I am from Germany and it is just sad how many people use these apps from shit companies without thinking, when suitable alternatives exist everywhere. Just use Firefox, it will work for 99,9% without any flaw. I would love to ditch WhatsApp, but could only convinge a few people to change to Signal. It is as easy as downloading a new app to prevent supporting Meta, but that’s too much effort for many :-(
it will work for 99,9% without any flaw
Unfortunately not anymore.
And it doesn’t help, that Mozilla is also slowly turning towards enshittification… (since they fired all servo devs…)
Actually as much as I’d love to use Firefox all the time, there are many times it won’t work properly at all. This isn’t entirely Mozilla’s fault, but it is the case.
People not using Firefox is Mozilla’s fault. Just look at how their mobile browser performs. It’s so much worse than any chromium browser.
I’ve been using Firefox mobile since they enabled extensions on it a little over a year ago on my Pixel 9 and haven’t had any performance issues with it. My only complaint is that it doesn’t handle form auto fills, or opening links associated with apps as well as chrome, but I think that’s because of chrome’s inherent ties into the OS. I prefer Opera on desktop for the UI and features.
I use Firefox mobile since they support extensions but I have to admit that mobile browsers that are based on Geckoview are worse than browsers that are based on Blink.
Mozilla said that they want to concentrate their power on the mobile version, but I could not find the statement anymore.
Chrome is no longer available in my Start menu.
Yeah, I switched to Firefox when this whole Manifest V3 thing was announced, I only still have Chrome installed because it’s better for PDFs than Firefox and once in a great while i run into a site that doesn’t work right on Firefox.
better for PDFs
Sumatra!
I actually really like Firefox for reading pdf’s, how is it in chrome? I’ve never actually tried chrome for that because I was still using okular back when I still had chrome installed on anything.
The main issue I have with Firefox is that some pdfs have this side-by-side layout (especially rpg pdfs) that Firefox respects and I keep having to turn it off every time I load a new one. Chrome doesn’t respect it and shows it a page at a time like I want. My eyes don’t work too good so side by side the text is just too small.
Interesting, funny enough I have sorta the opposite problem using Firefox for PDFs: I like the side by side view of two pages and Firefox always loads books with single pages, zoomed way too far in for my taste. Have you tried it for PDFs recently? It’s a new way of reading them for me, and I wonder if they’ve changed it since you used it last.
Yeah, it’s still set as my default for handling PDFs, so I keep opening them in there and then copying the address over to chrome by hand because I’m too lazy to go find the default app settings.
Or in my app drawer
or in ~/.local/share/applications
laughs in Firefox
Cries in only Chrome and Edge at work 😢
Tell your IT.
Yeah. What company wouldn’t allow it?
When I was working for an ad exchange, everyone had adblock installed in their browsers, I found that quite ironic.
I would argue it’s a security issue not to have any ad blocking. Many scams online start with popups or fake ads.
So if you get the opportunity to talk to IT that’s what I would mention.
A good IT is blocking ads at a company-level. Browser extensions wouldn’t matter, and in fact, shouldn’t be allowed for the same reason.
You can only catch so much at the edge and DNS level. Browser extension catches the stragglers that get through. But we’ve mitigated virtually all browser induced malware possibilities by just moving to cloud-based internet isolation. It’s similar to what the DoD uses, if anyone’s familiar with their use case: https://www.bylight.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/CBII_2020-2025.pdf
Even with CBII ads still make the internet cancerous to even look at
(Although they have since taken down their PSA woth no explanation)
Yeah. What company wouldn’t allow it?
My IT department uninstalled it from my work laptop, and told me not to reinstall it because - and I quote: “The only browser IT officially supports is Google Chrome.”
What makes this doubly stupid is that I’m a web developer. I literally can’t test my stuff on another browser…
I used to develop ads (non intrusive things for home depot or go RVing) and i used ad blockers. When testing, i would just run private browsing with plugins disabled…
Officially only Edge is supported, but Chrome is tolerated. It’s a full MS environment.
Same here. The worst thing is in their justification of disallowing Firefox they listed that it was not an enterprise application. I get that it might be extra effort to support it but don’t list something factually untrue as a lame cop out for why you don’t want to.
Was told it wouldn’t be allowed because you couldn’t restrict it using GPO… Until I told them they could absolutely apply those restrictions using GPO and even provided the ADMX templates.
