With the number of people concerned about privacy, it is a wonder why chrome is even popular.

  • HughJanus@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    With the number of people concerned about privacy, it is a wonder why chrome is even popular.

    It’s no wonder. It’s because people aren’t actually concerned about privacy.

    If you ask someone if they’re “concerned about privacy” many people will of course say yes. If you follow up that question with “what are you willing to do about it”, you’ll find that the answer is a resounding “not a God damn thing”. If they were they would spend 3 minutes on Google looking for an alternative browser that works even better than Chrome but without the privacy invasions.

    A browser is the low-hanging fruit on the “do-you-care-about-privacy meter”. It’s the one step with no sacrifices and the highest increase in privacy.

    • dimlo@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Just look at how popular threads is. Only a tiny group of privacy enthusiasts are truly worried about privacy. The general public in the whole world do not give a flying fuck.

      • Merulox@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        threads really blew my mind

        It really looks like the general population is actively looking for new ways to get their data harvested and their attention spans damaged. People are rejoicing over a new social media app (and it’s from facebook of all companies!!!). They’re rejoicing over a new poison and that’s mind-blowing to me.

        But then again I use Lemmy so who am I to talk? (Whilst Lemmy is an improvement from most other social networks, I still consider any social media use to be a detriment to my life)

        • dimlo@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I don’t really think using social media is inherently bad or harmful to anyone’s health, since human beings are striving for communication with others. Also I think privacy is a more first world problem as if people in developing countries, are not particularly interested in privacy at all. They are just going for things that are trendy, where a lot of people gather and do the same thing. Threads, TikTok, Twitter and obviously Facebook are all very popular yet the companies never hide their intentions to harvest personal data for profit. I guess if the companies pay people back for use of their data, even more people will say they are willing to give their data in exchange for tiny bit of money.

          • Merulox@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            You’re correct and much more reasonable than I am. I’ve learned from you, thank you.

    • KptnAutismus@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      i would like the government to do something about privacy. i want to use my funny gaming browser without having my data collected in the first place.

        • 001100 010010@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          1 year ago

          I’m conviced those people aren’t real and everyone is in fact secretly using an ad blocker.

          I mean, how do you not get annoyed with so much ads? People are probabaly lying in surveys to trick youtube to not blocking adblockers.

          • reversebananimals@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Hate to say it, but I think you’re giving the average person way too much credit. Most people are just not that smart.

            “Think of how stupid the average person is, and then realize that half of them are stupider than that.” - George Carlin

            Average and below internet users are not the kind of people you meet on Lemmy. They are people like the aging Gen-Xer who doesn’t know the difference between “the internet” and a web browser, or the kid whose parents shoved a tablet in their face to get them to be quiet for an hour.

            Most people want computers to be an appliance like a washing machine - the thought that they can shape their own experience on their phone or computer never even occurs to them.

          • littlecolt@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            You are mostly right. Think about how many people use chrome on corporate office computers that they do not have permission to install anything on or modify. It’s part of the reason Windows is so dominant. Businesses run windows and chrome a shit ton. I work for a Fortune 100 company. It’s Windows and Chrome across the whole company.

            • Pyro@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              I work for a large company and its the same. They even force-install Chrome despite Edge already being there! Yes, some people will make the privacy argument that Microsoft takes your data, but so will Google, and it’s not as if the business cared either way, because if they did they’d install an adblocker or Firefox, which they don’t.

        • amenotef@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          It could be a good thing. Maybe they won’t bother about people blocking ads because they become even less than before.

          So maybe you need to pause the ad block a lot less.

        • notannpc@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I forget that these people exist sometimes. I can’t ever go back to the internet with no ad blockers.

          • Mojojojo1993@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            You realize the Internet costs money. Those sites don’t charge due to advertising. If everyone used ad blocker. There wouldn’t be internet.

            But blind there

        • GreyDawn@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I suspect they spend most of their time in apps and not surfing the internet. Just a guess really since I saw the mobile traffic exceeded desktop. A lot of people don’t spend hours on the “internet” surfing. Tic Tok sure. Hell I’m getting more and more like that. Even when I use chrome I still only go the the same sites for the most part. lol

      • FoxBJK@midwest.social
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        1 year ago

        Google’s doing a pretty shitty job on that front since uBlock is already prepared with a new version that will work largely the same after the changeover.

      • HughJanus@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        They won’t. The vast majority aren’t using any kind of ad-blockers in the first place or Google would go out of business.

      • minorninth@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        The plan to deprecate Chrome V2 extensions has been constantly postponed again and again for years now. There is NO SCHEDULED DATE for this to happen currently, and when it is announced it will be more than 6 months out.

