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.

TheFeatureCreature ,
@TheFeatureCreature@lemmy.world avatar

Meh. They had plenty of time to move to Firefox but they ignored all the warnings.

Ghostalmedia ,
@Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world avatar

It’s not like they contracted some sort of terminal illness. Anyone can migrate whenever. It’s not hard.

tal ,
@tal@lemmy.today avatar

I believe that some organizations restrict what applications can be installed on work computers, so that might not necessarily be true, at least for work machines.

mp3 ,
@mp3@lemmy.ca avatar

One more vector of malware for these corporate systems. Sucks for them I suppose.

acosmichippo ,
@acosmichippo@lemmy.world avatar

if they’re restricting apps to that degree you probably can’t install extensions anyway.

datendefekt ,
@datendefekt@lemmy.ml avatar

My organization has blocked all browsers other than Edge and Chrome - and has also blocked all plugins except for UBlock. For security reasons, of course.

floofloof , (edited )

Everyone knows seeing a bunch of uncontrolled JavaScript-powered ads from who knows what server is good for security.

AlternateRoute ,

For all the firefox fans out there it might be good to note there have consistently been more Safari users than Firefox users since 2014. Hell Safari has been the number two browser by market share since 2015.

Browsers have to get very SHITTY or a new browser has to have a killer app to unseat a dominate one.

gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share#monthly-2…

megopie ,

I don’t think safari is even remotely comparable given that it’s a default browser on macs.

sensiblepuffin ,
@sensiblepuffin@lemmy.world avatar

Also, I’m pretty sure it’s not possible to install any other browser on iPhones unless you get root.

Edit: It looks like you can with iOS 15.0

fuckwit_mcbumcrumble ,

Those are all just skins on safari. Until like 6 months ago you couldn’t install any web browser with a renderer other than safari. And that’s only in the EU.

JimmyMcGill ,

I’ve had iPhone for years and I can’t remember the last time I didn’t use chrome with it

Never rooted my phones either. It’s definitely not blocked

megopie ,

As I understand it, any browser on iPhone has to be built on WebKit, so even if you install fire fox or chrome, it’s running on a totally different web engine than the desktop version. Making them more safari re-skins in the same way that stuff like brave or opera are just chrome reskins.

AlternateRoute ,

How so ? The default browser on Windows is Edge, people keep installing Chrome? Chrome is available on MacOS, yet people stick with Safari?

megopie ,

some people stick with safari, but no one is replacing chrome, fire fox, or edge with safari. People choose to replace edge because it is obtrusive and annoying to use, safari isn’t.

In that context, safari is not a competitor for Firefox in the same way chrome is. It’s comparing apples to oranges.

TheGrandNagus ,

Almost like being the default gives you an unfair advantage or something.

emb ,

And I mean, there’s still time now. Switching browsers isn’t that bad. Export+import some bookmarks and adjust some settings, good to go.

I think FF has been a good option for a while. But the second best time is now. I can totally get it if people didn’t want to switch until they had more of a concrete problem.

WalrusDragonOnABike ,

FF still hasn’t brought back a tab group API for extensions or native tab groups. Extensions can only do so much given what they have to work with. I still use FF on the side, but it simply isn’t a practical as a primary browser for me currently.

But for casual users, many probably have never even touched their browser settings.

_pete_ ,

Tab groups are coming but in the mean time containers work well enough for me with the added benefit that they’ll also block tracking from the sites that are within them.

emb ,

Understandable, I’m really looking forward to FF getting tab groups too. I don’t know why such a nice feature was left unimplemented for so long. 🫤

shortwavesurfer ,

Firefox downloads a spike by 30 million. Will be the next headline.

Lost_My_Mind ,

Followed by shocked pikachu face.

Potatisen ,

One would hope but nothing much will change in reality.

Ghostalmedia ,
@Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world avatar

Although searches for Firefox only ticked up slightly.

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/10ef1352-bf91-4436-8df4-af3659d39344.jpeg

TheBigBrother ,

I’m using brave so who cares…

Potatisen ,

Wasn’t it revealed a while ago that Brave was just a big crypto scam?

Also, it’s chromium so… You’re getting V3 eventually.

TheBigBrother , (edited )

I have years using it and I have never been crypto scammed for it, about the V3 I truly don’t know apparently you will still be able to turn on some V2 extensions like ublock origin but I didn’t see the point of it if the browser include a good adblocker anyway.

Engywuck , (edited )

Same. The adblocker in Brave is great, its been ages since I ditched uBo and I’ve still to see a single ad. Built-in adblockers are good, because Google has no power there. Firefox, instead, its still a thing exclusively because of uBO i.e., the work of an external, unpaid developer. The say uBO disappears, is the day FF dies. Mozilla is so busy wasting time and money on unrelated stuff and huge CEO paychechs that they have had no the time to add and inbuilt advlocker to FF, which instead has useless crap such as Pockets and an opt-out ad-measurement tool which nobody asked for.

Ilandar ,

Wasn’t it revealed a while ago that Brave was just a big crypto scam?

Revealed by who? Where? Brave definitely has some unsavoury connections to cryptocurrency but calling the entire project “just a big crypto scam” sounds like a massive exaggeration of the problem.

nokturne213 ,

Brave was found to be injecting their affiliate links for crypto.

blog.drhack.net/brave-browser-injecting-crypto-re…

theverge.com/…/brave-browser-affiliate-links-cryp…

cpomagazine.com/…/brave-privacy-browser-caught-au…

Ilandar ,

Yes, that’s what I was referring to. A very far cry from “just a big crypto scam”.

