Your choice of browser matters — Google’s Web DRM and the open internet
https://grafcube.codeberg.page/blog/2023/08/06/web-drm-api.html
I wrote this blog post to inform the people I know who aren’t as tech savvy or otherwise don’t put any thought into their choice of browser. Another goal is to help get enough awareness on the topic and make sure it fails.
@opensource @privacy #webintegrityapi #WEI #google #mozilla #chrome #firefox #chromium #foss #opensource #OpenWeb #privacy #drm #nodrm #drmfree #freesoftware #browser
I’ve been using Firefox as my primary on both desktop and mobile for about 6 years now, and it’s usually pretty great. Desktop rarely has problems. On mobile there are a good number of sites with issues though, because devs don’t usually test against it as has had a low number of users. But hopefully this revitalized movement to switch will make them have to care. And that said, 99% of the time these sites are still mostly usable, unless the broken thing is important like say a login screen 😅
I’ve only had like 1 issue on desktop in the last like 5 years. Mobile I’ve bumped into a few hiccups with forms, sliders, and other elements not working properly. If I can’t resolve the issue by requesting the desktop site I go to my computer or Chrome in an absolute emergency.
That said, I’d take a (waaay) sub-1% failure rate any day in exchange for having the joy of uBlock Origin on my phone. If you’re on Android, I can’t recommend Firefox enough thanks to the add-on support.
The opposite is true. A friend tells me some site is not working for them and they’re using Chrome. I open it on Firefox and yup, works fine.
Of course, it’s way more serious when the site doesn’t work on FF.
@ZephyrXero Interesting. I’ve personally never had any problems on Android. I use Iceraven since it has more extensions and the only issue so far has been that initial load is often slow (because of the extensions I use).
Iceraven?
Fork of android firefox
A fork of firefox with more extensions available than the standard mobile firefox app.
I have been using fennec and yeah the load is slow only when i have all the extentions enabled but overall a great browser
I have been using in desktop for about a year and it’s been great. I had tried mobile a while back and had some issues but with Google’s proposals I’m willing to try again.
I have been using Firefox since the release of Firefox 57 aka Firefox Quantum in 2017. I love the browser and most of sites run well in firefox. But there have been a few cases where I had to use a chromium based browser.
Firefox + Ublock origin is a great and awesome combo.
I also use Firefox on android. It is okay, but I sometimes feel it is slow at loading some sites. But it is not a big deal.
Oh, also Firefox is the only mainstream browser on Android that supports installing extensions.
This. I switched to Firefox on Android, because of extensions. At the same time I switched to Firefox on Windows. And I never looked back. The only problem I have is native support for PWA on Firefox for desktops (we can add support with 3rd party app), and backgorund notifications doesn’t work on PWAs on Firefox for Android
Weird , I have been using ff , twitter pwa for years and notifs work for me , although i voluntarily disabled notifs now !
Hm… It doesn’t work for me on my own app, where notifications are main part of the app. It does work on Chrome for Android and on both Chrome and Firefox on Windows, but on Firefox I never received a single notitication. And all notifications are enabled. I will try to remove and add PWA in firefox again and we will see. Is there some PWA app where I can test if notitications are working? I am not using Twitter.
There is a telegram pwa i think but i use the open source app for that !
I could never browse the internet without mobile firefox and ublock origin.
Unfortunately this is coming and a majority of people are going to happily step on to the train.
Think of it like this: 99% of all apps could have been just web apps in a mobile browser (Hell, a majority essentially are just a wrapped web app) but because of companies offering more/better functionality people choose to use the app.
All that needs to happen is sites starting require DRM functionality for “security reasons” so that the end user can enjoy more features.
A majority of end users don’t understand the implications when making choices like these.
@Mindlight but it hasn’t happened yet. Getting everyone to switch away from Chrome isn’t going to help anyone and that’s why there needs to be legal action.
It will because websites will not drop support for 20% of users, they might if it is 3%. This is how product owners make decisions on browser support.
I think its bit late for awareness campaigns now , google will eventually bring the web integrity api , I am very scared about if we will even be able to use new OSes , but i guess a new web with less dependancy may develop !
I was in dehi recently. Poverty is kinda nuts there, but I noticed everyone had phones, even people who obviously had no home. I assume kinda shitty phones, but it makes you realize a bit how important access is. If someone releases an iOS only app with no web version, they’re basically saying fuck you to all those people.
