Mozilla is such a treasure.
this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2023
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Firefox
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If only Firefox would have a bigger userbase. I still use it, but the vast majority of people is on Chromium.
I switched this week.
I'm switching today. Right now. Because of this post.
^^maybe
EDIT: okay. I think I've done it. I'm currently editing this comment from Firefox. I already had Firefox installed. But now I have pinned it to my taskbar. I went to import my bookmarks from chrome, and found that I also had the option of importing other stuff from chrome, too (bookmarks, passwords, history and autofill data). That's sweet. My bookmark bar has the same bookmarks in the same position. I also installed ublock origin, like someone recommended. And I am going to give it a go. If it all goes smoothly, I will unpin Chrome from the taskbar.
Thanks everyone for the encouragement!
It'll cost you nothing at all.
And in fact will save you CPU cycles. For a bit, Chrome had a slight performance edge over Firefox. But once Google got the market share, Firefox caught up and got ahead, and Chrome didn't invest in keeping up, so Firefox is generally faster. The only exception is a few sites (especially Google ones) seem to be heavily optimised for Chrome, but not necessarily as much for Firefox. If you stay away from those sites, Firefox is generally faster.
Plus Chromium is increasingly becoming more hostile to efficient ad blocking add-on implementations - so if you want to block ads (generally recommended due to ad networks doubling as paid malware distribution networks), Firefox or other Gecko-based browsers are generally the best bet.
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No maybes. Do it.
Please switch
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same!
Firefox is awesome now. It was great, then it lost out a bit to chrome, but it’s back to being awesome. If anyone’s reading this and isn’t using Firefox, please switch!
And importantly, their import mechanisms are great. A typical user can switch with basically no effort. Next time they ask you for help, switch your parents too, and your siblings, and that neighbour who keeps referring to the internet as “the google”. Set them up with Firefox and ublock origin and they’ll be set.
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People's willingness to seize every opportunity and monetize everything that was once free and open is truly shocking. Every day when I read about another dogshit attempt to make the internet as a whole a worse place, I'm not even supprised anymore
I can't believe I'm witnessing the death of the internet, at least it isn't going quietly into the night.
The web is not the whole internet. Plus isn't you being here prove that the internet is resilient?
Even if Lemmy does fight it and doesn't accept the fingerprinting bullshit, how many other websites are going to do that? We're just a link aggregator at the end of the day, I feel like all of the most important parts of the Internet are no longer going to be open.
good stuff, glad to see this opposition.
Also slightly related, but I'd absolutely hate if I were an employee having to work on this project and having my name attached to this. Quite embarrassing for all those involved.
welp, who isnt on firefox might want to start using it now.
It's a little slower and a little more broken and a little less compatible, but its not google's.
It's not slower, and the rare incompatibilities can be solved by changing the user agent, which shows it's artificial.
try not to ruin the user experience to make more money challenge (impossible)
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In my experience, Firefox is as fast as Chromium and extremely stable. What are the extensions you are using? Perhaps one of them is causing the instability you're mentioning.
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wiping_tears_with_money.gif
It’s unfortunate that so many people use Chrome. Google has control over the internet that no single company should hold.
Same as with IE in the past. A little better with most of the source being open but not much. I wonder how we could solve this issue since people obviously don't care.
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As a Linux user this has got me very worried. Chromium has so much market share that this change will certainly go through, and I feel like Safari won't care as it benefits them and their ecosystem to have device checks. I feel like Firefox and non standard OSes will almost certainly be blocked on a large range of websites with little impact on total users, not to mention completely blocking ad block and anti-tracking clients.
I think eventually regulators in the US will file an antitrust lawsuit and break chromium off of Google if this actually happens, but until then Fediverse/FOSS and personal websites are going to be the only places untouched by this.
I don't think our politicians will do anything but protect big business, personally.
Safari won't care as it benefits them and their ecosystem to have device checks.
