I use Opera
(yes i know it’s “Chinese spyware” if the Chinese government really wants to know what youtube videos i watch for hours, what porn i browse, and what impulse purchases i make they can have it, i don’t fucking care, when i want privacy i use Tor)
anyway i use Opera, and despite the fact it’s been my browser of choice for over a decade i will switch to Firefox in a heartbeat if my ad blockers stop working and i’m forced to watch ads for over 3 days in a row (in uBlock devs i trust)
If you want opera without rationalizing what the Chinese government does to you, you can try vivaldi.
nah it’s not rationalising, i really just don’t care. I mentioned it there because the second i mention Opera anywhere the first reply is always “but did you know it’s Chinese spyware?”
I like Opera’s features like workspaces, tab islands, built in adblock, built in vpn etc. it really suits my scatter brain self
I also used to use opera, and thought the Chinese ownership made me uneasy, I only left due to their short term loan scandal.
But honestly I don’t regret it because vivaldi has a lovely community. Opera just felt cold and faceless, and I didn’t even know anyone else who used it.
Vivaldi has all the features (except VPN) and a lot more, so you won’t find it lacking there
huh interesting! is it chromium based too though? I think at this point i’d mostly want to make a switch off chromium browsers with all the rumoured forced ads nonsense
Yes, but built in adblocker like opera so it’s unaffected
nah i’d not trust that, if chromium itself gets invaded by forced ads no chromium based browser is safe
Are you talking about manifest v3 or something else? Cause manifest v3 doesn’t force ads, it just cripples third party ad blockers. Also viv, (and some others, like brave) already disable plenty of Google stuff like FloC and privacy sandbox
wasn’t tor created by DARPA?
Nah it was the United States Naval Research Laboratory.
Still the best browser, even though the majority left it for the speed they think chrome has.
I’m back on Firefox now, but I did originally leave it because Edge had the speed. Not sure if that’s because it’s more optimized for Windows.
I mean yeah, all these big tech companies are trying to make their products feel faster, because that’s the only space they can compete. When it comes to privacy, they all lose.
Chrome definitely has the more sleek and responsive UI.
But that’s all Chrome has.
YouTube videos for some reason won’t load for me on Firefox. I switched to the Waterfox fork and it’s fine.
Google just maliciously makes their websites work way worse on Firefox. For YouTube I personally just use FreeTube on desktop and Tubular (A NewPipe fork) on Android so I never have to interact with that goddamn website
As someone who uses tubular I wish it got updated more tho. The number of debug versions I have installed from pull requests is like 5 at this point 😭
I’m fine with a slow update cycle as long as they don’t wait too long to actually merge app breaking features, like when recently youtube changed a few things and videos would no longer load.
Well, Google has been caught trying to make their sites slower / malfunctioning on Firefox. Usually they get away with it by saying it’s a mistake.
I am specifically waiting for this to happen so I can be part of the flood to Firefox when they finally throw the switch.
Why wait?
Brave browser exists for those who are particularly attached to chromium.
Brave is a great browser and the only chromium one I would ever use but mentioning it on Reddit OR Lemmy will cause you to get mass downvoted unfortunately
The browser lets you customize the dashboard so you can make the browser look as clean or minimal as you want with almost no distractions
Biggest issue I have with Firefox is that some websites can be broken but 99.9% of the time this is not Firefox’s fault and the only one to blame is lazy developer’s
Firefox out of the box doesn’t come with specific features that the websites that I use need which is why I haven’t made the switch yet, biggest one is that Firefox doesn’t work with Keychron’s in browser software that is used to customize their keyboards. Again this is not Firefox’s fault because Firefox didn’t adopt the feature because of security concerns which is completely valid and even commendable.
Or perhaps try ungoogled chrome if you enjoy Chrome.
I could see this as part of a metrics thing - if Google sees a big drop in users right after the rollout, it’s harder to brush it under the rug as having no correlation.
brave is literally just chromium, it solves none of the fundamental problems other than being like, reasonably well built.
It’s chrome, but if it didnt’t try and kill you ever update. That’s the difference.
I’m not touching brave with a 10 ft pole but thanks for your advertisement
I’m just learning about what all the fuss around Brave is. But I’d be interested to hear how Google seems to be the ethical choice for a daily driver browser currently. It’s obviously fine to not want to use Brave, but how is it the inferior choice when compared to Chrome (or even considered a sidegrade)? Even with all the issues mentioned I’d still recommend it as the lesser of the 2 evils compared to Chrome.
No one is saying Chrome is the ethical choice, why are you reducing this to a 2 options choice?
why are you reducing this to a 2 options choice?
I’m not.
