If I learned one thing, when talking with people about stuff like that: Most people unfortunately don’t care. Many don’t even have an ad blocker to begin with.
ah, time for a re-watch I guess
Look, I was among the glorious warriors who installed Firefox on his parents/grandparents PC and replaced its shortcut’s image with IE’s one (because old people hate changes and won’t accept it easily)
- Oh again! They keep changing my Google internet!
- Yes grandma, it’s Windows… (« It wasn’t Windows » says the narrator in a deep and mysterious voice) Do you want me to install Linux? It’s free and open source and…
- Keep that commie thing away from me, I like that meadow picture…
- You know you can change th…
- Don’t you dare!
Anyway. We did it. We killed IE hegemony. It’s up to the new generation to take the baton and fight against the tyranny of Google.
The idea of installing Linux on a grandparent’s computer is just asking for trouble. I convinced my father in law to give a Chromebook a try since he mostly just uses his computer to get online and boy, was that tricky. The average person has no idea what an Operating System is and will call you the minute they can’t install a new program for some reason.
I had a very successful experience! My grandmother had no idea how computers worked at all, so I set up a very stripped-down Ubuntu that didn’t even allow multiple windows open. I could easily remote in whenever she had an issue.
She used it to check her email, read the news, and watch Obama’s weekly address until the week she died. (Unrelated to the computer)
I feel like there’s a curve of where this could work. For the extremely technically illiterate or technically literate, you’d be ok. But for the middle chunk of the population, it’d be more confusing than it’s worth.
It can be very good for folk who are too tech illiterate to install any program by themselves.
The people who don’t care and don’t have an adblocker aren’t and weren’t ever the target. The people who are being targeted have an adblocker, and they’re all moving to FireFox.
What Google is getting out of this most of all is future compliance as new users coming to Chrome will never know a world in which ad blockers were freely available on Chrome, as well as dog whistling this to other corporate browser vendors.
Don’t forget they’re pushing chrome on the whole internet. Websites are already telling Firefox users to fuck off if we aren’t spoofing chromium and it’s only going to get worse after this.
Firefox is my daily and I very rarely encounter a site that specifically rejects it. Do you have some examples?
Seriously it’s opposite for me actually. I find that websites tend to have issues on chromium but they don’t on Firefox
I’d tell you but it’d dox me. I can’t pay my utilities on Firefox.
Long term they will move to Firefox also.
Because people like us will continue to suggest they use Firefox as their “tech person”.
It’s just a little slower for the people that don’t care.
That is exactly how Chrome took over internet explorer back in the day.
I doubt most people use an adblocker.
Anyone who’s aware of these issues or cares about them really should have been smart enough to switch to Firefox a long time ago.
Must be enough to make big companies angry
I use duck duck go. The browser on my phone even auto opts out of cookies
You can also do that with Firefox on your computer.
It’s not in settings, but you can easily google the instructions.
Duck duck go also runs it’s own vpn which is great if you can’t root your phone.
You can use system-wide VPNs on Android without root
DuckDuckGo is also so much better for search results since Google made theirs shit.
I can find websites pretty easy on DuckDuckGo which just don’t exist on Google.
damn google has really gotten shit then. I used to avoid duckduckgo because of how much better google was.
Google used to be like “we have found 10 quadrillion websites with your term” and you could click page 173 and it would give you the list for as many times as you wanted to click
Then they went to giving you several pages but if you clicked past page two they would be like hahaha psych there are actually only two pages of results for “starcraft two newbie tips”
Now I’ll search for specific phrases I know I read somewhere and I’ll get like, three god damn results.
Really? On the entire internet? Three results?
It’s just disrespectful and insulting
Which makes this even more annoying. Like you have good chunk of the world using your browser with ads, but you still want even more and are still taking these types of scummy actions.
I think they’re taking aim at people who use an adblocker because it’s simple and won’t bother if they make it harder than installing an extension.
I’ve seen this one before.
- A ton of people will complain
- Firefox will get a bunch of users for a few days
- 90% will go back to Chrome
That last 10% will be happier but that’s just the way it goes. This is based on Netflix, Reddit, Twitter, and Microsoft.
A browser is not like a social network though. There’s barely any difference in practical terms between Chrome and Firefox. Once you’ve switched there’s no reason to go back.
This is why I don’t understand why anyone tech savvy isn’t using Firefox. There’s literally no cost. From a user standpoint they’re basically the same thing. The one that isn’t made by an evil monopoly is just the obvious choice.
Desktop runs great, but Firefox on Android seems to be noticeably buggy here and there sadly. I still use it, but I can imagine that might drive people out of the ecosystem.
Many people get used to the synchronization of their passwords / bookmarks cross-channel. More advanced users have a separate password management for this I’d figure, but that’s not the default for 90% I’d guess.
I’ve never had a single issue with Firefox for Android and I’ve run it on all my phones for like 6-7years at least, probably more but I don’t remember.