Apparently Apple already rolled it out in a previous update, they just didn't call any attention to it.
I just hope that google won't try to lobby for this API like disney does for copyright changes
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I'm still salty that they implemented video DRM (for Netflix, Amazon, etc.), but at least they're standing against this bullshit.
Without video DRM those services don't work at all. It was necessary to keep users.
Without video DRM those services don’t work at all.
(x)
I think they meant it as a "necessary evil" because companies could start implementing their own drm and make everything more difficult to crack. Also without it, companies would not trust it without drm due to the greed.
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I think we need to try to get Firefox's user base up fast (and the user base for other browsers that are ultimately controlled by non-profits) - if non-commercial browsers dominate or even have 30+% market share, if they say no to something bad for users and the open web, it doesn't happen. While non-commercial browsers are a small minority, if they say no, services that work everywhere else follow Google / Apple and consider breaking Firefox acceptable collateral damage, and then Firefox etc... becomes an ever smaller minority, so they get forced into things like this.
The trouble is FAANG get advantage by posing an insidious threat - they treat users well when they are trying to gain market share, and invest heavily and maybe briefly offer a superior user respecting product. But when they get the market share to give them the leverage, the switch part of bait-and-switch comes out, and we see them try to take down the open web to cement their position against the non-profits, and make their browsers inferior for users to bump up revenue (enshitification, to borrow a term from Cory Doctorow).
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This is why we need Mozilla.
Google already rolled out AMP which is overtly hostile to an open internet and faced zero repercussions from it. The same will be true for this. The average person has no idea what this means, doesn't care, and won't be bothered by it. Politicians always side with big business.
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I'm doing my part using Firefox. I've always liked it over Chrome and I don't like the sign into Google BS.
I don't think OP had any nefarious purpose in it, but this title is ridiculous doublspeak. Google might have a vested interest in trying to bullshit us about this being about "web integrity," but that doesn't mean we have to accept its dishonest framing!
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IMHO we have several really big problems with the web as it is today, which are intertwined:
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The web (standards) is by far too complicated. If even Microsoft doesn't have (or isn't willing) to provide the resources to implement a browser, there are not many players left with the resources and the motivation
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Google Chrome and Safari are the only game in town. (My main browser is Firefox, but seriously, we have such a small market share that nobody gives a damn)
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Most people/governments/companies don't care or don't understand the problem of the mono culture for browsers
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The value of the web is everything which is already on the web and that one can access anything with the browser - for this reason, we can only grow in the direction of more complicated while keeping backwards compatibility
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Besides lip-service to the contrary, our politicians want to control communication and supervise their citizens, so for politicians it is better to have a browser controlled by a company like Google, than a really free web
Given how fundamental important the web is for modern human basic infrastructure, we (as a society) should find a better way to protect our infrastructure, freedom of speech and basic freedoms.
Thankful for Mozilla, seriously!
thats like an ant trying to punch out a bear, mozillas voice has lost its true power over a decade ago sadly
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Fuck yes, get fucked Google !
This has already happened in the past, and it will unfortunately end exactly like it did before.
It's going to end up exactly like it did with WC3 EME, as mentioned in the 2014 article mentioned few comments after the one you linked. This quote from the article sums it up perfecly:
I know of people recommending Chrome (not Chromium) because it has Flash Player natively incorporated, so you no longer have to install it separately.
This serves to prove that the majority of users doesn’t know about either the technical or ethical differences in the software they are using.You may also think of the pirated software the are using,but this is a different matter. Ignoring this marketshare goes against Mozilla’s idea of a web available to everyone, not to mention that Firefox is no longer the most used browser as it used to be a a few years ago and it is therefore forced to comply with this kind of requests.
Thank you for posting this. I've read five or six descriptions of the issues with Google's proposal by now and this was the first one that was clear, concise, and not riddled with histrionics.
This is exactly why we need Mozilla, this is kind of stuff what makes them the default in the open source community.
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