We’ve been anticipating it for years, and it’s finally happening. Google is finally killing uBlock Origin – with a note on their web store stating that the extension will soon no longer be available because it “doesn’t follow the best practices for Chrome extensions”.
Now that it is finally happening, many seem to be oddly resigned to the idea that Google is taking away the best and most powerful ad content blocker available on any web browser today, with one article recommending people set up a DNS based content blocker on their network 😒 – instead of more obvious solutions.
I may not have blogged about this but I recently read an article from 1999 about why Gopher lost out to the Web, where Christopher Lee discusses the importance of the then-novel term “mind share” and how it played an important part in dictating why the web won out. In my last post, I touched on the importance of good information to democracies – the same applies to markets (including the browser market) – and it seems to me that we aren’t getting good information about this topic.
This post is me trying to give you that information, to help increase the mind share of an actual alternative. Enjoy!
Even in Vivaldi???
Yeah
Vivaldi is a chromium browser so yes
Vivaldi has that, too, without the cryptobro People owning the browser.
I switched to Zen, personally as any chromium seems to be doomed unless someone manages to fork the base project and take it away from Google
Vivaldi is closed source. Brave isn’t. Even with all its very real problems, Brave is the best option aside from Firefox, especially once you turn off all the weird stuff
vivaldi has components open source but the ui is non-free
That’s essentially the same as not being open source considering the only part that’s open source is the engine code, which is mostly just chromium
i am talking about this, You cannot compile it from source tho.
this is why vivaldis ui is not open sourceYes, I’m aware, that’s what I was talking about too. As much as I love Vivaldi and want to trust them, i don’t think i can trust them as easily as Brave
Crypto stuff in Brave is opt-in. So just don’t turn it on.
personally as any chromium seems to be doomed unless someone manages to fork the base project and take it away from Google
ungoogled-chromium (windows version) is that.
idk if this blog is right or wrong correct me:
https://vivaldi.com/blog/why-vivaldi-will-never-create-thinkcoin/That’s explicitly making clear how bad of an idea crypto is?
It’s their opinion on crypto
Yeah - and they explain why they’ll never do a crypto currency. I don’t see how this is challenging anything I said before
Alr
Chrome, now with added crypto and homophobia
I have been using a fork of Firefox called Floorp and so far pretty happy with it. Chrome and any variant of it has essentially a monopoly on the browser and Firefox will just follow what Google says anyway so I wouldn’t recommend native firefox. It would be nice if Safari(WebKit) was more stable and available as an alternative.
Anyway: https://floorp.app/
It’s time to fork chromium!
Hardened Firefox, here I come.
For people who want to keep using Chrome for whatever reason, remember to disable auto-update.
Never updating your browser again is a pretty bad idea when it comes to security
I just use DNS or VPN for adblocking , no need for browser addons
To my knowledge, DNS blockers not only miss a ton of ads, they also trigger several false positives.
A better solution is to switch to something not chromium like Firefox or whatever alternative the next Linux person to read this comment recommends
Ublocks lists are available as hostlists as well. Yea Firefox for the PC , vanadium (chromium) for the phone. No problem running all of it as well , if you have a little bit of power to spare. Haven’t had any issues on adguard DNS plus proton adblock
Firefox also has a mobile app with full extension support on Android, including uBlock origin
Yea problem is however that using Firefox on Android is using Firefox and chromium WebView. Så twice the problems. Sticking to vanadium. No issues at all as far as I noticed regarding adblocking. Next phone will hopefully be a Linux one. If there ever is such a thing that works and matches mid-top level androids. Then it will be a Firefox based one (not the standard one as it is riddle with Google stuff)
I’ve been using Firefox on Android since it came out. I’ve had 0 issues.
And as far as I’m aware, the newest version of Android Firefox (previously called “preview” doesn’t use an ounce of chrome, even for temporary browser pages
Yea try to uninstall the chrome WebView :) . You are using Firefox and chrome. Firefox do have a close connection to Google also telemetry. https://itsfoss.com/librewolf-vs-firefox/
This isn’t sufficient. I’ve been running DNS adblocking for a decade, advertisers have wised up to it and can easily sidestep it.
Oh I run DNS adblocking on the router and protons adblocking on the VPN . That seem to cover everything. I use ublock on the job PC though.
how about adguard dns?
It kills the full version of uBlock but there is a lite version that has fewer functions as well.
For now. And Google super mega promises to never rug pull that one.
Oh great. Back to sucking Google’s teat for me then!
lol. Obligatory “you guys use chromium?”