TheBigBrother ,

IDK why you waste time explaining these kind of things to these kind of people mate, I mean someone who define that as a “big crypto scam” doesn’t even know what’s a big crypto scam.

TheGrandNagus , (edited )
  • pushing crypto on users
  • injecting crypto affiliate links
  • installing other Brave software without permission on your PC when you install their browser
  • an obscenely high marketing budget that misled people about data collection on Brave
  • a CEO that was fired from Mozilla for being openly homophobic and donating money to a campaign that wanted to undo the legalisation of same-sex marriage (although some users may view this as a good thing)
masterspace , (edited )

Stop using Chrome, it is adware at this point. Use Firefox or if that’s too different, use Brave or Edge or a different chromium offshoot that isn’t going to support manifest v3.

zewm ,
@zewm@lemmy.world avatar

Weird that you tell people not to use Chrome because it’s adware but suggest Brave which is a crypto miner.

WalrusDragonOnABike ,

Brave has built-in wallet support and such, but I don’t think it does any mining, does it? It just has its own opt-in ad system to pays out in crypto and is also owned by a turd.

Peffse ,

I dumped Brave when it decided to install its VPN as a service without my consent. I had so much trouble ripping out all the traces of that.

TheGrandNagus ,

I completely forgot about that. Yeah, it’s fucked.

Imagine if you bought a Microsoft game, say Forza, and it installed a bunch of candy crush games alongside it without asking you.

It’s scummy as fuck.

floofloof ,

Vivaldi is similar but nicer.

Tywele ,

Being owned by a turd is reason enough not to use it.

Engywuck ,

False. Try again.

masterspace ,

Man I just tried to throw out a Chromium fork that didn’t use Manifest v3, I didn’t realize Brave went off the deep end. Personally I use Firefox and Edge when I need to use Chromium and for work just because I find it’s dev tools nicer.

TheFunkyMonk ,
@TheFunkyMonk@lemmy.world avatar

Used Chrome forever, switched to Firefox back when this stuff first started going down. No ragerts.

zer0squar3d ,

No Rugrats!

WalrusDragonOnABike ,

I just listened to a rugrats song yesterday though.

kratoz29 ,
@kratoz29@lemm.ee avatar

Which one?

WalrusDragonOnABike ,

You’re a friend to me.

Iapar ,

https://feddit.org/pictrs/image/0f9629db-0de6-4e4c-81f1-3b746434bed8.png

catloaf ,

This headline is premature. They haven’t pulled the plug yet. I still have Chrome installed, fully updated, and all the extensions are still there.

cupcakezealot ,
@cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

and also ublock origin lite is still in the app store and works fine.

mp3 ,
@mp3@lemmy.ca avatar

I glanced at it and from a quick look I didn’t see any way of adding custom blocklists.

kirk781 ,
@kirk781@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

uBlock Origin Lite is a Manifest v3 compatible extension and was intended to be the successor of uBlock Origin on Chromium based browsers.

However, it is not at feature parity(and will likely never be due to restrictions in Manifest v3). One restriction is no element picking on websites and then adding them to custom filters.

Czeron ,
@Czeron@lemmy.world avatar

Which is pretty crazy because I believe that’s about to be a built-in feature of a new Safari update.

cupcakezealot ,
@cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

but for 90% of people, it’ll be fine

Teknikal ,
@Teknikal@eviltoast.org avatar

I’ve used Librewolf since the first time Google announced these kinda plans I’m thinking it must be at least 3 years now.

Theres tons of options Librewolf is overkill to be honest Firefox would be fine.

mke , (edited )

I think some people overestimate how many will migrate to Firefox in the near future over this.

  • High switching cost compared to finding another extension (e.g. uBO Lite), even if the resulting experience is worse.
  • Just as many Firefox users like Firefox, lots of Chrome users enjoy what they have too. They don’t want to lose that.
  • The kind of tech-aware person who’d switch over this is much more likely to have seen the news months ago and taken action already.

As fun as it is to imagine an Adpocalypse shocking the masses and pushing them to try out alternatives to big tech, it’s also way too optimistic, I feel.

downpunxx ,

I haven't watched a single YouTube advertisement in 5 years

Dagamant ,

I’ve been on Firefox since manifest v3 was announced. Firefox has its own shortcomings but no dealbreakers.

thanks_shakey_snake ,

What are some shortcomings in your view?

saltesc ,

I don’t like the lack of customisability. I’ve been using Vivaldi for a long time now and nothing comes close to how customisable and feature-packed it is. Everything can be set up and tweaked exactly how I want. My version of Vivaldi would look, feel, and act entirely different to someone else’s, because it does what I want, not the other way around.

Unfortunately, it’s Chromium-based. But the developers have been working on its native ad blocker in case extensions are impacted. They’re quite a brilliant bunch, so I’m hoping it all goes smooth. I really don’t want to have to go back to Firefox if I can help it. I can’t stand UX for the masses and these guys get it.

Ilandar ,

Yeah, same with people here declaring the death of reddit, or Twitter, or any of these massive, mainstream services. People in bubbles (and Lemmy is definitely a bubble) always seem to underestimate how little everyone else cares or even knows about the things that are important to them. The service needs to be extremely bad in a user experience way, not an ethical way, for an extended period of time and there needs to be a big social movement where lots of people migrate to a direct and equivalent competitor within a short space of time. Most people will not do it on their own, they will wait until they see their peers doing it and only then can a migration start to snowball.

