEdit: this was on Opera. It’s… fine.

    timewarp ,
    @timewarp@lemmy.world avatar

    MV3 doesn’t kill ad blockers. uBOL (uBlock Origin Lite) blocks ads, is by the same author and uses MV3. The issue is MV2 made it way too easy for malicious browser extensions to do bad things, like read the content of every page you visit. MV3 makes it much harder for malicious browser extensions to do these things, but makes it harder to do things like intercept network requests.

    Some of these “features” that classic uBO used are available in MV3 but requires different permissions. Some of them could also be implemented with native messaging. The main uBO author though feels slighted by Google and went on a trash talking campaign against Google, and to be fair had a few good points. Anyway, most people on social media now care more about how Chromium and Firefox makes them feel now irregardless of facts. They think their emotions somehow are the same as facts.

    partial_accumen ,

    The issue is MV2 made it way too easy for malicious browser extensions to do bad things, like read the content of every page you visit. MV3 makes it much harder for malicious browser extensions to do these things, but makes it harder to do things like intercept network requests.

    Then allow a savvy user to choose to keep MV2 mode via an opt-in control instead of depreciating years of hard work by non-malicious extension authors. uBlock Origin is, in fact, the ONLY browser extension I use in Chrome, as Firefox is my main browser.

    timewarp ,
    @timewarp@lemmy.world avatar

    I agree they should have tried to find more ways to keep the old behavior. MV3 rollout has already been delayed for a long time, and now users merely get a message. I’m not sure that the community (mostly Google contributors) won’t give in or try to find a way to keep MV2. However, what was done with MV2 can now be done with MV3 with native messaging or other network tools… I think the concern is that allowing an exception makes it much easier for a malicious extension or software to get users to agree not realizing what they’re agreeing to. Furthermore, the declarative approach is actually preferable by many. You get most of the same features without exposing all your traffic to an extension.

    TrickDacy ,
    @TrickDacy@lemmy.world avatar

    And yet the likelihood of Google publishing a malicious extension is quite low. Not sure why you’re so adamant about defending their shitty anti-adblock actions, making excuses for a mega corporation.

    timewarp , (edited )
    @timewarp@lemmy.world avatar

    Apple, Microsoft, Google, Steam, Arch Linux, NixOS, Flathub, etc. all end up publishing malicious software in their stores and package managers. It is inevitable. If you’re not worried about sandboxing then you might as well proxy all your traffic using third party software.

    TrickDacy ,
    @TrickDacy@lemmy.world avatar

    The fact that something is possible does not make it frequent or likely.

    Phoenix3875 ,

    From my understanding, MV3 kills vital features of ad-blockers in that

    1. Some filtering rules do rely on the ability to read the content of the webpage, which can’t be migrated, per the FAQ linked in the article
    2. The declarative API means an update to the rules requires an update to the plugin itself, which might get delayed by the reviewing process, causing the blocker to lag behind the tracker. It might not be able to recover as quickly as uBO in the recent YouTube catch-up round.
    timewarp ,
    @timewarp@lemmy.world avatar
    1. uBOL GitHub does a pretty good job of explaining some challenges, and some of them are better tracked in the issues.
    2. Your second point isn’t accurate though and MV3 does support dynamic rules.
    sapporo ,

    . Some of them could also be implemented with native messaging.

    Some? Or all?

    uBlockOrigin would still loose some of its features and capabilities nonetheless, even if a sub-set of them could be implemented in other ways. Not?

    tiredofsametab ,

    killing ab blockers

    I might finally get a six-pack!

    aesthelete ,

    The modern Internet is completely unusable without an ad blocker. Way to remake ie6, Google!

    Ragnarok314159 ,

    Got my boomer mom to finally install an ad blocker. She was tired of looking at a webpage, having an ad give some kind of script run error, and then it reloads back at the top. It’s a big problem on the cooking websites she goes to.

    I would rather go back to the days of shitty pop-ups you can just close. These ads are far worse, and none of them even make sense.

    dan ,
    @dan@upvote.au avatar

    the cooking websites she goes to.

    based.cooking doesn’t have everything, but it’s growing and the site is very clean.

    nossaquesapao ,

    What a really interesting initiative. I will try to contribute some things in their repo.

    Ragnarok314159 ,

    This is amazing and thank you.

    pete_the_cat ,

    Every time I turn off uBlock and reload a webpage I’m like “JFC this is eye cancer”.