Click on every single ad and banner, click “I agree” on every pop-up. Make that computer hate it’s life!
uBlock Origin Lite does work, but it’s predefined lists only. You can’t use the element zapper 🙁
lame
My condoleances
Download Firefox portable
At large organizations you’re generally not allowed to download much of anything without it passing through IT security and management first. If it’s a no, it will probably stay a no.
In your experience, what large organization restricts this? I’ve worked at a few SaaS companies and a FAANG that always gave us full install rights and browser choice. Granted we are on the software side, but I haven’t experienced this at all.
I work for a non-profit and they are way more lenient about what we would like to install as long as the job gets done.
Then you have bad opsec and security holes.
This matters more for some industries than others. But this attitude lets a malicious employee install basically whatever they want in service of “the job” and you won’t even know you’re being breached until after it’s all over.
Well, we still have to get approval. But it just seems like they don’t mind as much. For example, I don’t know how many companies out there would be fine with installations of AutoHotkey and LibreOffice.
Download Firefox portable
https://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox_portable
Link for convenience.
Download a Firefox based browser from the Microsoft store?
some “infosec” systems tags firefox as a “vulnerability” risk
ahem tenable ahem
Store is disabled
Wellp, time to get a new job.
I can’t install anything. I’m lucky I can install uBlock Origin because I worked out later most extensions are disabled too. But I guess it’s only matter of time until that disappears.
If you had uBlock origin already, you may have gotten a message through Chrome that it was no longer supported, so it’s been disabled, and gives you the option to remove it. I noticed you don’t have to remove it, and it can be re-enabled. However, I need someone smarter with adblockers than I to say if this is actually helpful and not hazardous.
I just downloaded the Kagi Orion browser and I can install extensions from both Chrome and Firefox web stores!
Nice!
Is there any firefox based browser on android where I can have easy gestures for the arrow buttons? All the firefox versions I can find require me to do this in two clicks which for the way I browse is a pain in the arse. Can I fix this somehow?
You mean swiping left up go back? Works fine for me in regular FF on Android…
Doesn’t work for me. I don’t have “plain” android but a specific type that’s compatible with my eink screen.
Chromium gestures work fine though.
No feature for it that I know of. They may be thinking of the swipe to change tabs support?
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/use-gestures-in-firefox-android
Unknown, i can use gestures on my phone which work in Firefox. Maybe it’s is a phone problem.
I haven’t tried it, but Iceraven has a lot of extensions available compared to Firefox. Maybe there is one to do exactly what you need?
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This is probably the single thing that got me to switch to Firefox. Privacy whatever, I don’t care about my data or the morality of my tech company or whatever, but mess with my adblocker and goodbye.
I’m mostly in the same boat. If you really want to know my kink-search-history, I really DGAF. The morality is nice to think about but it’s all about your personal morals in a lot of cases.
Can I have your bank account username and password?
No
Awww, but understandable. Can I see your bank statements for the last 12 months?
No
So you do care about privacy!
Yes, when it comes to sharing sensitive information publicly, I do care about privacy. Especially bank information - a regular bank statement could probably be exploited for identity theft - but it’s also nice to keep at least a little plausible deniability about who I am IRL (for employers and such).
When it comes to websites and browsers aggregating browsing history to use for advertising - which is what I was referring to in my original comment - no I don’t care.
Why not?
It could be used to take my money, which directly and drastically harms me and benefits you. Or worse, “steal my identity” and take out a loan in my name. Things like bank statements could also potentially be used for that, and I have no reason to give them to internet strangers.
so you DO care about privacy.
Yes, obviously I prefer to keep my secure credentials private to avoid having my bank account compromised.
I’m pretty sure any popular modern browser can be trusted not to leak that data, even Google Chrome. If anything I trust Chrome more because Google has an incentive to not obliterate trust in their security.
Now browsing history for advertisers is a different story - that is something I explicitly don’t care about. And that’s what I was obviously referring to in my first comment.
That’s security, not privacy
It literally is privacy.
firefox is going through thier own enshittifcation down the line, they changed ther policy about data recently
They changed the phrasing, since in some jurisdictions “sharing anonymized data with partners” can apparently be interpreted as a sale of data, if they get something in return, even if it’s not a fiscal payment.
But after the outrage that sparked, they’ve rephrased the policy again and wrote a lengthy article detailing the reasoning, which is at the very least plausible.
As I understand it that has more to do with covering their ass. They haven’t changed their practices.
I’ll care when Firefox loses ManifestV2 support.
I read about this too, and it worries me. Google has donated over a billion dollars to Mozilla over the years. That alone doesn’t scare me so much as it’s a blatant propaganda tool to deflect the antitrust sentiment that plagues them and will probably some day do its work of breaking them apart.