No one is saying Chrome is the ethical choice
The commenter I’m replaying to implies they’re using Chrome primarily, and then reacted negatively to the mention of Brave. I’m asking how Chrome use is the acceptable choice and Brave is seemingly so bad in comparison.
I don’t think the commenter you are replying to is arguing that chrome is a better choice. He or she knows it’s bad but didn’t make the change out of lazyness (no offence). Change has a cost, especially if it implies changing habits. So people will just delay or avoid them.
obviously, but when you have the option of just, not using chrome at all, why would you use anything chromium based to begin with, google is literally the problem here lmao
Lemmy always seems to hate Brave but no one ever says why
I don’t know, I’ve seen answers to this so many times on Lemmy.
- shady issues in the past from company
- heavily integrated with crypto (controversial for some)
- CEO is a transphobe
- it’s still Chrome under the hood
Ah ya I didn’t know about them being transphobic. That’s a shame
- CEO is also homophobic and a covid skeptic
- the browser used to modify crypto exchange URLs to add it’s affiliate code to it
- it used to collect donations for content creators without their consent
Why people always forget the simple:
Switching Google to Brave is not an upgrade is a sidegrade.
Firefox is
- Dependant on Google’s ad revenue
- Joining the advertising market themselves
So you are sure that Google and Mozilla doesn’t employ any homophobics? They obviously have some sort of mind reader?
You are right, I should have been more specific. He’s openly homophobic. I’m also pretty sure that’s not the case for Mozilla as he was Mozilla’s CEO and was pushed out over this specific thing.
I don’t know why you are shifting from CEO to employees.
I’ve seen this answered so many times it’d make your head spin, looney-toons style. If you don’t know then you haven’t been paying any attention.
My personal reason, I looked at their code and it was amateur town. Hacked together trash. There’s a proper way to modify Chromium and they didn’t follow any of it. In contrast, Vivaldi’s coders knew what they were doing. I don’t actively use or support Chrome, but if you’re going to do something, do it right.
Lmao down voted to oblivion
Has it actually been confirmed when it’s coming? I feel like this has been threatened for years now.
It started in june, for now it’s just showing a warning saying that the extension will soon no longer be supported. They’ll be disabled gradually until the beginning of 2025.
https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/develop/migrate/mv2-deprecation-timeline
Ah I see. Boiling the frog as it were.
Well, as much as I hate Google I don’t think that’s the intention of this particular point, rolling out big changes gradually is standard.
Pihole for the win
I use one too, but it doesn’t block certain things like YouTube’s embedded adverts. Also use uBlock Origin.
It will block youtube ads if the video is embedded in another website. When I want to find a youtube video on my tv I just search it on DuckDucGo, since watching it there blocks ads and seems to bypass any restrictions they’ve placed on watching videos outside of youtube.
I need to set up a cheap computer and just run the TV as a monitor so I can have all the features I want, including a real browser with ublock. But in the meantime, this fixes the one issue I have with DNS level blocking.
You can get “android on a stick” computers and sideload some de-googled stuff. They plug right into the USB port of some smart tvs. You might be able to hack an Amazon Firestick too.
I keep seeing this posted here and elsewhere. Is there a simple, easy step-by-step explanation for how to build one of these and how to deploy it on your home network?
I’ve got very limited experience with working with Raspberry Pi.
You actually need a pi to run pihole, anything that can run docker would do
You absolutely don’t need a pi to run pihole. They have a list of officially supported OSs that can run the software, regardless of the hardware (as long as it meets the insanely low system requirements), and it can also be run in a docker container.
Step 1) Get a raspberry pi. Step 2) Open terminal and paste: curl -sSL https://install.pi-hole.net | bash Step 3) Point your DNS to the raspberry pi’s IP address.
Interesting. So does it slow down your speeds any that you can tell?
It doesn’t really. I won’t give a whole course on DNS and network stuff, but basically it has zero effect on your download and upload speeds.
DNS is like a phone book. You type Wikipedia.org and DNS translates that to an address like 200.92.36.68
When you download stuff, that’s not going through the Pi at all. So there’s no negative effects.
Your own raspberry pi will probably outperform your ISPs DNS, since it’s on your local network.
Also, just by blocking what it does, pages load a lot less, so they load a lot quicker.
If you don’t want to tinker with a Raspberry Pi, a simpler alternative would be AdGuard DNS
https://adguard-dns.io/en/public-dns.html
(Configure manually -> Routers)I looked into making one a while back and it’s honestly quite complicated if you’re not a techy person. I gave up on it, though I think you can also buy them pre-built for a bit more money so you might look into that.
That’s not the same. DNS blocking is great but it can block as well as a proper ad blocker.
No, but better then nothing and network wide
Wonder if the recent antitrust ruling about Google paying for being the default search engine will affect Mozilla’s funding.