    RufusFirefly ,
    @RufusFirefly@lemmy.world avatar

    Even with an ad blocker, it gets more unusable every year that goes by

    madcaesar ,

    DO YOU WANT TO ACCEPT OUR COOKIES OR CUSTOMIZE THESE BULLSHIT OPTIONS???

    RufusFirefly ,
    @RufusFirefly@lemmy.world avatar

    The only options I want are Girl Scout thin mints or peanut butter cookies

    sugar_in_your_tea ,

    Missing Samoas, those are delicious.

    nossaquesapao , (edited )

    I already know a few people who were just marginally digitally literate, and now they can’t read things like news articles and access several kinds of services anymore, unless someone helps them, because they don’t property know how to close invasive popups and solve captchas.

    The internet is literally becoming unusable for some people.

    RufusFirefly ,
    @RufusFirefly@lemmy.world avatar

    I’m in my mid 60s and know a few people that never even heard the term “browser extension” before. How they tolerate using the web with no ad blocking is beyond me.

    Mwa ,
    @Mwa@thelemmy.club avatar

    I rlly hate how some sites don’t work on Firefox

    Akareth ,

    Same. For me, the big one’s my bank that requires its users to use Chrome, else it won’t let you log in. I got around this by using an agent-switcher extension in Firefox.

    Enekk ,

    I’m showing my age, but back when IE was basically the only browser and Firefox (Firebird back then) launched, people often lamented that things didn’t work in Firefox. The solution? People used Firefox and web developers were forced to make their shit work in Firefox. When Chrome came out, suddenly we had three real options and the way to make everything work? Open Standards.

    Now, Chrome is in the position IE was back before Firefox came around. How ever will we make sure things work in Firefox??? Use Firefox. If enough people dump Google’s malware browser, the web has to go back to supporting multiple browsers through open standards.

    Mwa ,
    @Mwa@thelemmy.club avatar

    Real

    Squizzy ,

    Thing is Google’s influence on Firefox is making it a worse company and browser as AI and privacy invading features take over.

    InternetUser2012 ,

    User agent switcher. I have zero issues since using it.

    Mwa ,
    @Mwa@thelemmy.club avatar

    Gonna try later

    Retrograde ,
    @Retrograde@lemmy.world avatar

    Which sites?

    Mwa ,
    @Mwa@thelemmy.club avatar

    Snapchat

    BruceTwarzen ,

    And nothing of value was lost.

    Mwa ,
    @Mwa@thelemmy.club avatar

    I need it for one of my irl friends

    dan ,
    @dan@upvote.au avatar

    Have you reported issues for them? It’s in the menu somewhere. If Mozilla get a lot of reports for particular sites, they reach out to the webmaster and try to work with them to improve Firefox support - usually by removing proprietary Chrome-only features or by removing reliance on Chrome bugs that don’t exist in Firefox.

    You can also report the issue at webcompat.com, just search to see if it’s already been reported first.

    Mwa ,
    @Mwa@thelemmy.club avatar

    You can do that?

    dan ,
    @dan@upvote.au avatar

    Yeah. Just checked on my computer. Open the menu then click “Report broken site” near the bottom.

    Mwa ,
    @Mwa@thelemmy.club avatar

    Oh okay

    Shatpoz1288 ,

    The more people use Firefox, the more web devs will be forced to ensure their website works on Firefox.

    Mwa ,
    @Mwa@thelemmy.club avatar

    True

    jol , (edited )

    What I’m scared is publishers taking this as a reason to simply start banning Firefox and other browsers.

    tehWrapper ,
    @tehWrapper@lemmy.world avatar

    Or google to lock parts of its ecosystem behind chrome only.

    SendMePhotos ,

    Yeah but can’t you just get a thing that tells things that you’re using chrome when you’re not

    Fashim ,

    Yeah I’ve got an extension for it, it just changes the user-agent string.

    I use it on YouTube because for some totally not suspicious reason Firefox won’t play videos but when I spoof it to Chrome everything works fine.

    TJDetweiler ,
    @TJDetweiler@lemmy.ca avatar

    I’ve noticed significant YouTube quality degradation when using Firefox, but no issues with Chrome.

    Got a link for the extension by any chance?

    SendMePhotos ,

    addons.mozilla.org/…/user-agent-string-switcher/

    TJDetweiler ,
    @TJDetweiler@lemmy.ca avatar

    https://lemmy.ca/pictrs/image/957d4903-d982-4b0d-9492-dde7410a8497.gif

    dan ,
    @dan@upvote.au avatar

    User-agent is being deprecated, so it won’t work forever.