TheGrandNagus ,

“Netflix will die when they ban account sharing!!” - Reddit/Lemmy/Techtubers

Netflix actually went on to have a massive jump in revenue, because most normal people can’t be arsed to set up a Plex/Emby/Jellyfin server and buy a shitload of storage.

helenslunch ,
@helenslunch@feddit.nl avatar

If large numbers of people were going to switch browsers over an ad-blocking extension, the whole advertising industry would be significantly less successful than it is.

WalrusDragonOnABike ,

There’s also other chromium browsers with built-in ad-blocking that still work AFAIK. If all extensions and forked brower’s ad-blockers stopped working, I think there would probably be a surge in firefox usage (even if there’s not that much change in chromium usage).

kautau ,

Yeah I use Vivaldi as my daily driver and love it. There’s built in ad blocking but it’s not as good as the extension. If the extension stops working there I’ll switch to Firefox in a heartbeat though

floofloof ,

As a supporter of Firefox and FOSS, the closed-source, Chromium-based Vivaldi is my guilty pleasure. It has the best UI experience I’ve found on a browser, and the company behind it doesn’t seem to be very evil.

kautau ,

Yeah the founders are ex-Opera devs who left after the company was acquired by Qihoo 360, and the power user UI features are leagues ahead of other browsers I’ve tried. I wish Firefox developer edition would embrace of a philosophy of a more customizable UI centered around power users

mke , (edited )

Leaving Vivaldi was a sad moment for me. That UI, that sidebar, the settings, those features…! Goodness. I’m an avid enjoyer of bells and whistles, and Vivaldi’s got all of them and then some. I miss that a bit.

The folks working on it seem great, check their blog for their decision track record 1 2 3. Did you know they also host a mastodon instance? Literally my only issue with it is the engine, and that just so unluckily happens to be a deal breaker.

WalrusDragonOnABike ,

Vivaldi is cool. I installed it (for those who wanted a chromium browser) and FF on all the work computers where I work. Eventually uninstalled it because people started playing Vivaldia. Disabled Edge, so now they are FF only.

avatar ,

Is there any other browser that does a right-side vertical tab bar with compact tabs?

There’s an extension for Firefox to do it, but it’s a bit clunkier than Vivaldi’s - definitely something I’d only switch to if I really had to… but every other browser I’ve seen only offers left-side vertical tabs at best, which is terrible if you want 3 monitors in a left-to-right layout with your browser on the left.

Morphit ,
@Morphit@feddit.uk avatar

I think what you want is in Firefox nightly right now: …mozilla.org/…/firefox-sidebar-and-vertical-tabs-…

That expands and compacts based on the sidebar state and can be flipped to the right side of the window in the ‘customise sidebar’ settings.

paraphrand ,

And then there are Safari users who are watching from the sidelines.

mrvictory1 ,

1 year ago I had basically free Spotify Premium because Safari was unable to play ads. That’s a kind of ad blocking.

paraphrand ,

And you ran zero ad blockers in Safari and on your network?

mrvictory1 ,

No ad blocker. This bug started to break song playback on Safari (according to Spotify’s forums, I faced no such problem) and then it was fixed so I got ads.

moonburster ,

My friends will stick to chrome, I switched to Firefox months ago. You’re right

ahto ,

Not to mention all the people who don’t even have an adblocker and for some reason don’t seem to care that their web browsing is infested with ads.

mke ,

A lot of people don’t even know it’s an option, or have grown to believe that’s just how the web is. When was the last time you saw adblockers in mainstream media or news?

This is why I think it’s so important to keep raising awareness. If you have people in your life who you believe would be better off using uBlock, consider bringing it up when you have the opportunity.

floofloof ,

Hopefully it will give Firefox a bit of a boost anyway. Firefox needs a boost.

cmhe ,
  • Just as some Firefox users like Firefox, many Chrome users enjoy what they have too. They don’t want to lose that.

Do you have some source for that? IIUC, you mean that more Chrome users like Chrome than Firefox users like Firefox, right?

mke ,

No. I simply meant that there exist Chrome users who appreciate what it provides them (features, UI, etc), so for these users to leave they’d have to give up those things. That’s always a hard ask.

Default_Defect ,
@Default_Defect@midwest.social avatar

“Some people like things.”

SOURCE?!

cmhe , (edited )

“Some firefox users like firefox” vs “many chrome users enjoy what they have” sounds to me like something that could have a source. Many sound to me more than some, so this is a comparison, which can be given a better foundation by supplying some numbers.

mke ,

I thought that might’ve been the source of your misunderstanding. Sorry, that’s just how I write sometimes, no deeper meaning intended. As far as I know there’s no public data on what percentage of Firefox and Chrome users like their browsers’ features.

Gestrid ,

High switching cost compared to finding another extension (e.g. uBO Lite), even if the resulting experience is worse.

You’re not wrong about the high switching cost.

Switching from Chrome to Vivaldi (because of Chrome’s whole FLoC thing) to Brave (because I didn’t like Vivaldi’s layout) to Firefox (because of Brave’s whole thing) was a pain.

And I don’t mean as a whole. Taking the time each time to change from one browser to another was always a pain. Transferring bookmarks and passwords was easy (Chrome and Firefox are at least compatible in that regard), but transferring extension settings was a whole different beast.

