• circuitfarmer@lemmy.sdf.org
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    1 year ago

    Please, everyone, stop using Chrome. This is an easy vote with your wallet that doesn’t even require your wallet.

    Complacency means the internet gets worse, ads get worse, nickel and diming gets worse. It’s the easiest chance to take a stand you’ll ever have.

      • rambaroo@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I use it at work because of it has the best dev tools. Although edge is pretty much the same so I could use that, but not much of an ethical upgrade.

        • HughJanus@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          I use it at work because of it has the best dev tools.

          Every Chromium fork has those same tools.

    • DarienGS@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Serious question: let’s say I continue using Chrome and Privacy Sandbox becomes the norm. How does my internet experience get worse?

      • circuitfarmer@lemmy.sdf.org
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        1 year ago

        One key change in the short term is the Topics API. This is the replacement for 3rd-party cookies in Privacy Sandbox. Basically, it allows sites to query your browser directly about what topics you enjoy, and Chrome will respond with topics based on analysis of your browsing history to allow for targeted ads. If it seems strange that a new “privacy” feature is still serving up data about you for targeted ads – it is. And in fact, a lot of the proposed changes potentially just give Google more sway to act as a middleman, which ultimately gives them more data.

        Will your experience change immediately? Likely not, but as with many things in this space, it’s about the dangers of the path and its longer term implications, specifically here about corporate controls and softening the definition of “privacy”.

        Here’s a decent overview with more far more details.

        • DarienGS@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I know what the Topics API does. I’m asking for a concrete example of exactly how it’s going to make my internet experience worse. (That Register article doesn’t provide one.)

          • circuitfarmer@lemmy.sdf.org
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            1 year ago

            Losing privacy makes your internet experience worse. That seems pretty clear to me, but if you don’t care about corporations being better suited to target ads to you, then I don’t think anyone would be able to convince you that these changes are bad.

            • DarienGS@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              I’d love to debate this with you properly but I’ve got COVID right now and don’t have the energy to put together a decent response, sorry. Basically I just don’t see how the specific features in the new Chrome build let advertisers do anything they can’t already do. I don’t see how they contribute to ads getting worse, or where “nickel and diming” comes into it.

  • MossBear@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    For people who roll their eyes when someone mentions Linux and all of the free and open source projects adjacent to it (including Firefox!), this is exactly why many people value those things. We actually can have freedom in computing and it’s worth pushing for. We don’t have to roll over simply accept what Google, Microsoft and Apple want.

    • WhiskyTangoFoxtrot@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      But there are a few specific hardware configurations and specialized jobs that Linux doesn’t work for, therefore nobody should use it!

      • geolaw@lemmygrad.ml
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        1 year ago

        My workplace is transitioning a bunch of their data and processing to the cloud. When I look at what software makes the cloud work, there is soooo much open source software there. Big business is quite comfortable with FOSS

      • systemglitch@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Why not be happy both OS options exist? Both have a place and a use and in various ways an ease of use

          • ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca
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            1 year ago

            Linux with 100% market share can’t monopolize the entire market because it doesn’t have a centralized distro

            You see similar to Google with Redhat/Canonical. If everyone was with them then it would be a problem

            • s_s@lemmy.one
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              1 year ago

              Linux with 100% marketshare means nothing.

              GPL is designed to protect developer rights, not user rights.

              If google packaged your linux distro and sold it through the play store bundled with their own apps and sandboxed everything and called it chromeOS, your rights would not be any better protected.

              Security and privacy involves users making informed choices to protect themselves, full stop.

    • imapuppetlookaway@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Any of thousands of people can say this but i don’t see it in the comments below so: I’ve been using a Linux Mint / Windows dual boot system for over 10 years and love it. I think a lot of people see Linux as highly technical, but versions like Mint and Ubuntu are more carefree than Windows nowadays.

      • MossBear@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I’m aware, but ultimately they’re still an ad company that uses technology to sell more ads. Any minor aspects of altruism (if it can be called that) can’t wash that away.

    • blami@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Doing same thing right now… only two things I will miss are chromecast and page translation.

      • TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Good news about page translation, Firefox is adding it, and it’s all done locally too, no phoning home to their or somebody else’s translation servers.

        I wonder if there’s an extension for Chromecast support? Might be worth looking into

        • Sentau@lemmy.one
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          1 year ago

          Good news about page translation, Firefox is adding it, and it’s all done locally too, no phoning home to their or somebody else’s translation servers.