    Also note that if people keep their UA as Chrome permanently, hit counters will count them as Chrome users, and the number of Firefox users will go down.

    SendMePhotos ,

    What is that relevant to? Genuinely curious.

    dan ,
    @dan@upvote.au avatar

    The comment I replied to was mentioning user-agent. User-agent is being deprecated (replaced by client hints) so changing the user agent will eventually stop working.

    At the moment, the stats for browser usage rely on user agent as recorded by stats software used by various sites, so if you make Firefox pretend to be Chrome, you’ll be contributing to the Firefox user percentage going down.

    SendMePhotos ,

    Right but why is that relevant? What good or bad does a number going down do? If Firefox wanted to keep track they could just count the number of downloads right?

    dan ,
    @dan@upvote.au avatar

    The issue is that sites will have even less reason to support Firefox if the number of people using Firefox goes down.

    SendMePhotos ,

    Ah OK that makes sense. Thank you.

    jol ,

    It takes more than changing your user agent to msk which browser you use. It’s trivial to know which browser you’re really using if they really want.

    madcaesar ,

    I’m pretty sure it’s much easier to mask your browser than detect the correct browser. In the end you’re just hitting a server for data, you fully control the call that is made.

    jol ,

    There are things you can’t do with extensions alone, like change how certain JS and CSS internals work.

    dan ,
    @dan@upvote.au avatar

    Not always doable as they could be relying on non-standard features that are only in Chrome.

    Not exactly the same thing, but my employer requires us to use Chrome for all internal stuff, as they’re using Chrome Enterprise Premium as part of their endpoint security solution, and of of course that only works in Chrome.

    Maiznieks ,

    Oh, publishers don’t want my traffic? Oh, nooo…

    jol ,

    Publishers don’t care about traffic thay only costs them money.

    Jarmer ,

    There’s already plenty of business web apps that require chrome. I specifically use a business focused web app that not only requires Chrome, but ONLY CHROME ITSELF and no chromium derivatives. That’s the first time I’ve come across that. I had previously seen chrome requirements, but they worked just fine on ungoogled chromium. Not this one, nope. Regular Google Chrome and nothing else. wtf is that garbage.

    jabjoe ,
    @jabjoe@feddit.uk avatar

    You can get past these with a user agent, lying about which browser it is. However, they aren’t testing for other browsers, so their site maybe as buggy as hell. As yet Firefox doesn’t do a WINE and match Chrome, bug for bug, so sites work as intended. Google have cause IE6’s return.

    Jarmer ,

    It was indeed buggy, which was when I reached out to support. They immediately asked if I was using not Google Chrome itself, but a Chromium offshoot like Brave or Vivaldi. I was using ungoogled chromium, so they told me it won’t work. I switched to regular google chrome and it worked great. I wonder what on earth they’re using that’s part of Google Chrome that makes it work and not part of any other chromium projects.

    jabjoe ,
    @jabjoe@feddit.uk avatar

    Monoplistic web hell scape.

    WhatYouNeed ,

    An ecom site decides to block 5% of web traffic and potential sales?

    Now tell the marketing team you are turning away 1 in 20 potential customers because (well, not really sure why) and see what they have to say.

    angelmountain ,

    Let this be my warning to Google that I will never go back to their browser when they do. Challas! ✌️

    Summzashi ,

    I reckon they’re absolutely shaking with fear by your warning.

    WhatYouNeed ,

    I am user. Hear me roar!

    ohlaph ,

    Google Chrome is about to be disabled? Got it.

    cupcakezealot ,
    @cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

    meanwhile firefox lists it as recommended and also lets you use it on firefox mobile.

    LostXOR ,

    Almost as if a browser company that's not also an advertising company has no reason to fight ad blockers.

    hollyberries ,

    I’ve got some bad news for you. Mozilla bought an ad company.

    DragonTypeWyvern ,

    And my nerd bros try to get me to donate

    endofline ,

    You can always fork firefox. People used to use website not requiring javascript at all and it worked well. Some people still use even w3m f.e. when graphics card driver goes bad after update and they need to watch some docs on the internet. Most current browser have most features you would ever need

    SpaceCadet ,
    @SpaceCadet@feddit.nl avatar

    You can always fork firefox

    You could fork Chromium too.

    hollyberries ,

    Forking is indeed the way forward when Mozilla loses its way a little more. For myself, I switched to Librewolf about 6 months ago, along with replacing Thunderbird with Betterbird after using it since the Phoenix days.