For interface unity I use Voyager in Chrome’s web app functionality, it’s nice to have the same interface. The last multi platform Lemmy app was Liftoff which was really nice but it’s dead.
Lemmy in a tab in Firefox, no matter the front end is so… I want the sleek experience dang it!
Firefox, give web app functionality on desktop!
Honest question here, since chromium (vs chrome) is open source, can someone not fork an older version, or remove the new code blocking ublock?
I mean i assume it cant be done, but i dont know why
It can be done, but then whoever forks that will need to stay on top of keeping that fork up to date with other changes in the original chromium, and that gets harder and harder to do as time goes on and more changes are made to the same or related parts of the codebase.
Also all the ad blocking extensions would have to continue maintaining forks of their own projects for increasingly obscure manifest V2 Chromium browsers.
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And you have to know that if anyone actually tried, they would dedicate their infinite resources to making that as difficult as humanly possible.
Google: We changed a color
Fork Developer: they changed a color and it caused 50,000 breaking changes that a diff tool can’t handle automatically wtf.
Google: sorry wrong color here’s a new one
Fork developer: another 100,000 breaking changes that a diff can’t handle?!?!
I don’t know why either. What I do know is that most Chromium browsers that are not Chrome have ad-blocking built into the browser itself using the same strategies as uBo but not reliant on Mv2 or Mv3 because they’re not extensions.
Firefox needs to work on ensuring seamless compatibility with more websites, web apps and so on, because I’m personally very bored with my kids’ schools and related services sending out emails and forms with links that simply won’t open in FF but are clearly expecting Chrome or Edge where they work fine. Yes, this is on the lazy developers, but if FF want wider scale take-up outside of geeky niche groups then this is the stuff they must fix.
Okay that’s fine, but when websites are effectively writing
if user_agent_string != [chromium] break;It doesn’t really matter how good compatibility is. I’ve had websites go from nothing but a “Firefox is not supported, please use Chrome” splash screen to working just fine with Firefox by simply spoofing the user agent to Chrome. Maybe some feature was broken, but I was able to do what I needed. More often than not they just aren’t testing it and don’t want to support other browsers.
The more insidious side of this is that websites will require and attempt to enforce Chrome as adblocking gets increasingly impossible on them, because it aligns with their interests. It’s so important for the future of the web that we resist this change, but I think it’s too late.
The world wide web is quickly turning into the dark alley of the internet that nobody is willing to walk down.
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Firefox can’t fix all the broken sites in the world, but they do investigate issues reported to https://webcompat.com
You can help by reporting sites that don’t work for you.
Can you send me an example? I don’t think I ever really encountered those sites and I use FF almost exclusively for ~20 years.
Its a frequency of use thing, and also some required sites. Examples are sites hosted by schools, government, or workplaces.
Although most people using Firefox aren’t aware of spoofing the client to look like chrome, so that might need to be talked about more.
That all said, I don’t have problems with any required usage, the only ones I have an issue with are on my phone, using mull, some sites payment forms won’t load or work correctly. Taco bell is pretty bad for that and then the app wouldnt work either for a while. I also run grapheneos though so its hard to say what’s the cause there.
Hm, okay. Maybe it’s just a US government page thing then. Here in Germany firefox is still at 20% and used to be the standard browser until 5-6 years ago, so maybe pages are still optimized for it here.
It varies state to state here as well. Someone in Georgia might have way more problems than someone in Minnesota. Its hard to generalize the US in that way. Sort of like the EU being a group but each country separate.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. If your site doesn’t work on Firefox your site doesn’t work. As web developers your job is to develop applications for the web not for one specific browser. This goes double for essential services.
That’s some BS. You and i both know that Chromium has the largest share in the browser business, so it makes sense from a development perspective to develop websites that will reach the most people. It’s on Firefox to optimise their browser so that it can run these sites as well.
A single company shouldn’t be able to dictate how the web works.
But they said they wouldn’t be evil!
Shit. You got me there. Carry on I guess.
Well too bad, because that’s how things are
Wrong again, sparky.
Nope
On the same line of thought, we should remove sidewalks and bike lanes because cars use the road more
That’s a pretty crooked line of thought
line
I see what you did there…
firefox uses the standard, chrome are adding some non-standard crap to be anti-competitive. same shit microsoft did with internet explorer and caused it to eventually be replaced by chrome waybackwhen once law finally told them to back off.
it’s not up to firefox, it’s up to the law to step in and prevent google from doing anti-competitive non-standard shit.