Same same for this though. Googles saying “as long as you use our stuff you’ll be fine, and why wouldn’t you use our stuff because it’s free! (Sometimes kinda sorta). And if you’re stuck with something else for some reason, fuck you.”
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@grafcube it’s very important to push back against google’s browser hegenomy just like we did back in the day with microsoft because now it’s not just about one company controllin the software to access the majority of the web but the privacy of it.
This new invention from Google has nothing to do with the browser you use. It is an API incorporated into, with Google affiliates and its own, web pages, which allows these pages to block any browser “for security reasons”, when it does not have a Google Token incorporated, that accredits it as secure. That is, it is then Google itself who decides which browser is worthy to access the web. It doesn’t matter which browser you use, or incorporate this Token in it, or forget about a large part of the internet and anyway about any Google page or service (Gmail, YouTube, GDrive, GoogleMaps, …). This is the danger that the free internet faces, that Google decides which browser is worth using and which is not, being able to allow only Chrome itself as the only valid browser to access half of the pages on the network, and Game over for everyone else, Chromium, Gecko, WebKit or any other, without Google Token in it no internet, except if some geek comes up with some Fake Token which can be used (complicated)🤬.
For the downvoters, also Firefox and forks need to insert this Google Token in the Browser or die. Because of this Mozilla, Vivaldi and several others have started a protest before the legislator to prevent this crap. In the EU there is already a debate whether or not this is compatible with GDPR and user rights. We’ll see what comes of this. It is legitimate that Google provides tools to web pages to protect against entries from bots and insecure browsers, but it is not legitimate that the decision which browser is secure and which is not, depends on this company, only a certificate from an independent technical institution can be valid on technical grounds and not by Google itself for possible commercial reasons.
Fuck google.
@grafcube @opensource @privacy
> But why do you use Chrome?
I can tell why I do. I used to use Firefox but had to move to Chromium long time ago for several reasons:
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It was nicer on RAM on a very small machine I had at the time. I think Firefox got better in that sense since then.
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Many web apps don’t work quite well (or don’t work at all) on anything but Chrome. That’s a sin many lazy web developers make, and it forces their choice on the users.
The first point is no longer true. The second point is, sadly, quite relevant.
To the second point, as a avid firefox user, I noticed that some Webapps seem to not depend on the Browser alone.
Even in safe mode, some Webapps sometimes work better on different systems than on others using the same Firefox version.
For instance youtube streaming seem to work better on my Linux laptop then on my Windows desktop, where it becomes stuttery. In Chromium there it works as well as Firefox on my Laptop.
What I want to say is that browsers and all the systems around this are very complicated. So your milage with the same browser will vary, and you might blame the wrong thing.
Oh I’m aware of that. Network drivers, GPUs, running processes, etc.
By just changing user agent string you can make the site work on Firefox too!
True for many cases. But I was referring to cases in which the site really acts out because it’s optimized for Chrome.
After using Firefox for 20 years, aside of maybe 3 times I never had any problems. So I can’t confirm the second point at all
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@grafcube @opensource @privacy
Yaaay, time to really push that SearX/alternative-search-engine crusade, because there is more reason for a user to say “fuck you” to the hungry machine.
Yeah I’m completely over to firefox now. I can’t help but notice firefox mobile is still a bit sluggish though but eh
Really, Firefox on Android feels much better then Chrome for me. But maybe thats because of ublock.
Try Fennec
I just switched to Fennec from Firefox Nightly when I found out it also supports custom add-on collections. Works great!
With Fennec you don’t need custom collections, you can just install the official add-ons right away.
I’m talking about third party extensions that the Mozilla store doesn’t let you install directly, at least the only way I’ve figured out how to add them is with the custom collections
I never had a single add-on Fennec wouldn’t allow me to install. Mind linking to one? Would like to see what’s causing the problem.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/wikiwand-wikipedia-modernized/
Note: I have this working via my addon collection
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Honestly the only issue I have with mobile firefox is how it refreshes when you app switch but I think that’s more of an android thing :(
Seamonkey (Mozilla browser/email/news suite) still exists! https://www.seamonkey-project.org/dev/
And there’s even still a build of uBlock Origin for it! https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/
There is still hope, if we keep the open tools alive…
Posted from freshly-installed Seamonkey browser with uBlock Origin :)
There is no internet without Firefox. There is an internet without Google.
Good article actually! I think non-tech-savvy people will also appreciate some kind of TL;DR
Edit: didn’t know Codeberg can host static sites, definitely migrating mine there from Guthib!
Excellent write up. Thank you for doing this, I’ll share with my whole family and friends.
