Google pulls the plug on uBlock Origin, leaving over 30 million Chrome users susceptible to intrusive ads

Comments

• maegul@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  So … can we like finally dismiss Google Chrome as the obviously awful idea it is and which should never have made it this far and remind all of the web devs married to it that they’re doing bad things and are the reason why we can’t have nice things?

  Hmmm … a web browser owned by a monopolistic advertising company … how could that possibly go wrong!!!

  XKCD Comic depicting a conversation between someone who send an essay in dot doc, MS Word format, and another trying to convince them to use open source alternatives. The first person is abusively unconvinced, doesn’t care about ensuring we have good software infrastructure and dismisses the open source advocate as smug and “probably autistic”. In the final pane, the first person runs to the open-source-advocate second person panicking about facebook taking over everyone’s social lives and doing evil things with it, in response to which the second person simply plays their “world’s tiniest open source violin” as a clear "i told you so gesture"

  • XKCD: Infrastructures

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  • Eyron@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Do you remember the Internet Explorer days? This, unfortunately, it’s still much better.

    Pretty good reason to switch the Firefox, now. Nearly everything will work, unlike the Internet Explorer days.

    • Firefox User

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• mke@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I think lots of people are overestimating how many will migrate to Firefox in the near future over this.

  • High switching cost compared to finding another extension (e.g. uBO Lite).
  • Just as some Firefox users like Firefox, many Chrome users enjoy what they have too. They don’t want to lose that.
  • The kind of tech-aware person who’d switch over this is much more likely to have seen the news months ago and taken action already.

  As fun as it is to imagine an Adpocalypse shocking the masses and getting them to try out alternatives to big tech, it’s also way too optimistic, I feel.

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  • Ilandar@aussie.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Yeah, same with people here declaring the death of reddit, or Twitter, or any of these massive, mainstream services. People in bubbles (and Lemmy is definitely a bubble) always seem to underestimate how little everyone else cares or even knows about the things that are important to them. Things have to be extremely bad in a user experience way, not an ethical way, for an extended period of time and there needs to be a big social movement where lots of people migrate to a direct and equivalent competitor within a short space of time. Most people will not do it on their own, they will wait until they see their peers doing it and only then can a migration start to snowball.

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    • TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      “Netflix will die when they ban account sharing!!” - Reddit/Lemmy/Techtubers

      Netflix actually went on to have a massive jump in revenue, because most normal people can’t be arsed to set up a Plex/Emby/Jellyfin server and buy a shitload of storage.

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  • OriginalUsername7@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    The uBlock Origin chrome extension has had 34 million users. Chrome has 3.45 billion users.

    Even if every uBlock user switched, it’s less than 1% of chrome users.

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    • mke@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Yeah, I thought about mentioning that. But the comparison goes both ways. Less than 1% of Chrome users switching to Firefox could still mean an increase in Firefox users of over 10%, if I remember my numbers correctly.

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  • Dagamant@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I’ve been on Firefox since manifest v3 was announced. Firefox has its own shortcomings but no dealbreakers.

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    • thanks_shakey_snake@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      What are some shortcomings in your view?

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  • WalrusDragonOnABike@lemmy.today ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    There’s also other chromium browsers with built-in ad-blocking that still work AFAIK. If all extensions and forked brower’s ad-blockers stopped working, I think there would probably be a surge in firefox usage (even if there’s not that much change in chromium usage).

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    • kautau@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Yeah I use Vivaldi as my daily driver and love it. There’s built in ad blocking but it’s not as good as the extension. If the extension stops working there I’ll switch to Firefox in a heartbeat though

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  • floofloof@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Hopefully it will give Firefox a bit of a boost anyway. Firefox needs a boost.

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  • moonburster@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    My friends will stick to chrome, I switched to Firefox months ago. You’re right

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  • helenslunch@feddit.nl ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    If large numbers of people were going to switch browsers over an ad-blocking extension, the whole advertising industry would be significantly less successful than it is.

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  • Gestrid@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    High switching cost compared to finding another extension (e.g. uBO Lite), even if the resulting experience is worse.

    You’re not wrong about the high switching cost.