Fortunately, there are numerous open source forks. I am currently using Librewolf, a fork of firefox focused on privacy and anti-tracking, and it has worked without a hitch. A couple of my extensions have required fiddling with to get right but it’s part of life if you care about these things.
They changed the wording of their policy for legal reasons. They haven’t actually changed what they do. They already updated the text of the policy to clarify.
Google is not an IT company. It’s an advertising company. Surprised Pikachu, it blocks ad blockers.
It’s been an ad company for a long time, though, and blocking ad blockers is new.
Because they are at the end of their growth phase and have entered their squeeze until dead phase.
Yes, but enshittification doesn’t happen all at once. And this is a textbook example of the actual meaning of enshittification.
Yeah it’s always been an ad company. And you are correct, blocking apps is new, welcome to the last stage in the ad-blocking arms race. Glad I degoogled my digital life a decade ago.
Chrome is no longer available on my computer.
Never has been 🔫 (at least for a couple of years)
I only use chrome for my work stuff, and that’s because I work with g-suite a lot.
Chrome fucking sucks
I wish I could say the same. Web dev. 🫡 But at least I’m using Chromium, if that’s even slightly better.
Use firefox
And if you don’t like Firefox, use one of the Firefox forks. Some of them are very Chrome-like.
Which ones do you mean?
FireDragon, Zen Browser, and LibreWolf. Zen feels like a streamlined Chrome.
Ah right. But none of them are true forks, really. They still rely on the Firefox project to port features in etc.
They’re too strict, unless you have one that’s usable by default?
“Too strict” how? I don’t know what’s “usable” for you.
It’s been a while since I used it, but Librewolf had a habit of showing the bitwarden extension’s window at the wrong size.
I was able to fix this by disabling a “resist fingerprinting” setting, but it’s annoying to have to do stuff like this in the first place. I really wanted to have an exceptions list that included certain websites for fingerprinting resistance, but I never found a clear way to do it.
There are a few other examples of settings that I had to tweak in order to make the experience as good as Firefox.
This: fingerprinting resistance is either too strict or none at all
Fingerprinting resistance is either too strict or none at all
Cookies are removed when the browser is closed, and iirc history isn’t saved by default. It just makes it a pain for regular users
or even better, use librewolf.
I’m not really sure it’s better tbh
I swapped to Chrome years ago because YouTube stopped working right on Firefox.
I’ve started the process of swapping back to Firefox after 10 years with Chrome over this.
never had a problem with firefox and youtube
I know what he’s talking about- there was some javascript spec or something that google proposed, and nobody else bought in, so it never actually became part of javascript’s standard.
But google implemented it into chrome’s javascript engine anyway, and then used it for youtube. There was some fallback code if the new functions weren’t available, but, because of a ‘mistake’ they didn’t work and basically made playback ass for a while until the open source community basically debugged and fixed the issue FOR google, and then spent a few weeks cramming it down google’s throat that it needed fixed.
google does this kinda shit on purpose to reinforce their market position
One of the many reasons why Google should be splitted into different companies
Isn’t it? YouTube isn’t its own company?
He means separate companies with few or no ties with each other.
It probably didn’t have anything to do with Firefox itself. It’s likely related to something I messed up in FF or it was something to do with the ancient laptop I had at the time being a junk heap, but I tried Chrome and noticed that the trouble didn’t exist there. So I started using Chrome.
I kept using it because of all the google integration, which was really handy when I was using the google business suite to run my own small business. I shut that down two years ago now, so there’s nothing really keeping me on Chrome any more.
I swapped back to FF a few days ago and YouTube works fine now. So I’m back on the FF train and giving Google the finger the whole way over banning the adblockers that I liked.
t probably didn’t have anything to do with Firefox itself
It probably did. Google has been caught red-handed with messing with Youtube to break Firefox.
https://www.reddit.com/r/youtube/comments/17z8hsz/youtube_has_started_to_artificially_slow_down/
Jesus Christ, what a bunch of rat-fuckers.
Yeah if you fiddle around with about:config without knowing exactly what yer doing, shit breaks. Fortunately you can type “about:profiles” in the url box, make a test profile, and mess around as much as you want before nuking your default browser.
The only problem I’ve had is that you can’t view HDR content in YouTube on Firefox.
That’s not a big part of YouTube (yet), so it is largely unnoticeable.
If they break youtube in alternative browsers or force ads I’ll finally be able to ditch youtube for good.
There were a few extensions you could run in firefox that told youtube that it was totally for reals being accessed by a chrome browser.
