Reminder to switch browsers if you haven’t already!


  • Google Chrome is starting to phase out older, more capable ad blocking extensions in favor of the more limited Manifest V3 system.
  • The Manifest V3 system has been criticized by groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation for restricting the capabilities of web extensions.
  • Google has made concessions to Manifest V3, but limitations on content filtering remain a source of skepticism and concern.
  • asteriskeverything@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    I’m sorry. I’ve seen this so many times today and I can’t stand it anymore.

    I hate this article photo. What the fuck is that shit?? Gloveless fingers? Digit warmer? Turtlefinger sweater?

    • graymess@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      How long until the majority of the Internet is inaccessible to non-Chromium browsers because the pages “don’t support them”?

          • bc93@lemmy.world
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            1 month ago

            I remember back in the day, doing all of my browsing in Firefox, and having IE6 on my desktop for the random few websites/tools that only worked in IE for one reason or another. That is becoming a reality already with Chrome, I need to occasionally use WebUSB, which only really Chrome supports, because Mozilla quite rightly refuses to implement the spec.

      • webghost0101@sopuli.xyz
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        1 month ago

        Honestly the way the internet is going do you need access to the majority of the internet? I feel like its pretty dead as it is now already.

        Lemmy will still work because we mostly use Firefox, and i bet the same will hold true for many others.

        Basically the moment mainstream internet becomes google only you will see nerds build new websites specifiably to cater to the non google crowd and i trust random internet nerds a hack of a lot more than a monopoly corporation.

        BRING IT ON GOOGLE!, YOU CAN INITIATE THE PUSH TO CREATE A NEW BETTER INTERNET. ^Create demand for freedom trough your suppressive enforments^

  • parpol@programming.dev
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    1 month ago

    What does google expect users to do once they realize they get better extensions with firefox?

    Imagine ad blockers not working on youtube only on chromium browsers, or tracking cookies/pixels/scripts not being blockable only on chromium browsers.

    • Wild_Mastic@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      80% of people I know does not use an ad block, even the ones more tech savvy. I have no clue how brainwashed they are for eating ad garbage all day.

      • overload@sopuli.xyz
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        1 month ago

        I think people just genuinely don’t know that firefox (and I suppose Safari) is the only true alternative browser i.e. Not based on chromium.

        I do my best to transition people I know across, but people are retty comfortable on chrome. If ad blockers stop working, I think there will be people who care just enough to switch.

        • grue@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          I think people just genuinely don’t know that firefox (and I suppose Safari) is the only true alternative browser i.e. Not based on chromium.

          Safari is only “not based on Chromium” in the sense that the heredity goes in the other direction (Chromium is based on it).

          Firefox is the only browser that maintains a rendering engine codebase fully separate from Chrome. That’s why using Firefox, and evangelizing it to help keep up its marketshare, is so vitally important for the health of the web.

          • overload@sopuli.xyz
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            1 month ago

            Huh, I didn’t know that about Safari/Chromium. Absolutely agree that having a Google-controlled browser monopoly would be catastrophic.

        • shalafi@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          Used Firefox on and off since it came around, not a fan. But if chromium blocks ad-blockers, I’m switching instantly. I doubt many people know or care enough to switch.

          • overload@sopuli.xyz
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            1 month ago

            I’ve been on Firefox almost exclusively for about a decade and I can’t really tell the difference between them honestly in terms of performance of normal web browsing.

            I’m having some weird graphical issues with my NAS frontend Web portal display on Firefox atm though, so keep chromium installed for that.

      • Ephera@lemmy.ml
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        1 month ago

        I think, they just stopped caring about users instead. They’ve got enough market share. Might as well internet-explorer it for a while.

  • Ech@lemm.ee
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    1 month ago

    Oh no! Wait, I don’t use that shit because of shit like this.

  • HonorableScythe@lemm.ee
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    1 month ago

    I’d be glad to switch back to Firefox, but websites straight up don’t work on it anymore. That was the only reason I went to Chrome.

    • fuzzzerd@programming.dev
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      1 month ago

      What websites? I use Firefox as my daily driver on desktop and mobile, and I rarely run into problems. Like so infrequently that I don’t even remember the last time.

      • TexasDrunk@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        Same. My Dark Reader doesn’t always show websites properly but Firefox hasn’t let me down in ages.

        • airglow@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          No problems loading that page on Firefox for Android or desktop for me. Are you using Firefox or a fork of Firefox? Do you have any extensions or about:config changes that may be affecting the page rendering?

      • cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.de
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        1 month ago

        There are some sites out there that won’t work. ESC Configurator won’t work in Firefox because it needs web serial to program an ESC connected over a serial port. That’s the only site I use that I have to run in chrome. I’m sure there are more out there, but they are not very common.

    • brbposting@sh.itjust.works
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      1 month ago

      I encourage those in this situation to do their small, small part in fighting for the future of the open web by only switching to Chrome when necessary.

      Which is almost never in my daily life!

    • grue@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      That’s a reason to insist on Firefox even harder. Fuck those websites!

  • tvbusy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1 month ago

    I use Firefox everywhere which means I have ads blocking everywhere, including and especially on Android. All my tabs are synced and are easily transferred between devices.