        Source: https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/chromium-extensions/c/zQ77HkGmK9E/m/HjaaCIG-BQAJ?pli=1

        If Google really wanted to kill ad blockers, they would have done this years ago.

        They don’t. They want to force ad blockers and other similar extensions to use more efficient APIs that don’t slow down the web. Extension developers overall (not just ad blockers) aren’t happy with the changes, so they’re still working on the APIs.

    • Frost Wolf@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 year ago

      Hmmm, on the bright side, with lemmy going mainstream maybe some of this culture (including privacy and FOSS) becomes more and more openly discussed.

      • Torres@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        As much as I love Lemmy I don’t see it going mainstream :/
        It’s too weird for the general user

        • theragu40@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Yeah I agree. Arguably reddit isn’t even mainstream, and it is exponentially larger than Lemmy now and will remain so for the foreseeable future.

          I’m really loving Lemmy, but it is not even remotely a factor if we are having a conversation about things that are mainstream enough to reflect popular opinion.

          • Torres@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            I’m sorry, I don’t know if “general user” means what I think it means. English is not my first language.

            What I meant was that most people who use the internet and social media on a regular basis aren’t exactly nerdy/tech-savvy. So as soon as you start talking to them about federated instances and whatnot, they lose interest.

      • Torres@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I mean I love Lemmy but I don’t see it going mainstream :/
        It’s too weird for the general user

          • Anoril@sh.itjust.works
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            1 year ago

            Whole idea is weird and as of now its lacking features. Like no ability to look on the other instance local feed without registrating there (at least not in apps i use). Also needing to type whole adress with instance name if you want some community from other instance is unhandy.

            Also, as far as i understand, there can be the same communities on different instances, so you could subscribe to, idk, cat community on lemmy.ml, but not see anything from cat community on lemmy.world. If its true its kinda stupid, i think there should be a way to associate comunities across fedarated instances.

            Hell, even registration is kinda messed up. As lemmy.world shown, you easilly can sign up on overpopulated instances which would drop several times a day. Not sure, it probably fixed for now, but that was a problem when i started.

            So far i like the idea and want it to succeed and become popular. But with how elitist people here are usually towards users from other platforms and with overall roughness it kinda seems unlikelly. Maybe it will change when current apps get better, or reddit app developers make versions for lemmy, idk.

            • Gork@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              I think what would help would be a way to create a multilemmy feature like the multireddit one where you can include communities together.

              cat@sopuli.xyz

              cat@lemmy.ml

              cat@beehaw.org

              cat@lemmy.world

              So long as they are all Federated with each other you could have a multilemmy feed for “cat”

  • ComeHereOrIHookYou@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I was originally an Opera user (back when it was using Presto) back in the day, but I switched to Firefox during the last moments of the Presto engine. When Presto died, I worried a bit about the state of other browser engines, but I didn’t worry about it too much because I never thought Microsoft would use Chromium with their Edge browser. Yet, here we are.

    Putting privacy concerns aside, we should encourage the use of Firefox because it helps promote browser engine diversity. The more diverse browser engines we have, the better it is for us, especially when it comes to innovation. I mean, it may be a bit different than the era of Internet Explorer, but since Google is leading the Chromium project, who knows what could happen.

    They might remove a particular feature that was once very useful for whatever reason, and we could end up just accepting it because we can’t do anything about it.

  • Paralda@programming.dev
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    1 year ago

    I use Vivaldi, which isn’t perfect, but I need tab grouping in some form. Firefox’s solutions for tab groups are meh at best

  • Kylamon1@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    My biggest issue with FF is the lack of the ability to switch accounts easily. In Chrome I have a work account, a home account, and a side hustle account. Each has their own bookmarks, themes, passwords, and history.

    I have tried using FF and the few workarounds to match this feature, but so far it has none worked as smoothly as chromes 2 button clicks to switch accounts.

  • GigglyBobble@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    Firefox is a weird buggy mess that constantly freezes.

    This is definitely not normal, Firefox never freezes for me. May be worth checking that out, especially your extensions.

    • TeamAssimilation@infosec.pub
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      1 year ago

      Especially your security programs, like third-party antivirus or firewalls. They can install system-level plugins in your browsers, and sometimes those don’t work well. Windows defender and the built in firewall are good enough and play nice with other programs.

  • AA5B@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Chrome is popular because of inertia. I was a huge Mozilla fan for years, until it became unusable. Chrome was the only choice and noticeably more performant. Since then, there hasn’t been sufficient reason to redirect that inertia. Yes, that was quite a few years ago. Lots of inertia

  • Gert@lemmy.nz
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    1 year ago

    What about LibreWolf, a fork of FF. Suppose to be better for security. Love using it !! Ditched Brave a couple of days ago

    • Showroom7561@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      Doesn’t play nice with Adguard for Windows, so it’s not my main browser, but I do still use it.