Boy, that would have been good to know back in 2015, I feel like I let Google hoodwink me into using Chrome for all that time.
Ironically YouTube seems to work better for me in firefox, although the issue in chrome may be caused by browser extensions
That’s good to hear. I’m looking forward to trying it out on FF again.
What problems with YouTube did you have?
Something was going wrong with video playback. Unfortunately, this was about 10 years ago so I don’t remember many specifics about what the problem was.
I’ve exclusively used firefox to watch youtube on Arch and Ubuntu for years, never had a problem so far for what it’s worth. I keep a laptop in the livingroom with Arch specifically to have adblocking and piping the video out to the TV. The youtube apps are terrible on the Roku last I remember, haven’t tried it in forever but I think the main reason was I didn’t want to see ads anymore.
My wife and I used the YouTube app on a Roku TV for some time, and it was rough. I’m not sure if the intense lag was caused by the app or the low specs of the TV, but either way it was a poor experience.
I take this as a sign that it genuinely still works to block ads and hasn’t sold out and become malware like those others that used to be popular.
It was removed because Google did away with manifest v2 for browser extensions, and uBlock Origin worked almost entirely from a feature provided in manifest v2. So it was removed because it can no longer work on chromium devices, unless the browser manually adds back in support for it. Firefox has chosen to continue to support manifest v2, so the original uBlock origin is still available. uBlock lite is still available in the chrome store, and uses the new manifest v3. It is more limited in it’s capability, but should be able to get the most obtrusive stuff. The lite version is definitely not nearly as powerful as the original.
On a side note, it seems to me like the link still works for now. Idk how much longer that will last.
Glad I don’t use chrome anymore. Though unfortunately everyone else I know still does.
I switched to Firefox many years ago, after their announcement I switched to Waterfox and I’m very happy with it.
I’ve been on Firefox since 2004, trying Waterfox right now and it seems very nice. I was surprised to see that it supports Firefox Sync, took me less than ten minutes to make it comfy. Now I’m wondering about that; perhaps I should disable Firefox Sync?
How did you choose Waterfox? Are there any resources that compare these FF forks?
Not Waterfox, but others is listed here https://www.privacytools.io/private-browser
Worth to be mentioned are also
but the best IMO https://zen-browser.app/
the what store now
But ublock origin lite is by the same dev… Not as many features but it conforms to the new rules and is still much better than not having a blocker if you use chrome or edge.
The best option here is to just tank Chrome’s market share instead of making something that’s obviously not ideal, work.
Everyone should ditch chrome
My fucking organization refuses to support anything but Chrome. I hate it so much.
Brave user here. Never looked back.
I think the Brave CEO recently said some Trumpy shit (in case you’re at all curious for the downvoting).
Honestly, hadn’t logged in for a few days, so didn’t even know I was severely downvoted. Leaving Reddit has helped me not scroll through every day for hours on end on Lemmee.
And good to know about the Brave CEO thing. I legit cannot keep up with everything.
I wish more people were like you. Not everyone can keep up with everyone’s beefs (this one not so much) but it really grinds my gears when I see seemingly polite, on topic, engaging or contributing comments with no replies but still geyting down voted. Especially on a forum as thirsty as Lemmy users are for more user involvement.
It makes me think there are too many people in the world conditioned to be preset to hate thst the fact a person doesn’t know they’re supposed to hate something is enough grounds to be shunned and hated on. Lol. It’s cool to see someone jump in and say:Hey homie, we don’t hate you we hate a person who is unrelated to the topic of the thread or the context of your comment but we do hate them enough to hate on you
Edit: the parenthesis comment was meant to imply hating Trump monkeys is glaringly obvious. My comment was about lemmy etiquette and wasn’t about why or why not OP was getting downvoted.
It’s gotta be some kind of sheep brain activation; crowd following behavior. It can be very annoying sometimes.
Sometimes you’re just voicing a neutral opinion and it gets destroyed. And by neutral I mean it’s not controversial or anything, like racism, it could just be something not exactly everyone would agree with.
I wish people would use the down vote as Reddit once intended it to mean: off topic and not contributing to the discussion, or perhaps rude, etc. Not “I don’t agree with this”. You should explain why you don’t agree with something, or up vote a comment that already explains it.
And that is why I went to Firefox once Google announced this bullshit.
Swapping is pretty painless. It even brings over all your passwords and stuff these days. Best get to swapping before Google disable that as well. They’d just love to keep you hostage.
Use a third party password manager, don’t rely on browser default ones
