With the number of people concerned about privacy, it is a wonder why chrome is even popular.

          • littlecolt@lemm.eeEnglish
            3·
            3 years ago

            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.

            • Pyro@lemmy.worldEnglish
              1·
              3 years ago

              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.

              • littlecolt@lemm.eeEnglish
                1·
                3 years ago

                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???”

          • reversebananimals@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            3 years ago

            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.

        • GreyDawn@lemmy.worldEnglish
          4·
          3 years ago

          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

        • notannpc@lemmy.worldEnglish
          3·
          3 years ago

          I forget that these people exist sometimes. I can’t ever go back to the internet with no ad blockers.

        • amenotef@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          3 years ago

          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.

      • minorninth@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        3 years ago

        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.

      • HughJanus@lemmy.mlEnglish
        1·
        3 years ago

        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.

    • Frost Wolf@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      2·
      3 years ago

      Hmmm, on the bright side, with lemmy going mainstream maybe some of this culture (including privacy and FOSS) becomes more and more openly discussed.

      • Torres@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        3 years ago

        As much as I love Lemmy I don’t see it going mainstream :/
        It’s too weird for the general user

        • theragu40@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          3 years ago

          Yeah 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.

          • Torres@lemmy.worldEnglish
            0·
            3 years ago

            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.

      • Torres@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        3 years ago

        I mean I love Lemmy but I don’t see it going mainstream :/
        It’s too weird for the general user

        • ewe@lemmy.worldEnglish
          0·
          3 years ago

          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.

          • Torres@lemmy.worldEnglish
            0·
            3 years ago

            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.

          • Torres@lemmy.worldEnglish
            0·
            3 years ago

            jsjajsj yeah, Jerboa froze on me so I had to retype the comment. I didn’t realise it had already gone through.

    • Mihuy@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      3 years ago

      In adittion to this make sure to disable the telemetry that’s on by default. If you want even better protection from fingerprinting etc, use arkenfox/librewolf (librewolf being preconfigured fork of firefox)

  • GigglyBobble@kbin.social
    14·
    3 years ago

    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.

    • TeamAssimilation@infosec.pubEnglish
      2·
      3 years ago

      Especially your security programs, like third-party antivirus or firewalls. They can install system-level plugins in your browsers, and sometimes those don’t work well. Windows defender and the built in firewall are good enough and play nice with other programs.

  • Captain Poofter@lemmy.worldEnglish
    7·
    3 years ago

    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.

    • TonyTonyChopper@mander.xyzEnglish
      5·
      3 years ago

      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

      • LetMeEatCake@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        3 years ago

        There was one extension I used in Chrome that I haven’t found a Firefox replacement for, but I stopped trying to look a while ago and just live without it.

        Was a specific kind of cookie manager: you could whitelist a set of websites to keep their cookies. Everything else would be deleted when you told the extension to do so.

        Too many websites need cookies that stick around indefinitely. But I also don’t want to delete everything everytime I close Firefox, because I may want to keep a website around for a few days without wanting to bother adding it to a whitelist.

  • Metallibus@lemmy.worldEnglish
    4·
    3 years ago

    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.

    • fatalError@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
      1·
      2 years ago

      At work I guess you only do work related stuff, so at the end of the day it’s only work-related data that the browser has access to. Why would it matter to you?

      99.9% of my the personal browsing I do is in firefox both on phone and desktop, but on work laptop I use Edge because 1. the work web-apps seem to favour chromium based browsers and 2. it’s not my data so I don’t really care about the privacy of my company’s data, they have a data privacy officer to worry about that.

      • AteshgaRubyTeeth@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        No, at work I regularly do non work related stuff. Also when doing work related stuff I prefer to use firefox as I can use adblockers.

        Having said that I understand that I’m using work supplied laptop and if they force me to use Internet Explorer than that’s what I have to use.

        Having said that it’s not so important as for my personal browser.

  • Maped@lemmy.mlEnglish
    3·
    1 year ago

    2 years later, the “Manifest” is doing it’s job and still I know some people that would not leave their favorite Chrome.

    • fatalError@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
      2·
      2 years ago

      Dark reader - for dark mode everywhere

      Decentreyes - for avoiding CDNs that track you

      Sponsorblock - to skip sponsored parts on youtube

      Enhancer for youtube - for a nicer overall experience, specific quality setting by default, scroll wheel volume, and more

  • mark100@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    3 months ago

    How about Brave? Not a big fan of Chrome but a long term Brave user I am. Filters a lot of things out.

    • aim4harmony@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      1 month ago

      I have been using Brave on both Linux and mobile for a while now. It seems to work fine as a backup browser for casual browsing. For more private browsing, I prefer Firefox forks.

      Also, the recently Brave Origin (Nightly) was released. It’s the same Brave browser that now has own telemetry (crypto, Leo AI, etc.) removed. It’s free for Linux users and costs 59.99$ to buy for mobile and Win / Mac etc. users.

  • Virkkunen@kbin.social
    2·
    3 years ago

    With the number of people concerned about privacy, it is a wonder how privacy is still a word in the dictionary

  • Pyro@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    3 years ago

    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 even go as far as to only use her first initial online 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.