And in the meantime Mozilla keeps making worse decisions, too
Someone who gives a damn needs to be in charge of mozilla but i dont see that happening.
As long as they are entirely supported by Google, they aren’t going to try too hard to outcompete them.
In order to get away from that, they need to find alternative ways of making money, like showing ads, which loops us back around to the guy above saying they’re making bad decisions.
Your point is fair, but their real problem is they bloated up to absorb their insane budget and they are going to have to strip down to a reasonable size for a browser company before trying to establish a non-google revenue stream.
Enshitification of all the things.
I do not study in detail if this combination is necessary, but:
- Firefox (of course)
- Ghostery
- Ublock Origin
- Privacy Badger
- Decentraleyes
- Disconnect
Ghostery, Privacy Badger and Disconnect do nothing worthwhile that uBlock Origin doesn’t already do.
privacyguides.org seems quite solid for recommendations
All of them except uBlock Origin are in Arkenfox “Do not bother” extension list: https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js/wiki/4.1-Extensions#-dont-bother
I use firefox, I mostly like it, but it still doesn’t support chromium style tab groups (no, that one extension is not similar), and its webgpu implementation also doesn’t work on most websites more than a year after Google made their version available by default
Not sure if this is “that one extension”, but I use Simple Tab Groups for Workspaces-like functionality, similar to Edge and Vivaldi. I know, it isn’t tab groups, but I use it similarly.
I’ve started using Tree Style Tabs in Firefox and really like it. Maybe vertical tabs aren’t so bad?
I’ve been using Vivalid, they have ‘Workspaces’ which is different but in a way that was a pleasant surprise and kind of reminds me of older systems. Imagine working with one tab group at a time and the rest disappear when you’re not on that workspace.
is that chromium?
Tab groups are in the works but we haven’t heard anything new about it since March.
Mozilla could definitely be putting their development time into the areas that the browser is actually behind in
We need another meme like this about Firefox but with the first panel saying “Antitrust judgement against Google” and the second panel blank, without anyone coming to the rescue.
The large majority of Mozilla’s revenue comes from the money that Google pays to be the default search engine in Firefox.
Source: I made it up
I guess Anonym, PPA, Cliqz, pocket, and the default telemetry that is non-trivial to disable are all just hallucinations.
Mozilla is about to collapse due to the Google antitrust ruling though.
The antitrust case is about Google and Apple, not Mozilla. It doesn’t mean the antitrust case will have any impact on Mozilla, because it’s not a major player, unlike Apple.
I don’t think you realize where and why Mozilla gets its funding.
Um, what makes you think that?
The Google antitrust decision will result in Mozilla losing 90% of their revenue since Google won’t be allowed to pay them to use their search engine anymore.
Mozilla makes about $590m a year.
$510m of that is from Google paying for the search engine default spot.
Well I for one hope they figure out an alternative income, like a premium subscription? Or perhaps look to get acquired by proton and get some integration going with those services? I’m no expert here, I just think that they have a lot of happy users, and there must be some way to figure this out financially.
They need to reform as a non-profit with user membership, an elected board, and fundraising like Wikipedia.
I’m not aware of any non-profit with staffing the size of Mozilla. The problem is that you need to be able to make money and to set it aside for bad times, so you don’t have to fire employees the moment the donations falter.
The 501©(3) non-profit form of tax-exempt non-profit, which is what the Mozilla Foundation continues to be, is not allowed to do so. That’s why they opened up the for-profit Mozilla Corporation subsidiary that does most of the Firefox development.
On the plus side, the only shareholder of the Mozilla Corporation is the Mozilla Foundation, which therefore essentially cannot accept any of the profit the MoCo might make.
That’s a ridiulously low amount of money given the amount of users. I’d happily pay 10-20 bucks a year to keep mozilla alive. Not that I like it much, but more so than the big alternatives
Mozilla and its murder/suicide pact with Google falling apart may be the best thing that could possibly happen to Firefox.
Mozilla about to lose funding from Google antitrust consequences :(
What does chromium-based browsers on pc have that Firefox doesn’t have? Like I don’t understand why people use Chrome instead of Firefox.
One thing for danish people is the “online government id” (MitID) everyone has and needs to use for online purchases and logins to banks and various other things.
It straight up only works on chrome for mobile :/
I really wish Mozilla would focus on these missing bits and bobs like WebUSB and this one you mentioned instead of whatever the fuck it is that they’re doing now
There’s was only a very brief period that I would have considered Chrome a better option and that was the period when Chrome had a mobile app and FF didn’t. Other than that, I have never understood why you would use chrome. I know FF didn’t invent tab browsing, but definitely the first to do it successfully.