With the number of people concerned about privacy, it is a wonder why chrome is even popular.
I’ve played around with a few browsers, and while Firefox is a better alternative to chrome, I’d more recommend a privacy hardened fork of firefox such as LibreWolf or GNU IceCat. I’ve also used mullvad browser which is kinda neat.
Some people are too comfortable using chrome for it’s extension library however, so if a mozilla-based browser doesn’t fulfill the extensions requirement, Brave browser is a good choice. I haven’t tried de-googled chromium, but I imagine it’s food for the reasons it says on the tin.
what are some necessary addons besides ublock?
Dark reader - for dark mode everywhere
Decentreyes - for avoiding CDNs that track you
Sponsorblock - to skip sponsored parts on youtube
Enhancer for youtube - for a nicer overall experience, specific quality setting by default, scroll wheel volume, and more
I have too use Edge at work. Is Edge also implementing this shit?
At work I guess you only do work related stuff, so at the end of the day it’s only work-related data that the browser has access to. Why would it matter to you?
99.9% of my the personal browsing I do is in firefox both on phone and desktop, but on work laptop I use Edge because 1. the work web-apps seem to favour chromium based browsers and 2. it’s not my data so I don’t really care about the privacy of my company’s data, they have a data privacy officer to worry about that.
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.
The whole Reddit debacle has really made me rethink all my services. I recently installed duck duck go and still getting used to it, so not quite sure if I’m ready to make another drastic change.
I used to love Firefox in 2006 or so, but got Chrome when it was released and forgot about Firefox. I think I’ll open a tab in my chrome browser for the Firefox page now…this is how I remind myself to delve deeper into stuff later. Thanks for the inspiration, everyone. Google has irked me ever since removing the Don’t Be Evil mantra.
Firefox has a super simple way to import everything from your Chrome install. And from what I can tell it has every feature plus more. Was very easy for me to switch. I was actually inspired to try it as my daily driver since Chrome hogs an uncomfortable amount of RAM on my laptop
There was one extension I used in Chrome that I haven’t found a Firefox replacement for, but I stopped trying to look a while ago and just live without it.
Was a specific kind of cookie manager: you could whitelist a set of websites to keep their cookies. Everything else would be deleted when you told the extension to do so.
Too many websites need cookies that stick around indefinitely. But I also don’t want to delete everything everytime I close Firefox, because I may want to keep a website around for a few days without wanting to bother adding it to a whitelist.
I think this might be what you are searching for. I’ve used it a few times and it does everything it promises imho: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/cookie-autodelete
With the number of people concerned about privacy
That number appears to be very small, all things considered. Out of everyone I know, literally one person cares about privacy. My mother. She will even go as far as to only use her first initial online instead of her name if she can get away with it. However, she uses Chrome all the time because she doesn’t understand that your browser also tracks you.
I think that’s what it comes down to. A mixture of lack of public interest, and lack of public awareness about tracking/privacy in general. If people can’t immediately see how having their data harvested will inconvenience/hurt them, they simply don’t care.
Most people aren’t concerned about privacy outside of places like here and Reddit.
Hmmm, on the bright side, with lemmy going mainstream maybe some of this culture (including privacy and FOSS) becomes more and more openly discussed.
With Chrome killing ad blocking, they’ll quickly care
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.
Firefox + Ublock Origin blows Google Chrome out of water.
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.
Vivaldi > Chrome
2 years later, the “Manifest” is doing it’s job and still I know some people that would not leave their favorite Chrome.
Aged like fine milk
I would love to and have tried. But I’ve found too many times that Firefox just doesn’t work for some sites. And unfortunately some of those sites are needed for my work.
Chrome does have a use, namely Selenium and automation.
I’m guilty of having Chrome on my PC, as I need to nerf over my favourites to Firefox.
Firefox is my browser of choice on my Google Pixel 7, but then again no doubt it makes little difference.
I just choose to use a VPN, so any targeted adverts are blocked regardless of the profile built up from my browsing habits.
The best time to switch to Firefox was 5 years ago. The second best is today.
Oops, I switched 15 years ago,
I switch when it was Phoenix, then switch again when it was Firebird, and finally switch when it become Firefox
you win Firefox!
I went straight from Mozilla Navigator to Firefox 1.0.
Tabs were such a crazy new thing back then. You would show tabbed browsing to someone (rather than opening new windows) and they thought you were a wizard. IE5 didn’t have tabs, so nerds moved to Mozilla/Firefox. Then IE6 came out but still didn’t have tabs. By the time IE7 came out, I’d had tabbed browsing for 5+ years.
Google has a web-browser?
Noob. I switched in 2006 - 17 years ago.
I cannot be 100% certain but I’m confident I was using it not long after the 1.0 release. That’d put me at 2004. 19 years!
Although I did briefly switch over to Chrome when it was new and fast. Then switched back when Firefox had a major optimization pass.
The early Chrome was crazy fast when it had none of the bloat.
What took you so long?!?
I had to pee!
I use Firefox since it’s release. It was never bad. I don’t get all the Chrome users.
Funnily enough - this article is 3 years old
