I think the management’s recent decisions, as well as the removal/lack of power-user features for those users, have moved a lot of people away from Firefox, myself included. They really need to focus on providing really good software, not get caught up in trying to chase trends or forcing services people don’t want. This WIRED article does a good job explaining the issues.
I am keeping an eye on Pulse Browser, which is an experimental fork of Firefox with uBlock Origin pre-installed and some UI customisations. They’ve got a sidebar with “web panels” very much like Vivaldi’s Panels, and they’ve got vertical tabs like Edge. People also seem to be posting suggestions to their discussion page on GitHub. It’s early days, but if they listen and try to implement some of the suggested features to their best ability, it could be a much better Firefox than Firefox itself.
Oh, I support Gecko. More browser engines to compete against Chromium the better. I just can’t support Firefox in its current state right now. Thankfully, Pulse seems to be picking up the slack in places.
No problem! Tree Style Tabs might also do the job on base Firefox with nested tabs, but it’s not as streamlined as Pulse or Edge, especially if you want to hide the tab bar (you have to edit .CSS files).
edit: okay enabling both features, moving the main side panel to the right and enable tab collapsing makes a great space-saving setup.
But that’s also not private as has been claimed as a reason to go FF. The only reason to use FF is only to not use chrome. Not for all the reasons that chrome is bad.
Tor Browser, LibreWolf, and Arkenfox JS are the most secure and private browsers you can get and they’re all based on Firefox. If they’re not private enough for you, I don’t know what is
I think he means Firefox is not Chromium-based; Chrome is a proprietary code base, no one can access it besides internal Google employees. Chromium, on the other hand, is open source, and is what browsers such as Edge, Brave and Opera are based off of. Chrome is also based off Chromium, it’s the closed source browser Google distributes. Think of Chromium as Android, and the Pixel UI as Chrome. So no, I doubt he means Firefox is Chrome.
Edit: seeing from the other comments, downvotes, and that the comment has been edited, he most likely made a typo and typed “Firefox is chromium.”
Edit 2: Mistakenly said that Chromium was what Firefox was based off of when I meant to say Brave. My bad. I’m well aware Firefox isn’t Chromium-based(I use it for that reason), I was just confused as to why this person was saying he meant Firefox was Chrome, when the comment read “firefox is not chromium”. I later realized(in the above edit) that they must have written “firefox is chromium”, before editing it to “firefox is not chromium” after realizing he messed the comment up.
Firefox is the only major browser standing today that’s not based on Chromium, so you’re right there.
Firefox does not predate Google. Firefox is a descendant of Mozilla, which started as a broken chunk of quickly open sourced Netscape Navigator 4.0 code. Netscape’s engineers ripped out everything they didn’t hold a license to and dumped it raw (and uncompilable) on the web for the OSS community to rebuild. This happed just before Netscape was finished being acquired by AOL.
AOL did rebrand Netscape Navigator as AOL Browser, but it didn’t gain any significant market share.
Google was founded about the same time (about two years later) as Netscape Navigator was released. So, you can either say Firefox’s history is older than Google or the actual Firefox project is younger than Google.
In February 1998, approximately one year prior to its acquisition by AOL, Netscape released the source code for its browser and created the Mozilla Organization
Google Founded September 4, 1998
Mozilla, Gecko and what everyone now commonly refers to as Firefox predates Google.
Edit: you’re technically correct of course, however I wasn’t about to complicate my reply with Netscape, Mozilla and Gecko history when the OP I was replying to was saying Firefox was built on Google Chromium.
Oh don’t worry, it’s poisoned and the animals are gone. Once the heat bakes off the greenery, there will be no reason at all to go out there except to get to your car
tbh I’m just tired of all of this, we can’t have nice things, ever… Every fucking thing in this world is being swallowed by corporate greed. Every service there’s a catch, and I’m getting mad with it, things aren’t made to serve their purpose, they only exist to make money and more money for people who already have infinite money, it’s frustrating. Things need to change or everything is going to collapse… fuck companies, fuck billionaires, fuck stocks, fuck all of this
I recently played Hacknet, a hacking game published in 2015. That game talks a LOT about being tracked on the Internet, telling you to delete logs and some IP address data in file headers.
The game tells you to delete the logs on servers because computers can track all incoming requests, which can be a problem when you are doing nefarious actions and looking through confidentional infornation. Tracking who is accessing a computer/server and why has been a common practice, especially for buisnesses.