    Switching from Chrome to Vivaldi (because of Chrome’s whole FLoC thing) to Brave (because I didn’t like Vivaldi’s layout) to Firefox (because of Brave’s whole thing) was a pain.

    And I don’t mean as a whole. Taking the time each time to change from one browser to another was always a pain. Transferring bookmarks and passwords was easy (Chrome and Firefox are at least compatible in that regard), but transferring extension settings was a whole different beast.

    Some extensions had cloud sync support. Others had local export support. Some didn’t have either kind, and I’d have to manually copy the settings from one browser over to the other. And that’s not even getting into finding replacements for the Chrome-exclusive extensions (of which there were only a few, thankfully).

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    • mke@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      (because of Brave’s whole thing)

      lol

      I’m sorry to hear that, been there (Chrome, Opera, Vivaldi, Firefox in my case). Hopefully we can stick around for a while.

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  • ahto@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Not to mention all the people who don’t even have an adblocker and for some reason don’t seem to care that their web browsing is infested with ads.

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    • mke@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      A lot of people don’t even know it’s an option. When was the last time you saw adblockers in mainstream media or news?

      This is why I think it’s so important to keep raising awareness. If you have people in your life who you believe would be better off using uBlock, consider bringing it up when you have the opportunity.

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  • scarabic@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I think probably the single most important thing that nobody is saying is that Google have ALL the numbers on this decision and they are not stupid, so it would be silly to assume this will work against their interests. Not only do they know how many people use chrome, their ad network gives them insight into ALL browsers.

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  • experbia@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I agree folks are overestimating how many will switch. but also maybe you’re underestimating too - a lot of browser installations are managed by the “family tech guy”. the father, mother, brother, sister, aunt or uncle who sets up everyone’s new laptops on Christmas and has the suggestions when you look for a new phone. we all know the type. a lot of us are the type.

    setting up granny’s laptop? I’ll install whatever browser lets me automatically block the most “1000th visitor!” banner ads and change the desktop icon to the old AOL icon because that’s all she knows the internet as. she doesn’t know of care about the browser options so it’s up to me. Chrome used to be fast and simple so it was the right choice. Firefox has caught up a fair bit on UX simplicity and speed and now offers better blocking and general security, so it just stole the crown for these installations imo. I trust it more to not let her mess the computer up, so even if I’m not using it as my main personal browser, it gets use here.

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  • cmhe@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    • Just as some Firefox users like Firefox, many Chrome users enjoy what they have too. They don’t want to lose that.

    Do you have some source for that? IIUC, you mean that more Chrome users like Chrome than Firefox users like Firefox, right?

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    • Default_Defect@midwest.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      “Some people like things.”

      SOURCE?!

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    • mke@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      No. I simply meant that there exist Chrome users who appreciate what it provides them (features, UI, etc), so for these users to leave they’d have to give up those things. That’s always a hard ask.

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  • paraphrand@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    And then there are Safari users who are watching from the sidelines.

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    • mrvictory1@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      1 year ago I had basically free Spotify Premium because Safari was unable to play ads. That’s a kind of ad blocking.

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• TheFeatureCreature@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Meh. They had plenty of time to move to Firefox but they ignored all the warnings.

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  • Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    It’s not like they contracted some sort of terminal illness. Anyone can migrate whenever. It’s not hard.

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    • tal@lemmy.today ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I believe that some organizations restrict what applications can be installed on work computers, so that might not necessarily be true, at least for work machines.

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    • datendefekt@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      My organization has blocked all browsers other than Edge and Chrome - and has also blocked all plugins except for UBlock. For security reasons, of course.

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  • emb@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    And I mean, there’s still time now. Switching browser’s isn’t that bad. Export+import some bookmarks and adjust some settings, good to go.

    I think FF has been a good option for a while. But the second best time is now. I can totally get it if people didn’t want to switch until they had more of a concrete problem.

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    • WalrusDragonOnABike@lemmy.today ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      FF still hasn’t brought back a tab group API for extensions or native tab groups. Extensions can only do so much given what they have to work with. I still use FF on the side, but it simply isn’t a practical as a primary browser for me currently.

      But for casual users, many probably have never even touched their browser settings.

