Sorry in advance for what might appear to be rambling (because it kind of is), but I had a few thoughts and I’m very curious how the community sees these things. I’ll try to do my best to condense them.
After reading through the discussion beneath a post about yet another Brave scandal, I decided to look up the marketshare of chromium. According to statcounter 73.43% of browsers used are chromium based (Chrome, Edge, Opera, Samsung Internet) and only a measly 2.8% use Firefox.
About the statistics: 73% of access to the internet for humans and bots alike go through software largely developed by one player. What are your thoughts on the effect this probably has on the development of the internet as a whole?
About brave and other wildly popular privacy focused products: compared to a lot of people in this fine community I’m a casual-privacist, but I do my best to review what sort of software/hardware I use, weigh opsec and convenience, etc. I also try to stay away from privacy influencers (is that a thing yet? If not, it should be) and the products they tend to shill, which brings me to my next point. What do you think about the scandals surrounding supposedly secure products and services that were heavily pushed by influencers (like brave, all kinds of laughable vpns, password managers, etc.)? Do you think the people who shill these products help or hinder tech literacy? I have a suspicion that most people flirting with the idea of privacy for the first time choose these products and services the same way they would buy a car or a toaster; by googling (affiliate links galore in SEO hell) or watching a video review on youtube and they only long for feeling safe (I’m safe because the talking head said so). What would be a great way to improve the tech/privacy literacy situation? How do we upgrade privacy from being a buzzword in ad campaigns to a life skill (maybe not the best way to describe it, but you get the point)?
Lastly, and thank you for bearing with me here. What’s wrong with Firefox?! Is it the marketing (or lack thereof)?
tldr: basically a long showerthought and an invitation for discussion about the unfair marketshare of chromium, and “privacy focused” products shilled by influencers.
Disclaimer: I don’t know how accurate the linked data is, I did not collect it or review it and I don’t know how trusted the site is supposed to be. True that I have some negative opinions about Brave and I have never used it. Probably never will and the only reason is that it just seems a bit fucky to me, even if it doesn’t have any dangerous faults. Reading the rules, I didn’t find anything that prohibits posta like this, but if I’m mistaken… sorry.
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Of course it sucks, but Mozilla definitely isn’t helping itself by being quite shady itself, and honestly Firefox is often usable only with grinding of teeth, especially on mobile.
The only real reason to use Firefox at this point is for the principle of it, and maybe some addons (which Mozilla is also trying its best to kill).
Honestly the whole concept of a modern browser is just so fucking wrong. Like OK JavaScript is a good thing to some degree, but almost all of the time, the only thing I need from the browser is to just show me the fucking web site. I don’t need it to rat on my codecs, fonts and phone model to the server. I don’t need to run a 3D accelerated game engine in the browser. I don’t need support for all this bullshit, because the only people that actually take advantage of it are advertisers trying to spy on me.
There’s “market” for a small, lightweight browser with no support for all the advanced nonsense that’s just fingerprinting bloat. Fuck, I’d probably pay for that rather than using Google’s of Mozilla’s behemothic crap.
Literally switched back to Chrome even though I hate it on my phone because for reasons beyond my understanding Firefox does not have pull to reload. Ah but you might say that the nightly version does and I did try to use it for a while, but it also for some reason it very minorly messes with text selection in a way that no other app does.
On desktop Chrome has some great tab management features that I am currently used to, not to mention a bunch of other incredibly minor features. Like why does Firefox reimplement the standard middle click scrolling in windows with its own and not let me use the normal one? The firefox one is weirdly sensitive and I can’t change that. All these minor annoyance and added jank mean that I want to switch for privacy, but won’t for usability. But Chrome is also getting some BS that Google is trying with extensions so, maybe I will switch… eventually.
Firefox on mobile does in fact have pull to reload.
you ever see a comment and just wonder if it was erroneously sent to you from another timeline via cyberwormholes?
If you’re still willing to try, on Android there’s IceRaven, which implements pull to refresh, and support for more addons. Despite my hatred of FF on Android, I still kinda use it.
Btw instead of Chrome, I’ve been using Bromite and now Mulch. Bromite is particularly awesome, but no longer supported and it’s still Chromium so there’s that.