    I cannot remember what prompted the move to Librewolf, it may have been the AI stuff they were pushing at the time, or possibly the update that forced the tabs into my titlebar without having to go into about:config to fix it. Or the fact that Firefox was constantly pushing me to sign up for an account. There were quite a few gripes that added up over time lol

    Betterbird restored some removed things I liked pre-supernova as well as a native systray icon under Linux and that was enough motivation to make the switch.

    It is time for a new browser to enter the market. Either Ladybird or something built with Servo seems likely.

    cupcakezealot , (edited )
    @cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

    i mean they bought a privacy preserving ad company to offer an alternative for companies to google, which is what they should be doing.

    because like it or not people depend on ads for their sites.

    NostraDavid ,
    @NostraDavid@programming.dev avatar

    Wait until people find out you can make the government ban ads - euronews.com/…/grenoble-europe-s-first-ad-free-ci…

    I like their future (so far).

    Railcar8095 ,

    Ban billboards. Very different. And are there ones owned by the city.

    Honestly, not a huge win.

    danafest ,

    Banning billboards is actually pretty huge. I live in Maine where billboards are banned and the mental break from being constantly forcibly advertised to is so nice. Every time I travel anywhere else I realize what a huge difference it makes.

    x00z ,
    @x00z@lemmy.world avatar

    Sadly that news isn’t how it is right now. Picking a random spot in Grenoble using Google maps and searching for the first tram station, I find 6+ billboards.

    Blackmist ,

    It has made mobile browsing usable again for me.

    jo3shmoo ,

    Same. Firefox Mobile had been a laggy mess when I used it a few years ago, but a combination of some really aggressive advertising and the announcement of manifest v3 caused me to give it another shot about a year ago. It’s a dramatic improvement in phone browsing.

    FangedWyvern42 ,
    @FangedWyvern42@lemmy.world avatar

    🖕

    occhionaut ,

    🖕🖕

    backup has arrived

    sugar_in_your_tea ,

    🖕🖕🖕

    Hmm, not sure how I managed that…

    hamburgers ,

    Eww

    CoffeeJunkie ,

    …Oh, no! Anyway. Just giving people one more reason to finally make the switch to Firefox or something different.

    Google Chrome warns about disabling uBlock Origin. I warn Google Chrome that they’re being a little bitch & they’re going to lose users.

    Tja ,

    Oh no, they are about to lose the $0 that uBlock origin users bring!

    They know they will lose users and they don’t care. They will make much more per user selling ads than before. Google is an ad company. They’re not a browser company, or a mobile OS company, or an office suite company. It’s all about ads.

    Olgratin_Magmatoe ,

    Not necessarily. They still get money from selling user data. So they likely still care about losing users who use adblocking to at least some degree.

    CasualPenguin ,

    Good point, but also it’s not that they will lose all of the user data they sell if people switch off Chrome, just the parts that chrome collects.

    If they were blocking ublock users from accessing any google products then it would be purely a ‘we only care about ad revenue’

    It would be very interesting to see the internal data they use to make these decisions, but also knowing tech these decisions were probably made by a series of mid level managers sufficiently sucking the air out of the room until a critical mass was hit to make this happen

    Olgratin_Magmatoe ,

    They absolutely also get data through means other than their browser. But they data they get off of the browser directly is probably a shit load.

    but also knowing tech these decisions were probably made by a series of mid level managers sufficiently sucking the air out of the room until a critical mass was hit to make this happen

    1000%

    I’m sure a bunch of bean counters were involved as well.

    person420 ,

    Google doesn’t sell user data, they sell user eyeballs. There’s no incentive for Google to sell user data since they’re an ad company and the only people who would buy the data are competitors.

    Olgratin_Magmatoe , (edited )

    Maybe you’re right, I don’t have any certainty in this. But I don’t buy google’s word on this for a second.

    www.cnn.com/2023/07/11/tech/…/index.html

    tampabay.com/…/google-selling-users-personal-data…

    mercurynews.com/…/google-selling-users-personal-d…

    Corpos like to lie, and their promises to not sell data is worthless. Even if they’re not outright selling data directly, or “anonymizing it” before selling it, at a bare minimum they’re still abusing the hoard of data they have to make a buck. They want that data and get large amounts of it through people’s broswers, even with adblockers installed.

    person420 ,

    Your first link talks about Google consuming data for its AI

    Your next two links (which are talking about the same thing) talks about how other companies are abusing Google’s adbid system to try and collect correlated data against their own.

