If you can, use Firefox.
We’re in a lose/lose scenario here. Google has been inserting ad-tracking and soon will be nuking ad-blockers.
Then you’ve got Firefox wanting to implement AI soon at the cost of employees.
Is there really anywhere else we can go before both of their shit hits the fan?
Firefox needs to ship with IPFS & IPNS built in, then we’d have a Distributed web. Which is I think what you’re asking for maybe?
Maintaining a browser is crazy hard. If Firefox goes to shit, it would require some serious foundation to maintain a good fork.
Yes, and expensive. This is often overlooked when people just say don’t worry it’s FOSS. The enshitification happens slowly, and by the time there is outrage about how bad it becomes the last non intrusive fork might be several years old and take even more work to modernize. I’m not giving up all hope, but you are correct, it would be a very ambitious community undertaking to keep such a thing competitive with the plethora of evil browsers out there.
Opera, Vivaldi and Brave are descent alternatives.
EDIT:
Vivaldi (based on Opera, but FOSS and not Chinese) is still good.
I didn’t realize Brave inserted referral codes, TIL.
I’d argue Firefox is the descent alternative.
- Opera is Crappy Chinese ad-filled browser
- Vivaldi, although it’s extremely nice tab management system and unique features, isn’t open source. But probably the better chromium browser of the owns you mentioned.
- Brave… Is a crypto shilling browser run by a turd wanting to ban same sex marriage
There are a plethora of sources out there of good reasons not to use these browsers. But seriously, Firefox is an excellent browser, treat yourself to better privacy 🦊
Brave is shady af and iirc Opera got bought by some Chinese spyware company.
I only listed Opera b/c Vivaldi is based on it:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vivaldi_(web_browser)
Vivaldi is absolutely a descent FOSS product, but will agree with the Opera sentiment and have edited my post more accordingly.
I don’t think we should equate Firefox’s AI plans with other ones.
Firefox’s AI will be trained entirely locally with data that you choose to give it, and won’t send information back to Firefox.
By the sounds of it it won’t be a chatbot either, but rather an aid for finding more sources, pointing out fake reviews, assisting in (offline, local!) translation, etc.
My two main issues with AI are unethically sourced training data, and hoovering up personal information when you use it. Neither are a problem for Mozilla’s AI plans. This is how AI should be done.
Well this is the thing here. We’re in an era of time in technology where we DON’T want people having as much of our data. Whether it’s for good or bad use, we just don’t want it. How hard is that for these companies to comprehend?
The internet was fine without this sort of thing. We were fine without AI. Why complicate it at all?
The main reason I haven’t switch to Firefox is that it doesn’t have a “tab group” feature nearly as functional, polishedg and usable as Chrome’s.
Then you don’t take your personal data security seriously.
Anyone who trades security for convenience deserves neither.
It’s getting harder to remain compassionate towards people who keep using chrome.
Are you serious? You can’t be compassionate toward people who use a certain browser? It’s probably because they don’t understand/know/care. 🤷♂️ Educate them.
People who care make the switch so not sure what there is to feel compassionate about.
Its kinda nice they slowed YouTube down first, that got at least 3 people i know into using firefox, though if i still want to annoy them i could tell them to run a invidius docker instead.
Seems like a quick hop to chrome://flags allows one to disable this. chrome://flags/#privacy-sandbox-ads-apis
Ads aren’t evil though. They are the main method of making people know about new things. Intrusive and privacy-defeating tracking is.
And nowadays, most online ads are intrusive and privacy-defeating tracking, so you know
Yes, absolutely. As far as I can tell, Privacy Sandbox could help with that.
The big problem with Privacy Sandbox is who is implementing it. I was on the fence about it for similar reasons until I saw who came out against it. Mozilla, the EFF, etc. all heavily condemned it, so I knew it was safe to say its bad (limited time, unlimited desire for knowledge and all I did not have the time to do a deep dive on Google’s newest way to get people okay with invasive tracking)
I’m really confused, everyone seems pissed about this, but if you understand what they are up to, it actually is a very privacy focused way to allow for interest based ads. Like I get if you understand that and feel like all interest based ads are evil, sure. But at the same time the ‘free web’ is built on advertising. Nobody is offering an alternative.