You also don’t actually need to delete the logs while playing. There are only 1 or 2 minor moments where there is a consequence for not doing that, and in those cases a fork bomb is also needed (to prevent leaving a disconnect log).
The actual scary part of the game is (SPOILERS) a big tech company developing a massive 0-day exploit and wanting to monopolize the patch for it.
We saw the mass adoption of the internet, which before was mostly used by a small group of techies. Now we might be heading to a split: The mass walled garden and a separate smaller but free internet.
I’m used to dealing with DRM, too. If it can be stripped out of a game or other software, it could be stripped out of the internet itself. Maybe some of the old cracking scenes that quit due to boredom will return for the challenge.
It’s interesting to think about from a technological point of view, and there could be multiple ingress points to combat it.
The proposal doesn’t have a complete implementation, but it in essence they want websites to ask browsers for a key if sorts (attestation). In theory this flow would be a lot like hoe notifications work. Keeping that in mind, when the website asks the browser, what’s stopping us from making our own attestation server?
Like, seriously, went through the last 10 years spending a good chunk of my day on Twitter and Reddit using Chrome, and suddenly I’m on Lemmy/Mastodon on Firefox.
Well, best thing to counter that is to be the change you want to see. Start the community for the niche you miss the most/know the most about. Post something daily for two weeks + do a call for mods, and before you know you’ll have at least some activity. I (helped) to bootstrap !openstreetmap this way, and the community has about 1 top level post per day on average now. Not a lot, but a good start.
I won’t lie that it’s been an adjustment. Old habits die hard. Reddit is the one that I am more certainly done with. No one is on Mastodon yet so I do browse Twitter a little bit to get updates on the stuff I like, but don’t interact there anymore.
Seriously… my oldest account on Reddit was 12 years old. I’ve been through so many changes that turned me off, but the API stuff was the last blow, and the CEO’s love for Elon Musk just sealed the deal.
Add me to the list with a side of furiously searching for security and privacy of cloud storage services and figuring out which Linux I want to use. I’m shaking my head at how complacent I got with my services. I always do my due diligence when starting to use anything but I somehow forgot to keep up in the past couple of years.
That is only because it doesn’t keep all tabs loaded in RAM all of the time though.
If you open the same pages with the same installed extensions on both you will see similar RAM usage. It is only on restoring sessions or longer-term sessions that you will see a difference because FF will reload the page when it is activated again where chrome will keep it in RAM.
I mean yes, that’s the main reason, but that doesn’t make it any less true. I like being able to have a couple extra tabs open just to have them there, not having them to use up resources seems kind of like a given.
The rulers figured out the internet is too dangerous to their power. They thought they could control it and us, and they did for a long time, but it’s not working anymore. Now they are cracking down on our ability to communicate, to prevent ideas from spreading and taking hold that they cannot tolerate.
? They’re just following the end game of capitalism, they’re trying to squeeze every last bit of profit out of the internet that they can, it has nothing to do with the internet “threatening” power, they already took care of that with all of the spying laws they passed when the internet started getting popular
interest rate hikes, VCs are demanding their money back and companies are scrambling to become profitable/more profitable.
Edit: forgot to address the other point, they don’t really care about us spreading ideas as long as we don’t actually threaten their power. There is absolutely 0 threat of a socialist revolution anywhere in the west right now
I’m not speaking of socialist revolution. There’s a whole spectrum between licking boots and socialist revolution that is mostly ignored online. There are many ways people can threaten power, even just using Lemmy instead of Reddit. Here the conversations and our attention are not directed by profit and power seeking interests.
No, never, but that’s not necessarily the biggest problem. I think the algorithms were a bigger problem, and we don’t have that here (at least not secret profit driven ones).
I don’t think the “spying laws” are what makes the internet controlled. It’s the constant, huge waves of misinformation and weak thought, which are enabled by those “spying laws”, among others ways. Just my two cents, tho.
Services like Reddit, Twitter and Youtube needs to make money somehow. They provide a service that the users enjoy, and it is fair that they want componsation for those services. Aslong as they are upfront with how and what you are paying with I think it is fine, and the user can themself choose not to use the service if they feel like the payment is too high.
It seems like we are whining about not being able to watch quality content for free. Even Lemmy needs donations or kind souls to keep running.
The DRM and Chrome changes might be worse… But in the end it is the same base argument, we need more competition to reduce the price or stop using services we don’t like / want to pay for.