Some extensions had cloud sync support. Others had local export support. Some didn’t have either kind, and I’d have to manually copy the settings from one browser over to the other. And that’s not even getting into finding replacements for the Chrome-exclusive extensions (of which there were only a few, thankfully).

mke , (edited )

(because of Brave’s whole thing)

Ha.

I’m sorry to hear that, been there (Chrome, Opera, Vivaldi, Firefox in my case). Hopefully we can stick around for a while.

OriginalUsername7 ,

The uBlock Origin chrome extension has had 34 million users. Chrome has 3.45 billion users.

Even if every uBlock user switched, it’s less than 1% of chrome users.

mke , (edited )

Yeah, I thought about mentioning that. But the comparison goes both ways. Less than 1% of Chrome users switching to Firefox could still mean an increase in Firefox users of over 10%, if I remember my numbers correctly. That’d be a sweet boost for most products.

OriginalUsername7 ,

Ya, it’d still be huge for Firefox, but what I’m really getting at is that even with this change, Chrome is going nowhere. They’re the big fish, they can afford to make these kinds of changes, because the people who care are a very small minority.

Huschke ,

To be fair, nerds will tell their tech-illiterate friends about this change and probably influence them enough to consider it. Especially when it’s something as easy as downloading an application.

It’s much easier to switch a browser then it is to stop using Google, Facebook, etc.

Capricorn_Geriatric ,

Depends on their methodology. Sure, a huge proportion of those are users who haven’t heard of uBO, but we’re forgetting a lot of caveats:

  1. Electron exists and lots of apps are built on top of it and identify as “Chrome”. Judging by the numbers most have been weeded out, but some edge cases do visit more sites so they end up in the count.
  2. A lot of workplaces mandate the browser, which is often Chrome. This also gets counted.
  3. A not insignificant amount of Firefox users change their useragent to Chrome.

All of these skew the numbers towards Chrome. Some Chrome users use a different adblocker which lowers the uBO statistic.

experbia ,
@experbia@lemmy.world avatar

I agree folks are overestimating how many will switch. but also maybe you’re underestimating too - a lot of browser installations are managed by the “family tech guy”. the father, mother, brother, sister, aunt or uncle who sets up everyone’s new laptops on Christmas and has the suggestions when you look for a new phone. we all know the type. a lot of us are the type.

setting up granny’s laptop? I’ll install whatever browser lets me automatically block the most “1000th visitor!” banner ads and change the desktop icon to the old AOL icon because that’s all she knows the internet as. she doesn’t know of care about the browser options so it’s up to me. Chrome used to be fast and simple so it was the right choice. Firefox has caught up a fair bit on UX simplicity and speed and now offers better blocking and general security, so it just stole the crown for these installations imo. I trust it more to not let her mess the computer up, so even if I’m not using it as my main personal browser, it gets use here.

mke ,

For what it’s worth, I hope you’re right.

scarabic ,

I think probably the single most important thing that nobody is saying is that Google have ALL the numbers on this decision and they are not stupid, so it would be silly to assume this will work against their interests. Not only do they know how many people use chrome, their ad network gives them insight into ALL browsers.

stoy ,

“intrusive ads” are the least of the problems, an adblocker is a critical part of any computer’s security suite.

The internet advertisement companies wont police their ads from maleware, and untill they accept criminal and financial responsibillity when their ads cause harm to the users being served compromised ads from their networks, I won’t even consider disabling my adblocker

metaStatic ,

as long as data caps exist anywhere on the planet all internet advertisement is theft.

stoy ,

I see your point but disagree with your hard take.

Lemmy80085 ,

Unpopular opinion: the less people use ad block, the better the experience of those using ad blockers.

Remember the days before ad block detection and nag?

Hedup ,

In case anyone here needs this

support.mozilla.org/…/switching-chrome-firefox

Maeve ,

Is ublock origin still operable for YouTube? Could this be related?

Ilandar ,

The blocking of YouTube ads is related to the decision to limit ad-blocking in Chrome, yes.

maegul ,
@maegul@lemmy.ml avatar

So … can we like finally dismiss Google Chrome as the obviously awful idea it is and which should never have made it this far and remind all of the web devs married to it that they’re doing bad things and are the reason why we can’t have nice things?

Hmmm … a web browser owned by a monopolistic advertising company … how could that possibly go wrong!!!

XKCD Comic depicting a conversation between someone who send an essay in dot doc, MS Word format, and another trying to convince them to use open source alternatives. The first person is abusively unconvinced, doesn’t care about ensuring we have good software infrastructure and dismisses the open source advocate as smug and “probably autistic”. In the final pane, the first person runs to the open-source-advocate second person panicking about facebook taking over everyone’s social lives and doing evil things with it, in response to which the second person simply plays their “world’s tiniest open source violin” as a clear "i told you so gesture"

Eyron , (edited )

Do you remember the Internet Explorer days? This, unfortunately, is still much better.

Pretty good reason to switch the Firefox, now. Nearly everything will work, unlike the Internet Explorer days.

  • Firefox User
ayyy ,

Stallman was right.

mannycalavera ,
@mannycalavera@feddit.uk avatar

It’s pronounced GNU Stallman.

erwan ,

Too bad he spent all his energy getting Linux users to say GNU/Linux instead of talking about the real issues

octopus_ink ,

Just because that’s all you ever listened to doesn’t mean that’s all he ever said.