It doesn’t play super nice with foldable phones. The UI doesn’t adapt correctly without restarting the app and you end up with a very dense interface of overlapping buttons if you try going from open to closed. The address bar becomes completely blocked by all the extra buttons from the tablet layout, so the app is unusable.
Well that’s a pretty specific use case, I’ve only ever met one person with a foldable phone. But yeah they should probably fix that.
Well, in my experience it’s mostly interaction bugs. Quite noticeable when you’re used to Chrome not having these issues.
I use both a password manager and Firefox password sync.
You may think so but there’s always a bunch of posts about why people can’t switch out of chromium in every other Firefox related posts. There are few significant differences and some don’t wanna make any compromise for something better.
The only ones who can’t are those who have that SUUUPER special plugin that they need and they won’t look at FF alternatives.
As long as there is suddenly a new pinned tab with irrelevant info or an unskippable pop up about the new color schemes or data grabbing websites pinned to the top sites or the company firing half their developers even when their CEO gets another pay raise or…
Agreed, I think they’re hedging on the amount of people who leave will be less than the increased revenue of those who stay. Considering the ones leaving were never going to allow as revenue anyway what do they really lose?
The rest will go to some other chrome derivative that includes a built in adblocker.
Until google announces that adblocks will be blanket removed from chromium as well. The truth is the only company big enough to maintain a fork this different, is Microsoft, the question is will they feel like they should, or will they side with Google, since this is by their interests as well…
There were people back in the day who thought that the internet was that fancy E on the desktop (internet explorer) and would have their brains melt when trying to explain alternatives. I think that people now have this problem with a fancy G.
And thus, entropy is presented. Even if only 10% go to Firefox, thats still 10% that aren’t going back to Chrome. And if this repeats with similar results, as you imply, that 90% going back to Chrome is gonna be a lot smaller a few iterations from now.
Until they use their multiple monopolies to further cripple the experience for competitors, entrenching their dominance, and allowing them to force their proprietary standards on the internet, killing any remaining pretence of Internet freedom.
The description is “Google will disable MV2 extensions in 2024, including ublock origin” and the title is “Google will disable Ublock origin in 2024”
YouTube clickbait title moment.
I use firefox btw
The target oft mv3 is litterally adblock TF u in securitythéâtre?
No the target is something like ‘prevent extensions from doing whatever they want with websites’. Could be to just block Adblocks but not a fact.
***
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Not sure they understand the flow on effects. Those of us being affected and work in the corporate IT space who have a lot of say in what browsers are used will simply replace chrome with Firefox on our thousands of machines nationwide without a second thought. They are digging their own grave.
It’s a little more complex then that.
First we need to draft a project to keep the PMs happy. Then test the change…
Then get it through change management…
Or just have our friends in secops make it a security call and a priority. Not saying I’ve done this before - no sir.
Don’t forget the six months of complaining and loss of service desk productivity because people still can’t figure out how to import their bookmarks.
You can script that i believe. We had multiple fuckup in our company due to poorly missmanaged browser migration.
Im in a top500 and they swapped browser to like 30% of the population without informing local IT as a test. Many people lost bookmarks I always run a firefox in parallel (against company policy but they are too bad to find out)
Their masterplan is possibly to deactivate certain websites for anything but chrome.
Sadly, their user base is really every idiot with a cell phone or MacBook and not those of us who do as you suggest.
The majority of people on Chrome at this point are the same people that only ever used Internet Explorer until like 2015. They aren’t even using Ublock, they don’t even know what it is. The kind of people who have their nephew set their computers up for them.
How dare you! I AM the nephew that sets up their computers for them, and I install Firefox.
Good man.
And that’s why I set my elders up with uBlock.
Back before web browsers had ad-blocking extensions, we had programs like Web Washer. It was a local, ad-blocking proxy program that you ran along side your browser. To use it, you just changed your browser’s network settings to point to Web Washer. And the ads would be filtered before they even reached your browser. It would be no problem to implement this again.
PiHole is the most common way I hear of network-level ad blocking these days.
blocking YouTube ads can’t really be done just with a DNS adblocker tho. if it could then my pihole would be blocking them too
It’s a proxy though, so it could inspect the actual content, detect ads and do something about it. Peertube, Grayjay etc bypass ads just fine so I guess it could be done with the webapp?
If you install a TLS certificate theoretically yes
it can’t inspect the content because https exists. it can only see where you are attempting to connect to
Well yeah it would have to MITM the connection, like Avast does.
Google when people don’t stop using chrome and just disable ublock:
:)
They won’t make people disable uBlock. They’ll just make it stop working, and people will just think the ads have gotten better or uBlock has gotten worse.
Fortunately there’s so much chatter on this that maybe it won’t be that way.
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Calling people npcs is total npc behavior
Now I want to see a video game where every other NPC you talk to, complains about all the NPCs.
Does NPC mean the same as “low value human”? Asking for a friend.
Also, what a terrible take.
Google when people stop using chrome
Not so sure about that. I know more than enough persons who still like to use Edge (Internet Explorer).
