- cross-posted to:
- firefox@lemmy.ml
- google@lemmy.world
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- firefox@lemmy.ml
- google@lemmy.world
- technology@lemmy.world
Clearly, Google is serious about trying to oust ad blockers from its browser, or at least those extensions with fuller (V2) levels of functionality. One of the crucial twists with V3 is that it prevents the use of remotely hosted code – as a security measure – but this also means ad blockers can’t update their filter lists without going through Google’s review process. What does that mean? Way slower updates for said filters, which hampers the ability of the ad-blocking extension to keep up with the necessary changes to stay effective.
(This isn’t just about browsers, either, as the war on advert dodgers extends to YouTube, too, as we’ve seen in recent months).
At any rate, Google is playing with fire here somewhat – or Firefox, perhaps we should say – as this may be the shove some folks need to get them considering another of the best web browsers out there aside from Chrome. Mozilla, the maker of Firefox, has vowed to maintain support for V2 extensions, while introducing support for V3 alongside to give folks a choice (now there’s a radical idea).
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We’re going to have a serious problem on our hands soon with compatibility. I’m a software dev and I’m already seeing a few issues here and there where Chrome is being treated as the default expected browser and features don’t work on Firefox.
Firefox doesn’t support a fair few Chrome features because of security and privacy reasons, such as WebHID, WebUSB, etc.
Devs, please stop using those features. I know it’s tempting, but they’re basically bribes to encourage you to sell out to Google. Don’t do it.
We’re going to have a serious problem on our hands soon with compatibility. I’m a software dev and I’m already seeing a few issues here and there where Chrome is being treated as the default expected browser and features don’t work on Firefox.
It’s basically IE6 and ActiveX all over again.
Most “Chrome-only” web applications I have to use I can get around just by changing my user agent string and everything works fine. I try not to use that stuff when I can, though.
This is my experience. They are just taking your default agent and throwing up a message because they can’t be assed to do minimal testing in FF.
Some of the older stuff is indeed that way, but there are more and more features which Firefox can’t support. Web-based custom keyboard configuration tools, tools to flash phone firmware, and one niche MiniDisc tool all are chrome-only things I’ve had to open Chrome to use
we are really really better off without features that grant any website such deep access to our systems just by a single click, trust me. this is a security nightmare, especially looking at people who don’t understand computers and those who instant allow permissions by reflex.
tools to flash phone firmware
Yep. Forgot I had to use Chrome on Windows to flash GrapheneOS.
you don’t have to, there’s no need for that. they have a normal flashing tool too
Wait is this real? That’s hilarious
https://grapheneos.org/install/web#prerequisites
Technically it works on Linux, but I didn’t feel like installing a Chromium browser to do it at the time.
I just don’t use services that don’t work with Firefox. Easy.
Yep. There are plenty of other ways to do something that don’t require selling out.
What about ad blocking services where you would need them, such as browsing into an ad farm of a website?
Teams calls for example :( I have chromium on my Debian only for teams.
Teams works in Firefox, I sadly have to use it almost every day interacting with clients who use teams for comms.
One of my company’s customers is a DoD contractor that uses the government version of Teams, which does require Chromium, unfortunately. Or at least, I haven’t found a way to make it work on Firefox yet.
I’ve not had either of those issues on my laptop, using teams through Firefox. I wonder if there is something else going on there.
But you can’t turn on camera with Teams on Firefox iirc
idk what to tell you, calls have no sound.
I’ll try again, though.
I’m using Firefox as my only browser. If everything works in Firefox that’s fine for me.
That’s the best advantage of only making websites / web applications for fun (for friend groups, video games, family etc)
Yeah, but that’s my point, not everything works in Firefox now - even though admittedly it’s relatively niche stuff - and my prediction is that if we continue on our current course Firefox will either have to compromise their commitment to privacy and security or will become more and more unusable.
I saw this quote a while back “if you only make code that works in chrome you aren’t a web developer, you are a google developer.”