RageAgainstTheRich ,

I can’t listen or look at this man anymore after seeing him scrape shit off his feet and eat it in front of a bunch of people. 🤢

TheGrandNagus , (edited )

He has went on record multiple times saying having sex with children (even within the family) or family pets is fine. Eating his foot gunk is the least of my issues with him.

That said, when it comes to warning about software, he was pretty bang-on.

mikegioia ,
@mikegioia@lemmy.ml avatar

Post the link to him saying that having sex with children is okay

TheGrandNagus , (edited )

It’s pretty well-known at this point, I thought? Regardless:

“The nominee is quoted as saying that if the choice of a sexual partner were protected by the Constitution, ‘prostitution, adultery, necrophilia, bestiality, possession of child pornography, and even incest and pedophilia’ also would be. He is probably mistaken, legally–but that is unfortunate. All of these acts should be legal as long as no one is coerced. They are illegal only because of prejudice and narrowmindedness.”

RMS on June 28th, 2003

"I am skeptical of the claim that voluntarily pedophilia harms children. The arguments that it causes harm seem to be based on cases which aren’t voluntary, which are then stretched by parents who are horrified by the idea that their little baby is maturing. "

RMS on June 5th, 2006

"There is little evidence to justify the widespread assumption that willing participation in pedophilia hurts children.

RMS on Jan 4th, 2013

You can find these on Stallman’s blog, which I believe is Stallman.org iirc. Just go to the dates I provided.

ChickenLadyLovesLife ,

Yeah, necrophilia is fine as long as both parties are consenting.

14th_cylon ,

When one of the parties objects, that is when the fun starts :D

mikegioia ,
@mikegioia@lemmy.ml avatar

I cannot find any of this on his blog, why didn’t you just link to his blog?

TheGrandNagus , (edited )

I did link to his blog… It’s stallman.org

I said from there you can go to the dates I provided.

I don’t wish to be rude, but do you really need this hand-holding? It took me less than 10 seconds to find a specific link to the first quote, for example:

stallman.org/archives/2003-mar-jun.html

Did you really look?

Stallman being pro-paedophila is not new information.

mikegioia ,
@mikegioia@lemmy.ml avatar

You pasted the domain not an actual blog post link. And you’re the one making these claims about him on a forum, does it really surprise you when someone asks for the source? Sorry you had to google something.

TheGrandNagus , (edited )

I gave a link to the source, his blog, and gave instructions on how to find each statement. I even gave timestamps.

I gave you the source as soon as you asked. The source is Stallman’s blog, stallman.org.

Apology accepted, don’t worry about it. You just came across as a bit of a sealion, that’s all.

Anyway, the point is, yes, Stallman has been a repeated defender of paedophilia and having sex with family pets.

Personally for me that’s a mark against him. But that’s just my opinion, a lot of people in the Linux don’t really mind.

14th_cylon ,

Sod off, sealion

jaemo ,

You were the one looking for proof? Then you do the googling.

That is how this shit works, genius.

AstralPath ,

You’ve got the burden of proof backwards, pal.

WldFyre ,

Online discussions aren’t formal debates, bud.

jaemo ,

Lucky this isn’t a court of law, buddy.

mikegioia ,
@mikegioia@lemmy.ml avatar

This makes no sense. This person made a claim and I asked what the source was. Shouldn’t they know where their own comment came from?

jaemo ,

Mike, you came at this person twice. He gave you a url and since you’re on Lemmy we assume you’re at least halfway internat savvy.

In my shoes I’d have at least put in a few minutes of effort to look for the information on that site. Or even a general search. ANYTHING to evince my capability for critical thought.

You were given 99% more than most are in this type of exchange and still lazily demanded more. You didn’t just ask and you weren’t all that polite. I found it lazy. That you appear to feel a keen need to have the last word in this type of situation is also worth a bit of reflection.

TheGrandNagus , (edited )

You calmed down? You agree he supports paedophilia, yes? The evidence is right there. I provided sources for you a bunch of times.

TheGrandNagus ,

I’m sorry I hurt your feelings. But I’ll take that downvote and no reply as a “yes, you were right. Stallman is a disgusting supporter of child rape and bestiality”.

Perhaps you can learn from this. Celebrity worship is bad. It blinds you to the faults of people. Stallman doesn’t deserve your simping.

namingthingsiseasy ,

How is it that you’re so well-versed in all of Stallman’s negative quotes (from over a decade ago), yet conveniently omitted the fact that he later retracted those statements?

On September 16, 2019, Stallman announced his resignation from both MIT and FSF, “due to pressure on MIT and me over a series of misunderstandings and mischaracterizations”.[124] In a post on his website, Stallman asserted that his posts to the email lists were not to defend Epstein, stating "Nothing could be further from the truth. I’ve called him a ‘serial rapist’, and said he deserved to be imprisoned. But many people now believe I defended him—and other inaccurate claims—and feel a real hurt because of what they believe I said.

The FSF board on April 12 made a statement re-affirming its decision to bring back Richard Stallman.[133] Following this, Stallman issued a statement explaining his poor social skills and apologizing.[134]

Evilcoleslaw ,

Those issues are ones that it’s hard to just walk back with a mea culpa, especially when the apology comes precisely when it starts to impact your career.

TheGrandNagus , (edited )

Stallman spends decades publicly-championing adult-child sexual relations on his personal blog and using his work email address.

