I have converted most of my family and friends to ff in the past month. I take my time and help them understand why the change is needed.
The biggest reason they were afraid to move was because they had stored years worth passwords and other setting on their browsers.
Take some time and help a few people out. If everyone convert a few people and explain why they need to and help them with their issues. We can do this.
Mr don't be evil has become too evil at this point.
I also had a lot of passwords in chrome. So, what I often do is open passwords.google.com in a Firefox tab. Just a tip for anyone who thinks they're in that situation.
While switching browsers, I also adopted an open source password manager that has a Firefox plugin. Because passwords are migrating, I opted to move to a cloud-free solution. (This tip might be too much to suggest, depending on who you're trying to convert)
I also do that. I even help people move away from windows to Linux. I don't force them I just explain how it works and what the differences are. And if they have issues they can always contact me. Not everyone goes for Linux some people require applications that don't work on Linux or have less good alternatives.
But Firefox is an easy step.
This is great advice! Instead of expecting non-techies to handle the migration to more ethical platforms by themselves or leaving them in the control of large corporations, us techies have an obligation to help them with such tasks.
How do I help my non-techy friends to not be in control of technical decisions large organizations (I don't really have those) or to make the right decisions, while there are 10 "techy people" recommending Chrome, for every 1 privacy aware techy person like me, if not more, and these non-techy friends are not able to judge who has their best interest at heart or who knows their stuff best? How do they know who is the most knowledgeable?
There is always a huge temptation to choose convenience over privacy or security. If then some technical person recommends that avenue ...
And then comes along some accidental change, that breaks YouTube or GMail or whatever on Firefox ...
Thanks for asking. I haven't finished thinking it through, and I am young without much experience, but I think a possible avenue would be a return to the expectation that there is an "IT guy in the family" to help set up phones and computers for others to use. Essentially, there needs to be a culture change. There is some prior literature to this, for example https://runyourown.social/.
In this case, the non-techies don't need to know or care much about free software, convenience vs privacy/security, who is most knowledgeable, how to not be in the control of large corporations, etc., since it'll be the techie's job to help them set up their OSes and teach them how to use the functionality that they want to use. Additionally, I am assuming that techies are principled enough and knowledgeable enough to hold their own against corporations' anti-user decisions and advertising.
As a practical example, if a techie is culturally expected to buy and set up a laptop for a non tech-savvy member of the family, then the techie can simply install Tor Browser instead of Chrome and set it up to make sure it's working. Any additional instructions, if needed, can be taught via post-it notes. Humans are adaptable, and if the internet speed is acceptable via Tor, then I don't think most people would care or complain.
Of course, I cannot ignore the fact that to some people this seems like a power-grab by techies, or that people's expectations of technology has changed from "oh I'll just ask the IT family member" to "I expect to be able to use <device> out of the box". But I think this is an idea worth exploring, given how flexible it is.
> return to the expectation that there is an "IT guy in the family" to help set up phones and computers for others to use.
Definitely this. This is the only way to make-sure people around us are protected. If enough tech people do this, we will have a better tech ecosystem for all of us.
Atleast for me, I haven’t found an easy way to do it. Usually its about being the tech guy for them. I really dislike the “non techies are bad because they bother the techies for small issues” meme, surely you are not so busy as to not be able spend a hour on a loved one. Ever since a computer repair shop scammed my parents, doing tech support is something I enjoyed doing for people I know. Why know something if you cant share it with others? If something takes a considerable time to fix I will take the issue over to a shop that I trust and make-sure things are in order once its returned.
Whenever I fix something or install something I explain what I am doing, and why I am doing it, and I think at least in my experience years of helping my friends and family they at this point trust me when explain to them why something is important. Everyone values their privacy everyone gets concerned when they realize how creepy some companies are.
As a fellow Brave user I fear for the longterm viability of the browser. They are an ad company at the end of the day, not browser maintainers. They lack the capital and I fear technical ability to maintain a truly separate fork, which may be required in the near future. They were already railroaded into the “no JPEG-XL” decision Google made.
> most sites don't care about Firefox compatibility
This is FUD. Can you please name specific sites that don't work in firefox? Even all of google's stuff works fine, particularly when seen thorugh the eyes of non-technical people.
