With the number of people concerned about privacy, it is a wonder why chrome is even popular.
The best time to switch to Firefox was 5 years ago. The second best is today.
Oops, I switched 15 years ago,
I switch when it was Phoenix, then switch again when it was Firebird, and finally switch when it become Firefox
you win Firefox!
I went straight from Mozilla Navigator to Firefox 1.0.
Tabs were such a crazy new thing back then. You would show tabbed browsing to someone (rather than opening new windows) and they thought you were a wizard. IE5 didn’t have tabs, so nerds moved to Mozilla/Firefox. Then IE6 came out but still didn’t have tabs. By the time IE7 came out, I’d had tabbed browsing for 5+ years.
Hat trick!
Noob. I switched in 2006 - 17 years ago.
What took you so long?!?
I had to pee!
I cannot be 100% certain but I’m confident I was using it not long after the 1.0 release. That’d put me at 2004. 19 years!
Although I did briefly switch over to Chrome when it was new and fast. Then switched back when Firefox had a major optimization pass.
The early Chrome was crazy fast when it had none of the bloat.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/nCgQDjiotG0
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Google has a web-browser?
10 to 15 years ago, myself. Don’t remember exactly.
Sorry, that’s 3rd best at most, according to the data above. Sorry, I don’t make the rules!
Funnily enough - this article is 3 years old
I use Firefox since it’s release. It was never bad. I don’t get all the Chrome users.
I had the crappiest of PCs in 2006 or 2007 with 768MBs of RAM running Windows XP. Funnily enough the reason I switched to Chrome back then was the immense RAM usage of Firefox compared to Chrome back then. With the big rebranding an rerelease of Firefox in 2017? 2018? I came back and haven’t looked back since.
It has a pretty severe memory leak issue during the period where Chrome siphoned off most of its users.
I used it since netscape navigator XD
Does it have native dark pages. Why I use brave. Would use Firefox but it’s glaring white
Firefox has dark mode.
Most people aren’t concerned about privacy outside of places like here and Reddit.
With Chrome killing ad blocking, they’ll quickly care
Except most people don’t use adblock. I don’t even know how they live
I’m conviced those people aren’t real and everyone is in fact secretly using an ad blocker.
I mean, how do you not get annoyed with so much ads? People are probabaly lying in surveys to trick youtube to not blocking adblockers.
You are mostly right. Think about how many people use chrome on corporate office computers that they do not have permission to install anything on or modify. It’s part of the reason Windows is so dominant. Businesses run windows and chrome a shit ton. I work for a Fortune 100 company. It’s Windows and Chrome across the whole company.
I work for a large company and its the same. They even force-install Chrome despite Edge already being there! Yes, some people will make the privacy argument that Microsoft takes your data, but so will Google, and it’s not as if the business cared either way, because if they did they’d install an adblocker or Firefox, which they don’t.
Because It’s baked into the network
Permissions, you say? Lemme introduce you to Portable Apps.
Yeah the second anything gets stuck into a USB port, IT is on WebEx like “Get what’s that asshole in pod H-12 doing???”
Why use usb when you can download from Google Drive? Or is that not allowed too?
Hate to say it, but I think you’re giving the average person way too much credit. Most people are just not that smart.
“Think of how stupid the average person is, and then realize that half of them are stupider than that.” - George Carlin
Average and below internet users are not the kind of people you meet on Lemmy. They are people like the aging Gen-Xer who doesn’t know the difference between “the internet” and a web browser, or the kid whose parents shoved a tablet in their face to get them to be quiet for an hour.
Most people want computers to be an appliance like a washing machine - the thought that they can shape their own experience on their phone or computer never even occurs to them.
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I forget that these people exist sometimes. I can’t ever go back to the internet with no ad blockers.
You realize the Internet costs money. Those sites don’t charge due to advertising. If everyone used ad blocker. There wouldn’t be internet.
But blind there
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And it exploded because of that. Stuff costs money. You either pay for it or ads though.
I’d prefer having the internet of now than what was before.
You can use ad blocker but I’m pointing out the your theory. Without ads the Internet doesn’t exist in its current form. As long as 90% don’t use ad blocker it’s all good.
I suspect they spend most of their time in apps and not surfing the internet. Just a guess really since I saw the mobile traffic exceeded desktop. A lot of people don’t spend hours on the “internet” surfing. Tic Tok sure. Hell I’m getting more and more like that. Even when I use chrome I still only go the the same sites for the most part. lol
Ah, you met my parents.
