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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.

    • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
      0·
      11 months ago

      I’m not really sure what you mean. Firefox is pretty good, and I honestly think the privacy-friendly ads thing is a good initiative. If you’re going to block ads anyway, it won’t impact you, and if you won’t block ads, having them be more privacy-friendly is a good thing. As long as Mozilla doesn’t sell my browsing data (and there’s no indication they are or will), I’m all for harm-reducing features/settings.

        • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
          0·
          11 months ago

          They didn’t really hide it, they just didn’t advertise it. It was in the release notes, hence why the media picked up on it. And on release, there was a checkbox in the normal settings to opt-out, so it’s honestly not that bad.

          FakeSpot

          That’s an opt-in extension, it’s not part of the core browser. I honestly don’t know much about it, and their privacy policy isn’t appealing, so I won’t use it. If it becomes part of Firefox by default, I’ll disable it.

          In what universe are advertisers going to use this instead of, not in addition to, other telemetry?

          What telemetry is this providing? AFAIK, Mozilla isn’t providing any kind of personalized info, it’s merely aggregated data.

          And the reason they’d pick this is to get access to privacy-minded people who would otherwise block their ads, but may choose to exempt these ads. Mozilla has some anti-tracking features, and there’s a significant subset of Firefox users that block ads out of principle of avoiding tracking. If websites want to get some of that advertising revenue, they’ll comply. That benefits all Firefox users, because some sites may choose to use this method of targeted ads, which still provides the site with ad revenue without providing the advertisers with details on their customers.

          That’s the idea here. It’s not going to happen on day 1, but having the capability means Mozilla can pilot it and see if websites are interested. And it’s possible Mozilla’s ads are more relevant because they have access to browsing history, not just whatever advertisers were able to figure out from their network of ads.

  • tpihkal@lemmy.world
    0·
    11 months ago

    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.

  • cyberwolfie@lemmy.ml
    0·
    11 months ago

    I see many people say to just use forks of Firefox. I use Librewolf myself. However, are such forks not very dependent on upstream Firefox not being completely enshittified? Will it be possible to keep the forks free of all new bullshit, or does that at any point become a too difficult/comprehensive task for the maintainers?

    • laughterlaughter@lemmy.world
      0·
      11 months ago

      At that point the forks will become its own thing and depart from Firefox.

      Which is ironically and exactly how Firefox came to be.

      Netscape fucked up Navigator, some folks forked Navigator and created Phoenix - which then was renamed to Firebird, then Firefox. And somewhere in that timeline the Mozilla foundation ditched Navigator in favor of the fork.

      • cyberwolfie@lemmy.ml
        0·
        11 months ago

        But is it viable? I know very little of browser development, but my impression is that it is a lot of work to develop and keep the browsers secure. If Librewolf separated completely from upstream Firefox, would they be able to keep the browser secure without significantly expanding their team?

        I ask in earnest, as I said I know very little about this.

        • unwarlikeExtortion@lemmy.ml
          0·
          11 months ago

          For Firefox forks, it’s viable since the forks aren’t doing all that much in the grand scheme of things. That isn’t to say what they’re doing is in any way bad, it’s just that there’s no need to reinvent the wheel.

          Firefox is a secure browser and already has 99% of the work done. Most changes which forks make can be done just by changing the config. Some unfortunately have to be made seperately, and that does require extensive testing. Some can even be lifted from other open-source projects.

          Separating from source just isn’t viable. Something nuclear would need to happen for any fork to decide to seperate from Firefox. If we just look at the Chromium side of things, Microsoft found it easier to switch to Chromium than to keep making IE/Edge from scratch, and Microsoft surely has a lot of resources to burn.