I got endless issues opening an app the second time. Didn't happen in Chrome.
As for sites that specifically doesn't care about Firefox, that was in a private talk with another frontend developer, so I can share neither the name or a URL as proof.
Ironically by killing Google you highly likely will put Mozilla into a surviving. I doubt they will figure out how to deliver any new “big” features without being able paying their talented devs without a such funding.
It doesn't "fund" it - it buys its position as the default search engine in Firefox, which makes up the bulk of Mozilla's income. In this theoretical world where Google actually goes away, presumably some other company would want to pay for that position.
> The internet is for end users: any change made to the web platform has the potential to affect vast numbers of people, and may have a profound impact on any person’s life. [RFC8890]
> User needs come before the needs of web page authors, which come before the needs of user agent implementors, which come before the needs of specification writers, which come before theoretical purity.
Google as a company just does not care. No amount of pointing out violations of web standards or norms is going to make them care and statements such as this only amount to indignation-fueled, self-congratulatory rhetoric.
> > The internet is for end users: any change made to the web platform has the potential to affect vast numbers of people, and may have a profound impact on any person’s life. [RFC8890]
That ship sailed when the W3C accepted EME. The internet ceased to be about the end users, but for media company and their DRM. They didn't have to accept it as a standard, if Google and Netflix wanted their own DRM system then their problem, not the web.
You can easily pretend you're respecting the priority of constituencies if you (i.e. Google) just say that the needs of web page authors are the needs of users ("otherwise the websites users want to visit would disappear").
Yeah... executive stakeholders will fire you on the door spot if you come in with that sort of excuse. "How do you assure that our intellectual property, which is worth billions of dollars, is uncompromised?"
I thought I was gonna find some comment in here appreciating Revoy's artistry and dedication for his craft and his commitment to FOSS but it seems everyone just jumped on the web browser argument. It makes me realize how his work just goes unappreciated, like those beautiful snippets he did for a guide to Git.
I didn’t previously know of this guy, but I also hoped there would be more discussion of the artwork cuz I really like it. The uBO shield was such a nice touch as well. Thanks for adding some context to Revoy, I’ll definitely check out more of his stuff
Serous question: I don't get why so much steam goes towards Chrome which can be basically open source (Chromium) and the same folks accept Microsoft Windows perfectly well (which is closed source and has much bigger impact on our privacy IMHO)
Edit: same with MacOs?
Whether the source is open doesn't matter, and in fact I think that's part of a distraction; it's orthogonal to the issue of whether the software respects the user's freedom or is a way for a third-party to control the user (turning it into a "used"). Both closed and open source user-hostile software exists, and the same goes for software that isn't user-hostile.
Also, I suspect many of those who are anti-WEI are also either not Windows users, or Windows users who are grudgingly doing so and have also killed off the spyware and customised the environment to their own liking, which can still be done even without requiring source code.
I think you’re confusing two things. How open standards are developed/pushed vs open source.
In the context of web integrity API, what good does it do that chromium can be open source? Whether a browser is potentially fully open source has no impact on the bad google is doing by pushing evil we. standards through the mainline chrome browser.
Personally I’ve switched to just using Safari on MacOS simply because giving Apple some power against Google in adoption of web standards is beneficial in my view. Apple is one of the few companies not incentivised by maximising ad revenues which is really toxic to the web. Not that I like what Apple is doing in general.
On Windows I’ve used Firefox only for years. (Why not on MacOS? My laptop (only macOS machine I have) is a bit old, safari runs smoother, and I like the iOS integration futures)
Can’t speak for everyone else but I just think that getting people to change their OS is much harder than getting people to change their web browser, so it makes sense to start there.
Chromium is in that awkward position where it is technically an open-source community-driven project but in practice operates like a closed-source one. Google has complete control over decisions and can make changes that serve their profits (see: JPEGXL debacle).
Of course, you can make the same critique of Firefox, but at the very least they are a nonprofit foundation and don’t have enough market share to abuse their power.
I think the main issue is the concern over whether you can access other resources on the web. E.g., windows doesn't allow websites to refuse service to you based on, say, your physical address; but the web integrity (WEI) proposal might allow a website to refuse service to your new custom browser because it can't implement WEI.