I had to install ublock origin on my mother’s Chrome because she never would otherwise. Doesn’t even know how.
It could be a good thing. Maybe they won’t bother about people blocking ads because they become even less than before.
So maybe you need to pause the ad block a lot less.
They don’t!
Google’s doing a pretty shitty job on that front since uBlock is already prepared with a new version that will work largely the same after the changeover.
Do you have a post clarifying how uBlock got prepared? I can’t seem to find anything
I don’t think it’s just one post, but before last month Gorhill would regularly post to Reddit about it. The MV3 extension is already live in the extension store as well.
They won’t. The vast majority aren’t using any kind of ad-blockers in the first place or Google would go out of business.
The plan to deprecate Chrome V2 extensions has been constantly postponed again and again for years now. There is NO SCHEDULED DATE for this to happen currently, and when it is announced it will be more than 6 months out.
Source: https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/chromium-extensions/c/zQ77HkGmK9E/m/HjaaCIG-BQAJ?pli=1
If Google really wanted to kill ad blockers, they would have done this years ago.
They don’t. They want to force ad blockers and other similar extensions to use more efficient APIs that don’t slow down the web. Extension developers overall (not just ad blockers) aren’t happy with the changes, so they’re still working on the APIs.
IIRC the original cutoff date was supposed to be this summer (or possibly winter).
Not surprised you’re being downvoted but definitely disappointed seeing it.
Honestly, it seems like people have basically created internal adblockers where they seem to not notice ads.
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Hmmm, on the bright side, with lemmy going mainstream maybe some of this culture (including privacy and FOSS) becomes more and more openly discussed.
As much as I love Lemmy I don’t see it going mainstream :/
It’s too weird for the general userYeah I agree. Arguably reddit isn’t even mainstream, and it is exponentially larger than Lemmy now and will remain so for the foreseeable future.
I’m really loving Lemmy, but it is not even remotely a factor if we are having a conversation about things that are mainstream enough to reflect popular opinion.
Arguably reddit isn’t even mainstream …
… with just 0.91% of US social media visits
this yearin March this year, if this isn’t wrong:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/265773/market-share-of-the-most-popular-social-media-websites-in-the-us/FB 53.09%, Twit 16.25%, IG 13.85%, …, Reddit 0.91% …
[Edited to fix my error.]
[I have no affiliation with the linked site.]
That’s US based. I don’t have stats handy, but I remember seeing that huge amounts of Reddit traffic are outside the US, and from anecdotal experience, limiting the study further to younger demographics would drastically change these results.
Reddit was too weird for most people until they ended up being in their Google search results for most topics. It will take a while but the Fediverse will eventually reach a level of popularity and mainstream utility.
We could have it both, where big instances like LemmyWorld or BeeHaw becomes the well known public interface, while they maintain federation with smaller instances.
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leave lemmy for us
But your content would go over so much better in those places. Pretty sure you’ve already found that your Musk-loving, antisemitic, anti-lgbtq+, misogynistic, garbage is not going to make it very far here. “cancel culture” back at it again. Guess Musk isn’t the big brain you think he is. I’m sure you’ll be back with your braindead zombie tribe in no time.
Then why are you here “Generic User 1234”?
I’m sorry, I don’t know if “general user” means what I think it means. English is not my first language.
What I meant was that most people who use the internet and social media on a regular basis aren’t exactly nerdy/tech-savvy. So as soon as you start talking to them about federated instances and whatnot, they lose interest.
I mean I love Lemmy but I don’t see it going mainstream :/
It’s too weird for the general userThe irony of this comment duplicating 😅 but yeah you’re right, there needs to be a lot of streamlining first
jsjajsj yeah, Jerboa froze on me so I had to retype the comment. I didn’t realise it had already gone through.
I had that issue with Jerboa a lot so I switched to Liftoff, it’s much smoother!
I dunno. Lemmy isn’t all that weird outside the first little bit of choosing an instance and signing up for communities. Everything since that has felt extremely normal to me. Some more thought about that and a good instance onboarding workflow can be implemented, that seems like a solvable problem.
I completely agree, I don’t find it difficult at all. But I have already tried to recommend it to a couple of friends and just having to go through those first steps was enough for them not to want to use Lemmy.