Firefox doesn’t support a fair few Chrome features because of security and privacy reasons, such as WebHID, WebUSB
I’m very serious about my opinion that we are better off without them. If the feature does not exist, it cannot be activated by a bug in the permission system, and also the lesser technically inclined people won’t allow them by reflex/accident
Google’s working on fixing that for you right now. That’s more people switch to Firefox and there’s futures don’t work they’ll start complaining to the developers and then to Firefox. Microsoft road the it only works in IE train for a long time and it eventually buried them
There’s no need to wait. Just switch to Firefox now. All the cool kids have already done it.
Some of us never left.
Some of us switched to Chrome when it was legitimately better, but are back now.
i switched to chrome when I was too young to understand anything, and I’m not even sure if it was better for any extent. have switched back 5+ years ago
people who used Firefox since high school😎😎
I was pretty sure manifest v3 had already happened - but when I knew it was coming, I went ahead and switched ahead of time. Came with the extra bonus that now I’m ad free on mobile too! Mobile websites are absolutely filthy with popovers and 2 sentence paragraphs with an ad between every paragraph. I’m sick of it. And unfortunately I spend so much more time browsing the web from my phone these days than my desktop - so when I swapped on pc to Firefox, it was such a relief to have browser extensions on my phone now too.
I remember the internet before Google, and how game changing it was to have all of the internet indexed in one place (even if that wasn’t actually quite true back then). If you had asked me 15, 10, even 5 years ago if I would be cheering its downfall and yearning for a return to a simpler, far less centralized internet, I would have called you crazy. And yet here we are.
You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.
It wasn’t hard to foresee. We knew these kind of things could happen. The internet used to be very out spoken about it. That ethos is long gone. What’s equally disappointing is tech nerds selling out for bigger paychecks.
That’s because the OG visionaries of tech are gone, and have been replaced by MBAs and techbros.
I like the SearX search engine. It gives old-school, relevant search results, not Google ranked ones.
It’s also spread out over many separate instances, so you can pick the one that best suits your search needs:
I don’t understand seemingly intelligent people who still blindly use chrome at this point…
For those of us who work in (or love) tech - we (myself included) grossly overestimate how much the general public cares about, or cares to be informed about, this stuff. Heck, even people in tech who know better.
I wish it wasn’t the case but look how long and hard Microsoft moved on Internet Explorer and ActiveX back in the early days of the web.
Google and Chrome is just another bit of history repeating.
As an aside, I’ve been using Zen for about a week and it’s been wonderful. Easy transition from Firefox because it largely is Firefox, so all my containers, extensions, and settings carried over. Zen’s workspaces provide exactly the promise I’d hoped “tab groups” brought with Safari (but never worked right). I just wish there was an equivalent to the Hush plug-in on Safari (even after a year of full-timing FF, consent-o-matic is quite poor).
Yeah I work in tech and I’m the only one that cares enough to use Firefox. All my colleagues use chrome or chrome with makeup.
Maybe ad blocking will be what broke the camel’s back, but I doubt more than a few will care enough to switch.
I kinda have to at work. Our classroom computers reset between classes and Chrome is the only browser installed. I might ask IT about that, moving forward, given uBlock getting neutered soon.
when you ask them, don’t only mention ublock, but the privacy aspects of only allowing the browser of the largest data collection fueled ad company
Honestly, our IT peeps aren’t idiots. They’d probably agree with me. It’s admin who make the overall decisions. I might be able to swing “also Firefox” to be included when they inevitably update the repo.
And the only place I can think of where uBlock is not getting neutered anytime soon is in LibreWolf.
Firefox is fucking with uBlock Origin, too? I was not aware.
I didn’t say anything about Firefox fucking with uBlock Origin, but was merely suggesting to try LibreWolf as its a hardened Firefox fork that comes with uBlock Origin preinstalled.
I have a similar issue at my school as well. Chrome is the only allowed browser, and each of us have to use our own school email as our login session in chrome, so we get that much of user space, and that actually works quite decently. I had ublock installed on my user account so far, but if it breaks, I’ll just have to suffer. Although, the real problem is that the school I work in uses some digital books that only work 100% in Chrome, and all show some form of weird behaviour in non-chromiun based browsers. And there’s a 0 chance they are changing it.
It’s not about intelligence it’s about what keeps you up at night. Most people aren’t bothered by cookies and ads, somehow.
this is something i cannot understand. my brain would fking die from the seizures the modern, ad infested web induces.