I’m fine with paying for YouTube premium. I find good value in it and like YouTube music. Fuck Google for continuing to push this though. I’m working on degooglefing myself.
I wouldn’t say its unpopular, but I do agree its a bit ignorant but not in the probably negative way you mean.
I think its your acceptance that its fundamental that “Business MUST profit and we MUST suffer to allow them to profit”
You’re making a huge leap that we need to suffer through all of the internet getting worse just because a corporation wants to profit. Fuck Google, Fuck Reddit, fuck all businesses that fail. Who cares? We owe them nothing.
I guess they don’t have to profit, but I believe they do have to cover their expenses (salary, hosting, etc). This is needed with capatalism or any other model (yes I know they have huge profits sadly)
I do agree that the market is failing, where we have way to little competition. Or that maybe a alternative to capatilism would solve the issue.
But in every thread here I feel like most people just expect to use everything on the internet for free, which is absurd to me. Why would anyone host a service like youtube if you didnt get any income from the users? The server costs alone must be huge.
Why would people write articles if they do not get any money from it?
Why would people write articles if they do not get any money from it?
Ever heard of Wikipedia?
Or blogs?
Weren't loads of people quitting reddit because they refused to have their free content contributions monetised?
Capitalism makes you think many things that aren't true: people only being motivated by money is one, humans being naturally selfish and greedy is another, and the notion that it is the best and only viable system. Are you starting to see a thread there?
It's all about maintaining the illusions it needs to continue to exist, but you can learn how to see beyond, and unlearn all these lies, you just have to be willing to.
I do agree that it is possible to be motivated by other things than money, but in todays society you need income to survive.
If we had other systems to deligate money to everyone I agree that we might not need to do things for money.
I love services that are free, and driven by communities that are motivated by what they are doing. But these services also need some kind of income today. Wikipedia is dependent on donations, mosts blogs have sponsors, ads or is used to further a career.
I have no issues with this, I will glady donate to Wikipedia, and I understand why blogs might have ads or sponsors in them. But if you enjoy a service it is kinda wierd to not want to give anything back to the creator.
I understand google is fucked, but we cant just sit back and not understand why a free version of youtube will not exist. Maybe youtube should just die, but why are we complaining about a comany taking payment for a service? Fuck google, fuck facebook, but don’t complain that they want payment for huge expensive services that basically could not survive without any income.
Only because a handful of obscenely wealthy people need it to be that way for them to maintain their power and way of life.
but why are we complaining about a comany taking payment for a service? Fuck google, fuck facebook, but don’t complain that they want payment for huge expensive services that basically could not survive without any income
I think what those companies are doing can safely be described as far beyond just making a reasonable income for what they do.
You are being played. I won't even take you as far as the possibility of a stateless, classless, moneyless society, way way before that we can get to the point where money isn't an obstacle because it is equally and equitably distributed. It is possible, it's the people who want to exploit you and others' labour as well as the world's resources for their own personal profit that are telling you you need this system that keeps them untouchable, why would you believe anything they say?
Because they take payment already. What people don’t like is being nickel and dimed. Google sells ads on the page. They sell ads in the videos. The creators sell their own ads and they ask for patreon and subscriptions and donations. It’s too much. I pay for premium. Google logs me out, and then I start seeing video ads again. That’s bullshit. For 10 bucks a month I should literally never encounter an ad on YouTube. That’s not how it works. Now the price has increased by 50%. Why should I pay that? What benefit do I get? I can use invidious or libretube, or even host my own instance, and be far better off. No ads ever, including sponsored spots. At 10 bucks a month it wasn’t worth my time. At 15, I’m insulted enough that it is.
On a side note, I’m autistic enough that I’ll say the quiet part out loud. I care about someone making their reasonable living creating content. I don’t care about the ‘livlihood’ of someone who’s already so rich it doesn’t matter, or some mega global corporation. And it’s troubling that most ways you can support a creator end up doing much more to prop up companies or platforms that interact with them in a predatory way. It’s not worth several hours of my time for creators to get a couple pennies. That’s just a fact.
It’s not my fault if a company decided it’s not worth it to continue with the advertising platform it created. It’s likely just as profitable as it ever was. They just take advantage of their huge size and its stifling effect on competition to squeeze us for everything they can. That’s actually illegal and if our governments were doing anything they were supposed to they’d stop it.
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