          Till then there is this open source extension which provides the same functionality including local offline translation

      • Sentau@lemmy.one
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        1 year ago

        For translation you can use this. Since you can use Google translation service as the backend(?), it works as good as Google translate atleast in my experience

        • blami@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          Thanks a lot, this extension looks very much as what I need. I wish Apple stopped their WebKit policy on iPhone so I could use it on mobile Firefox too…

      • Cosmic Cleric@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        only two things I will miss are chromecast and page translation.

        You can use your phone to start the chromecasting, and translate.google.com lets you also put in a weblink to translate a whole page at once.

    • Stumblinbear@pawb.social
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      1 year ago

      I’ve only had issues with Nordpass crashing occasionally when auto-filling, but it’s otherwise pretty seamless

    • jcit878@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      the main thing holding me back is the password manager in Chrome and having to basically use 2 browsers as passwords are slowly saved to a new system

      • avatar@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        Do yourself a favour and get Bitwarden or similar. Browser password managers are way too vulnerable.

    • Auli@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      The only issue is I have to keep a chromium browser because there are a few sites that Firefox has issues with. But the vast majority work fine.

      • Possibly linux@lemmy.zip
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        1 year ago

        Can you not use those sites? The reason they don’t work is because there userbase uses chrome.

        • lunaticneko@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          Unfortunately I’m not in the business of working for them. They are mostly govt sites in my country and we simply have to work with them sometimes. Their web devs are underpaid general workers who know a bit of Joomla but added this and that shit to the point that it works only on Chrome.

    • DreitonLullaby@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      I don’t think I’ve used Google Chrome itself for over 3 years now (excluding on other people’s devices). I don’t plan to ever use it again either.

      • paddirn@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        At one point I was switching back and forth, because I’d see a general decline in Firefox for some reason. I don’t know if it was just getting overloaded with extensions that were hitting its performance or if my machine itself was having problems or if Firefox’s performance was shit for awhile, but I’d switch from Firefox to Chrome, try going back to Firefox, then back to Chrome, but I’ve been with Firefox for a good few years now without issue. The browser “market” is even crowded now, there’s no reason to go back to Chrome, since there’s so many other choices out there (though avoiding Chromium might be a little bit trickier).

  • Sygheil@lemmy.worldB
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    1 year ago

    Back in the old days when a software contains these crap, considered as adware/malware and people get their pitchforks.

    Now: its normal.

    • Buffalox@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Modern software: Please insert anal probe.

      Average user: OK 😀

      It’s sickening.

    • WuTang @lemmy.ninja
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      1 year ago

      there’s a whole class of users born with smartphone, those were not techie or concerned, then you have the other class who don’t know really anything about these things which only use smartphones.

      even discussing with family about privacy is difficult. “but everyone use it”… gosh. then you have some of my IT colleagues - there for the good money job - which don’t care with the motto: I have nothing to hide.

      anyway, stay true to your principles no matter what.

      • ★ 𝐘𝖔𝖕𝖕𝖆★ @lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I blame these “tech youtubers” who don’t understand anything technical and keep repeating the script which the company provides them. I saw this idiot MKBHD telling his viewers how a phone has a “beast mode”. Wtf is a beast mode? ! Non technical guys eat shit like this and proceeds to buy because the phone has beast mode lol.

        • DreitonLullaby@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          These are exactly my thoughts about tech YouTubers. They have no idea what they’re talking about and encourage mindless consumption. Glad I’m not the only one who’s thought about this.

      • pup_atlas@pawb.social
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        1 year ago

        I work in tech, and I’m still using Chrome. I don’t like it, and I know a lot of other tech people are in the same boat, but I can’t just switch. That’s what I’m working towards, but the amount of tooling we use every day that depends on specifically Chrome is, significant to say the least. This is tooling we built internally to help ourselves, that depends on Chrome-specific APIs that are either different, or do mot yet exist in Firefox.

        We’re working to port this stuff over to Firefox, but that takes time, and not everyone can just drop what they are doing to reimplement the tooling they already have in a different browser. On top of userspace tooling, we also have tens of thousands of unit tests based in some part on chrome (through tools like jest and puppet) to validate certain aspects of massive distributed web platforms that cannot easily be unit tested in normal code (though we have high coverage where we can). These also need to be ported, and are VERY specific to Chrome (or Chromium in some cases) in particular. We’re talking entire teams of people, and tens of thousands of man hours.

