What do you mean meme storm? Switching to Firefox makes you immune to annoying changes like this... I honestly don't understand why more people, especially on hn, haven't switched over still.
As a Firefox user, articles like this are just noise, not a possible attack on my personal privacy. When was the last technical scandal with Firefox? Adding an optional bookmarking service? How are people still defending chrome?
Security (not privacy): Firefox has shown in Pwn2Own contests and in security circles that it is not as secure as Chrome. Mainly because of overall security architecture and sandboxing techniques involved (remember the Chrome comic, I think even current Firefox has not implemented all security sandboxing which Chrome had from day 1). Firefox is trying to catch up but is overall behind. So there you have your technical disadvantage. I feel personally saver to visit unknown sites with a current Chrome based browser than with Firefox.
Also if you compare from a fingerprinting side of view then Brave is better than Firefox+uBlock (and all privacy lists involved). You can compare that easily between your Firefox and Brave here: https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/
For me personally I also don't want to miss Chromecast capabilities (it's a nice system and unfortunately there is no good alternative) in my mobile browser.
It's an imgur thing. It disables controls on every interaction with the video by doing `.controls = false` on the video element.
Chrome seems to ignore this attribute being set to false and continue to show controls anyway, which appears to be a spec violation from my reading of it. Of course it ends up being a desirable behavior in this case.
Switching to Firefox means accepting ads built-in to the browser, something that (AFAIK) Google has never done. You can, I suppose, go find the settings one by one and disable all the places they appear, but Mozilla can (and has) introduced new on-by-default ads with version upgrades, so that only lasts so long as your current browser version is supported.
I mean, sure it's great that ad blockers still work, but let's not pretend that Firefox is some kind of bastion of pro-user sentiment.
Absolutely true. That's why I use Librewolf. I can control updates when I want them via my system package manager. The developers don't really maintain a separate browser from firefox, just a distribution that removes Mozilla trackers and a few user hostile decisions (like those ads). Works very well for me!
> You can, I suppose, go find the settings one by one and disable all the places they appear
It's like one setting in about:config
> Switching to Firefox means accepting ads built-in to the browser, something that (AFAIK) Google has never done
Google might not build ads into the browser, but if you use it as they intend and log into the account all of your activity gets tied to your account. I would rather have pocket then not be able to sign into a google account without google signing it in across the browser
> I mean, sure it's great that ad blockers still work, but let's not pretend that Firefox is some kind of bastion of pro-user sentiment.
Yeah mozilla has a shitty track record I'll admit and firefox is a lower quality product, but at the end of the day it's still the lesser of two evils
> Switching to Firefox makes you immune to annoying changes like this
Unfortunately it does not, as other replies and plenty of HN Firefox posts demonstrate.
> I honestly don't understand why more people, especially on hn, haven't switched over still.
There are several important areas where Firefox is lacking. Automation on macOS is one of them (it’s the sole major browser without AppleScript support) but in every thread I see people complaining of something different.
I use neither Firefox nor Chrome. I don’t want to support Google, but it’s also not feasible to use Firefox as my daily driver or to support it in the tools I release.
Actually even firefox is switching to V3 and deprecating V2, they are keeping request blocking (main problem with v3) but why are they just following google?
It used to be that firefox would copy chrome's ui, then they started copying the extensions, then they eliminated their better extensions. Now I expect they will fully embrace the latest gimped api from google.
"During the third quarter of 2021, the average global adblocking rate was estimated at 37 percent. Vietnam and China were top of the class, with a respective adblocking penetration rates of 44.7 and 43.7 percent. This was followed by 41.7 percent of surveyed Indonesians and 40.4 percent of surveyed South Africans admitting to using software blocking online advertising. In the United States, 34.2 percent of internet users said they used adblockers."
It's a wrong assumption. Installing chrome requires no brains and google pushing it hard. A tool from my Motherboard maker would install chrome and make it default if you don't go into "advanced" install. You can end up with chrome as a default browser without knowing it. Shit, our work MDM policy installs Chrome on every work laptop.
What’s not speculative is that adblockers have to be constantly maintained to remain effective. As websites find new circumventions, adblockers respond with fixes.
Manifest v3 freezes the capabilities of adblockers in time (it regresses them). Perhaps it’s sufficient for today’s ads but over time websites will take advantage and the effectiveness of adblockers will wither: websites have a financial incentive to circumvent all those chrome users.
I don't think the meme-storm has anything to do with it. Desktop Linux is constantly memed, for example at times when MS does something stupid with Windows, and yet, Linux adoption is minor on desktops. People being loud, and putting their word in action are two very different things.
As a Firefox user, articles like this are just noise, not a possible attack on my personal privacy. When was the last technical scandal with Firefox? Adding an optional bookmarking service? How are people still defending chrome?