And the creepiness. Advertisers can deduce many habits based on the information you give them. Some techniques can tell when people are pregnant before they do based on their pathing inside the store, for instance.
And yet, all they continue to sell me is a dryer when I just bought one a month ago.
It used to be worse. Pop up ads are mostly a thing of the past. The web used to be an advertisement shit hole and there were no ad blockers back then.
Regardless, you’re right. I don’t understand why or how people could be ignorant of the existence of adblock in 2024 unless they’re boomers.
Since ads began, there have been ad-blockers. You just didn’t know about them.
Most people are stupid, myopic imbeciles that arent bothered by anything until it personally affects them.
Then they’ll howl like wolves at the moon about the great injustice of it all, and how could anyone allow this to happen.
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You’d be amazed at what seemingly intelligent people will do or say or believe.
I know people who I thought brilliant until they said they were voting for trump. Way to shatter my opinion of you, jagoff.
I’m only using it atm for extensions that are, ironically enough, blocked on Firefox… Though thats only one website in particular.
blocked? that sounds weird, can you give a few examples?
Unrelated one- https://www.neowin.net/amp/ublock-origin-lite-maker-ends-firefox-store-support-slams-mozilla-for-hostile-reviews/
The two in I use are for twitter-
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/blue-blocker/ - Blocked in Firefox since after 0.3.5, which makes it useless since 0.3.5 was prior to the forced change to x, iirc.
https://github.com/dimdenGD/OldTwitter - Removed from Firefox entirely. Still available on Chrome.
Combined those two make the site look like old twitter, lets me save videos with a right click, and blocks twitter blue users automatically.
Man fuck google
Waiting for Mozilla to shoot their own foot again
Make sure to shit on them every fucking time anyone says the name “Mozilla”, that’ll help us not have anything except Chrome in a couple years.
It’s fine, there are open source projects underway. If any one of them gains traction, it could happen to Mozilla what happened to Unity with Godot. Here’s to hoping they get their act straight sooner tan later.
Oh, bullshit. There is nothing that has 1/100th of the effort that goes into gecko, because maintaining a web browser is ridiculously difficult. You’re living in a dreamworld if you think any other project is within a lightyear of Firefox.
idk why people think that these foss projects will be fully finished super quickly every time mozilla or google does some stupid shit. firefox exists solely because of googles funding due to web browsers being expensive/difficult to maintain. the effort being made for ladybird is amazing, but holy shit we are NOT gonna be at the ‘firefox and chrome alternative’ level unless they gain massive funding.
maybe i should get back into gemini
👍
Didn’t they just announce recently that they were going to work more with advertisers? https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/improving-online-advertising/
How to improve online advertising: Step 1: remove all online advertising
They just did, they are gonna work more with advertisers.
again?
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What about waiting for Google to shoot their own foot again, even though that already has happened numerous times?
While this will drive some users to Firefox, we all know it won’t be enough. Too many people simple don’t know, or don’t care, it won’t affect their lives in any meaningful way, or so they will believe. Google will be harming the tech illiterate and normies (sorry for the slur) because money, bullshit, and to drive the stake deeper into the monopoly. If you have older family members using chrome, sit them down and explain to them the dangers of the internet without adblock.
It gets me thinking. Tech literate people are the types to install blockers, and would be the same type of people both motivated and knowledgeable about how to switch browsers. On the line of thinking it seems like it is just going to drive them away from Chrome. Tech illiterate people remain unaffected since they are getting ads anyway.
But then on the other hand, if someone is tech literate then why are they even still using Chrome? Does such a person value whatever advantage Chrome theoretically provides over their ad-blocking?
as a chromium browser user - i’ve been meaning to switch to firefox, and i know it’ll take me maybe a day, but it feels like so much workkkk. In a similar fashion i’ve been meaning to switch to Linux for ages too. I guess it just hasn’t gotten bad enough for me to take action
as long as my adblockers & script blockers work, i’m not forced to upgrade to win11, and win10 still has security updates i don’t think it’s pushing on my discomfort buttons strong enough. I know the day will come, but like with a lot of things in my life - why do something today when i can do it tomorrow?