Stallman later comes under fire for strange comments about Epstein’s underage girls/clients. Some people say he should step down, as his poor image jeopardises the effectiveness of the FSF.

2 days later, Stallman has a sudden change of heart. Child/adult sexual relations are wrong. Children can’t consent.

Some Linux nerds: “see, he’s changed his mind, he’s a different man!”

Maybe I’m overly pessimistic, but to me the timing of his epiphany seems rather convenient.

How ready people are to treat celebrities as deity-like figures is scary to me. Just because Stallman has some great FOSS credentials doesn’t mean he can’t be a total POS in other areas. People bend over backwards to defend him as some saint who can do no wrong, even to the extent of trivialising child rape. It’s scary what a bit of celebrity worship can get people to do.

TheGrandNagus , (edited )

You mean when he had an epiphany and changed his mind 2 days after his job became under fire?

Gee, I dunno. Maybe because it was a clear last-ditch effort to save his job, rather than because he genuinely went from his decades-held (and publicly-championed) view that sex with children is ok to sex with children is rape, by sheer coincidence, 2 days after people started requesting he step down over Epstein comments?

It was about as convincing a statement from Stallman as when Zuckerberg says he cares about privacy.

Do you genuinely believe him when he says he changed his mind? It’s an awfully convenient timing, even you would have to admit.

And can I also ask - are you only looking favourably at him because you like him? If Andrew Tate, just before his court case, came out and said that his views on women are wrong and he doesn’t believe that stuff anymore, would you believe him? It seems to me that you’re likely sweeping Stallman being pro-childrape under the rug, because he happens to have cool ideals when it comes to software.

avatar ,

who

isles ,

It’s a very searchable name

ConstipatedWatson ,

We should all probably start donating to Firefox. Isn’t Google their main source of income?

There might come a time when they prefer to gut Firefox, forcing Mozilla to either reject uBlock Origin or die (or they could simply pull the plug on funding knowing they’ll earn more when people go back to Chrome-based browsers)

fernlike3923 ,
@fernlike3923@sh.itjust.works avatar

Mozilla still does pretty good without any donations, and your donations will most definitely not be spent on Firefox.

noodlejetski ,

Mozilla still does pretty good without any donations

because Google pays them so that they keep offering Google as the default search engine. now that Google has been declared a monopoly, they might not be allowed to do that anymore, which means Mozilla loses its funding.

fernlike3923 ,
@fernlike3923@sh.itjust.works avatar

Mozilla’s funding did mostly consist of the Google partnership (86%), but as you can see, it’s not their only source of income. And you really don’t need half a fucking billion just to develop a web browser, which is open source, which also gets community contributions. This is made pretty obvious by their current revenue (>$1,000,000,000) and their CEO’s whopping $5.6 million salary.

Don’t donate to a shitty for-profit that masks itself with their non-profit company. Instead donate to something like Ladybird, whom are currently in early development but have no plans on adding features that actively spy on you (FakeSpot, Pocket), and they don’t need $500 fucking million to develop a web browser.

And if you’re going to talk about Mozilla’s social work, just don’t. I’ve already seen it.

areyouevenreal ,

You have zero idea how much engineering it takes to create a standards compliant engine and then maintain it. “And you don’t need half a fucking billion just to develop a web browser”. Technically this is true if you are willing to use someone else’s web engine. Firefox aren’t doing that, and it requires huge investment to maintain their own engine. There is a reason only large companies these days (Apple, Google, Mozilla) have their own engines. The actual browser part is tiny compared to the engine. We are talking about something the size of the Linux kernel or bigger, that gets far less contributions from outside sources. It actually makes perfect sense they are looking at starting other projects when you think that all other companies that do this kind of work need those other projects to remain profitable. Web engine development from my understanding does not pay. You get almost the same amount of money using somebody else’s engine as you do developing your own, yet one costs way more.

The fact Mozilla manages to maintain a better web engine than Apple’s WebKit only from Google’s advertising money is actually incredible. Did I mention Apple didn’t even start that engine themselves? It’s based on KHTML. Chrome is in turn a WebKit derivative. Firefox on the other hand actually comes from Netscape, and was first developed under the name Mozilla based on Netscape’s code. So Mozilla has put in more work than Google in modernising their engine.

fernlike3923 ,
@fernlike3923@sh.itjust.works avatar

Thank you. Yes, they are also developing their own web engine, which is a very complicated piece of software because of the current sad state of the web. But it doesn’t excuse any of the things I mentioned, and web engine development still doesn’t suckle up that much money as we can see from their current revenue and other efforts to make an independent web engine such as Ladybird.

I do not mind Mozilla starting other projects, but if you’re talking about FakeSpot or Pocket which are getting integrated into the “more private alternative to browsers like Internet Explorer, and now Chrome” by the “non-profit” whom “prioritize people and their privacy over profits”, I think you need to take a look at those privacy policies I linked in my previous comment.

I agree with you on your last paragraph, but there are some things I’m bothered with. Mozilla is (or was) a company that focused on one thing, their web browser. Apple and Google are (and were) different, in that they have a vast range of products to maintain. And Gecko is most definitely inferior to Blink in terms of speed, although I’m not familiar with any of their “modernity”.

areyouevenreal ,

other efforts to make an independent web engine such as Ladybird.

