cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/20260243

Google Chrome warns uBlock Origin may soon be disabled

Google Chrome is now encouraging uBlock Origin users who have updated to the latest version to switch to other ad blockers before Manifest v2 extensions are disabled.

43 points

That’s exactly what happens if we lose Firefox - Chrome (and those based on it) now have all the power to disable all ad blocking - enabling Google’s horrific privacy-less future

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5 points

There’s still WebKit, which doesn’t suck anymore! (At least from my end-user standpoint)

At least for mobile—I cannot attest to the desktop version.

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3 points

Which webkit based browser are you talking about?

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4 points

I suppose anything on the iPhone cuz it’s all WebKit under the hood hahahah

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1 point

web kit doesn’t suck

I wouldn’t go that far. Gnome web is coming along but it has a ways to go

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13 points

I switched back to Firefox two or three years ago. It was tough at first but now that I have it setup for me, I like it so much better than Chrome. Very little noise, ad-free most of the time.

Now I only use Chrome when I’m shopping because that’s the only thing it’s good for.

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14 points

For shopping? That can also be done via Firefox.

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-12 points

I don’t want to use Firefox for shopping.

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20 points

Why not? I’ve never heard of anyone that uses a different browser to shop online.

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5 points

That’s definitely a reason hmm

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20 points

I couldn’t help, so let me ask What about firefox stops you from using it for online shopping?

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2 points

Chrome is good for shopping? I feel like if anything it would be worse as it is a data collection machine

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34 points

It’s a good opportunity for any Chrome users in the crowd to switch to Librewolf. It may be a small project but it’s been around for a while and they haven’t made any mistakes that I’ve heard about. Google has its various off-brand browsers using the engine, why shouldn’t Mozilla get some? It comes with uBlock Origin preinstalled, and has none of the telemetry and ads of Firefox.

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1 point

Have they implemented the update option yet, or does it still rely on unofficial methods for updating?

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5 points

They provide official deb and rpm builds for linux, which get updated in the usual ways. I don’t know about windows but the website says:

you can choose to install the LibreWolf WinUpdater, which is included in the installer.

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2 points

The LibreWolf WinUpdater works great. You get a small pop-up when there’s an update and it updates super quickly (in my experience in like 15 seconds).

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3 points

Librewolf is also available as a Flatpak

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1 point

Looks like it’s available in the Windows Package Manager Community Repository, so you can update it via winget update LibreWolf.LibreWolf or keep it up to date using the Winget-AutoUpdate tool.

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6 points
*

For mobile, there is Fennec, which is just Firefox with those elements removed.

Edit: there is also Mull, which is more privacy focused.

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11 points
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I don’t care about telemetry that reports what features I use and sends crashes, only actual marketing telemetry. Is Fennec a good choice for me? Stuff like Pocket is annoying but you can sort of disable it in about:config. Basically, I hate stuff like Pocket but don’t mind stuff like syncing or non-ad based telemetry.

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-3 points
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Deleted by creator
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8 points

Yeah IMO there is nothing in vanilla Firefox to complain about that you can’t disable easily from the settings. You only need librewolf or the arkenfox user.js if you’re a privacy nut.

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-1 points
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I also recommend iceraven (Note link uses github) which adds pc extensions to mobile and removes telemetry and more

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18 points

One thing to note about using forks is that they have no chance of being on corporate software whitelists, while firefox does. For that reason, adding to firefox numbers is potentially important. I’ve already seen companies wanting to only allow chrome/edge/safari (even while they officially support firefox …)

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1 point
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Honestly Firefox is generally easy to maintain. Just update it once in a while and maintain some basic group policies

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8 points

Exactly, so you have Firefox, Floorp, LibreWolf and even Waterfox. Just pick one.

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145 points

I think people come down a lot harder on Firefox than they should. It’s a great browser, and they do a lot for the freedom of the community and as an open source ambassador.

I feel like people generally feel that, given their prominence, they could do a lot more. This is certainly true. Their weird corporate structure, their half-baked experiments like Pocket or VPN, their Google ad money, these are all valid issues.