Keep Lemmy Weird
Not sure why it’s weird, it’s just reddit but open source?
Whole idea is weird and as of now its lacking features. Like no ability to look on the other instance local feed without registrating there (at least not in apps i use). Also needing to type whole adress with instance name if you want some community from other instance is unhandy.
Also, as far as i understand, there can be the same communities on different instances, so you could subscribe to, idk, cat community on lemmy.ml, but not see anything from cat community on lemmy.world. If its true its kinda stupid, i think there should be a way to associate comunities across fedarated instances.
Hell, even registration is kinda messed up. As lemmy.world shown, you easilly can sign up on overpopulated instances which would drop several times a day. Not sure, it probably fixed for now, but that was a problem when i started.
So far i like the idea and want it to succeed and become popular. But with how elitist people here are usually towards users from other platforms and with overall roughness it kinda seems unlikelly. Maybe it will change when current apps get better, or reddit app developers make versions for lemmy, idk.
If you click the All, you can see that I am able to see posts from lemmy.ml even though I’m on lemmy.world
But it does show feeds from other instances. Tick all rather than local
No, i mean not all, but local from other instances. I dont remember why i needed it, probably discussion of more specialised instances out there. Most down to earth example i can imagine now would probably be trying to find instance on your local language (other than english, ofc).
There are instances dedicated to other languages, but because they are new, and has not a lot of people, they won’t push at the top of your feed. The best thing for now is to help those instances grow by contributing to the instance and communities. As more activity sprouts, more and more specialized communities and instances will get pushed to the top.
As a start, you can select Hot or New rather than active and see if there are specialized regional instances. Or try directly searching for it.
If not start your own community in the language you desire. Bear in mind that lemmy only has 200k users. And most are probably from the US. So you’ll likely see more mainstream communities and in English.
If that’s still not enough, the best I can advise is to wait until it matures. The more mainstream it gets the more lesser known communities and regional instances can develop or start.
I wish that was the case. Privacy is barely a thing in the general public’s eye. FOSS is a spec in the wind in comparison.
I think lots of boomers and gen-x do care. (At least the ones I know). They just aren’t tech literate enough to do anything about it.
I think we need more privacy oriented devices and software with simple ux, and advertising that isn’t targetted at the tech community.
Run some TV ads for a privacy enabled smartphone, and play up how it works just the same as your current phone but doesn’t spy on you. Shit like that.
Firefox is a weird buggy mess that constantly freezes.
This is definitely not normal, Firefox never freezes for me. May be worth checking that out, especially your extensions.
Firefox + Ublock Origin blows Google Chrome out of water.
IMO the thing is that people don’t care about their privacy. Sure, some people around here do, but your average person owns an Alexa, has a FB/Instagram account and constantly posts their location, uses the same password on many sites, uses TikTok, doesn’t block cookies, etc etc etc.
Most people don’t actually care. Some claim they do, but then can’t even be bothered to stop using Instagram etc because of the “inconvenience”… So do they really care?
Some companies (Apple, etc) push their products under a narrative around safety and security, and people will repeat that point as a way to justify a decision they already made, but if they actually cared, they would be doing other things too. But they don’t.
The number of us who do actually care about privacy and security is actually very small.
With the number of people concerned about privacy, it is a wonder why chrome is even popular.
It’s no wonder. It’s because people aren’t actually concerned about privacy.
If you ask someone if they’re “concerned about privacy” many people will of course say yes. If you follow up that question with “what are you willing to do about it”, you’ll find that the answer is a resounding “not a God damn thing”. If they were they would spend 3 minutes on Google looking for an alternative browser that works even better than Chrome but without the privacy invasions.
A browser is the low-hanging fruit on the “do-you-care-about-privacy meter”. It’s the one step with no sacrifices and the highest increase in privacy.
Google has a vested interest in showing you ads and selling your data.
Firefox does not.
Seems like a pretty clear choice to me.
It’s ironic that there are over 60 blockable elements and such over Privacy Badger and Ublock origin on that page.
The whole Reddit debacle has really made me rethink all my services. I recently installed duck duck go and still getting used to it, so not quite sure if I’m ready to make another drastic change.
I used to love Firefox in 2006 or so, but got Chrome when it was released and forgot about Firefox. I think I’ll open a tab in my chrome browser for the Firefox page now…this is how I remind myself to delve deeper into stuff later. Thanks for the inspiration, everyone. Google has irked me ever since removing the Don’t Be Evil mantra.
