Time to De-Google I guess. I will keep using Firefox and if or when I come across any website pulling this crap I won't hesitate to blast them to eternity. I suggest everyone else do the same please.
Privacy
A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
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- Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
- Don't promote proprietary software
- Try to keep things on topic
- If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
- Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
- Be nice :)
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much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
Time was a decade ago... But better now than never.
With that kind of attitude, it's a wonder no one listened to you a decade ago!
Lol. As soon as I heard someone upload their contacts to Google I thought "welp, I'm out." And yeah, no one listened then either.
Still, we got diaspora working finally. May the force be with you.
I've been converting folks where I can! I work in IT for a huge corporation, so our computers all come pre-loaded with Firefox set as the default browser haha.
And with you!
Damn. How'd you swing that? Everyone I know is still stuck in the Microsoft/Chrome cycle.
I don't give my users a choice at work and those computers are all locked down to where they'd need an admin to install Chrome.
As far as my personal life goes, I've just been the go-to guy for computer questions for friends and family most of my life, so they usually listen to my advice, but it also helps to just go into detail as to why the change is necessary (not recommended, but necessary). No one likes to hear that their web browser is making it impossible to block ads and is streamlining the ad experience so they get more ads. Everyone despises ads lol.
De-google, anyone?
How do you "de-google" when most websites expect most browsers to use chromium and start requiring this to ensure ~~companies buying ad space get the best bang for their buck~~ security?
Most websites? Haven't come across one yet (I am using Firefox on all devices and don't have any other browser installed) ... Do you have any examples?
Yeah I don't think this comment is accurate, the only website that gives you a subpar experience to incentivize you to use a Chromium-based browser that I've come across is, well, google.com on mobile.
Luckily you can download a plugin on Firefox to trick google.com to show you the Chromium experience, or you can just use something like startpage.
Firefox and ublock origin to start. Site requires Chromium? Buh bye now.
I’ve been de-Googled for 6 months now and the internet works just fine on Firefox and Safari. No significant differences.
I agree it is an uphill battle, but it must start somewhere. Else, it only gets worse, and then movements against such abuses will get easily crushed. As I like to say, "the hardest part of a journey is the first step", but also "the future belongs to those who prepare now".
It's small, but here's a real actionable item that you can do to help:
Put a gentle "Use Firefox" (or any other non-Chromium-based browser) message on your website. It doesn't have to be in-your-face, just something small. I've taken my own advice and added it to my own website: https://geeklaunch.io/ (Only appears in Chromium-based browsers.)
We can slowly turn the tide, little by little.
Copy and paste:
<p>
This site is designed for <a href="https://firefox.com/">Firefox</a>,
a web browser that respects your privacy.
</p>
(I also posted this on the HN discussion.)
One way to hide it for Firefox users.
<p class="not-firefox-warning">
This site is designed for <a href="https://firefox.com/">Firefox</a>,
a web browser that respects your privacy.
</p>
<style>
@-moz-document url-prefix() { .not-firefox-warning { display: none; }}
</style>
IE in the 2000's called, it wants it's dream back.
Between this, hobbling adblockers and performing enough monopolistic acts to warrant swift government action, I really see this more as Chrome dying than the web itself.
Honestly this won't effect me a ton, though I wouldn't be surprised if I have to boot up a windows virtual machine just to check my bank in a few years cause my bank doesn't know what Linux is and doesn't want go trust it. I'm mad about it but given slowly but surely I've been replacing everything with FOSS stuff. I just fear one day they will force you to use corpo approved software to use WiFi , or get cell service
It will likely not work inside a VM. Haven't looked into the implementation, but they will probably want to use the hardware DRM manufacturers have been sneaking into the CPUs and GPUs.
So you will be required to use "approved" CPU, "approved" OS and "approved" browser to access certain websites, as it is already the case with online streaming. You can kiss foss goodbye.
Entirely separate laptop purely for those annoying sites it is, then. At least until the approval inevitably gets cracked and can be bypassed.
So this is a problem for all browsers based on Chromium right???
No, it is a problem for all browsers, present and future, period.
The point is that major websites, even government ones might decide to be only available on Chrome.
Question for anyone with more understanding of the implementation…
Doesn’t this still presume the browser tells the truth to the third party attester? Could we not build something that just straight up lies to the attester? Says I’m a good Google chrome user with no extensions please serve me ads sir?
My understanding was that the browser vendor itself would be the attester. So if Google says it's Google Chrome, it probably is. Unless you somehow reverse engineer how Google decides that it's Google Chrome and spoof that or something...
Can you explain to someone not so tech savy what this means?
Is there anything a person can do about it, other than using Firefox and degoogling?
from https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/1053748
https://github.com/RupertBenWiser/wei-wpt-other
https://github.com/RupertBenWiser/wei-wpt
these showed up after Jul 21 per GitHub “contribution activity” but are retroactively dated to 13 - they were probably private before that.
Please comment any information under this post and create cross-links to any possible posts - to create comprehensible information source.