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  • AlternateRoute@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    For all the firefox fans out there it might be good to note there have consistently been more Safri users than Firefox users since 2014. Hell Safari has been the number two browser by market share since 2015.

    Browsers have to get very SHITTY or a new browser has to have a killer app to unseat a dominate one.

    gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share#monthly-2…

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    • megopie@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I don’t think safari is even remotely comparable given that it’s a default browser on macs.

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    • TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Almost like being the default gives you an unfair advantage or something.

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• AFC1886VCC@reddthat.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  “The browser built to be yours”

  Hahaha sure thing Google

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• Hedup@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  In case anyone here needs this

  support.mozilla.org/…/switching-chrome-firefox

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• Cpo@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I’m in the process of switching to firefox on all my devices.

  I’ve had enough of Google pushing features like this.

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  • Tilgare@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Having ublock on mobile is such a breath of fresh air. I wish I had made the transition sooner. I knew this was coming and completed my transition a few weeks back so I could abandon Chrome on my own time table and not on Google’s. Other than a little headache trying to find extension replacements for pc, I’m LOVING it.

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  • zarenki@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I switched from Chrome to Firefox in 2019 because that’s when Google adopted Manifest V3 and I never looked back. There were already articles then describing how it’d break ad blockers, and Firefox had at the time just recently released their “Quantum” overhaul which drastically improved responsiveness.

    I’m a bit surprised it took five years for Google to drop support for Manifest V2, but the threat has long been there.

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    • Modern_medicine_isnt@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I use Firefox as my main on my home pc. I keep running into things that don’t work on Firefox. Not by saying they don’t, just by throwing errors that make it sound like I put the wrong data in a field. Is there some magic extension to fix that?

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    • uranibaba@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I remember the Quantum release. They remade how the browser handled tabs, and with the new release you could handle (almost) unlimited number of tabs. I tried this buy opning

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• stoy@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  “intrusive ads” are the least of the problems, an adblocker is a critical part of any computer’s security suite.

  The internet advertisement companies wont police their ads from maleware, and untill they accept criminal and financial responsibillity when their ads cause harm to the users being served compromised ads from their networks, I won’t even consider disabling my adblocker

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• THX1138@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Firefox.

  This is the way.

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  • TheHotze@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    This is the way.

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• texasspacejoey@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I miss the “dont be evil” version of google. Its like, large amounts of money ruin everything

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  • ColonelPanic@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    It’s not just large amounts of money. It’s chasing more and more money each quarter, and when it starts slowing down panic sets in and they start trying to find any and every possible avenue to keep profits up. It’s how we’ve ended up in subscription based hell and it’ll only get worse.

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• idefix@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  There’s only 34 million uBlock Origin users on Chrome? So, billions are using Chrome without any ad-blockers? That’s crazy and unsafe

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  • Crozekiel@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Most users are fucking idiots and will continue to raw-dog the internet while visiting the most malicious sites possible.

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    • Deepus@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I feel like you’ve worked helpdesk at some point.

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  • PM_Your_Nudes_Please@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Lemmy has a really biased idea of what the average computer user can do. Imagine Janet in accounting, who calls help desk to reset her password every morning, and takes 30 minutes to remember how to check her email. Or the late GenZ just entering the workforce, who was surprised that their desktop wasn’t a touchscreen, and doesn’t know how a file structure works, because literally every device they’ve used growing up has been either a tablet or a Chromebook. That’s the average user.

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    • asexualchangeling@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I don’t classify them as computer “users” personally, I think of them as computer butcherers

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  • alphabethunter@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    My boss once asked me to take a look at her computer that was super slow and barely functional, and the thing that surprised me the most was that she had been running Chrome without any adblock since ever, and when I asked her about adblock, she answered: “adwhat?”. Mind you that she’s still a millennial, and only a few years older than me.

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    • BangCrash@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I had to use my parents desktop a when I flew home for a bit.

      Surfing the internet is fucking stressful if you don’t have adblocks. So overstimulating!!

      I’m also on windows and for some reason I had to use Edge.

      The Edge home screen is the VERY REASON google killed it back in the 90s. Clean clear search screen. Allows you to think what you are doing with out getting bombarded with ads and posts and ads and markets. Reminded me how terrible the search experience was back in Alta Vista and Yahoo days

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  • LordWiggle@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    There are also loads of people using Edge.