        A lot of users truly can just switch at the drop of a hat. The UI switch is annoying sure, but its doable. For a lot of users in the tech space though, it’s just not feasible to drop Chrome overnight. We’ve started the process to be clear, but it’s going to be a very long transition.

        • WuTang @lemmy.ninja
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          1 year ago

          So, you are not using Chrome for the web? if it is not for the web, it’s fine you don’t have to switch :)

    • SkyNTP@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      Except websites that will tell you “Use a modern browser, switch to Chrome to view this page”.

      This sort of thing is becoming more and more pervasive. I’m genuinely worried that between this and web DRM, there will be no where to hide from corporate America ducking everyone over with their greed.

      • talentes@lemmy.nz
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        1 year ago

        I’ve been using Firefox for over 5 years now and I don’t think I’ve ever seen this message?

        There has been a handful of times when a page just won’t work correctly and I have to switch to edge, but that is super rare and has probably been less than 10 occasions

        • originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com
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          9 months ago

          the feature they just implemented will start to trigger this. there is a hardcore push for corporate to go all in on chromium for tracking/drm reasons similar to how IE had that market in the past. as a firefox user im kinda terrified were out of options.

          were not talking about what the experience was, but what it will be

      • Strawberry@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        1 year ago

        99% of the time you can just tell the website that firefox is actually chrome using the User Agent Switcher plugin and it will work perfectly. Unfortunately that 1% exists because chrome likes to add features that aren’t web standards that irresponsible devs then use and break compatibility with other browsers

      • rckclmbr@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        It was much faster, and firefox was slow as shit for a long time. It’s much better now

  • TheDarkKnight@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Every single thing about Google sucks nowadays. Great job Sundar, you successfully turned one of the former most exciting companies on the planet into one of the absolute lamest.

  • DreitonLullaby@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    The site you’ve linked to literally uses Facebook and Google browser trackers. Pretty hypocritical of them if you ask me.

  • mariusafa@lemmy.sdf.org
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    1 year ago

    We have firefox, iceweasel, fennec (android). Anything else not firefox based is chrome based. Don’t get tricked by opera and similars.

    You can still change browser.

  • miffmaff@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    So as far as i know, firefox is the only mayor browser not based on chromium. Also, firefox is dependent on google’s funding because of a search engine exclisivity deal. So my understanding is that, if google decides to kill firefox, they could easily do that. Well, what then? Is there any other browser left wich similar features that would be untouchable by google?

      • karma_nder@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 year ago

        So the lawsuit appears to be looking at Google as a search engine monopoly, not web browser, right? And if I’m understanding this right, assuming this lawsuit goes anywhere, it would actually incentivize Google to pull funding from Firefox to no longer support that search engine exclusivity deal.

        • stewie3128@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          Google still benefits from having Firefox around, so that they can maintain less of an appearance of a monopoly in the browser space. Whatever way they fund Firefox, it’s still to their benefit to do so.

      • ADTJ@feddit.uk
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        1 year ago

        This is pretty much the same situation as when Apple faced bankruptcy a while back and Microsoft essentially bailed them out.

        Having an effective monopoly is better than a literal one for legal reasons

    • SendMePhotos@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Fun fact, Firefox used to be called… Netscape… Yeah… Let’s see how many miklenials are in here!

      • EssentialCoffee@midwest.social
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        1 year ago

        Sort of. Netscape released the program’s source code and Firefox used that as a base, but it wasn’t like they took Netscape and just changed the name to Firefox like your comment implies. They were competing browsers for a while.

      • SokathHisEyesOpen@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        And remember what happened when Microsoft tried to kill Netscape? That needs to happen again, but against Google.

    • karma_nder@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 year ago

      This should be the top comment, and I’m going to come back to view the replies. I can’t personally think of any realistic alternatives. Someone further down posted a link to an article about the US investigating Google for a search engine monopoly, but I’m not sure how large a role that would factor into web browsers.

    • Mkengine@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      You have to decide for yourself if those browsers have the features you need, but just for your interest, other non-chromium browsers are Ladybird, NetSurf, Flow, Pale Moon, Basilisk and K-Meleon.