Doesn’t really matter to a regular user, in that case it’s"Firefox doesn’t work"
My job requires login to most internal websites via Microsoft Azure AD SSO using Kerberos authentication using passwordless, smart card auth.
This switch happened this week. Up until yesterday I was 100% Firefox until this.
Firefox for MacOS is not able to do this. I spent an hour or so looking for solutions. Chrome on MacOS also doesn’t. Safari does and now I have to fucking use Safari FFS.
Check some of Firefox’s
about:configflags. A number of years ago I enabled something related to Kerberos for my previous company’s (simpler) Microsoft SSO on a Mac, it may still be available and enough to work for you.I did. Unfortunately for the Mac it’s a no-go. It was a good 10 year run :(
Or use Edge
Why do you hate me
Just tryna save you from the failed abortion that is Safari
Could be worse. You could have to use Chrome.
I read this in my history and for a second thought it was in response to my other comment, which also is true
Bshahahaha
Internet Explorer has entered the chat.
Eh, I’d still take Chromium anything over the dumpster fire that is Safari
why? safari is faster and far less bloatad? chrome is literally a fork off safari.
“ugh just use a normal browser”
- everyone
What to do when the site is not compatible with Firefox: Alt + ←
I encounter this very infrequently. I think I only have 1-2 examples at work. It’s not a huge deal for me to spin up a chrome for those one or two occasions.
I recall I didn’t get some sites working on Chrome either, when Firefox fails me 😅
This is also true. The majority of the time when something doesn’t work on Firefox and I try to go to Chrome, it doesn’t work there too 😂
Just make an electron out of those sites 🌚
Sounds interesting, care to expand?
The only concrete one I can actually recollect is generating a quote from our quoting tool in Salesforce. I just ended up running my 100+ Salesforce windows in Chrome because it has a good feature where you can name each window so I can see which customers I’m working on in the taskbar. It’s good to have those cordoned off from my normal browsing anyway. So this one doesn’t bother me. For everything else I use Firefox.
I used this prompt
I want to create an electron app for linux of a third party webapp
How would I do that?
And chatGPT gave me a good instruction, will try that out. Apparently, you only need node, electron and the javascript like this:
const { app, BrowserWindow } = require('electron') function createWindow() { // Create the browser window const win = new BrowserWindow({ width: 800, height: 600, webPreferences: { nodeIntegration: true } }) // Load the third-party web app win.loadURL('https://www.thirdpartyapp.com') // Optionally remove the default menu win.setMenu(null) // Open DevTools (optional for debugging) // win.webContents.openDevTools() } // Run the createWindow function when Electron is ready app.whenReady().then(createWindow) // Quit when all windows are closed app.on('window-all-closed', () => { if (process.platform !== 'darwin') { app.quit() } }) app.on('activate', () => { if (BrowserWindow.getAllWindows().length === 0) { createWindow() } })I still don’t know what this is though? Something Linux specific?
Electron is a tool to bundle a website and a interpreter for that website in an application. That works on many platforms. Official discord desktop app, for example, is an electron app, spotify as well.
Slack calls disabled for firefox users, but if you change the user agent to chrome it works…
Almost like it does work on Firefox but for some reason they don’t want you using it. Honestly it’s so damn weird, why do that? Is there some incentive for them?
I just want my modern codecs to function. Why can’t I play .mov or h264??
I can’t think of a single example where a web page doesn’t work on FF.
if FF want wider scale take-up outside of geeky niche groups
Lol. I remember when FF was the most popular browser.
There was a point in time where Firefox had the most market share? When was this?
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Around 2009~2011 if I remember correctly. Back then it was either IE or FF. Then Chrome came on the scene with their fancy marketing ads and blew up very quickly to overtake FF.
At the time FF felt bloated compared to Chrome, so Chrome was like the fresh new and faster alternative.
I just need a „install as app“ Feature in Firefox, that is not as pain as the webapp Manager app we currently have
What do you mean “install as app”?
Install PWA so that you can start those as normal native apps without it looking like a website in a browser (remove unnecessary window decorations) and cache js for ever, so that the PWA can be used offline, if features are not dependant on API calls
On mobile it’s the three dots then the install button that has an image of a cellphone?
I guess, I only know the way on iPhone using “add to homescreen”
What you’re talking about is webcompat and is a very complicated issue. Also I’ve talked to some Mozilla devs who gave me multiple examples of Chromium rendering something wrong, and they’d have to intentionally break Firefox to render it incorrectly too, just so the end user would get a more consistent experience. Of course these issues happen more and more when things are only tested for one browser.
