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!!!
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
There’s an easy fix for this. 🔥🦊
“The browser built to be yours”
Hahaha sure thing Google
“The browser built to be piping your data into our hands”
There, fixed.
It deserves mentioning that Firefox on Android supports extensions, so if you uninstall/disable the official YouTube app then add uBlock Origin and Sponsorblock you get a more tolerable experience.
Or just use Revanced or Grayjay, both of which are ad free and support sponsor block. Revanced is still a bit more feature complete imo, but also more buggy on my device, and more of a hassle to update. The browser YouTube experience is so bad, ads or ad free.
In case anyone here needs this
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/switching-chrome-firefox
Firefox.
This is the way.
This is the way.
This is the way.
I’m in the process of switching to firefox on all my devices.
I’ve had enough of Google pushing features like this.
I wonder if this leaves Chrome users susceptible to ads that load malware, which has been a problem for the last decade, and a driver of adblocking extension development. You can get spyware and worms from Forbes, for instance.
Adblocking is not just a matter of a cleaner internet experience, but also of good internet hygiene
Oh yeah, I have a feeling we’re about to see 2000s level bullshit on computers/phones again.
The majority of people already don’t use ad blockers though. The Chrome Web Store says that 34 million people use (used?) uBlock Origin, while it’s estimated that around 3.3 billion people use Chrome. If those numbers are correct, only around 1% of Chrome users use uBlock Origin.
I feel sorry for that 3.26 billion people, most of whom have to deal with ads, spyware and malware.
its not just ads and malware, and its not only about beeing sorry for them. ads are also manipulating how people think. not only the obvious things like “that product is good”, but also that products in general would help (with problems you didn’t have). and the format itself of ads (even without considering its contents) already has a changing effects on the minds of those who watch it. i am thinking of some parts of neil postmans thoughts about television back then and i guess there is plenty of possibilities to make a realistic conspiracy theory out of it why exactly the most poisonous parts of television are replicated to the internet with massive force even though everyone ignores ads in the net. i like theories
unfortunately, feeling sorry for them does not help society to stability. 😥
What’s the alternative to ads, though? Not everyone wants to (or can afford to) pay for every site they use.
What’s the alternative to ads, though? Not everyone wants to (or can afford to) pay for every site they use.
its not about paying for the site a user uses, its about paying those who run the site (and less to pay for someone only “managing” the site by doing actually nothing)
maybe these could be alternatives:
- patreon
flattr- micropayment in general
- donations (somafm runs on donations)
- link to shopping platforms (musicians on somafm mostly have links to the songs on amazon that you see while playing the song for free)
- communities, like FSF, local groups
- some small payed supporter part (like lwn.net) while the important stuff that makes the win-win of the site is free to use
- maybe the list from this page can help too: https://kinsta.com/de/blog/patreon-alternativen/
Kickstarter Indiegogo Podia Sellfy Buy Me a Coffee Memberful Hypage Ko-fi Substack Kajabi Gumroad WooCommerce Mighty Networks MemberPress Uscreen
maybe even a combination of multiple of those *whoa!!! mindblow!!! could be a good choice to allow usersvto choose how to contribute.
so really only choosing to offer exactly one option that also puts all users at a real risk of real attacks where they can get ripped off of all or lots of their real money and data for the sake if earning 0.003 ¢ per each putting them at high risk is not really what should be done, or do you personally profit from their users high risk and are thus completely okay with it? hope not.
if you have to earn money with your project or whatever, why not offer several options to choose from? why only one? and while we’re at it, offering an ad-free “membership” for 400 times the price of what they would earn by the same visitor with ads like they try here sometimes, does not make any platform look good, but the opposite.
there are many platforms that i would pay for monthly and i would spend much more money alltogether than now on that if their price would not be artificially pushed into astronomically heights per service…
there is one project where i do donate each month a little bit via recurring bank transfer since years. my transfer says the name of the project and “donation” thats pretty easy to setup for both sides, but too complicated for those who pay designers money so they can place the ad layers on top of the 400 other layers of spypixels and navigation controls… really ? lol*
if those you are talking about cannot afford to have a bank account for some reason, i guess they also cannot receive the revenue of ads on their webpages ;+)
saying there are no alternatives to ads is rather a candidate for the lamest excuse award ;-)
I miss the “dont be evil” version of google. Its like, large amounts of money ruin everything
It’s not just large amounts of money. It’s chasing more and more money each quarter, and when it starts slowing down panic sets in and they start trying to find any and every possible avenue to keep profits up. It’s how we’ve ended up in subscription based hell and it’ll only get worse.
