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).
~laughs in firefox~
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It sorta protected Chrome’s monopoly in the browser world for years. Now that they’ve established that monopoly firmly, it’s time to crack down on things that diminish monetisation.
aka the “extinguish” phase I believe
We need to add a fourth E:
Embrace, Extend, Extinguish, Enshittify.
Embrace
Extend
Extinguish <-- you are here
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?
Chrome devtools and debugger are awesome
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?
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
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.
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.
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 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.
I fail to see the issue.
The Fox has been re-promoted to my daily driver as of this year. Chrome still in play for work stuff & sites don’t have ads.
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.
Yeah, I remember when Chrome was first released, I was already on Firefox, and I downloaded and tried Chrome…
I absolutely hated the UI, and kept on using Firefox.
Over the years, I have seen many articles about how Chrome is better because it is faster, I never had an issue with Firefox, so I kept using it.
The only time I swiched from Firefox since version 1.0 was when they launched the Australis redesign as it made it look like a boring chrome copy.
I swiched to Pale Moon, a Fitefox fork which kept the old UI, then when they released the Quantum redesign, I switched back.
My biggest gripe with Firefox is that if I’m too fast and start typing into the address bar when it first launches, it’ll clear the auto text selection and start prepending my input onto the URL.
Same for me. Cool my commonly used Websites load 0.05ms faster - idc. Still gonna use firefox
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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’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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
Come and join me in Firefox and try out container tabs. Super powerful when you’re trying to keep home and work identities seperate.
I love containerized tabs. They do break online payment for some sites but imo it’s worth it. Wondering if there’s similar feature / addon in brave / librewolf…
Waiting for Mozilla to shoot their own foot again
They just did, they are gonna work more with advertisers.
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/
People completely misunderstand this feature (which is only a temporary prototype anyways), and I think that’s entirely Mozilla’s fault. They do a really poor job explaining it.
Usually ad networks implement sophisticated tracking, which works in a highly invasive way. They need the telemetry to watch their campaigns. Firefox now offers the option to collect a minimal amount of data for them and inform the network indirectly.
This is a good thing for the end user. The trackers are not needed, you gain privacy. Disabling the option makes it so you’re instantly tracked MORE.
Mozilla shouldn’t have staged this as an opt-out of the new system. You actually OPT-IN to networks running their old scripts on your machine to collect your telemetry:
[ ] Allow ad networks to run their own telemetry
(Beta functionality, some advertisers may still run their own trackers, even when this option is disabled.)
That would be the same thing, but communicate what it’s doing.
The fact that advertisers like Meta might be on board with this should be exciting to people. That they are even considering giving up so much data and now only receive a single number of impressions per campaign is very unexpected.
Also, none of this matters if you block ads anyways. If you don’t load the ad, neither the networks script runs its telemetry, nor does Firefox increase the counter for the campaign id.
If you’re wondering what’s every involved party’s gain in this, an interesting read is the IPA white paper, where the overall design targets for the system are stated: Interoperable Private Attribution (IPA), 2022
In particular:
In designing IPA, we set out to find a win-win-win solution for cross platform attribution measurement that met our goals across privacy, utility, and competition.
• Privacy: data collected about the user is minimized, protecting the end-users privacy. • Utility: the telemetry process is unified and simplified across all platforms, reducing the costs • Competition: it will be an open, standardized system, accessible to everyone
Just to be clear, I dislike the way Mozilla rolled this out. They already have a “Studies” checkmark that people can enable if they wish to participate in stuff like this. That Mozilla treats this prototype differently is actually not ok, and breaks trust with their users. But as far as I’m concerned, this is a completely separate topic from the update content, which I wish to be successful.
Firefox now offers the option to collect a minimal amount of data for them and inform the network indirectly.
This is a good thing for the end user.
I’m not sure that collecting data is actually a good thing for the end user, but to each their own I suppose.
i think the key word is option
It’s an improvement over the current systems. Incremental improvements to the state of things can be a good thing too.
Yeah, the reason they could be collecting data, is to feet it to an AI.
How to improve online advertising: Step 1: remove all online advertising
again?
Before chrome became massively popular, Firefox was very popular. ie was still the most used browser back then
What about waiting for Google to shoot their own foot again, even though that already has happened numerous times?
Wasn’t there just an article about how Mozilla is claiming ublock origin shouldn’t be supported anymore and another one claiming they’re starting a focus on ads?
I feel like we’re entering a really shitty time for the Internet… Tie that in with Microsucks Recall feature and computing in general is going to suck…
I don’t want to go touch grass!!
The closest I can find is
Which is only the “lite” version (which really has no reason to be used in firefox) and was likely based on an improper scan. Which happens constantly and is usually an email and a few days of waiting rather than immediately going to the press.
If you can find something about Mozilla actually being anti-adblock or disabling manifest v2 that would be incredibly useful. But maybe be aware of what is going on before vaguely making major claims?
IIRC Mozilla doubled down on their v2 support when Chrome announced the shift to v3. But then the Chrome monopoly judgment came down and with it a lot of speculation on Google dropping their funding of Mozilla, so maybe Mozilla could be changing its tune to either protect or find a replacement for that funding? Nothing of substance is happening yet, it’s still all speculation, but I do hope nothing like that does happen.
Mozilla has been diversifying for ages, it’s what stuff like buying pocket was all about. They should be making around 100m off the side hustles by now, plenty to keep the lights on, but still a small sum compared to the 500m they get from selling the default search engine spot.
Also, just as a reminder: Mozilla doesn’t exist to make money for Firefox, Firefox exists to make money for Mozilla’s general internet charity work.
In fact, uBlock Origin is one of the officially recommended extensions by Mozilla
Firefox isn’t far behind now. They just announced ads are coming and they know their platform is used heavily with ad blocking extensions so they’ll cut it
Source?
Talk about a gross mischaracterization of what is actually said in that blog post. You made it seem like Firefox is getting rid of ad blocking which is far from the truth of what that post says. It doesn’t even mention ad blocking. Maybe don’t editorialize a post and present it as fact.
Advertising is like the Kudzu vine: neat and potentially useful if maintained responsibly, but beyond capable of growing out of control and strangling the very landscape if you don’t constantly keep it in check. I think, for instance, that a podcast or over-the-air show running an ad-read with an affiliate link is fine for the most part, as long as it’s relatively unobtrusive and doesn’t put limitations on what the content would otherwise go over.
The problem is that there needs to be a reset of advertiser expectations. Right now, they expect the return on investment that comes from hyper-specific and invasive data, and I don’t think you can get that same level of effectiveness without it. The current advertising model is entrenched, and the parasitic roots have eroded the foundation. Those roots will always be parasitic because that’s the nature of advertising, and the profit motive in general when unchecked.
I kinda wish for google CEOs and shareholders to die a horrible, painful death :p
They know that’s how peasants feel that’s why they feel zero shame or guilt about fuxking people over. We are not human to them anyway.
I would wager that at least some of them do not confuse effect for cause.
Well, looks like then I might have to start shutting down my use of Chrome.
I used to be fine with adverts, not a big deal. Until they became insanely intrusive. Noticed that YouTube recently stopped to even show the countdown to skip or the length of the actual ad on some devices/apps, so it’s always guesswork when you can actually skip or how long it would run after the skip becomes available. And the amount of ads going in videos is getting disgusting as well, I know it’s partly up to the creators, but fucking hell I often get ads like not even a minute into the video already, often running longer than the time I’ve spent actually watching the video.