This is Chromium monopoly. At this time instead of W3C standards, Chromium itself becomes the standard.
Maybe there could be some sort of compatibility flag in Firefox which detects non-standard pages designed for Chrome. We could call it… hmm… something like Quirks Mode?
Firefox needs to work on ensuring seamless compatibility with more websites, web apps and so on
Care to share some examples Firefox has trouble with? The only issues I have with websites is due to my aggressive use of Noscript.
There’s some streaming video sites that deliberately block Firefox. It used to be that Firefox didn’t support the necessary web standards, but now it does. The site put up blocks telling you to use Chrome, and never got around to taking them down.
And you haven’t turned to piracy yet?
I’m on a Surface Pro, which is a somewhat weaker device. For whatever reason, Microsoft Edge (Chromium) runs YouTube and Twitch much better than Firefox. This might be due to efficiency in the browser, or the site video code itself being built for it.
It’s pretty trivial to just use an alternate browser for the garbage sites that don’t support FF.
Yeah, unfortunately the next step will be sites rejecting “unsecure” browsers because they want the ad money.
This is going to get worse, not better.
Switch to Firefox
Or a fork :)
Or a spoon
And my axe!
And my bow!
And my mustache!
Free rides!
Free Hat!
We kept Firefox alive for you all these years. You’re welcome.
Didn’t Google paying them loads of money keep FF alive?
Yes, but Google would not have done that if nobody used Firefox
Yes and it’s likely that they will not be allowed to any longer after Google lost their anti-trust case.
It blows my mind that there are major companies that are actively, and very publicly- working their asses off to undermine the interests of their own customer base. And not only are they still are enabled to exist- they’re profits are constantly growing. Which means, despite their nefarious and intrusive updates to their services…. People are eating it up!
Nothing will change until people do the work to make that change.
Take YouTube for example:
They have screwed people over time and again. From their content creators, to those that enjoy watching them. Yet- those that hate it so much would seemingly never organize themselves to boycott their services on a level that will ever hurt them.
So they continue to do it unstopped.
Nothing changes until something changes. It isn’t ever easy, but if you want it to happen badly enough, it is always worth it.
All it takes is for someone to stand up and take the reins!
(I cannot be that person as I have ADHD and will probably forget that I wrote this come later this afternoon)
Well said. Also maybe you forgot you wrote the comment by the afternoon, but it reminded me that I’ve been meaning to finally research more into adhd for better managing it, so thanks!
Hate to break it to you, but you are not Google’s customer. Don’t believe me? How much did you pay for Chrome?
This move is in fact being made with their actual customers in mind.
Sooo… those that buy ads you mean.
Google is an advertising company. Vertical integration ftw?
You’re correct, but your argument is bad. I also paid $0 for Linux.
And look how many Linux distro producing companies there are that are the size of Google or that earn even a significant fraction of what Google earns.
Linux is a totally different ballgame. It started out with open source and free access in mind. Linux distros are often made by volunteer developers who do it for the love of the game, non-profit companies, or companies that have found some way to monitize it like RHEL. And companies certainly pay for support, standardization, and exhaustive stability validation. There’s also the commercial use of Red Hat’s customizations, and arguably faster responses to patching vulnerabilities.
Can we ban bot-posted articles with incomplete body text?
Who’s a bot?
Explain your methodology for posting this post, including any edits made to the original post.
What are you a captcha?
I wear many hats. You failed, BTW.
Seriously. We don’t need bot bullshit on Lemmy.
This is the start of the slide for Reddit is just going to be worse here because there are fewer controls to actually detect and do something about bots.
Can I just add a different perspective on this?
My dad is really old (like early baby-boomers), and I am basically the in-family tech support when the home computer starts acting strange.
Well, right after google rolled out this update, my dad clicked on what he thought was an online shopping link. It was actually an ad for a toolbar add-on. Queue like 6+ hours trying to uninstall that add-on and the bundled software.
I never had to worry about that in the past with him because I had u-block origin installed. Now I need to find something else that can run quietly in the background. And probably a better antivirus.
so what you’re saying is; this will bring old-school computer repair shops back? i’m sort of in favor of that 😂
Nooooo, but MV3 is all about security!
This is how I know this is bullshit. I was reading the article and thinking "So, let me get this straight. The ads aren’t the security risk. It’s the ad blockers!"
Sure. Pull the other one.
Buy a Raspberry PI, install PiHole or AdGuard, change router DNS, and you are good to go. Yes, not perfect, but doesn’t rely on a browser extension that can go extinct next time the browser decides it is time for a change.