      • Overshoot2648@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        Honestly, I’ll give credit to Apple for pushing forward JXL on webkit and pushing back against Chromium team’s dominance and Mozilla team’s apathetic stance in the browser space. While I appreciate Mozilla’s stance on Manifest V3 and several other issues, I can’t help but hope for more development from the Servo project.

    • MajorHavoc@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      We will have to maintain a Chromium fork with their trackers removed, if it comes to that.

      Likely Google won’t do anything until or unless the bulk of the public moves off of Chrome over this.

  • randint@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz
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    1 year ago

    I tried to preach why Google sharing your browsing history with ad partners is bad, but most of my friends don’t seem to care. :(

    • mattomattic@discuss.tchncs.de
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      1 year ago

      It’s frustrating, I get it too. Nobody cares until the leopard bites their face. Then it’s too late, and we’re all affected by their indifference/laziness/ignorance.

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        1 year ago

        I’m probably going to get downvotes for this, but I seriously don’t understand why you care whether other people care. If you don’t like Chrome and it’s approach to privacy, don’t use it. But man am I sick of people being so preachy about it. Just make your own choices and stop forcing your choices on others yeesh.

        • SkyNTP@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          This line of thinking only works if you live as a hermit at the edge of the forest. Living in a society means dealing with consequences of the choices of others.

          As far as browsers are concerned, having Firefox is pointless if 95% of websites will refuse to serve you content because you don’t have some cryptographically signed chrome web DRM enabled.

        • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          However deep the public at large deems is acceptable for raw sewage to puddle in the street is exactly how much sewage I have to wade through on my way to the store.

    • TheJackalChan@lemmygrad.ml
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      Everybody hates this stuff EXCEPT when Google does it and then they’re suddenly apathetic.

      I don’t fuckin get it.

      • emil_98@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Probably because most people use google for everything. Not to mention chrome is practically synonymous with speed, although I got sick of it for its shit reliability

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      1 year ago

      I think people care, but there is a lot of inertia. i.e. it takes a lot of little nudges for people to change their habits.

  • NewAgeOldPerson@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Honestly, I was already using FF for my home. Made the switch on Mobile after seeing this on the news yesterday. I’m just one person though.

    • SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      I’ve also switched to FF on both desktop and mobile because of this. So there’s two of us!

    • googlrr@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I’ve been using Firefox Mobile for years. It’s never let me down and having mobile adblock is great

      • blady_blah@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Yeah, I made the switch on Mobile when YouTube’s ads started getting super annoying. Ad block is a killer app in my book.

    • geolaw@lemmygrad.ml
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      1 year ago

      Apparently Firefox can synchronise your bookmarks between your desktop and your mobile app? Does anyone have experience with this?

      • Yttra@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Works perfectly for me, though by default mobile bookmarks are in their own folder, iirc

      • sgtlighttree@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Bookmarks is a little finicky in my experience, but tabs syncing between devices is quite good, but not as automatic as I want to be.

      • dekomote@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Not just that, it has a great password manager I’ve been using for years now. You can also sync tabs.

    • Rescuer6394@feddit.nl
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      1 year ago

      does this happen on Linux too?

      i have to keep chrome around for sites that breaks with ff / ublock, but i only open it when i need it.

      • Neshura@bookwormstory.social
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        1 year ago

        I have a chromium install lying around for that. Bizarrely the online conferencing tool my bank uses has issues with Firefox despite advertising Firefox support which is pretty much the only thing I need the Chromium browser for

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          1 year ago

          Rather, use un-googled chromium. Brave is kind of bloated with all of the extra “features” they have.

          • YⓄ乙 @aussie.zone
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            1 year ago

            Where can I download it from ? Can you please share the link for windows? . Ungoogled chromium for android is not maintained anymore.

            • rederick29@sh.itjust.works
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              Windows links are here. As for android, you’re right, it is not maintained anymore; the most similar still-maintained browser I could find is Cromite, but I’ve never used it before so I can’t comment on it.

  • 👁️👄👁️@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    You guys are way to late to quit chrome, and you probably won’t at this point. This is what happens when you don’t swap, you enable this anti-consumer monopoly behavior.

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      1 year ago

      All the people saying to just use Firefox have zero fucking clue how screwed we are with google implenting the forced attestation for the removal of ad blockers too. Chrome will be the internet. Its already been initially deployed in chromium.