    Love it or hate it, Google has been pretty transparent that they use your data for advertising, but nothing there talks about Google selling your data to third parties.

    snugglesthefalse ,

    They also gain people spreading word of mouth advice to never use chrome

    Tja ,

    If you also spread the word about uBlock, same rule applies.

    linearchaos ,
    @linearchaos@lemmy.world avatar

    I honestly can’t wait to see how this plays out. Only Chrome, chromium and edge in their pure forms have dedicated to doing this. Most of the Chrome forks have said they’re going to fork and keep it running. It’s certainly going to give Firefox a shot in the arm, but there’s no lack of other competition either.

    olympicyes ,

    It’s probably 95% of windows users then who are affected by this.

    linearchaos ,
    @linearchaos@lemmy.world avatar

    Oh yeah easily.

    OhmsLawn ,

    Especially those at work who can’t install their own software.

    Scrollone ,

    I don’t know how long the forks will be able to backport new features to their forked codebase.

    I think the only sensible solution is to just switch to Firefox.

    ipkpjersi ,

    Eventually Firefox will switch to V3 anyway so it’s kind of just delaying the inevitable.

    It sucks that this is the future of the Internet.

    mint_tamas ,

    Manifest v3 is already supported in Firefox (they must support it to keep the extension ecosystem alive), but they implemented it without the user-hostile restrictions.

    ipkpjersi ,

    Oh, I wasn’t aware of that, I thought the user-hostile restrictions were inherent to Manifest v3 and they were unavoidable.

    Okay, maybe just maybe Firefox squeaks by unharmed then.

    edit: I literally just had someone else tell me just now that “It’s not something that can be worked around. It’s specifically a design feature of manifest v3 to restrict these types of things.”

    So which is it? I’m kind of getting mixed signals here.

    edit 2: Oh, it sounds like Google has additional arbitrary restrictions on content blocking functionality, beyond what Manifest V3 itself has.

    irish_link ,

    Glad I have firefox as well but also looking forward to a cool new project called Ladybird. ladybird.org

    Not sure if its the right one but glad there are more projects out there trying to jump into the game. (I know extensions are a long way off for it but i see it as hope.)

    Also please consider running pihole or adguard home. Or any other full home DNS add blocker. It will help.

    Jarmer ,

    Ladybird looks great! Very much looking forward to an alpha linux release so I can use it and give all kind of feedback.

    itsnotits ,

    if it’s* the right one

    AceTKen ,
    @AceTKen@lemmy.ca avatar

    Looks like what I’d want to use, but to reach broad support it needs a Windows client as well.

    art ,
    @art@lemmy.world avatar

    They started putting ads in Windows, a few users switched, but most still continue Windows.

    Google will roll this out and a few users will switch, but most will just keep using Chrome.

    We’ve already established that most users don’t seem to care.

    StormWalker ,

    I am one that switched. I have Linux Mint which I use 99.9% of the time, and a windows 10 laptop that I use 0.1% for that one windows program.

    I think more people are wanting to get out of the grip that google, apple, and Microsoft have over them. Many are overwhelmed because they are in so deep. It took me months to get out, which I did about 6 years ago. I never looked back though. I know people that want out, but are not strong enough to commit to switching all their services and apps.

    trafficnab ,

    Seeing that half of my extensions (it was seriously like 10 of them) were going to be disabled is what pushed me to finally switch to Firefox because if I have to find alternatives to them it might as well be on another browser

    pete_the_cat ,

    The reason for this is because switching from Windows to Linux is a lot bigger change, requiring a fair amount of technical know-how, and even knowing that Linux exists in the first place. Swapping browsers is easy in the technical sense, it’s breaking the habit that’s the hard part, but if they piss people off enough all it takes is uninstalling it in order to break the habit, not a drastic paradigm shift. I’m a long time Chrome user, like over a decade and with the recent “unverified download” nonsense unless you enable their invasive tracking has put me over the edge. I had both the Chrome and Firefox icons pinned to the taskbar and just out of habit kept clicking it, I finally removed it last week

    golden_zealot , (edited )
    @golden_zealot@lemmy.ml avatar

    I’m not so sure about that. Windows despite its ads is still generally usable or at least readable, but adblockers affect almost every website, and in a much more extreme way, without which renders some websites virtually unusable. As someone else said, installing another browser is also far easier than taking backups, installing an entirely new OS, implementing your backups, and learning an entire new OS which may not readily support the software you have licensed from windows for most users.

    Users care a lot about convenience. I expect that they weigh installing and learning linux etc as less convenient than the ads in windows which is why they would not switch, but I expect when it comes to this case, they would weigh installing a different browser with adblock as much more convenient than using the internet with ads on every single website.

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