Your choice of browser matters — Google’s Web DRM and the open internet
https://grafcube.codeberg.page/blog/2023/08/06/web-drm-api.html
I wrote this blog post to inform the people I know who aren’t as tech savvy or otherwise don’t put any thought into their choice of browser. Another goal is to help get enough awareness on the topic and make sure it fails.
@opensource @privacy #webintegrityapi #WEI #google #mozilla #chrome #firefox #chromium #foss #opensource #OpenWeb #privacy #drm #nodrm #drmfree #freesoftware #browser
I’ve been using Firefox as my primary on both desktop and mobile for about 6 years now, and it’s usually pretty great. Desktop rarely has problems. On mobile there are a good number of sites with issues though, because devs don’t usually test against it as has had a low number of users. But hopefully this revitalized movement to switch will make them have to care. And that said, 99% of the time these sites are still mostly usable, unless the broken thing is important like say a login screen 😅
I’ve only had like 1 issue on desktop in the last like 5 years. Mobile I’ve bumped into a few hiccups with forms, sliders, and other elements not working properly. If I can’t resolve the issue by requesting the desktop site I go to my computer or Chrome in an absolute emergency.
That said, I’d take a (waaay) sub-1% failure rate any day in exchange for having the joy of uBlock Origin on my phone. If you’re on Android, I can’t recommend Firefox enough thanks to the add-on support.
@ZephyrXero Interesting. I’ve personally never had any problems on Android. I use Iceraven since it has more extensions and the only issue so far has been that initial load is often slow (because of the extensions I use).
I have been using Firefox since the release of Firefox 57 aka Firefox Quantum in 2017. I love the browser and most of sites run well in firefox. But there have been a few cases where I had to use a chromium based browser.
Firefox + Ublock origin is a great and awesome combo.
I also use Firefox on android. It is okay, but I sometimes feel it is slow at loading some sites. But it is not a big deal.
Oh, also Firefox is the only mainstream browser on Android that supports installing extensions.
This. I switched to Firefox on Android, because of extensions. At the same time I switched to Firefox on Windows. And I never looked back. The only problem I have is native support for PWA on Firefox for desktops (we can add support with 3rd party app), and backgorund notifications doesn’t work on PWAs on Firefox for Android
Weird , I have been using ff , twitter pwa for years and notifs work for me , although i voluntarily disabled notifs now !
Unfortunately this is coming and a majority of people are going to happily step on to the train.
Think of it like this: 99% of all apps could have been just web apps in a mobile browser (Hell, a majority essentially are just a wrapped web app) but because of companies offering more/better functionality people choose to use the app.
All that needs to happen is sites starting require DRM functionality for “security reasons” so that the end user can enjoy more features.
A majority of end users don’t understand the implications when making choices like these.
@Mindlight but it hasn’t happened yet. Getting everyone to switch away from Chrome isn’t going to help anyone and that’s why there needs to be legal action.
I was in dehi recently. Poverty is kinda nuts there, but I noticed everyone had phones, even people who obviously had no home. I assume kinda shitty phones, but it makes you realize a bit how important access is. If someone releases an iOS only app with no web version, they’re basically saying fuck you to all those people.
Same same for this though. Googles saying “as long as you use our stuff you’ll be fine, and why wouldn’t you use our stuff because it’s free! (Sometimes kinda sorta). And if you’re stuck with something else for some reason, fuck you.”
“Sure, Chromiums code is available and you can modify and redistribute it. But if you want to send your changes to the main project so that more people may benefit from it, it is ultimately Google’s decision. This is the problem with projects that are not community-run.”
Google is asshole. This shows than NOT all open source codes are free as in freedom. Stallman is right.