What do you mean “work”? What is it that needs to move?
You just fire up Firefox and start using it. It’ll even scrape your chrome setup to move bookmarks and stuff over.
It’s not an OS. It’s an application.
i don’t use chrome itself. i have a lot of saved things, roughly a million tabs open at every moment, and passwords saved which i do not remember
There’s extensions to export all your open tabs and then a similar extension to import those tabs and open them as a session in Firefox. Source: I, too, have a million tabs open at every moment, and had to do that to transition myself. Same for exporting/importing passwords.
This is all mostly automatically transfered over… I don’t know about passwords though
I’m not sure if Firefox pulls passwords when you import your data, but you can manually export passwords from Chrome and import them into Firefox.
If you have tabs like that, they’re not “open”. They are crumbs left as you wandered the internet. You’re not going back to them. Do yourself a favour and close them.
It’s like having thousands of unread emails in your inbox. At some point you have to stop kidding yourself you’re going to read them.
if that helps, switching browsers is a lot easier than switching your OS. the automatic import brings over most of your data (bookmarks, passwords, history, …), and you only need to handle the addons, if you had any, and the browser settings if you need anything from there
That’s some procrastination going on. Sometimes you should force yourself to start doing something for a minute or so and things will eventually change.
I feel you. It’s vey much a convenience thing, and sitting down with something you’re used to.
I use Opera for myself, but I have to use Chrome for work reasons (user profiles for different work areas based on whatever email is being used at the company computer). Thing is, Firefox also lacks the feature that makes me use Opera: speed dial. My Opera starting page is my speed dials, and speed dials are 10x better than just bookmarks, and I wouldn’t want to go through all the trouble of transfering literally hundreds of saved pages to standard bookmarks. But, if ublock fully stops working, guess I’ll have no choice.
I don’t know what exactly speed dialsare in opera, but firefox’s homepage can show website tiles in multiple rows
Chrome devtools and debugger are awesome
If you have older family members, you could try just installing Firefox for them and tell them it’s their internet now. This worked for me parents.
Same
Not for mine, they couldn’t make the switch even though everything was the same
I even changed the icon to Chrome’s
When is this happening? I’ve been telling my wife and kid that they need to stop using chrome for a year, but ublock is still working for them and blocking YouTube ads. They are the type that won’t switch until it becomes a problem for them.
I think that’s the point: Google has been shutting down Manifest V2 extensions one step at a time, and it’s been experimenting with anti-ad-block tech on YouTube with one user group at a time.
I’ve fully switched to Firefox everywhere. The only thing I’m missing is a lightweight browser which is not based on chromium for my potato tablet. jQuarks viewer is a good one but can be dumb sometimes, it opens image instead of the link for eg.
Not sure if they’re still round, but I used to use opera.
Opera ditched their browser engine. They use chromium now.
And now there is a need to ditch chromium on the grounds of what Google is doing to enshittify Manifest v3.
You could always try Firefox Focus to see if that will run on your potato tablet and is lightweight enough for you.
I find it funny how so many people are switching back to firefox but its been my default since I was like 10. I had crappy laptops when I was young and it was the only one that worked, it works amazingly for my modern computer.
The lack of HVEC/h.265 support is kind of a deal breaker in firefox (windows nightly builds don’t count as done). I need it to view h.265 security cameras and the occasional movie streamed via browser.
Edit: For those suggesting multiple browsers I could just use Edge if I wanted to… still better compatibility as it is essentially chromium.
I have a list of other things that don’t work reliably in Firefox such as various video conferencing tools so no, I am not going to switch to Firefox as my primary browser again anytime soon.
I was a Firefox user for many years but there are too many daily things I use now that prevent me from using it as a primary browser for work and causal use.
Cool thing is you can run multiple browsers. So just use Chrome for your cameras and Firefox for everything else.
Why would I use multiple browsers if I can achieve nearly everything in one? I would much rather use Edge or Safari for everything than Firefox plus another browser.
Because Edge has also moved to Manifest V3 and Safari uses WebKit which doesn’t have the same degree of blocking. I mean, you do you, enjoy your ads.