Imagine instead that chrome refuses to start if WEI can't be guaranteed (but otherwise it doesn't do anything). Is it annoying and dumb? Sure, but it doesn't limit how you can connect to the internet.
I mentioned here (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36886572) that I think a better aligned proposal might be to introduce some system for pluggable 3rd party attestations that could be used by websites to verify the that the user is in some sense real. I imagine a lot of people would still object to this, but to me it would remove a lot of the concerns about the open web, since anyone would be able to build a browser integrating with the attestation services (I imagine some sort of service like LetsEncrypt would exist for this, although it's not clear what websites would settle on as being trusted attesters, if it's only a small set of companies then there's still some issues I think).
This whole debate has been interesting to me, since in some sense even with WEI the web is still a thing, it's just that it would be sent back to the 90s. E.g., any website would still be able to allow you to visit without WEI, but large swaths of the internet as used today might be unavailable without it.
Google, in all its products, is adopting aggressive architectural decisions that break interoperability, sacrifice user freedom and strongly favor their proprietary business models. They are not interested in building an open Internet. They're building a business where users have no ownership of their data, everything runs on their servers and they are getting a commission on each step and layer of service/application creation, delivery and consumption.
Most people use very little that is not available via a browser these days. MS Office, Spotify, Netflix, e-mail, banking, chats, everything is available. And for gaming there are solutions like Geforce Now. Sure if you want to find something which is not available, you will find something.
Yes, a switch to Linux comes with some change for the people, but what do you expect? Doing a switch without changing anything?
For my grandpa the switch to Linux was easier than the switch from Windows XP to Windows Vista...
That's just inaccurate. Microsoft Office is one of the easiest things to replace; LibreOffice takes some getting used to, but it does what you need it to do.
What's going to be harder is Microsoft Exchange, but if people work in a company that uses Exchange, they need to push their Exchange admin to enable SMTP and IMAP.
You should not be using Exchange for calendar synchronization anyway, and I am sure there are better dedicated alternatives in the OSS world. Probably something like Nextcloud which comes with numerous useful apps.
For video editing I think Kdenlive does everything you need for basic editing.
> Microsoft Office is one of the easiest things to replace; LibreOffice takes some getting used to, but it does what you need it to do.
Nope. No. Nada. No way.
MS Office is one of hardest software to replace. On the same level as proprietary SCADA system alike. I know this hard way.
Yes, if you only need prepare new small documents and print them out into PDF or on physical paper, you could replace MS Word with almost anything - LibreOffice, OpenOffice, KWord, Google Docs (though, Google Docs has very primitive style system, but if you need to make small simple documents, you don't need good style system anyway).
As soon as you need to work with documents created by others, and exchange these documents with others in office format (not PDF), oh man. When document was created in Office'2000 (yes, in 2020s), edited by several other versions by different people on computers with different fonts and locales, when it contains images, sections with multiple columns, is formatted half with styles (both paragraph and character ones) half by direct applications by attributes like "Bold" and "Interline space"... And you need to edit it and pass to the next person with unknown version of MS Office - good luck to use anything but MS Word. Same with Powerpoint.
Yes, MS Word could break such document too - but typically by rearranging images and adding unneeded pagebreaks, not by showing only blank pages or replacing all fonts with Courier New. After any alternative you could get anything, literally anyhting. And your OpenOffice will show "perfectly" formatted document, only your counterpart with MS Office will complain that YOU ruined document.
How do I know this? My wife is freelance translator. We've tried not to pay for MS Office several times, because, you know, new version of *Office is compatible for MS Office at last. But no, it could be Ok for next 10 clients, all looks good, and eleventh will yell t you by phone because result you provided him looks completely different in his MS Office (including, as I mentioned, empty pages without text at all or all these fancy fonts replaced with one Courier New - it is real cases from my experience).
And don't let me start to rant about Excel where people write crazy macros in VBasic and such - good luck to use any other software when you need to communicate and exchange documents with other Excel powerusers.
I love that picture as it shows the difference in size and how chromium just sucks everything in, but somehow I miss the fallen Konqi (KDE mascot) in it. Konqueror (the KDE Browser) with KHTML was the origin of Webkit and therefore Chromium, but due to the vast improvements Apple (and later Google) made to the code base, KHTML and Konqueror became obsolete.
