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Time to stop using Chrome (arstechnica.com)
submitted 1 year ago by Owl@hexbear.net to c/technology@hexbear.net

Google is now rolling out a system where Chrome directly tracks your activity and shares its summary with advertisers.

Also Firefox is faster as of like two months ago.

It takes five minutes to switch browsers, and the difference is so little that you'll often forget you did it.

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[-] Finger@hexbear.net 64 points 1 year ago

no more half measures walter

[-] Pluto@hexbear.net 3 points 11 months ago

Bill Finger

[-] sexywheat@hexbear.net 56 points 1 year ago

Time to stop using Chrome

astronaut-1

[-] raven@hexbear.net 51 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Using chromium, ungoogled chromium, brave (reactionary baggage), vivaldi, opera, etc is not good enough. We must switch to Firefox specifically.

All the Chrome forks I mentioned above use the same chrome rendering engine, called blink. When you use blink you're helping google take over the web. Firefox is already on the shitlist of every major website because they refuse to prevent the user from installing things like adblockers and privacy extensions like Chrome does with manifest v3 and soon with their new Web Environment Integrity system. They cannot wait to throw up a "your browser is no longer supported :(" page for all Firefox users, and when that happens it will be over for our fox friend.

[-] sovietknuckles@hexbear.net 47 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

They cannot wait to throw up a "your browser is no longer supported :(" page for all Firefox users, and when that happens it will be over for our fox friend.

Whenever you see a site that does this, or a site that works on Chrome but not Firefox, report it at webcompat.com. Doing that will create an issue in github.com/webcompat/web-bugs.

For sites that are intentionally blocking Firefox users, Mozilla adds interventions or user agent overrides for those specific pages or scripts (go to about:compat in Firefox to see a list of them) to make it work with Firefox, even on sites trying to block Firefox.

[-] raven@hexbear.net 23 points 1 year ago

Thank you for mentioning this. Bookmarked.

[-] Clever_Clover@hexbear.net 5 points 1 year ago

Honestly, manifest v3 can't come soon enough, the enshitification of chrome would mean more people moving to Firefox, so, I think it would be a good thing to force all chrome users to look at ads, simply to give them a 'real' (since privacy isn't annoying or something you feel with every page you click) reason to switch

[-] buckykat@hexbear.net 40 points 1 year ago

The best time to stop using chrome was when they announced manifest v3, the second best time is now.

[-] AlbigensianGhoul@lemmygrad.ml 31 points 1 year ago

Not sure if this Chrome thing also applies to mobile, but this is as good time as any to remind people that you can now install uBlock Origin (and many other useful extensions) on the android firefox app.

[-] Beaver@hexbear.net 13 points 1 year ago

The FF Android app is great, it has more UI customization, and adblock extensions.

[-] LoveSausage@lemmygrad.ml 4 points 1 year ago

Problem is webview , until there is an option from Firefox. You can either use the chrome one. Or use the chrome one. Whatever browser you use. So adding Firefox mobile only give you issues from Firefox on top of issues with chrome.

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[-] FourteenEyes@hexbear.net 29 points 1 year ago

The time to stop using Chrome was always

[-] xXthrowawayXx@hexbear.net 21 points 1 year ago

it's always been time to stop using chrome.

ungoogled chromium isnt good enough either. if you want to get away from topics you need to be using firefox or safari based browsers.

To the people saying chromium is fine, do you know what Embrace, Extend, and Extinguish (EEE) is? Maybe you’ve heard of it in passing, but don’t really know what it is.

The web is built on standards, which is supposed to mean that no one entity dictates how the internet works. Microsoft pioneered the EEE strategy in the 90’s in an attempt to kill off HTML and replace it a proprietary alternative. This was brought to light during an antitrust trial against Microsoft. It is literally a strategy designed to centralize commonly held standards into the hands of a single corporation.

When you see a popular product created by a corporation which offers a stripped down open source alternative, understand the end goal is to monopolize that product niche and encircle all the labor contained within the commons to enshittify the product (start offering subscriptions, selling ad data, putting more and more features behind a paywall, etc).

This applies to Chrome and Chromium. It also applies to VS Code (Copilot seems to be the Killer Feature they’re attempting to do this with right now). But when a website works on Chromium but not on Firefox, it is almost always because Firefox is not implementing features which haven’t been ratified as web standards yet.

[-] alexandra_kollontai@hexbear.net 18 points 1 year ago

Hey Porky, what's the time?

Time to stop using Chrome! porky-scared

[-] Awoo@hexbear.net 13 points 1 year ago

If a simply migrate tool existed that could preserve everyone's bookmarks, saved passwords, saved banking details, settings, etc and transfer them to firefox or other browsers it would be significantly easier to get people to move.

