Today marks my last day as a Chrome user. And fellas I encourage y’all to switch away from Chrome
uBlock Origin is no longer available on the Chrome Store
591–600 of 1001 posts
Re: uBlock Origin is no longer available on the Chrome Store
#592Earlier quoted context omitted.
Then they wouldn't be throwing money into open firepits on trash like a VPN service or how to comply with Google's advertising decisions. Then they would let people contribute money to the browser (instead of to Mozilla Foundation which goes to enabling aforementioned trash fires) and to the salary of a multi-million dollar CEO after laying off developer staff and hiring more C-suite assistants. Mozilla is a bad orga…
> Then they would let people contribute money to the browser People keep saying things like this, but the truth is that direct contributions to any ad-supported system contribute more like 1%-10% (at best) of their income. You are not the majority you think you are.
It does not have to be the majority. It would suffice to produce enough funds to continue developing Firefox, with full-time engineers, infrastructure, etc.
The whole Mozilla foundation budget oscillated around $100-120M/y for last few years. Let's assume that half of it was dedicated to Firefox; e.g. $60M/y. It would take 500k users paying $120/y (aka $10/mo) to support their favorite browser. The current audience of Firefox is approx. 170M users; it would take about 0.3 percent of the audience to be paying users; 0.6% if you lower the rate to $5/mo.
This is how any freemium works.
Even more funnily, someone with a good reputation could just start an organization to accept the payments and direct them to Mozilla developers, both Mozilla employees and significant open-source contributors. Eventually the developers might stop needing the paycheck from Mozilla, and thus from Google.
Re: uBlock Origin is no longer available on the Chrome Store
#593Earlier quoted context omitted.
Firefox and its derivatives remain the only true alternative at this point.
How long will Mozilla be around for, though?
If the Google, Pocket and other ad money dries up, Mozilla the company may go away but the Firefox browser itself will continue on because it's open source. As an exclusively Firefox user for over 20 years, I suspect if Mozilla the company dies, it will won't negatively impact Firefox much, at least in any meaningful way. In fact, the browser may be somewhat better off managed like the Blender or MAME projects.
In the last five years or so Firefox has increasingly introduced controversial changes that make it (IMHO) less good, primarily around interface design. And, from what I understand, Mozilla employs full-time UX designers who've been driving much of that. Of course, with Firefox it's still possible to modify, fix and restore all these recent interface "improvements" with user CSS but it's a constant annoyance to need to keep fixing it. Fortunately, there's an active community effort around restoring the Firefox interface and usability, exemplified by the brilliant Lepton project https://github.com/black7375/Firefox-UI-Fix/releases.
My perception just watching the evolution of Firefox from the outside, is that it used to be a browser that celebrated the ethos of "Have it Your Way." However, Mozilla the company gets money to pay its executives and employees (millions in the case of more than one recent CEO) by actively driving users and eyeballs for Google, Pocket and other advertisers. So the company is highly incentivized to try myriad changes and redesigns to increase appeal to "the masses" of browser users. Thus, the UX keeps getting 'simplified' and 'de-cluttered' with advanced functionality 'de-prioritized' and add-on support demoted to second-class afterthought - instead of the shining key feature advanced users value most. Basically, in recent years the Firefox UX and end-user features have been pushed by the substantial payroll needs of the Mozilla company to become more like Chrome and Safari instead of embracing its unique position as a tool for power users who value advanced features, customization and extension. And it was all for naught because Firefox has continued to lose market share while ignoring (and even actively alienating) its niche community of fanatically devoted power users.
Re: uBlock Origin is no longer available on the Chrome Store
#594Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Ad blocking on Youtube. uBlock Origin Lite blocks all ads on YouTube for me.
Google push out updates at regular intervals that detect the adblocker why didn't you notice before? ublock origin has a special quick fixes list which updates very frequently, without Google's involvement but with manifest v3: Google are now in charge and have to approve all "definition" updates which they will only do once they've got a new detection method ready and this is the entire point of manifest v3
>but with manifest v3: Google are now in charge and have to approve all "definition" updates
No, they don't. MV3 extensions are allowed to fetch remote data which definition updates would be.