Reddit being enshittified is what motivated me to switch back to Android. I don’t want to continue using a a locked ecosystem only for apple to one day say: “Welp, no more adblocks 😜 Oh you use VLC? Dude that’s for pirates only. Signal? That’s for terrorists. Standard Notes? What evil plans are you hiding? Banned Banned and Banned.”
I used iPhones because everyone else was using them so I kinds fell for the peer pressure thinking “Hmm… what are the odds that Apple become evil? Probably don’t have to worry about it.” The Reddit shitshow just triggered a fear in me that made me rethink about my life decisions. Apple’s locked ecosystem suddenly looked terrifying to me, and I just wanna nope out. So I got an Android phone and gave the iPhone to someone. I love my apks and don’t need to worry about Google-Play shennanigans.
True. It takes a big chance to switch browsers for some. And there may be learning curves, but being intentional about our internet and app use goes a long way to saving headaches in the future. The early investment (ie learning a more open source and free, even FOSS software) will help mitigate loss in case a profit driven company changes or “pivots” to a new direction.
The best time to start with a new browser is when you get a new device. Since you have to re enter your logins or re enable your pw manager anyway, it’s just a convenient time. That’s when I switched, about 1 year ago when I upgraded phones.
Duckduckgo app tracking blocker is my new jam too. Which I leaned about here on lemmy about 1 weeks ago when I joined
If you use a password manager like bitwarden, there’s no need to enter all your logins. I guess that’s why I’m a bit browser agnostic. I use different browsers for different purposes. And I don’t have to worry about remembering my passwords with bitwarden.
Firefox has a super simple way to import everything from your Chrome install. And from what I can tell it has every feature plus more. Was very easy for me to switch. I was actually inspired to try it as my daily driver since Chrome hogs an uncomfortable amount of RAM on my laptop
The difference between ddg and Firefox for me is that Firefox is a genuinely good product, whereas ddg is noticeably worse than Google. Still trying to find a good search alternative.
I recently learned that ddg is a meta search engine which pulls from Bing search, which is probably why it sucks.
Tried out brave search engine (uses it’s own search algorithm) and the results have been better. Probably slightly weaker than google.
I do all my personal browsing on Firefox now. I’m still using chrome, but strictly for work stuff. It’s nice to keep those activities separate, especially since many apps I use for work still discriminate against Firefox.
This is the problem! :( Monopoly is never good, in this case in particular since it’s in the hand of a corporation they make money on people data.
There’s no reason you should be using Chrome. Using Chrome:
- Means you consent to spyware (along with everyone else you interact with)
- Allows Google to continue dictating web standards
- Is a resource hog
If you haven’t already, I highly recommend reading this comic about the dangers of Chrome: https://contrachrome.com/
If you need to absolutely use a Chromium-based browser, at least use Brave (just for that site).
Not-so-fun fact from the comic Contra Chrome: Google Chrome’s URL bar is called the “omnibox.” The name is derived from the Latin word “omnis,” meaning “everything.”
When you type into the omnibox, it’s sent to Google’s servers and added to your profile forever.
Even if you deleted it or didn’t hit enter.
With the number of people concerned about privacy, it is a wonder how privacy is still a word in the dictionary
With the number of people concerned about privacy
That number appears to be very small, all things considered. Out of everyone I know, literally one person cares about privacy. My mother. She will just use her initial instead of her name if she can get away with it. However, she uses Chrome all the time because she doesn’t understand that your browser also tracks you.
I think that’s what it comes down to. A mixture of lack of public interest, and lack of public awareness about tracking/privacy in general. If people can’t immediately see how having their data harvested will inconvenience/hurt them, they simply don’t care.
I use Firefox because I don’t like how Google acts with regards to web standards being the de facto standard because so many browsers are Chromium based. If everyone is using Chromium then they don’t need to obey any standards and can just do whatever they want. There needs to be competition in that space. Microsoft Edge becoming Chromium based was a big problem on that regard.
The irony that Firefox is kept alive in part because Google pays them for Google to be the default search option is not lost on me.
Chrome is popular because it works. The average person is not going to give up convenience for privacy, even if they claim to care about it. As someone who uses Firefox, I can say that some websites don’t work on Firefox and Firefox is often slower than chromium browsers. While I’m ok with that, others might not be.