    • sophs@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I tried LibreWolf but it just doesn’t work for me, it disables lots of stuff I use and like. At the moment I use Firefox with my custom User.js which disables Mozilla tracking and other stuff.

    • Mihuy@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      In adittion to this make sure to disable the telemetry that’s on by default. If you want even better protection from fingerprinting etc, use arkenfox/librewolf (librewolf being preconfigured fork of firefox)

  • Reziarfg@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I have one thing keeping me from moving back to Firefox. I use Chrome profiles extensively to separate my various client access sessions that I need to do my job. So I need a solution in Firefox that allows me to have separate profiles with separate sessions. I’ve tried Firefox profiles but those are so much clunkier to setup and switch between. Also there’s no way I’ve found to get the Firefox profiles to be in separate color-coded windows like Chrome does so I have to look through all my open windows to find the one for the specific client I’m working with.

    If someone can solve this I’ll switch back to Firefox immediately.

      • Reziarfg@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        This (and the other suggestions below) are what I’ve tried previously.

        It’s close but Google’s got the native solution and the “window-level” containers that have individual per-container icons make it much easier for me to sort my sessions. Unfortunately it looks like Firefox still has them relegated to a single taskbar item. I guess this is necessary since container tabs can be moved between windows unlike Chrome which draws a hard line between windows. I guess this is just the method Firefox went with but it makes my processes a lot more difficult.

        Thanks for the suggestions. I’ll give it another go and check out ungoogled Chromium as well.

    • Einar@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      I just launch Firefox with this option:

      "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" -ProfileManager

      Always launches with the profile selector. Then install a profile switcher extension. Done.

      Unfortuntaley 1) it doesn’t really come out of the box and 2) the extension must be installed on every single profile. Not the most obvious or user friendly.

  • Metallibus@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    IMO the thing is that people don’t care about their privacy. Sure, some people around here do, but your average person owns an Alexa, has a FB/Instagram account and constantly posts their location, uses the same password on many sites, uses TikTok, doesn’t block cookies, etc etc etc.

    Most people don’t actually care. Some claim they do, but then can’t even be bothered to stop using Instagram etc because of the “inconvenience”… So do they really care?

    Some companies (Apple, etc) push their products under a narrative around safety and security, and people will repeat that point as a way to justify a decision they already made, but if they actually cared, they would be doing other things too. But they don’t.

    The number of us who do actually care about privacy and security is actually very small.

    • rageagainstmachines@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I think about this every day, but I keep coming back to this: they do care. It’s just that they don’t always know they care, or to what extent. The big problem is that there’s virtually no way to visualize the harm in using privacy-invading products and services. Everything that goes on in the background of our phones, we’d never tolerate in real life.

      If you could visually see every time there’s a background process, an app activating the mic, the sensors, the location, accessing your messages, etc., we’d be in a better position.

      There’s no way we’d tolerate the IRL equivalents of what goes on digitally—at the browser level, at the app level, perhaps even at the OS level.

      It’s usually visual cues that set off change. Think about it this way: 9/11 killed ~3000 people and we got the USA PATRIOT Act virtually overnight. COVID-19 happened and killed ~1.1 million people in the US alone. But because COVID wasn’t as “visual” and as “graphic” as 9/11, there was less urgency to do something about it.

    • DharkStare@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Exactly this. Most people care about convenience above all else. People want their software to “just work” without having to fiddle with settings or add-ons or anything else.

    • WindInTrees@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I am one of those people. Nothing bad has ever happened to me in the decades I’ve been putting my info online beyond a bad actor getting ahold of my credit card info for a minute. I just don’t see the issue when companies with my data actively make my life better…?

      • HughJanus@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        It could happen to you, but it has happened, is happening, and will continue to happen to other people. And you enable it happening to other people by participating in it.

        Here’s a good example

        Here’s another where the police used Facebook messages to target a woman getting an abortion

        Just take one look at China to see the kind of dystopian future we’re heading toward. Look up Zhima credit. Look up what happens to protestors.

        The short version is, your government can easily turn fascist at a moment’s notice, and when it does there’s no way to claw back all that data you put out there.

        I don’t give a single shit about what Google or Facebook has on me, other than the fact that they give a backdoor to that data to every government body that asks.

  • Sarcastik@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I just ditched Brave a few days ago for Firefox and really prefer it for performance and real privacy.

  • GonzoVeritas@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I switched to FF a few years ago when my Chrome was showing some bloat. FF works for almost everything, but from time to time some sites, forms, e-commerce, etc., have issues with non-Chrome browsers. In that event, I use Edge.