The best time to switch to Firefox was 5 years ago. The second best is today.
this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2023
163 points (97.7% liked)
Technology
59641 readers
2694 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Oops, I switched 15 years ago,
I switch when it was Phoenix, then switch again when it was Firebird, and finally switch when it become Firefox
I went straight from Mozilla Navigator to Firefox 1.0.
Tabs were such a crazy new thing back then. You would show tabbed browsing to someone (rather than opening new windows) and they thought you were a wizard. IE5 didn’t have tabs, so nerds moved to Mozilla/Firefox. Then IE6 came out but still didn’t have tabs. By the time IE7 came out, I’d had tabbed browsing for 5+ years.
you win Firefox!
Hat trick!
Noob. I switched in 2006 - 17 years ago.
I cannot be 100% certain but I'm confident I was using it not long after the 1.0 release. That'd put me at 2004. 19 years!
Although I did briefly switch over to Chrome when it was new and fast. Then switched back when Firefox had a major optimization pass.
The early Chrome was crazy fast when it had none of the bloat.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/nCgQDjiotG0
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
What took you so long?!?
I had to pee!
10 to 15 years ago, myself. Don't remember exactly.
Sorry, that's 3rd best at most, according to the data above. Sorry, I don't make the rules!
Google has a web-browser?
I use Firefox since it's release. It was never bad. I don't get all the Chrome users.
It has a pretty severe memory leak issue during the period where Chrome siphoned off most of its users.
I used it since netscape navigator XD
Funnily enough - this article is 3 years old
Does it have native dark pages. Why I use brave. Would use Firefox but it's glaring white
Firefox has dark mode.
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.
Firefox + Ublock Origin blows Google Chrome out of water.
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)
Most people aren’t concerned about privacy outside of places like here and Reddit.
With Chrome killing ad blocking, they'll quickly care
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.
Hmmm, on the bright side, with lemmy going mainstream maybe some of this culture (including privacy and FOSS) becomes more and more openly discussed.
As much as I love Lemmy I don't see it going mainstream :/
It's too weird for the general user
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.
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.
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.
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
Chrome does have a use, namely Selenium and automation.
I'm guilty of having Chrome on my PC, as I need to nerf over my favourites to Firefox.
Firefox is my browser of choice on my Google Pixel 7, but then again no doubt it makes little difference.
I just choose to use a VPN, so any targeted adverts are blocked regardless of the profile built up from my browsing habits.
You can use the Gecko webdriver for Selenium
It's ironic that there are over 60 blockable elements and such over Privacy Badger and Ublock origin on that page.
With the number of people concerned about privacy, it is a wonder how privacy is still a word in the dictionary
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.
what are some necessary addons besides ublock?
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
With the number of people concerned about privacy, it is a wonder why chrome is even popular.
It's no wonder. It's because people aren't actually concerned about privacy.
If you ask someone if they're "concerned about privacy" many people will of course say yes. If you follow up that question with "what are you willing to do about it", you'll find that the answer is a resounding "not a God damn thing". If they were they would spend 3 minutes on Google looking for an alternative browser that works even better than Chrome but without the privacy invasions.
A browser is the low-hanging fruit on the "do-you-care-about-privacy meter". It's the one step with no sacrifices and the highest increase in privacy.
I have too use Edge at work. Is Edge also implementing this shit?
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.
TOR browser is built off of Firefox and is even more private.
This kid is a dumb pile of shit. I recommend everyone block him.
Seems someone forgot their meds.
Chrome just werks
I used chrome for less then 1 day ..it always sucked