It's been my worry that at some point Google will force DRM on YouTube and I won't be able to backup interesting channels, but I didn't expect Google will put DRM on majority of websites. Last week Google granted itself rights to scrape all the internet for its AI, but doesn't us to do it.
The genius marketing move behind Google nowadays is convincing people that indexing and scraping are two different things and they are the only entity allowed to do it.
Chrome wants to get rid of fingerprinting, and has for many years (see the entire Privacy Sandbox effort). But they cannot do it unilaterally, they need to identify the legit use cases and design + implement new privacy-preserving technologies to meet those use cases. (Yes, yes, we all know Apple and Firefox have been able to such things unilaterally. But as we've seen by the different reception from Apple having shipped remote integrity attestations in prod for a year to Chrome just proposing it, the rules aren't the same for all browsers.)
Fraud prevention/anti-abuse is both an extensive use case for fingerprinting and the most obviously legitimate one. If we demand that browsers close off all the fingerprinting loopholes (it's a great goal!) but don't allow a replacement, the web will be mostly dead as a platform in 10 years. All economic activity will move to native apps on walled garden platforms that are able to provide effective anti-fraud mechanisms.
because it’s not about fingerprinting or even identity, it’s about forcing the browser to not run code like adblock or code that scrapes their treasured data they amassed for AI use
Google knows well enough that their solution does not attest humans - it attests machines which may or may not be used by humans.
The web is already full of vietnamese click farms of physical android devices with real accounts, their narrative is about misdirection
Exactly, anybody who think this will solve any issue with bots needs to take a hard look on Android and how absolutely nothing changed with the play integrity api, the click farms are just as big as before.
It's effective against thirdparty roms and competitors though.
WEI is for controlling what software runs in the stack, from the bootloader upwards. Traditional secure boot gives assurances up to the kernel. WEI will extend it up to the browser. So more layers of the stack are secured from unauthorized modifications.
You should not use the word "secure", it only checks the integrity, it doesn't guarantee any security, same as on Android. Same for "authorized" which is a bit misleading because only manufacturers can authorize modifications, not users.
Trusted is a warm and fuzzy sounding word. But always remember that in terms of security, trust is at best a necessary evil. Trust makes you vulnerable to abuse of that trust.
My guess is that they want to stop bots from creating Google accounts once and for all. I don’t see them putting DRM on YouTube. That would break every app everywhere, and many of them can never be updated. Most could never be updated to this scheme.
I think this is actually great, users will finally have a reason to switch from Chrome to an open browser.
Ofc they will fight back an allow only their browser on their services, which again will be a great push to use open and privacy conscious alternatives.
So let them go as closed as they want
I feel like the concept of Open Web runs hard against the institutions that fund the development and growth of the internet. I'm not saying I don't support the Open Web concept. I do but it seems more like a pipe dream than something that will just happen.
If a country sees the internet as a threat it will just create its own network and only allow its population to see what it deems alright. I would say most internet today is curated. The largest issue in addition to lack of openness networks is what the network contains, we have min maxed the internet for profitability and in the wake more tech debt which no one wants to own.
You are probably asking tech debt? Let me just say this tech debt comes in the shape of garbage data, false news articles and propaganda. Last one propaganda isn't necessarily something a government makes but business do it to for misdirection. This is usually done because there is no accountability for anyone utilizing the internet.
What I'm getting at is the fact there is a lack of accountability those who keep building up the internet keep piling garbage on garbage. One day the internet will cease because there will be so much unimportant information and misinformation on the internet that it will force governments to curate the internet. Which they sort of do already.
So before we can have truly an Open Web we need to help pick up the trash we've all created over the years. Set regulations that protect the internet from further garbage. If we don't hold someone accountable eventually we will be forced down the path of a Closed Web.
I strongly believe in Open Web from browsers to the freedom of starting your own webpage without restrictions. We just have to make progress.
I also really hope to see the open web make a resurgence, but I have no faith in regulation as the answer. I'm not actually sure how regulating the open web would work, seeing as regulations require laws to be written by someone deciding what can and can't be done on the internet.
Bottom-up solutions are often the hardest, and a massive undertaking compared to top-down alternatives, but if the goal is am open web I can only see that working bottom up.