The problem isn’t Edge in itself. It is good if there are many browsers. But when Javascript became more than just a play thing, all of a sudden browser slowly moved to chromium as an engine. There used to be Opera, IE, Edge, Firefox, Safari and Chrome with each their own browser engine. Now there is only Chromium/Blink, Safari and Firefox left. Google is way too powerful with their marketshare. They constantly try to implement features that are bad for users.
Please use Firefox if you can!
Now there is only Chromium/Blink, Safari/WebKit and Firefox/Gecko left.
{browser}/{browser_engine}I know. I mixed engines and browsers. I was too lazy to find out the engine names of opera, edge and ie.
New engines are in test stage, servo, ladybird etc.
Oh thank God. I was worried nobody would make new engines.
The problem is that it will take ages for them to get any adoption in a new browser. Firefox used to be a big player and then chrome came along. Now most of the people don’t even try Firefox anymore. I still hear a lot of “Firefox is slow” sentiment even though it isn’t.
Oh thank God. I was worried nobody will make new engines.
At least at home and on mobile I absolutely do o7
I’ve started using Firefox at work, too. Unfortunately, I still have to use a lot of the Google sites at work, but they all work flawlessly within Firefox and uBO.
I use Edge at work and it’s a really decent browser. It’s not Internet Explorer it’s basically Chrome with different tracking software lol
Obviously I use Firefox personally. But it’s actually decent.
I also use it at work and it really sucks. I also have Chrome on my work computer, but for everything work-related I have to use Edge. Like E-Mails and Sharepoint-Stuff. Edge’s startup time is at least 4 times Chrome’s startup time. Sites load extremely slow directly compared to Chrome. No Adblockers. I really don’t like this.
You can install extensions right from the Chrome Web Store with Edge. I have uBlock Origin in Edge on my work PC.
ublock origin is published to the addon ‘store’ for edge and opera, in addition to mozilla’s (firefox and thunderbird) and chrome. links to all are on the repo’s main page https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock
I also use it at work and it really sucks. I also have Chrome on my work computer, but for everything work-related I have to use Edge. Like E-Mails and Sharepoint-Stuff.
That’s a decision your IT department made. I use Firefox with all of that at work.
Can confirm. I also have to use Sharepoint with certain groups, and it works just fine. The web interface for Outlook works just fine as well.
I also have to use Google at work, and everything I’ve used works within Firefox.
I think it’s important to point this out because a lot of people seem to be laboring under the misconception that the sites they use will break in Firefox. The only sites I’ve found that don’t work are things like Bing AI, which work fine if you switch the user agent header.
Edge isn’t IE, it’s reskinned Chromium.
It won’t do anything to their market share. At work my colleagues keep asking me “Why don’t you use chrome?” or saying things like “Isn’t Firefox slow?”. They simply don’t know or don’t care to know. Also Firefox IS slow or just doesn’t work, not because it’s a bad browser but I’ve been seeing a trend of websites being designed to make it appear slow, like YouTube takes 5 extra secs on Firefox to load videos Clipcham and Adobe outright not supporting Firefox on their websites. The internet is a clown show.
Remember the net neutrality debate? I do.
This is now a balancing act to see how much they can cripple the internet for their own benefit without affecting market share enough that it hurts long-term profitability.
I’m sorry, but you work with a bunch of morons of they are harassing you about it.
we’re doing the IE6 thing again…
I’m sure some people will swap, but nah no way it’s a meaningful loss
Ad blockers will still exist too, they just won’t be as effective. If the layman installs an ad blocker and gets one less ad, they won’t question it further
uBlock Origin has a Manifest V3 version, it’s not going anywhere. I swear there are more people not reading anything here than Facebook.
Nah, there’s a big difference between what and how much you’re allowed to block in V2 vs V3 - the current status V2 adblock is way outside the range of V3’s version.
I’d say V3 blockers can probably block at best 30% of what V2 can block. Which means it has to be selective. It essentially nuders the extension, making it worthless - an adblocker that only blocks some ads is not an adblocker at all. It’s more of an ad restrictor, and in heavily monetized sites it might not even be that.
It has but i read somewhere its very limited and can be disabled by Google whenever they want.
The vast majority of Chrome users will continue to use Chrome, as the vast majority of internet users do not use adblock software.
im not sure about it, they wouldn’t try to ban ublock if it was a minority
Random article I found said about 26% of people in the US use adblocking services. Working on the assumption that’s reasonably accurate, that’s a pretty big chunk of ad revenue.
What platforms does chrome come as default on? I know it’s on google products like pixel, but mac and pcs still have safari and edge, right? What kind of people know enough to get a non-default browser and not enough to get adblock?
Chrome is standard on pretty much all Android phones, and Edge is just Chromium with a skin so it will get this too
Sadly, they know damn well that people won’t stop using it
Anecdote, but all of my friends & family members that depend on me for computer support have already stopped using it. IT at my company has also decided to stop loading it with their install images, because “ads are known attack vectors”.