    • GregorGizeh@lemmy.zip
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      1 month ago

      While I dont use Firefox itself any more I am using librewolf on my PC, which sadly doesnt exist for phones yet. Also, GOS comes with its own privacy oriented chromium fork called vanadium, so I’m using that in the mean time.

      • Nelots@lemm.ee
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        1 month ago

        I’ve found the Mull browser (which can be found through the DivestOS repository on F-Droid) works great as a privacy-focused firefox fork, similar to LibreWolf. I hear Fennic F-Droid is also a pretty good but less extreme alternative, but I’d imagine you don’t care much about that if you use LibreWolf.

      • AWildMimicAppears@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 month ago

        I also use librewolf and have settled for iceraven on my phone. the list of installable extensions is much longer (even if not everything is working yet, depending on how far mozilla has come along) and it has about:config support, which gives me a pretty close approximation of my desktop browser.

    • Scrollone@feddit.it
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      1 month ago

      If we want to be honest, Firefox on Android has way worse performance than Chrome.

      (But I still use it instead of Chrome)

      • tvbusy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 month ago

        It depends I think. I found Chrome to be a tiny bit faster but then ads bogged the page down so most of the time, Firefox is faster for me.

        In some very rare cases when I need to disable ads blocking, Chrome is indeed faster but I’d rather abandon websites rather than disable ads blocking.

        So if you love ads, Chrome is better. If you hate ads like I do, Firefox is miles ahead.

        • JWBananas@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          There are other ways to block ads. Adguard does a great job on Android. It establishes a local VPN, so it can do HTTP[S] content filtering in addition to DNS blocking.

          • ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            1 month ago

            Can’t use my VPN and adguard at the same time iirc, unless android has two active VPN “slots” now. Can’t bring a pihole with me 24/7 either as much as I would like to.

                • Cyberpunk3000@lemm.ee
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                  29 days ago

                  Yes because there is no need to setup another VPN. You only configure the DNS settings (Private DNS). I know that Mullvad on PC has an option to use custom DNS server

      • foggenbooty@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        Ive been using Firefox on Android for years but it really needs some TLC. It doesn’t support scaling to a tablet/desktop UI at all so it doesn’t work well in DeX or anything larger than a phone. I also recently had to swap to Brave because I noticed Firefox was draining a lot of battery all of a sudden. There’s some kind of leak or running process that isn’t sleeping properly. In a few months I’ll re-install and try again.

  • OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml
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    1 month ago

    Switched to Firefox at work today. Looks like I still need Chrome to do the VPN handshake, but the more of us there are, the more pressure we have on IT!

    • Emptiness@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      I’m still confounded by workplaces that run the old nineties way of VPN handshake by browser. Clunky, clumsy just straight up bad digital workplace setup.

      There is no reason to not do it the modern way where all the handshaking and connecting is done under the hood, hidden from the user. At the most you as a user should only see the tiny little systray icon switch how it looks.

        • Ephera@lemmy.ml
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          1 month ago

          I don’t have official information, but I doubt it. They tend to stick as closely to the Chromium experience as possible, with the exception of the ungoogled part, of course. Maintaining Manifest V2 support would also just be a massive amount of work, for which they likely don’t have the manpower.

        • AnActOfCreation@programming.devOP
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          1 month ago

          I have no idea. I’d guess not, as it’s not a strong fork like other Chromium-based browsers. Its main selling point is that it’s nearly identical to Chrome, but with a lot of the Google garbage stripped out. I don’t use it as a daily driver, but only when I need something Chromium-based like the use case mentioned by @OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml. It’s very likely to work wherever Chrome does.

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldB
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    1 month ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    Other groups don’t agree with Google’s description, like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which called Manifest V3 “deceitful and threatening” back when it was first announced in 2019, saying the new system “will restrict the capabilities of web extensions—especially those that are designed to monitor, modify, and compute alongside the conversation your browser has with the websites you visit.”

    Google, which makes about 77 percent of its revenue from advertising, has not published a serious explanation as to why Manifest V3 limits content filtering, and it’s not clear how that aligns with the goals of “improving the security, privacy, performance and trustworthiness.”

    Like Kewisch said, the primary goal of malicious extensions is to spy on users and slurp up data, which has nothing to do with content filtering.

    Google now says it’s possible for extensions to skip the reviews process for “safe” rule set changes, but even this is limited to “static” rulesets, not more powerful “dynamic” ones.

    In a comment to The Verge last year, the senior staff technologist at the EFF, Alexei Miagkov, summed up Google’s public negotiations with the extension community well, saying, "These are helpful changes, but they are tweaks to a limited-by-design system.

    For a short period, users will be able to turn them back on if they visit the extension page, but Google says that “over time, this toggle will go away as well.”


    The original article contains 692 words, the summary contains 230 words. Saved 67%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

  • FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today
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    1 month ago

    They already don’t let you add ublock origin to chrome on mobile. I had to teach my elderly mother to use Waterfox with the extension, but as a plus side she can now turn on desktop-site and and turn the screen off without interrupting her hokey crystal meditation flute music [3 hours].