But do you know what else is supported by Google ad money? Chromium and every browser built on it. Do you know what has a far more corporate culture? Chrome, Edge, Safari, etc. Do you know who else had weird little money making experiments? Every other browser (Brave’s Basic Attention Tokens, DDG’s Privacy Pro, etc.).

Firefox makes a bigger target because of their relative popularity and long history.

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56 points

It has always felt so goofy to see people say “x” based Chromium browser is better than Firefox because Firefox takes Google’s money but “x” based Chromium browser doesn’t. Like… It just completely ignores the investment Google puts in Chromium lol. Google’s money into Firefox equals bad, but Google’s money into Chromium, oh, that’s actually not bad because we just cover our eyes and ears and go “LALALALALA I CAN’T HEAR YOU” or something???

All that to say, I’m glad to see someone else explicitly share this opinion.

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12 points

Isn’t the only reason firefox gets google ad money is because google is afraid they would slapped with an anti-trust lawsuit? Firefox getting money from google doesn’t seem like a valid criticism.

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20 points

I believe it is because Google is the default search engine in Firefox.

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-1 points

That’s exactly the reason.

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15 points

When Chrome came out it was heavily promoted by everyone I knew (apart from my best friend) I tried it, didn’t like the UI (still don’t) and didn’t see the point of it.

People talked abour how fast it was, and I felt that Firefox was fast enough, and Firefox just worked as I wanted it to, why change?

I kept stedfast with Firefox, apart from when the horrible Australis UI was launched, then I switched to a fork called Pale Moon, which I used for several years untill the current UI was launched.

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5 points

it actually WAS really good when it first came out and for a few years, it was also back during the days where google still kind of follows the “don’t be evil” principle.

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2 points

Yeah there’s a good reason we all started to use it, unlike Firefox it was far far quicker to boot up and load pages. And used significantly less resources, so there was really little upside to using Firefox apart from a few addons not being available for a while.

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1 point
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Yup, I used it for a year or two, then I found Opera, which was about as fast and also had an independent rendering engine. Around that time, the independence of the rendering engine really mattered to me, so when Opera switched to a Chromium base, I switched back to Firefox. Firefox has since caught up in perf and is the best non-Chromium browser for me (well, I use Mull on Android because FF isn’t on F-Droid and has some defaults I prefer to Fennec).

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5 points

I have very strong doubts about the security of Palemoon

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1 point

Today I am not certain I would use it, but at the time I wasn’t concerned.

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3 points
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Chrome was so lightweight and fast when it was launched. And it had a blazing fast Javascript engine. No other engine came close to it.

It was a pretty awesome browser back then during the “do no evil” era of Google.

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1 point

Sure, I get what you are saying, but I never had an issue with Firefox and Javascript.

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13 points

I’ve best heard it described as: people love Firefox to death.

People, use whatever you like, but if you actively discourage everyone to stop using it, we might lose it - and with it, Librewolf, Palemoon, Tor Browser, and everything that’s not Chrome or Safari.

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2 points
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Not true.

Navigator died a horrible death, and Phoenix (later Firefox), being a fork of it, survived just fine.

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2 points
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Building a browser was a hugely different (and waaaay smaller) job back then.

But let me know when Servo or Ladybird are viable. Until then, don’t burn any bridges.

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5 points

I want there to be a competitive market so that Firefox gets better. Without good competition it will continue to rot.

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5 points

I don’t understand the premise of this statement. Do you think Firefox doesn’t have competition in the browser space?

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2 points

It doesn’t have competition in terms of a “private browser”. As far as I can see there is only Brave, and Ungoogled Chromium which is soon to be an unviable option because of the switch to Manifest V3 for Chromium.

There are of course browsers like Mullvad Browser, GNU Icecat and Librewolf etc. but they are all based on Firefox, so I wouldn’t really count them.

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2 points

It only has Chromium which somehow is worse than Firefox. We need something that supports all the same features as Firefox but isn’t a fork

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12 points

Honestly it’s more that Lemmy as a whole is just a big group of curmudgeons. Most discussions on here veer strongly negative, not limited to Firefox.

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1 point

That was after the reddit migration. Lemmy was much better before the reddit doom-and-gloom gang made themselves home.

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1 point

I don’t see what’s relevant about your argument. Whether they came from Reddit is irrelevant, they’re here now and this is how they behave.

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