this post was submitted on 22 Feb 2025
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[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 minutes ago

Unfortunately, there are only 3 companies developing browsers right now: Google, Apple and Mozilla.

Apple's browsers are only available on Apple platforms. In fact, if you're on iOS you have no choice, you have to use Safari. Even browsers labelled as "Chrome" or "Firefox" are actually Safari under the hood on iOS. But, on any non Apple platform, you can't use Safari.

Google is an ad company, so they don't want to allow ad blockers on their browser. So, it's a matter of time before every kind of ad blocking is disabled for Chrome users.

Firefox is almost entirely funded by Google, so there's a limit as to what they can do without the funding getting cut off. They seem to be trying to find a way forward without Google, but the result, if anything is as bad as Google if not worse:

"investing in privacy-respecting advertising to grow new revenue in the near term; developing trustworthy, open source AI to ensure technical and product relevance in the mid term;"

https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/mozilla-leadership-growth-planning-updates/

All these other browser people like are basically reskinned versions of Chrome or Firefox. They have a handful of people working on them. To actually develop a modern browser you need a big team. A modern browser basically has to be an OS capable of running everything from a 3d game engine, to a word processor, to a full featured debugger.

It looks like it's only a matter of time before there will be 0 browsers capable of blocking ads, because the only two companies that make multi-platform browsers depend on ads for their revenue, and both of them will have enormous expenses because they're obsessed with stupid projects like AI.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 56 minutes ago

Vivaldi on Linux and Windows is still good in my experience, and so far uBlock Origin for manifest v2 still works. I hope they keep v2 support forever, forking completely if they must.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

I switched to Firefox the morning they disabled uBlock Origin.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 23 minutes ago

I never left Firefox. It's a fantastic browser.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Use an alternative chromium based browser?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 minutes ago

Don’t use chromium?

[–] [email protected] 58 points 14 hours ago

Meanwhile ublock origin works fine in Fennec/Firefox Android.

[–] [email protected] 50 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

Chrome? A browser that's easily replaceable with any other browser? Huh... Didn't see that one coming.

/S

[–] [email protected] 19 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago) (1 children)

I'm saying this as a 2 year convert Firefox user: mostly easily replaceable. Sure, I can browse pretty much every page that I can on chrome. However, a few sites don't work the same way - sometimes because of the site's conscious decision, sometimes because of Firefox.

Take Facebook, for example. On desktop, I can't make voice calls anymore from the desktop site. For a while it was possible with non encrypted chats, but now pretty much all of them are encrypted, and FF is not compatible with that. I also can't watch h265 videos in my chats anymore. I'm still sticking with FF, but I just can't easily say that FF is just as good for everything (I'm still not going back to chrome).

[–] [email protected] 13 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Yeah I'm a 20-some year FF user and when it started you had to have IE as a backup because not everything was compatible. In the late 2000s through late 2010s everything worked everywhere, then with chromes dominance places have stopped testing or supporting certain things in FF and it feels like history is repeating itself. Unfortunately you need a chromium-based backup realistically for certain sites, but 99.5% of things work totally fine in FF.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

A lot of websites are broken on Firefox which is a shame. I can’t even scroll down on some news sites. What a shame…

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

This might be the fault of your ublock filters rather than Firefox. Do you have a cookie banner filter list? Some websites are blocking scrolling until you make a cookie decision. A short disable of ublock, rejecting the cookies should then work. The "downside" of a powerful ad blocker

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 hours ago

Agreed, I've never come across a site that was broken because of Firefox. Usually the culprit is adblock being too good at blocking, so just toggle it off and refresh and page loads just fine.

[–] [email protected] 51 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

LibreWolf if you want security, privacy and freedom

https://librewolf.net/

[–] [email protected] 13 points 14 hours ago

Fennec on Android

[–] [email protected] 285 points 22 hours ago (7 children)

If you're still using Chrome, do yourself a favour and install Firefox.

[–] [email protected] 210 points 22 hours ago (3 children)

Let's be honest: Everything that might be "worse" or "annoying" in Firefox for someone is not relevant in comparison to "no working adblocker available". A browser without adblock is unusable

[–] [email protected] 1 points 37 minutes ago

I haven't actually found anything that doesn't work on Firefox on my personal computer. At work we also use Firefox, and some things don't work on it, but some things don't work on chrome or edge either, it's a hodge poge.

[–] [email protected] 54 points 22 hours ago (4 children)

True, but if an adblocker no longer works on a specific browser, change your browser! I started using Netscape back in '94, and lost count on how many browsers I've tested and used in the past... Holy shit, 30+ years!!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 minutes ago

Mosaic was awesome. Netscape 1 was pretty cool, but Netscape 2 and animated gifs... zowie! That was a day to remember.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 14 hours ago (2 children)

30+ years!

.....fuck off, '94 wasn't 30.... counts on fingers several times

.....Shit.....

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

It doesn’t sound right but it is. I think in ‘94 I was using Juno for email and internet. Shortly after that it was time to actually use one of the many AOL trial discs for service instead of a mini frisbee/ninja star.

Modem sounds, chat rooms, you’ve got mail. What a time to live!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 hours ago

Fuck. I got free internet for almost 5 years. So many AOL discs. 01, 02? Friend's dad had a T1 connection put into their house for his work. The difference between T1 and the 56k I had at home? At home walk out the room, have a smoke, maybe ⅔ a boob loaded. At buddy's house, that's when I realised that the internet had the potential to change everything. Whole boob before you could even stand up.

Kids these days. No appreciation for how much struggle it used to be. Everything just. Just there. No bork the only computer in the house because boob.exe.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

I know... Jurassic Park is 33 years this year. It would be like watching a movie from the 60' when it was released.

We're old, friend.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 hours ago

I've never hated my life more than right now...

[–] [email protected] 4 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago)

I use Palemoon for the nostalgia but also because of the best theme around, Moonscape

Netscape will forever be my number one.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 21 hours ago (7 children)

In the past 10 years it's pretty much just been Firefox, Safari, Explorer/Edge, and Chrome. 99% of browsers are just skinned Chrome. Even Edge now. Opera's engine died in 2013.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 21 hours ago (3 children)

99% if browsers are just skinned Chrome.

Yup. Hence, the reason I originally suggested to use Firefox, only because it's not built on Chromium.

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[–] [email protected] 31 points 21 hours ago (40 children)

What issues do people even have with firefox? Its a browser, it seems fast enough. Isn't that all most people need from a browser

[–] [email protected] 19 points 19 hours ago (6 children)

Mainly that Google intentionally makes its sites (like YouTube or Google Docs) slower and less useable when they detect you're using Firefox, and/or ad blockers (which you need Firefox to use, so same difference).

It's mostly fixable with add-ons and userscripts (and eventually, one hopes, with an antitrust lawsuit), but it's still a hassle.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 hours ago

Unfortunately, with the FTC rolling back net neutrality protections, I don’t see an antitrust lawsuit happening, or succeeding, anytime soon

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[–] [email protected] 121 points 22 hours ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 hours ago

upvoted for the spinny gif ... weeeeeeeee C:

[–] [email protected] 48 points 21 hours ago (3 children)
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[–] [email protected] 36 points 22 hours ago

It's a good thing I stayed loyal to Firefox. Mainly due to my dislike of change lol, but I was forced to use Chrome and it felt ominous with its owner being Google.

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