Re: uBlock Origin is no longer available on the Chrome Store
#595Nobody could have possibly seen it coming that Google would abuse its market position to their own benefit... I migrated off Chrome as soon as this BS story about improving privacy, a joke coming from Google. Then the excuse was "well it improves performance", which they could easily do by marking extensions as low performance. If Google wanted to improve this they have an entire search engine where they could re-ran…
People's web experience is in degradation for long time.
No point using 99% of the web due to the hostile, fraudolent, abusive approaches on top of the hollow (yeh, very very gentle world for the thing what it is) content. No point searching for advice, products, job, as crap is poured at you while your actions are registered, your profile is sold, just to pour dedicated crap on you by the highest bidder.
I have mail and 5 (7 with weather) pages I check regularly, and that's it. That's my online life. More like a hermit goes into town for tools and cans kind of digital solitary. Clicking on links only after reconsidering five times, if I am really interested in the possible content. Mostly here. So, so far away from the extremely curious me 20 or so years ago spending hours to the limit of my thirst and bladder, navigating all that is out there.
It is very sad what humanity made out of the Internet. It does not even hurt anymore. It is numb blob where the feeling about the rich common knowledge source this was and could have been should be.
Re: uBlock Origin is no longer available on the Chrome Store
#596Earlier quoted context omitted.
If it's really that big of a problem this can be addressed by locking extensions by default and hiding the on switch where casual users won't look. But come on, this is obviously a pretext. You expect people to believe that the most prolific adertising and surveilance company in history is crippling the ability to block ads and trackers for altruistic reasons?!
It's not "obviously" a pretext. I don't think that the change in ad revenue to Google is going to be significant between v2 and v3 ad blockers. It might be to ad networks and sites that employ significant ad blocker counter measures though. And it's not "altruistic" - it's because eval() and webRequestBlocking are bad for security and performance, so they're bad for a lot of users. Users who will switch to Safari or…
Yeah right blocking ads and trackers helps performance.
Re: uBlock Origin is no longer available on the Chrome Store
#597Earlier quoted context omitted.
Safari content blockers are awful compared to UBlock and I’m a Safari user. Not only does YouTube either get through or cause weird issues, YouTube now blocks you until you completely disable the extension. Content blockers often block cookie banners too which can often result in broken functionality - a nightmare when you’re trying to buy tickets to something and have to “reload without blockers” for the website to…
What blocker do you use? I don’t have these problems with AdGuard in Safari
Me too, but shhh.
Re: uBlock Origin is no longer available on the Chrome Store
#598Earlier quoted context omitted.
> And what does Firefox have to do with crypto? Firefox is all AI this year, but they've been all blockchain when that was in fashion.
Is the AI coming at a prohibitive cost? I'm not sure I understand what is going to come of those bets, and I'm not a fan of AI everything so I hope it's only used in measured ways that are beneficial, but I certainly would rather them continue innovating. I don't think they did a whole lot with blockchain beyond some very preliminary dabbling in decentralized web stuff which if it could have gained traction I absolut…
It depends if having the organization chasing the latest fad as it changes yearly inspires you trust or the opposite...
Re: uBlock Origin is no longer available on the Chrome Store
#599Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because Ghostery belongs to an analytics company that sells your data so they are working round the clock to keep it running
Honest question - let's say you can't physically experience ads. Why do you care about your data being sold? This is a problem only if you can see ads, but remember, you can't.
The data can be used for more than ads - it can be used to adjust prices, etc.
Re: uBlock Origin is no longer available on the Chrome Store
#600Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can still install uBlock Origin in Brave, assuming you don't mind the crypto stuff and how they pay it out (or, rather don't) to site owners. Even Firefox feels a little weird now with the advent of Mozilla Advertising. Very much a lesser of all evils situation.
Another day, another subtle insinuation that Brave is the only Chrome fork anyone uses. Are you people being paid to do this?
As I see it, Brave is the only Chromium-based browser with a competitive Mv2-deprecation-resistant adblocker. If adblocking is important to you - and it is, to many people - then Brave literally is the only one worth considering. Not to mention it is open source, unlike most of the others.
(I work on Brave's adblocker, and FWIW the folks who work for Brave are very open about their affiliation when commenting about it online)