Notice the word efforts here. No one has actually succeeded yet despite multiple attempts, some even by Mozilla themselves like Servo. Ladybird is not a fully functioning browser yet. Are they anywhere even close yet? Even if they are close it also has to be fast. Google and Mozilla have spent quite a bit of time, money, and effort making their JavaScript engines as fast as possible.

I will have a look at some of the links you have given, but honestly I think most criticism thrown at Mozilla isn’t anything close to what the alternatives are guilty of, and is mostly done by conspiracy nuts. The kind of people were Mastodon and Lemmy is their only social media, and refuse to own a modern smartphone that isn’t running custom firmware.

fernlike3923 ,
@fernlike3923@sh.itjust.works avatar

Ladybird is fairly new. Just like how Mozilla didn’t get Gecko to this point in 1 year, Ladybird will take years of development to become a reliable browser and browser engine.

I pretty much agree with you. The alternatives are far worse. Seeing Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge being literal spyware, other Chromium-based browsers cutting out support for content-blocking extensions Firefox is vastly superior to them in terms of privacy. Although that still doesn’t mean Firefox is good, at least if we’re past talking about web browser engines etc., using another Firefox-based browser which is less bloated (Firefox Sync off by default, no Pocket, no recommendations in Addons tab), more privacy-friendly (all telemetry off by default, uBlock Origin installed by default, some hardening options from about:config enabled by default) seems to be the best choice currently, since other options like GNOME’s Epiphany and KDE’s Falkon sucks, if we’re being honest.

And I do kind of fit your description, if we exclude being a conspiracy-theorist.

areyouevenreal ,

I actually use Firefox sync. In fact I think all of that is quite unnecessary given what the policies you brought up actually state as was discussed in another comment. Everyone should be using AdBlock at this point, and I am planning to setup network wide AdBlock and malware block at my home in the future.

And I do kind of fit your description, if we exclude being a conspiracy-theorist.

Yeah I thought you could be. Nothing wrong with using a de-googled phone. Lemmy while a great idea is full of extremists. The kinds of people who go to that level of effort to cut out Google and social media tend to be uber paranoid. It’s a shame that people are divided into three groups regarding piracy: unknowing sheep, people who know but don’t care, and conspiracy nuts. The kind of person who hears something vaguely sketchy from someone and immediately jumps to the conclusion they need to boycott that company. Very rarely do you get reasonable, informed people who actually care with regards to online privacy without thinking every single organisation is out to get them (even non-profit like Mozilla or Wikipedia). It’s why things like the legislation the EU comes up with is necessary, to protect those who won’t or can’t protect themselves.

areyouevenreal ,

Oh also the devs behind Ladybrid are apparently against anyone who isn’t male using their technology. People tried to change masculine pronouns in the documentation to neutral pronouns just to be more grammatically accurate, and it started a whole chain of GitHub arguments arguing the change is “political”. Apparently it’s political not to imply that every computer user is a man.

fernlike3923 ,
@fernlike3923@sh.itjust.works avatar

There are many software from bigots and shitheads that still get used, being seperated from their creator (e.g. Hyprland, I guess you can put here some social media platforms like Xitter if we’re not only talking about open-source software). Although I prefer not using or supporting such software, I’ve not been able to find what you’re talking about. I’ve tried searching “ladybird pronoun controversy (forgive my search engine skills)” and other similar sentences but nothing really related pops up, so it would be great if you told me your source. Thank you!

areyouevenreal ,

The whole Vaxxry controversy is largely bullshit from both sides. The original complaint was something said in his Discord server, and that he didn’t police it enough. Not something bigoted he himself said. Vaxxry was right to defend himself given their CoC doesn’t apply to his Discord server, and talking about how they are trying to improve the moderation there.

Vaxxry from the little I know of him doesn’t seem that bigoted. He certainly isn’t progressive by any means. He does espouse tolerance for other political viewpoints, which is more than can be said for a lot of projects.

It’s on there GitHub. I would have linked earlier but search engines don’t seem to pick it up.

github.com/SerenityOS/serenity/pull/6814

github.com/SerenityOS/serenity/pull/8046

fernlike3923 ,
@fernlike3923@sh.itjust.works avatar

Thank you very much! I guess it makes sense a little bit that the lead developer of an older-style operating system is a conservative, but I was still not expecting it. It’s pretty sad that this seems to be the only new web browser engine that has actual support.

areyouevenreal ,

Yeah it’s really annoying. We need more browser engines and alternatives to the current web standards. The current way these things is not fit for purpose, and is making it easy for google to establish a monopoly on the web. I think wasm helps with this somewhat, but it isn’t popular enough yet nor is it a complete solution.

areyouevenreal ,

I’ve read the one for fakespot. Given what it’s designed to do then having your purchase history makes perfect sense. How else are they meant to make recommendations? If you really have a problem just don’t use that service. The only real criticism here is the name doesn’t imply they also make product recommendations. Nevertheless they explain that on the website.

I have skimmed the pocket one, and as far as I can tell they aren’t doing anything dodgy. Keeping information only to provide the service, and some anonymised analytics to see how it’s actually being used. The later is needed to direct development effort.

In summary: Not everyone is out to get you. Some information is needed to provide services.

Edit: sorry for there different comments, wanted to come back and do more research before I finished making a statement.

fernlike3923 ,
@fernlike3923@sh.itjust.works avatar

Yeah, no problem at all. This is a lot better than people downvoting and not actually talking about what they disagree on. Felt like r/apple.

