uBlock Origin is no longer available in the Chrome store
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I run ad blockers. As a security measure. Ad companies collect insane amount of data and do a bunch of shady stuff whenever they can get away with it.
I want to support websites whenever I'm able, but the way ad companies operate just ain't it.
If they clean up their act, maybe then I could stop using ad blockers, but it's been decades and I don't have high hopes.
Also using ad blockers for performance and usability reasons. For example, I used to use a bunch of Fandom wikis and couldn't understand why people hated the UI. Then I saw how Fandom looks like without ad blockers and holy shit how can humans live like this
oh yea i been on those fandom wiki, and almost slows you down on mobile because the amount of ads.
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FireDragon, Zen Browser, and LibreWolf. Zen feels like a streamlined Chrome.
Ah right. But none of them are true forks, really. They still rely on the Firefox project to port features in etc.
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firefox is going through thier own enshittifcation down the line, they changed ther policy about data recently
I’ll care when Firefox loses ManifestV2 support.
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I swapped to Chrome years ago because YouTube stopped working right on Firefox.
I've started the process of swapping back to Firefox after 10 years with Chrome over this.
What problems with YouTube did you have?
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My guess is that they're doing it in waves. I've been hearing about it removed for weeks, only happened to me a few days ago.
they are probably testing how ads cant be blocked, they will move onto youtube, whom they tried many times to stop ad blocking. i would love to support some youtubers, who arent pos. but the ads are just too untenable.
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never had a problem with firefox and youtube
It probably didn't have anything to do with Firefox itself. It's likely related to something I messed up in FF or it was something to do with the ancient laptop I had at the time being a junk heap, but I tried Chrome and noticed that the trouble didn't exist there. So I started using Chrome.
I kept using it because of all the google integration, which was really handy when I was using the google business suite to run my own small business. I shut that down two years ago now, so there's nothing really keeping me on Chrome any more.
I swapped back to FF a few days ago and YouTube works fine now. So I'm back on the FF train and giving Google the finger the whole way over banning the adblockers that I liked.
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if ads were normal and unobtrusive. We wouldn't need ad blockers. Instead we get an almost unusable internet where ads take up more and more real estate. I had been running an ad blocker for so many years that when a friend (who doesn't use an ad blocker) showed me a website, the unfiltered experience was horrifying.
I went to help out a friend, a few years ago, he runs vanilla Edge, I can't believe anyone actually uses the internet like that.
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This is probably the single thing that got me to switch to Firefox. Privacy whatever, I don’t care about my data or the morality of my tech company or whatever, but mess with my adblocker and goodbye.
Can I have your bank account username and password?
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Axate (used to be called Agate) is trying something like this. Popbitch (sue me) use it to charge 0.25 per article or 0.50 for access for a week, but it doesn't seem to be very widespread
I tried https://popbitch.com/royal-blush/ on firefox with ublock turned off and the microtransaction box after the faded out text still didn't display so it might have some way to go yet
Axate
Huh, I hadn't heard about them, probably because they're UK based? Thanks! I'll check them out.
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This is probably the single thing that got me to switch to Firefox. Privacy whatever, I don’t care about my data or the morality of my tech company or whatever, but mess with my adblocker and goodbye.
I’m mostly in the same boat. If you really want to know my kink-search-history, I really DGAF. The morality is nice to think about but it’s all about your personal morals in a lot of cases.
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firefox is going through thier own enshittifcation down the line, they changed ther policy about data recently
As I understand it that has more to do with covering their ass. They haven’t changed their practices.
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What problems with YouTube did you have?
Something was going wrong with video playback. Unfortunately, this was about 10 years ago so I don't remember many specifics about what the problem was.
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firefox is going through thier own enshittifcation down the line, they changed ther policy about data recently
They changed the wording of their policy for legal reasons. They haven't actually changed what they do. They already updated the text of the policy to clarify.
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Something was going wrong with video playback. Unfortunately, this was about 10 years ago so I don't remember many specifics about what the problem was.
I've exclusively used firefox to watch youtube on Arch and Ubuntu for years, never had a problem so far for what it's worth. I keep a laptop in the livingroom with Arch specifically to have adblocking and piping the video out to the TV. The youtube apps are terrible on the Roku last I remember, haven't tried it in forever but I think the main reason was I didn't want to see ads anymore.
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And if you don't like Firefox, use one of the Firefox forks. Some of them are very Chrome-like.
They’re too strict, unless you have one that’s usable by default?
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I actually really like Firefox for reading pdf's, how is it in chrome? I've never actually tried chrome for that because I was still using okular back when I still had chrome installed on anything.
The main issue I have with Firefox is that some pdfs have this side-by-side layout (especially rpg pdfs) that Firefox respects and I keep having to turn it off every time I load a new one. Chrome doesn't respect it and shows it a page at a time like I want. My eyes don't work too good so side by side the text is just too small.
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It probably didn't have anything to do with Firefox itself. It's likely related to something I messed up in FF or it was something to do with the ancient laptop I had at the time being a junk heap, but I tried Chrome and noticed that the trouble didn't exist there. So I started using Chrome.
I kept using it because of all the google integration, which was really handy when I was using the google business suite to run my own small business. I shut that down two years ago now, so there's nothing really keeping me on Chrome any more.
I swapped back to FF a few days ago and YouTube works fine now. So I'm back on the FF train and giving Google the finger the whole way over banning the adblockers that I liked.
t probably didn’t have anything to do with Firefox itself
It probably did. Google has been caught red-handed with messing with Youtube to break Firefox.
https://www.reddit.com/r/youtube/comments/17z8hsz/youtube_has_started_to_artificially_slow_down/
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never had a problem with firefox and youtube
I know what he's talking about- there was some javascript spec or something that google proposed, and nobody else bought in, so it never actually became part of javascript's standard.
But google implemented it into chrome's javascript engine anyway, and then used it for youtube. There was some fallback code if the new functions weren't available, but, because of a 'mistake' they didn't work and basically made playback ass for a while until the open source community basically debugged and fixed the issue FOR google, and then spent a few weeks cramming it down google's throat that it needed fixed.
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if ads were normal and unobtrusive. We wouldn't need ad blockers. Instead we get an almost unusable internet where ads take up more and more real estate. I had been running an ad blocker for so many years that when a friend (who doesn't use an ad blocker) showed me a website, the unfiltered experience was horrifying.
Instead we get an almost unusable internet where ads take up more and more real estate.
Its even worse than just hurting usability. Lots of ad networks are not policing their advertising customers and malicious payloads have been injected from ads. So allowing ads is a security risk because of the lack of security at the various ad networks.
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firefox is going through thier own enshittifcation down the line, they changed ther policy about data recently
I read about this too, and it worries me. Google has donated over a billion dollars to Mozilla over the years. That alone doesn't scare me so much as it's a blatant propaganda tool to deflect the antitrust sentiment that plagues them and will probably some day do its work of breaking them apart.
Fortunately, there are numerous open source forks. I am currently using Librewolf, a fork of firefox focused on privacy and anti-tracking, and it has worked without a hitch. A couple of my extensions have required fiddling with to get right but it's part of life if you care about these things.
