If you can, use Firefox.

  • Rufus Q. Bodine III
    link
    fedilink
    English
    1319 months ago

    “Did any user in the world want a user-tracking and ad platform baked directly into their browser? Probably not, but this is Google, and they control Chrome, and this probably still won’t make people switch to Firefox.”

    • RedFox
      link
      fedilink
      English
      399 months ago

      Their idea is that is hides all the user info from advertising companies. Downside is your browser is an ad slot machine.

      Which is best?

      Tracked or ad machine?

      I’m more surprised people aren’t talking about the fact that since it’s running on the client side, someone would just figure out a way to hack and block all the ads even easier.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        379 months ago

        Because the entire design of it is to mathematically prevent you from having the option to hack or block the ads. THe way to get around it is to… not use chrome.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        359 months ago

        This also further consolidates Google’s advertising power. Block all their competitors from gathering the information and give them a neutered “topics list”. Google still maintains every ability to allow their own products and ad platform to bypass and use the full information.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        159 months ago

        It hides user information from companies which aren’t Google. The best is not using anything Chromium based.

        Extensions require APIs from the browser to work, and Google is going to nerf the APIs which allow for ad blocking. Extensions don’t have unfettered access to the DOM. FF used to be like that, but Chrome never allowed that.

    • Neato
      link
      fedilink
      English
      329 months ago

      You’re thinking about it the wrong way. How does this directly and noticably harm the user experience of the average user of chrome? If it doesn’t then there’s no incentive for them to switch.

      Not everyone knows about this kind of thing or cares. Firefox has to be significantly better in obvious ways and market that to grow their market share.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      69 months ago

      I wish I could stick to Firefox but I’ve been having trouble with looping captchas on there. 90% of the time Firefox works fine but there’s still a handful of websites that just refuse to work unless I’m using chrome.

      • finalarbiter
        link
        fedilink
        English
        179 months ago

        Some websites intentionally change behavior based on your user agent. There are plenty of extensions for Firefox that let you change it so sites think you’re using chrome instead. It’s wild to me that’s even a thing, but ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