Reading it again, Pocket’s privacy policy is actually not that bad. Thankfully it was not one of those 100 page ones that are made to confuse the shit out of consumers, but I have a slight problem with it.

“Personalized Advertising: Some Pocket web pages have ads. With your consent, Pocket’s ad partners will place advertising cookies on your device to personalize the ads you see here and on other websites.”

How does this consent exactly work? Is it just a simple check you have to tick in your account settings, or is it one of those cookie banners that require you to untick 800 advertising partners to “not give consent”? I’m not exactly a Pocket user so I’m a bit ignorant about it.

Though there doesn’t seem to be another privacy concern with Pocket. It seems I had misconceptions about their practices.

The one other problem I have with Pocket though is, it’s not a feature that should be in a browser, it should be an extension. They have already made a lot of extensions for features that not all of the userbase might need, even FakeSpot is currently an extension (approximately 40,000 users). I guess this is a whole another argument though.

I will write my thoughts about FakeSpot in another reply.

fernlike3923 ,
@fernlike3923@sh.itjust.works avatar

Okay, what does a sweepstake or a contest have to do with a browser extension, made to spot fake reviews. Trade shows? What?

I did take a look at this privacy policy before to check if the extension was worth installing, but holy fuck I didn’t see that.

And they collect a lot of things, supposedly “automatically”. I have never developed a browser extension, but does the browser force this information on the extension? Do they just look at their data collection and find the geolocation of their users, how they accessed the extension download page, browser specifics etc.?

They also sell your “automatically collected” geolocation data, “internet or other electronic network activity”, “inferences drawn from other personal information to create a profile about a consumer”, and “commercial information”. I’ve quoted the three data selling points I really don’t understand, since their “descriptions” aren’t very descriptive. But if we are to fully trust the lawful descriptions they provided, I hope the extension stays at 40,000 users really.

https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/7ae6ed2a-b24c-4d34-866c-ef8c990df43e.png

FakeSpot’s privacy policy

areyouevenreal ,

A lot of this is the same kind of things amazon do to make purchase suggestions. It is fairly invasive but also effective. There are even some customers who appreciate this kind of thing. I will say though that the name is misleading. It dosen’t just spot fakes, it seems to be designed as a shopping assitant or search engine who’s stand out feature is pointing out fakes. I think there is a place in the market for such a thing, but they need to be careful of how they market that and what data is actually needed to be collected. Ideally they should put in a system where you can opt in to personalised recommendations and collect data for only those people who require that feature. It also needs to be spelled out clearly what this involves in terms of data collected and who sees the data. Regardless I don’t think it should be enabled by default in Firefox. Including it in the browser isn’t so bad provided they don’t get up to microsoft-like shenanigans pushing people to use it.

sunbeam60 ,

This is what drives me mad about Mozilla. Let me donate to Firefox! I don’t want to donate to another hairbrained idea to “diversify your revenue streams” - I want to donate to Firefox.

As I’ve said many times before, Firefox would be better off as an opencollective-driven, smaller (50-ish) team, with code on Codeberg, than driven by a 600 strong org who needs to compete with SF salaries and fancy offices. They have become Google by another name and it ain’t healthy.

fernlike3923 ,
@fernlike3923@sh.itjust.works avatar

I really couldn’t agree more.

mhm ,

LibreWolf exists, and is already on Codeberg. If and when push comes to shove, they may stop depending on Firefox altogether.

sunbeam60 , (edited )

I like LibreWolf! But while they may be the natural successor to a folded Firefox, they would need to beef up dramatically to actually be the stewards of the codebase. Right now they do a good job at removing stuff, but setting a direction for a browser that zings with users requires a fully fledged product org.

Firefox is caught between those two worlds.

mhm ,

Fair take. I agree 👍

areyouevenreal ,

I actually think it’s a good thing they are seeking other income sources. After all Google is both their competitor and main income source while being under investigation by the government. Firefox barely manages to keep up with Chrome as-is. Nevermind if they had a team a fraction of its current size. It’s just not really practical for a project this size and scope to have a small plucky team. It needs a big organisation of some kind behind it. Ideally one like Google or Microsoft who can pull income from more profitable projects to pay for better browser engineering. It’s also needed so they can have a say in web standards. An organisation like that also has more ways to make money from their browser like with ChromeOS and Android. Firefox actually tried to make their own smartphone OS, to be honest I am annoyed they didn’t succeed. It would have given us a real alternative to Android while giving them needed income.

HKayn ,
@HKayn@dormi.zone avatar

Your money is honestly better spent donating to new efforts like Ladybird or Servo.

sunbeam60 ,

Is Servo independent of Mozilla now? It’s instructive how much they swayed when Mozilla cut them away, but seems they’ve found a new team to steward it.

Ladybird I hadn’t heard of so thank you for the suggestion. I’ll check them out.

mostlikelyaperson ,

Screw the mozilla foundation. My only hope at this point is that Ladybird or one of the other projects produces something viable one of these days.

piracysails ,

If they can pay 5-8 milion the CEO while laying off employees, they do not need donations.

Tilgare ,

You’re absolutely right, ~80% of Mozilla’s revenue is from Google’s paying to be the default search engine in Firefox - and the US is going after Google for it’s anticompetitive behaviors as we speak. Ad blocking aside, Mozilla is going to need help pretty soon anyways if Google gets their monopoly broken up.

werefreeatlast ,

Possibly when the US government decides to break Google up next week.

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