I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back • Hacker News Board

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#401

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jan 14, 2025, 7:06 PM UTC

cornstalks wrote: post #319

ustad wrote: post #23

Currently the main attack facing Firefox is coming from advertising companies such as YouTube. It’s crazy to think that some software engineers might actually intentionally degrade user experience on non-Google browsers or for people using adblockers. The mentality here is pretty disturbing: it’s almost like punishing users for making the choice to browse the web without ads, or without the surveillance mechanisms th…

> It’s crazy to think that some software engineers might actually intentionally degrade user experience on non-Google browsers Is this actually a thing? As far as I'm aware all degradations in non-Chromium browsers have been unintentional bugs, either caused by a YouTube bug or a non-YouTube bug (i.e. in the browser or an extension) (note I'm specifically not commenting on the last portion of your comment regarding "…

[deleted]

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#402

Post by deedub » Tue, Jan 14, 2025, 7:08 PM UTC

elephanlemon wrote: post #83

ethbr1 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What doesn't work with YouTube on Firefox? Asked as on mobile I run as few apps as possible, so use the web version. Haven't seen any issues.

I ended up switching back from Firefox to Chrome after a few weeks because I found that if I had more than about 6 YouTube tabs opened, the YouTube interface would become very laggy. I blamed it on Firefox at the time but maybe it was something intentional by Google.

Maybe more related to youtube than I thought, but I have trouble closing tabs and firefox with 15 or 20 tabs would eat all my CPU. Pages loaded much slower and the experience across the board was often pretty poor. I had to go back to Chrome and I don't miss FF at all. I tried.

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#403

Post by settsu » Tue, Jan 14, 2025, 7:09 PM UTC

politelemon wrote: post #369

baxtr wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually really like Safari… sometimes tabs sync across devices is buggy, reloads a lot. But other than that I’m quite content.

To continue GP's comment, > With Microsoft and Google, we just expect them to Do More Evil, with Mozilla we expect Good And with Safari, a loathsome browser that's intent on recreating the IE6 conditions of yore, we give it a free pass.

> ...the IE6 conditions of yore...

I'm sorry, but comparing modern Safari to the worst software ever widely used is just not remotely reasonable.

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#404

Post by int_19h » Tue, Jan 14, 2025, 7:13 PM UTC

cj wrote: post #294

samuellavoie90 wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The goal of a standard is to not be forced to code specific things for each implementation out there. This is failure of the web standards that the google implementation has become the standard.

We have web standards, but one area they breakdown is adoption of those standards. Each browser seems to pick and choose which standards they want to adopt and when. Sometimes Chrome will support a new CSS syntax for months or years before another browser finally picks up support (or vice versa). For web standards to truly work, there would need to be better coordination between browsers to adopt new standards in uni…

Part of the problem is that so many web standards these days are basically an officially blessed repackaging of what Chrome is already doing.

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#405

Post by jraph » Tue, Jan 14, 2025, 7:13 PM UTC

Workaccount2 wrote: post #288

jraph wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The network effect kinda prevents you from finding coffee at an honest place. (The content is on YouTube and nowhere else) Until this changes and one can choose to go somewhere else, I wouldn't worry too much about the terrible cafe's income, because it is one of the richest entities in the world, it already shouldn't be that rich and powerful, and if it disappeared, it would finally let one go find coffee somewhere…

YouTube is hardly the only website on the Internet. And besides that, YouTube splits ad revenue 40/60 yt/creator anyway. So I suppose those creators are all in on the scheme too?

> YouTube is hardly the only website on the Internet

Indeed, but it's the video hosting platform. Initiatives like PeerTube try to fix this, but most videos can be only found on YouTube.

> So I suppose those creators are all in on the scheme too?

Mostly yes. Creators today rely on:

- sponsors

- youtube ads

- donations

- merch

- other revenues, for instance if they have a business and their videos bring customers

At least you can often donate if you skip the ads and the sponsors, so there is a way to pay the metaphorical coffee.

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#406

Post by int_19h » Tue, Jan 14, 2025, 7:15 PM UTC

segasaturn wrote: post #47

ustad wrote: post #23

Currently the main attack facing Firefox is coming from advertising companies such as YouTube. It’s crazy to think that some software engineers might actually intentionally degrade user experience on non-Google browsers or for people using adblockers. The mentality here is pretty disturbing: it’s almost like punishing users for making the choice to browse the web without ads, or without the surveillance mechanisms th…

The irony that Google, who made their bones on the "open web", is now attacking open web standards and trying to turn the internet into their own walled garden that they control every aspect of I hope is not lost on the people here.

The lesson here is that there's no such thing as Big Tech that is not hostile towards the people. They will say whatever people want to hear on their way to market dominance, but once there, they will mercilessly fuck those same people for every cent they can get.

(I would actually extend this to all large businesses in general, but we can start with tech.)

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#407

Post by cptskippy » Tue, Jan 14, 2025, 7:15 PM UTC

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #372

bartread wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s also laziness in software development practices. Developers (still) only develop and test with Chrome. My last job a bunch of us used Firefox as our main browser, which was hugely helpful. As recently as yesterday I ran into an e-commerce site that didn’t work in Firefox (CPC Farnell, I’m looking at you), giving some obscure security error in multiple languages. I thought it might be caused by an extension at fi…

rei.com generally continues to have issues with firefox. Completely absurd.

I've never noticed any issues and I use Firefox as my daily driver.

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#408

Post by int_19h » Tue, Jan 14, 2025, 7:16 PM UTC

immibis wrote: post #300

HunOL wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s crazy to think that some software engineers might actually intentionally degrade user experience on non-Google browsers or for people using adblockers. Pretty sure that was happening back in a days when Opera was using own engine (Presto). They shipped browser with scripts to fix some popular sites. Actually Firefox also has some fixes for particular sites about:compat

Even market-dominant companies do this. Windows ships a bunch of backward compatibility patches. Graphics card drivers (especially Nvidia) wholesale replace shaders in popular games.

Thing is, Opera had to do this specifically to work around stuff like UA-based degradation of service on YouTube etc.

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#409

Post by int_19h » Tue, Jan 14, 2025, 7:18 PM UTC

recursive wrote: post #384

segasaturn wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google isn't entitled to invade my privacy, harvest my data and waste my time with ads. Installing an adblocker isn't an act of entitlement, it's an act of self-defense.

And google is entitled to infer that you're using it and serve you different content, or none at all.

And I'm entitled to publicly shame software engineers who implement this kind of stuff for Google.

Re: I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back

#410

Post by nosioptar » Tue, Jan 14, 2025, 7:19 PM UTC

34679 wrote: post #290

Has slashdot started showing ads in the last 48 hours for anyone else using Firefox and ublock on Android? It was a very weird experience to see an ad on my phone for the first time in over a decade. My brain kinda froze and took a second to process what it was seeing.

I'm using IceRaven, so it might be a bit different on Firefox.

I just get a white screen that says "Hello world. I'm a bubble" and flickers.

When I change to desktop site, I'm not getting any ads.