True, but the other argument is just try adblock lite, it works fine… It isn’t as powerful but I would rather have a fully functional daily browser than one with lesser video playback and conferencing functions.
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I guess, but the comment is a direct assertion against Firefox growing from this change. You sort of prove my point by suggestion another sub variant of the chrome ecosystem.
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guessing you want that codec for a reason
It is the default most widely used codec for devices and video 4K and higher resolution. It is just what nearly all new / modern cameras come with. You don’t really get a choice.
I guess when edge stops supporting v2 you’ll just look at ads then
I won’t
Ad block lite does a good enough job without me changing to be honest, again the point being is that there are more problems with me using Firefox as a primary browser than ad blocking benefits.
Nice try, Satya
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And we started with “Don’t be evil”
I believe their new slogan is “Fuck em’, what they gonna do!?”.
Doesn’t uBlock Origin already have a Manifest V3 version of the extension?
That’s uBlock Origin Lite, which the developer already stated is grossly inadequate for ad blocking.
thr manifest v3 version is basically ublock origin lite, whoch has extremely limited control of what you can and cant do.
Yeah, but it sucks, because of the heavy constraints of MV3
Yes, though the devs don’t even like it
Yes, but capabilities are reduced.
Browsers with in built adblocker or system wide AdGuard.
DNS ad blockers are not sufficient to block all ads and often overly broad. So they have much higher rate of false positives and negatives compared to in-browser ad blockers. Differentiating between ads and useful content based on domain names will become more and more difficult. Both might use some url from the same cloud provider, and blocking those breaks a lot of stuff.
AdGuard is not a DNS blocker
It’s both a browser extension and a DNS filter.
https://adguard-dns.io/kb/general/dns-filtering/#how-does-dns-filtering-work
Edit: It seems the apps can act as a VPN to filter traffic.
You where talking about “system wide AdGuard”, which is not the browser addon, but an app that uses DNS blocking, be it by either letting people set DNS servers manually, or automatically through VPN. Their VPN does not break TLS connection by inserting custom certificates and MITM proxies, so they cannot read/modifiy content.
It might be possible to use TLS breaking proxies for systemwide ad blocking, but even that wouldn’t help, because nowadays a lot of content and ads are loaded dynamically via javascript. So a browser is required to filter ads.
Maybe you are looking for SpamGuard, TrojanGuard, VirusGuard, MalwareGuard, SpywareGuard, RansomWareGuard, etc. instead.
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Or Firefox?
porque no los dos? I use both and there are things uBlock can catch/block that AdGuard Home doesn’t seem to be able to. That said AdGuard makes mobile pages readable, when most these days are a complete nightmare of ads
I was talking about AdGuard, not AdGuard Home.
I misread system wide as network wide. My mistake. FWIW, I still prefer a network wide and browser plugin (ublock and privacy badger) combo.
Those are trash and DNS adblocking does not work on YT either. Garbage advice 0/10
No, you’re wrong.
What’s a good YouTube downloader these days?
yt-dlp is the gold standard. Not only for YouTube either. Check out the man page, the amount of shit it can do is insane.
yt-dlp is what i normally use, tho its only got a command line interface. I think someone’s made a GUI for it, but I’ve never tried it.
theres seal on android, ive used it on waydroid but thats pretty silly
There’s like 20 guis
yt-dlp continues to be the best option for me.
if youre just looking for a downloader website with zero setup of your own there’s cobalt
On Android you can use Seal
Hell yeah. Another vote for Seal!
Screen capture while the video is running, like the VCR days of yore
Nah, man. I point a Betamax camcorder on a tripod at my 4K, 16bpp graphics workstation monitor to make sure I really capture all those pixels.
A great privacy focused client for YouTube is FreeTube. Uses a native API or Invidious for playback, and you can download and share videos from it. Doesn’t give any identifying info to Google/YouTube and I’ve never once dealt with an ad. For mobile, Grayjay and NewPipe are similar apps.
The downloading on freetube is so bad as to be functionally broken, and based on what reading I did to try to get it good, it sounds like it’s gonna stay how it is forever.
Basically it should be considered a lie to advertise freetube as having a working download function, even if it can technically do it. I wish it were better because it’s a neat little program for viewing without mucking up recommendations!