Or just do what I do. Use Firefox and only keep Chromium around for those few sites that work better in Chromium.
… or use Firefox and migrate their bookmarks.
That’s what I ended up doing. It was a weird conversation though, telling him that if it seemed like some website wasn’t working, try it on chrome and it just might work
You’re awesome!
I recently switched back to Firefox, and almost immediately ran into an issue where I couldn’t log into Dropbox. It took me far longer than I’d like to admit, to realize that Firefox as the problem. I popped into edge and logged in immediately no problem.
I’m still gonna will with Firefox, but it’s annoying that it doesn’t work all the time.
Edit: what’s with the down votes? I like Firefox, I’m using Firefox, but I won’t deny that I ran into issues with it 🤷♂️
Uhh, that doesn’t seem normal at all. Is this a default config? Any extensions in use?
Fresh install of Windows 10, fresh install of Firefox, fresh install of Dropbox.
I was trying to log into Dropbox to authenticate the app, but every time I got to the part where I had to enter my 2fa it would say it was expired. I grew concerned that I was hacked and it was changed, but trying it on my old computer it worked fine.
Then I said fine, I had accidentally paired my Dropbox account with my Google account years ago, so I guess I’ll use that. So I logged into Google, and then clicked sign in with my Google account, and I got stuck in a loop where the page was refreshing everything few seconds.
The page would load, it would say “signing you in with your Google account”, then it would say at the top in red letters something like “sorry, you haven’t signed in recently enough to do that, please log in”, and the entire page would refresh and start the loop over, “signing you in with your Google account” etc etc. I left it go through several cycles, it was never gonna work.
It was about then that I guessed that Firefox might be the problem, and it was 🤷♂️
The only non standard thing about my config, is that Windows is inside of a VM. That could very well be it too? But edge was also in that same VM, and it worked. I only used edge because I’m trying to keep the VM light, so I didn’t install chrome for a one off thing.
I don’t know why I got down voted in my earlier comment, I’m not pooping on Firefox. I honestly want it to work, and am still going to use it. But the facts are facts, I literally just ran into this issue yesterday 🤷♂️
This is part of Googles strategy. Ever since the Chromium engine took off enough and everyone else fell behind they began introducing more and more changes that merely benefits them, with less public debate or proper communication (or even adherence to common standards). Last thing I remember, aside of manifest v3, was them killing off JPEG XL as it was a competitor to webp and webm (which they control). JPEG XL was actively worked on and would’ve probably turned out better before they killed it without any previous notice.
Given Googles dominant market position, their influence and everyone wanting to cut corners wherever possible sometimes Firefox support is just ignored.
tl;dr It’s not Firefox’ fault. It’s Google’s sabotage.
Is there any organization out there that could actually promote an “Acceptable ad standard”? Like, maybe even something within web specs?
A long time ago, ads were slightly irritating, rarely useful, and considered a necessary evil for gently monetizing the web. We’ve had this slow evolution to draconian tracking nightmares that are genuinely dangerous and often written by malicious untraceable actors. I almost feel like we could pressure back towards decent ads if there was some standard by which they only received basic info about the user, showed basic info about a product, didn’t pollute the experience or ruin accessibility, and were registered to businesses by physical address with legal accountability for things like false advertising.
That is…perhaps a vain hope though. It’s just hard to picture futures where all websites run off of donations or subscriptions, because advertising is fucking hell now.
You mean like https://acceptableads.com/ which is only supported so far by Adblock Plus (and its parent company)?
The problem is until there is some kind of penalty for being too annoying or too resource consuming, it will always be a race to the bottom with more, worse ads. As people add ad blockers to their browsers, the user pool that isn’t running them begins to dry up and more ads are needed to keep the same revenue. This results in even more people blocking them.
Two of the things I had hope for on the privacy side was Mozilla’s Privacy-Preserving Attribution for ad attribution and Google’s Privacy Sandbox collection of features for targeting like the Topics API. Both would have been better for privacy than the current system of granular, individual user tracking across sites.
If those two get wide enough adoption, regulation could be put in place to limit the old methods as there would be a better replacement available without killing the whole current ad supported economy of most sites. I get that strictly speaking from a privacy perspective ‘more anonymous/private tracking’ < ‘no tracking’ but I really don’t want perfect to be the enemy of better.
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Google would never push this because it would cost them money in the short term, eg, next quarter.
They can’t have that.
You could leverage Kitbogas software in relation to scam/sketchy download protection.
Paid and closed source with a proprietary license.