The biggest blockade I am seeing in getting people to move is not their love of google, it is the stickyness that having all of their shit built up in the browser causes. A simple and easy to migrate method would get people off it.

[-] stardust@hexbear.net 12 points 1 year ago

Most of this can be easily imported from Chrome to Firefox. Mozilla has a guide on it and it's pretty easy.

Settings will have to be redone, but I find that usually is pretty quick

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[-] SnAgCu@hexbear.net 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

OKAY OKAY

it's done. the only thing missing is Chrome's reading list, but that's minor.

[-] dannoffs@lemmy.sdf.org 12 points 1 year ago

Chrome reading list is just a knock off of pocket which Mozilla owns and is integrated into Firefox.

[-] very_poggers_gay@hexbear.net 9 points 1 year ago

i just got a new laptop and it came with firefox installed on it, but i couldn't really figure out its features. on chrome i like having different profiles with their own histories, bookmarks, appearances, accounts/passwords, etc.. I couldn't work that out in firefox.

I've seen lots of people say it's an easy switch, but my ass could not do it sad-boi

[-] Targuinia@hexbear.net 25 points 1 year ago

All you need should just be in about:profiles, but it's definitely not as intuitive as on Chrome unfortunately yeah

[-] very_poggers_gay@hexbear.net 4 points 1 year ago

Ok sweet, I’ll give it another go tonight with that tip. Tyvm

[-] rogrodre@hexbear.net 8 points 1 year ago

Would containers work for you? They don't separate bookmarks, but everything else would work like a profile. It says you need an addon but I'm pretty sure you don't anymore because I don't have it.

[-] very_poggers_gay@hexbear.net 4 points 1 year ago

I’ll check out containers too, ty!

[-] Notcontenttobequiet@hexbear.net 9 points 1 year ago

I've been in the process of switching to Firefox, and I've been half assing it, time to really do it

[-] YEP@hexbear.net 9 points 1 year ago

Anyone have a good guide to migrate data to Firefox. Things like auto fill bookmarks ect

[-] Helmic@hexbear.net 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I am a vim gremlin. I use qutebrowser, which is ultimately chromium-based, because I cannot find any reasonable way to do vim bindings for Firefox. Tridactyl, the most featureful and mature vim binding extension for Firefox, shits out if Firefox hasn't loaded a webpage.

Is there any Firefox fork that is keyboard driven like qutebrowser? I don't see how it could be accomplished without a fork or patchset, as the WebExtension API simply has too many restrictions for a proper input method.

[-] buckykat@hexbear.net 10 points 1 year ago

spacebar heating ass reason to use chromium

[-] dannoffs@lemmy.sdf.org 6 points 1 year ago

Accessibility for people who have a hard time regularly switching between their keyboard and mouse is not a spacebar heating like reason.

[-] Helmic@hexbear.net 5 points 1 year ago

If it were, there would be a functional Firefox alternative that I'm unaware of. You don't seem to know of one either. The moment such a fork exists I'll switch, but my wrists are too fucked up to use a mouse constantly.

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[-] comrade_pibb@hexbear.net 4 points 1 year ago

GOOD reference

[-] NoGodsNoMasters@hexbear.net 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The time to stop using Chrome was yesterday, but I guess today is the next best

[-] Omegamint@hexbear.net 5 points 1 year ago

God they just can’t but ratchet this shit up huh? I finally heard my roommates suggest ditching streaming recently and am hoping moves like this make it easier to migrate people off these platforms. Unfortunately the greatest issue is always ease of use in terms of what people are used to

[-] TankieTanuki@hexbear.net 4 points 1 year ago
[-] buckykat@hexbear.net 45 points 1 year ago

no more half measures walter

just use firefox

[-] Owl@hexbear.net 29 points 1 year ago

I think that has it too.

Google is telling everyone this feature ("privacy sandbox") is good for them and not Google-specific.

[-] blobjim@hexbear.net 8 points 1 year ago

"ungoogled chromium" should have this feature removed (I assume).

[-] VernetheJules@hexbear.net 4 points 1 year ago

I switched over and there's a few things I miss:

  • Profiles: Containers works okay for me but every once in a while it'll just completely kill a website and then I have to open it in a different window. I know Firefox also has actual profiles which I need to try out but it's also annoying how those don't sync (I think?)
  • Offline Google Docs Editing: Huge deal breaker for anyone without consistent internet. Only works on chromium based browsers. Yeah I can kind of work around it but I wouldn't expect many people to want to go out of their way for this.

What I love:

  • ublock origin for Android. I wouldn't switch back without it. I can watch videos on YouTube without ads, and there's no ads anywhere else either. Absolute game changer.

People still use chrome?

I stopped using it in 2013 when I realized that it would load all your restored tabs at once, while firefox didn't

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this post was submitted on 09 Sep 2023
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