The French government is considering a law that would require web browsers – like Mozilla’s Firefox – to block websites chosen by the government.
Unfortunately, this is gonna happen and worse. We lost the fight for the internet in 2006, and we’re watching it die. No joke, I started using yandex browser and search since Google ruined theirs, and it is close to perfect. Waterfox is my backup.
I wouldn’t recommend using Yandex, due to it’s connections with the Russian government. You should check out privacyguides.org they have a lot of cool info about privacy respecting tools. However I also don’t recommend anything Brave. The company was founded by a homophobe who was previously in charge of Mozilla, but left, because of community pressure.
What can the Russian government realistically do to me?
My government is the one that can ruin my life.
Totally! While you’re at it: Make sure to use WeChat and TikTok. Oh, also: Hoyoverse makes great games. They require admin perms but you wouldn’t worry about that.
First of all: Yandex? You’re joking, right?
Secondly: Of course this is not happening. Firefox is an open source browser. If they update it to comply with France’s bs people will just use an older version or people will fork it and cut out the censoring code.
Also, what about lynx or curl? They certainly will not be censoring shit.
France is going to have a very bad time enforcing this.
Have you tried Yandex? Other than being Russian, it is a great browser. And instead of having to use search operators, rephrase or click verbatim on Google to find something, Yandex actually gives you proper search results, especially in photos. It is like Google before 2016. I used Lynx years ago, totally forgot about it.
I use LibreWolf as a browser and Qwant, Startpage, SearX (murena spot) and SwissCows as search engines.
All of these respect my privacy. Yandex doesn’t.
Also:
I just went to Yandex.com. It immediately told me information about my “location” (I fake it). That’s kind of unsettling because I never gave that info or asked for anything related to me or my location. After a single search I got prompted to install the app to search “privately without tracking”. The app is rated 6/10 privacy by Exodus. Exodus lists “Yandex Ad” as one of the app trackers. Sounds lovely.
The search results are quite similar to the ones I would get on SP or Qwant. Nothing special here. Wikipedia, Maps, IMDb, stuff like that. Incredible.
I also need to do captchas regularly, which is very annoying.
It’s not even particularly fast. Qwant Lite approaches warp speed in comparison.
In conclusion:
This search engine is nothing special. If you need their browser for it to do all the fancy stuff you said, it’s basically a piece of shit. Websites that need browser specific code should not exist.
So? I do not use the crypto features in Brave browser or thr BAT rewards. You can easily opt out.
