#chromium based browsers

[melyzard]

Time for a new edition of my ongoing vendetta against Google fuckery!

Hey friends, did you know that Google is now using Google docs to train it's AI, whether you like it or not? (link goes to: zdnet.com, July 5, 2023). Oh and on Monday, Google updated it's privacy policy to say that it can train it's two AI (Bard and Cloud AI) on any data it scrapes from it's users, period. (link goes to: The Verge, 5 July 2023). Here is Digital Trends also mentioning this new policy change (link goes to: Digital Trends, 5 July 2023). There are a lot more, these are just the most succinct articles that might explain what's happening.

FURTHER REASONS GOOGLE AND GOOGLE CHROME SUCK TODAY:

Stop using Google Analytics, warns Sweden’s privacy watchdog, as it issues over $1M in fines (link goes to: TechCrunch, 3 July 2023) [TLDR: google got caught exporting european users' data to the US to be 'processed' by 'US government surveillance,' which is HELLA ILLEGAL. I'm not going into the Five Eyes, Fourteen Eyes, etc agreements, but you should read up on those to understand why the 'US government surveillance' people might ask Google to do this for countries that are not apart of the various Eyes agreements - and before anyone jumps in with "the US sucks!" YES but they are 100% not the only government buying foreign citizens' data, this is just the one the Swedes caught. Today.]

PwC Australia ties Google to tax leak scandal (link goes to: Reuters, 5 July 2023). [TLDR: a Russian accounting firm slipped Google "confidential information about the start date of a new tax law leaked from Australian government tax briefings." Gosh, why would Google want to spy on governments about tax laws? Can't think of any reason they would want to be able to clean house/change policy/update their user agreement to get around new restrictions before those restrictions or fines hit. Can you?

SO - here is a very detailed list of browsers, updated on 28 June, 2023 on slant.com, that are NOT based on Google Chrome (note: any browser that says 'Chromium-based' is just Google wearing a party mask. It means that Google AND that other party has access to all your data). This is an excellent list that shows pros and cons for each browser, including who the creator is and what kinds of policies they have (for example, one con for Pale Moon is that the creator doesn't like and thinks all websites should be hostile to Tor).

[adobodemon]

Poll inspired by my coworkers…

Bonus question: what browser are you using?

[prototypelq]

FIREFOX GANG

Don't want to rain on your parade, but while looking through different browser privacy reviews, I was disappointed to learn that default Firefox is not privacy-secure browser either. By default, Firefox uses google's analytic features, plus the Mozilla company is partially owned by google, so they aren't really independent either.

This issue can be mitigated by switching to a more tight-code Firefox-based browser, I heard Waterfox mentioned a number of times, or using extensions + manually digging into Firefox settings to turn it off.

I'm not about to turn anyone away from using Firefox, just wanted to raise some notice about this issue.

[yddaw]

Sometimes it’s unfortunate seeing that a lot of people are anti [insert technology here]. It makes sense of course, but it seems like the idea being shared is that the technological tool itself is “bad” but not the company using it.

Like Chromium is not the same thing as Chrome itself. And AI is not only for stealing content and reselling it. But having so many companies do this and use these tools with little to no regulation (specifically on privacy) paints such a nasty image for the tool that has so much potential 😩

[dapg-otmebytheballs]

Gen Q - is opera part of the boycott or smth? I haven't seen it in any bds stuff but idk its parent company.

Nope, the opera stuff is unrelated, we were just commenting on how they've been platforming some pretty shitty sponsors lately, like opera (being chromium based) and Nord vpn (Bitcoin mining), and then the audible sponsorship happened which is on the bds list and there was backlash over that but quite soon after there's the Opera spon again, which is another irresponsible sponsorship, so that's a bit agitating

That's not related to the bds though

[kodicraft]

stabbing everyone who says that all chromium-based browsers are "basically chrome" or "also chrome"

thats like saying that oranges and bananas and cherries are "basically apples" just because they're all fruit

the fact they use the same fucking browser engine doesn't mean they're the same thing!! the fucking browser engine doesn't affect how a browser treats your privacy or what ads are displayed or whatever the fuck. that's entirely up to whoever made the actual fucking browser

you're not "morally corrupt" for using a chromium-based browser unlike what a lot of ignorant kids are convinced of. chromium is an open-source project with a bunch of community-managed forks for various purposes which does NOT include the sort of tracking and vendor lock-in that people complain about google for. you can use chromium right now with absolutely no link to google by just using ungoogled-chromium, a fork of chromium which also comes with extra privacy features. or you can use chromium on its own which doesn't include any tracking or whatever, but that still uses some google services in the background (such as Safe Browsing).

if you wanna use firefox, go use firefox. I use firefox every day because I just like its feel and i've sometimes forked firefox for silly purposes. but if you like chrome's look and feel, or like being on the bleeding edge of web technologies (including recent stuff like WebGPU without crashing your entire OS), using chromium or ungoogled-chromium is just as good.

[20cm]

new carrd :3 dont look at it on safari 🫶

[gendernewtral]

not using firefox is not a moral failing or reason to personally attack someone in the comments of a post

[spectrum-core]

hi! sorry to message you out of the blue like this but i corrected my post about chrome bookmarks, it turns out those are saved google searches, so i updated my post to reflect that.. i still think that's scummy as hell regardless though, and just felt like i should tell people who reblog it in case it'd gain traction (better safe than sorry type thing)

thanks for the heads up!

[hentairobot]

always so crazy i see people saying "ohh i get ads on twitch still oh i get ads on youtube even though i have adblock :-/"

[foxpunk]

"ungoogled chromium" okay. still chromium.

[ainyan]

Google is actively blocking Captcha on Firefox

Firefox users have noticed that captchas - both the picture kind and the click the box kind - are not resolving on Firefox. Tests on Chromium based browsers show that it works perfectly fine on them. It is also known that Chrome will be disabling all ad-blockers in June when it moves to Manifest v3, which will greatly limit what extensions can do.

If you use Firefox, there is an extension called User-Agent Switcher and it allows you to change your browser's UA to Chrome. This will allow you to bypass reCaptcha/Captcha blocks set up by Google and make them function properly.

It could be a code snafu on Google's part - but given how predatory they have been acting lately, I'm going to guess not. Don't get locked out of your websites or feel forced to use Chrome again just to browse.

UPDATE: This has been fixed as of 5/4/2024 and no longer affects Firefox. It was a bug in the most recent update of the Captcha code. Hopefully it won't happen again!

[xumoonhao]

oh btw the fact that you can’t anti-alias text across all widely used browsers and operating systems is in fact going to be my 13th reason </3 there’s not even a work-around for it!!!!!!! sometimes text is just going to look fuzzy!!!!! sooooooo fucked up, esp for pixelated fonts. bro…….

[casfree]

This just in: my mom Hates duck duck go and has been possessed by the spirit of grass roots marketing

[nooradeservedbetter]

fuck you tumblr i'll keep using firefox

[davepetea]

we are trying two impurress our meowrail by trying out some technical things!