At this point I am seriously wondering why people would like to use Chrome over Firefox for instance.
Use chrome to download Firefox.
Back in the day when I still used windows, I did not even use IE to download Firefox. I used the FTP functionality inside the explorer to download Firefox from the Mozilla FTP.
I use multiple profiles in chrome for my different logged in usages, for some reason Firefox makes it hard to switch profiles.
“Hard” is a strong word. It’s not built into the default interface, granted, but it’s not that hard to use FF’s command line:
firefox -PThey have said they’re thinking about rejigging the whole thing though.
Ok, telling people to open a command line and TYPE firefox -P is HARD. In chrome you just click the icon in the upper right and select whatever profile you want.
It makes no sense that you have to either open about:profiles then select “launch in new window” or open the command line to start a new profile, makes NO sense at all.
You can open a firefox private window with a keyboard shortcut, but if you want to be logged into two different accounts in two different profiles, you have to go through a minimum of three non-intuitive steps.
Even the extension that adds the profile switching doesn’t work anymore because it’s not maintained.
Dude, if that’s all-caps HARD, then I don’t know how you’d classify, say, compiling things from source and fixing any problems that might crop up along the way. Or fixing missing DLL / OCX hell when trying to get an old Windows game running under Linux, because let me tell you, I’ve done both of those and had to give up.
firefox -Pis heaven by comparison.You could even put it into a shortcut and you wouldn’t have to type it any more.
Yes the interface sucks, but HARD is not it.
Simple solution. Don’t use Chrome.
Ive been testing out ungoogled chrome with uBlock, and it still seems to be working. But I think I’m going to add Waterfox along side of my Firefox to look at that one also.
But I’m also not sure you can install uBlock anymore from the Chrome repository either.
Not sure about the repo route, never went that deep with Chrome. Firefox has always been my mainstay (and Netscape before it.)
There’s only 34 million uBlock Origin users on Chrome? So, billions are using Chrome without any ad-blockers? That’s crazy and unsafe
Most users are fucking idiots and will continue to raw-dog the internet while visiting the most malicious sites possible.
I feel like you’ve worked helpdesk at some point.
Worked IT. Can confirm.
Yes. Unfortunately. “a virus? How did I get that? What’s an anti-virus? You must be wrong, I just do a little bit of web browsing and downloading music.” (this was in the windows xp days that I’m specifically flashing back to)
Lemmy has a really biased idea of what the average computer user can do. Imagine Janet in accounting, who calls help desk to reset her password every morning, and takes 30 minutes to remember how to check her email. Or the late GenZ just entering the workforce, who was surprised that their desktop wasn’t a touchscreen, and doesn’t know how a file structure works, because literally every device they’ve used growing up has been either a tablet or a Chromebook. That’s the average user.
My boss once asked me to take a look at her computer that was super slow and barely functional, and the thing that surprised me the most was that she had been running Chrome without any adblock since ever, and when I asked her about adblock, she answered: “adwhat?”. Mind you that she’s still a millennial, and only a few years older than me.
How long until YouTube blocks Firefox?
Considering they were already declared an illegal monopoly? I’d love to see them do that
Huh… I couldn’t tell with all the Firefox I use.
Huh… So you’re not using the product the article is referring to?
No I use u-block origin. The very product the article is referring to.
I just use it in Firefox so I am completely unaffected by this.
It’s a great feel.
It literally took me less than ten minutes to set up firefox. I carried all my bookmarks and passwords from edge and set up a mozilla account and everything is synced across linux, windows and android.
The only thing I’m worried of, is if some websites require chrome to work, as was the case with some government sites that only worked with internet explorer in the old days.
(Does anyone know if the default user agent is chrome? I used to log in a local streaming site from edge and it wouldn’t work, as it required chrome, but I used an extension to take care of the user agent. On firefox it works no problem.)
I recommend the User-Agent Switcher and Manager Firefox addon for those struggling with some sites.
You can also report a broken site to Mozilla directly via the browser menu.
There was another (third-party?) page where you could report websites but I forgot its url.
half of the websites are google-owned
Just use Edge on sites that don’t support Firefox, if you must use them. Same as how we used IE for government sites back in the day.
Why not use chromium or a hardened version of it? Edge is proprietary software.
Edge is chromium…
Yes, but Edge comes with a lot more proprietary components added.
I would recommend installing ungoogled-chromium or using another hardened FOSS version of chromium instead.