Not least of all, top-down regulations that actually improve the open web would be extremely difficult when companies like Google have nearly unlimited funds and most regulators and politicians are already well accustomed to being captured. Even on a good day I would expect well-meaning regulators to ask the "experts" at Google how it's supposed to work and what the regulations should be. The FAA allows Boeing to regulate itself as does the FDA with pharmaceutical companies, why would this be different?
Not sure that I follow, but the open web is a bottom up approach rather than to down. Top down would be a controlled system with regulations and punishment, that isn't open at all.
Well the Open Web is one thing in the Internet of Things. Imagine what changes if we move closer to a closed web environment how that changes other things in the umbrella term. Open Web is desirable but the clock is ticking to a closed web.
Ah OK I follow you now. Unfortunately I think that clock on the open web has already ended, we've effectively had a closed web for at least a decade.
Google sure seems to want to hammer in that final nail, but it's been a long road to get here.
Honestly I can't help but think we'd be better of revisiting early decisions made in Http itself, especially cookies though long-lived connections are also risky. The gemini protocol is really interesting in that area, but I can't help think they rolled it back to far with odd decisions like not requiring cert verification, utf-8 encoding URLs, and only supporting GET requests.
I think you read the first paragraph and off ranted.
Firstly I am for Open Web, but the lack of regulation enforcing accountability prevents this from ever occurring. Tech debt in various forms also prevent this. We need to get passed those two large hurdles.
I don't see Open Web happening because the further decades of tech debt the further we get from the goal.
The fight was already lost, we must now fight the consequences of our defeat. Every year google squeezes its hold and introduces new chrome 'features' to serve its purposes. Platform capitalism seems to have come to a new stage, consolidation of power, closing off borders. Maybe now people will come to realize why protocols matter, and you can't replace them with APIs.
Unfortunately protocols seem to have no chance as long as people just want convenience and immediate gratification. For companies there's no profit in protocols, we love talking about motes and with data that means owning users' data and clutching onto like Gollum with his precious ring.
We don’t live in a perfect world, and the priority should be preventing Google from having complete control over the internet. If you have any better ideas for how to do that, please let us know.
> Is a national park "tarnished", if funded with tax money coming from a highly-polluting industry...?
The difference is the majority of national parks funding might not come from highly-pollting industry. Mozilla corp would not survive for long without Google's bribes.
What do you propose as the alternative? And do you have any reason to believe FF is making meaningful decisions based on coercion from Google?
Mozilla has to keep paying the bills. I expect most people would be upset if they starting charging for the browser or selling ads, and I frequently see complaints when they focus on any products other than FF and MDN. If private donations won't cut it and sponsorships tarnish their standing, what's left?
Private internet/VPNs with no government presence/censorship is the only way forward. Buy all your SDR transceivers while you can before they get outlawed lol
Mmmm, maybe because the last version of Safari that could be installed on Windows was from 2012 and Windows is still the most used computer OS at home and at work?
And when was the last version of Safari on Linux?
And using Firefox on iOS or Android allows you to sync your settings and history etc and send tabs between devices (and you should be happy, it uses Webkit on iOS -at least for now- because Apple won't have it any other way).
Perhaps because Firefox, and the Mozilla foundation as a whole, are one of the few projects not trying to milk you for data nor money? Might be a good enough reason in my book.
> The detachment from reality I see in some HN readers is really mind boggling sometimes.
I try to balance it out by flagging unconstructive comments, leaving it alone, and participating in more constructive threads instead. For reference, take the classic "don't feed the trolls" advice, in combination with Lobster's flag types:
> For comments, these are: "Off-topic" for drifting into meta or topics that aren't related to the story; "Me-too" when a comment doesn't add new information, typically a single sentence of appreciation, agreement, or humor; "Troll" for derailing conversations into classic arguments, well-intentioned or not; "Unkind" when uncharitable, insulting, or dismissive; and "Spam" for promoting commercial services.
The biggest reason they were afraid to move was because they had stored years worth passwords and other setting on their browsers.
Take some time and help a few people out. If everyone convert a few people and explain why they need to and help them with their issues. We can do this.
Mr don't be evil has become too evil at this point.