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  • jjagaimo@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    A lot of them don’t know the difference between ab, abp ublock and ublock origin

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  • DarkSpectrum@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    There are billions of people on earth who don’t have access to a computer.

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• ayyy@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Stallman was right.

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  • mannycalavera@feddit.uk ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    It’s pronounced GNU Stallman.

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  • RageAgainstTheRich@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I can’t listen or look at this man anymore after seeing him scrape shit off his feet and eat it in front of a bunch of people. 🤢

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    • TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      He has went on record multiple times saying having sex with children or family pets is fine. Eating his foot gunk is the least of my issues with him.

      That said, when it comes to warning about software, he was pretty bang-on.

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  • erwan@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Too bad he spent all his energy getting Linux users to say GNU/Linux instead of talking about the real issues

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    • octopus_ink@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Just because that’s all you ever listened to doesn’t mean that’s all he ever said.

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  • avatar@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    who

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    • isles@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      It’s a very searchable name

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• Schadrach@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Advertising company makes it harder to block ads on their browser, news at 11.

  Or did anyone forget that they made an explicit effort to block another ad blocking extension a while back, including blocking it from the Chrome store, blocking you from installing it manually and even blocking at least some versions of it from being manually installed in developer mode?

  Ad nauseam, because it also simulated as clocks and thus ruined their metrics.

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• TheFunkyMonk@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Used Chrome forever, switched to Firefox back when this stuff first started going down. No ragerts.

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• ConstipatedWatson@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  We should all probably start donating to Firefox. Isn’t Google their main source of income?

  There might come a time when they prefer to gut Firefox, forcing Mozilla to either reject uBlock Origin or die (or they could simply pull the plug on funding knowing they’ll earn more when people go back to Chrome-based browsers)

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• faethon@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  At this point I am seriously wondering why people would like to use Chrome over Firefox for instance.

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• Netrunner@programming.dev ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I pulled the plug on allowing chrome user agents on my domain.

  Granted its tiny but I’m making people switch.

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• Masterkraft0r@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  cackles in firefox…

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• CouncilOfFriends@slrpnk.net ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  It deserves mentioning that Firefox on Android supports extensions, so if you uninstall/disable the official YouTube app and add uBlock Origin and Sponsorblock extensions you get a more tolerable experience.

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• Yambu@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  LibreWolf.

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• DarkSpectrum@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  With Google providing 80% of Mozilla’s finding, I think we can all see whats going to happen next.

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• masterspace@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Stop using Chrome, it is adware at this point. Use Firefox or if that’s too different, use Edge or a different chromium offshoot that isn’t going to support manifest v3.

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• GiddyGap@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  There’s an easy fix for this. 🔥🦊

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• Dazed_Confused@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  It literally took me less than ten minutes to set up firefox. I carried all my bookmarks and passwords from edge and set up a mozilla account and everything is synced across linux, windows and android. The only thing I’m worried of, is if some websites require chrome to work, as was the case with some government sites that only worked with internet explorer in the old days. (Does anyone know if the default user agent is chrome? I used to log in a local streaming site from edge and it wouldn’t work, as it required chrome, but I used an extension to take care of the user agent. On firefox it works no problem.)

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• shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Firefox downloads a spike by 30 million. Will be the next headline.

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• sturmblast@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Simple solution. Don’t use Chrome.

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• vxx@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  How long until YouTube blocks Firefox?

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• ansiz@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I wonder if the DoJ actually does split up Google if separating Chrome would make any difference with behavior like this?

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• uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I wonder if this leaves Chrome users susceptible to ads that load malware, which has been a problem for the last decade, and a driver of adblocking extension development. You can get spyware and worms from Forbes, for instance.

  Adblocking is not just a matter of a cleaner internet experience, but also of good internet hygiene

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• Teknikal@eviltoast.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I’ve used Librewolf since the first time Google announced these kinda plans I’m thinking it must be at least 3 years now.

  Theres tons of options Librewolf is overkill to be honest Firefox would be fine.

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• catloaf@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  This headline is premature. They haven’t pulled the plug yet. I still have Chrome installed, fully updated, and all the extensions are still there.

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