The Chrome team says they’re not going to pursue Web Integrity but…
it is piloting a new Android WebView Media Integrity API that’s “narrowly scoped, and only targets WebViews embedded in apps.”
They say its because the team “heard your feedback.” I’m sure that’s true, and I can wildly speculate that all the current anti-trust attention was a factor too.
K, I’m still not using Google search engine anymore. And once I find a replacement for any other Google services and devices I have, it’s out with those as well.
Both leaving reddit and leaving google s.e. were two things that I thought would be harder than they were.
Just need to install Linux as your primary OS and your transition to software freedom will be complete.
Doing so on the desktop is easy enough. Getting rid of Android appears to be a much harder challenge, though.
Android is opensource. You can get phones that support ROMs like LineageOS (would recommend a FairPhone) or /e/ (godawful name, good ROM) for example - you can buy the Murena phone for this.
Linux phones are about 5 years away from mainstream usability, IMO.
I’m really looking forward to Linux phones. Have been for years. It’s sad that Mozilla and Canonicals ventures didn’t pan out because both had really fun ideas. Hell I say they had the right ideas, it just wasn’t the right time.
Until banking apps except the use of custom ROMs it will be a major stumbling block to switching to them.
I’ve never had an issue using banking apps from Lineage. I use 3 different pretty mainstream ones
I have 3 banking apps installed right now through Aurora Store (FLOSS access to Google Store). They work fine. The only bank that didn’t like my degoogled phone, I dropped.
Monesse, Monzo and Revolut all refused to work for me. They’re mobile-only banks so maybe that’s the reason.
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I second the recommendation for Fairphone w/ CalyxOS. Feels just like having a Google Pixel running Android. Just way way more private.
Linux phones are about 5 years away from mainstream usability, IMO.
Is this gonna turn into a new meme?
Maybe 😄
I’ve tried running Replicant and degoogled Lineage OS on an old Samsung phone many years ago. The experience was a bit rough, but tolerable as long as you’re a tech enthusiast and willing to make some sacrifices. Back then it wasn’t quite acceptable to me, because my bank app didn’t work. Then they announced that they were going to phase out the old code paper, so authentication through a mobile app was seen as the only acceptable method going forward.
I have tried /e/ os, I have found it to be meh
Fingers crossed that linux gets better support and development on phones
I can reccommend graphene os however u need a pixel for that
Lemmy has a hate boner for Apple but iOS is dope
Apple is not much different than Google
Heaps better when it comes to data collection and privacy, if you’re concerned about that.
their privacy policy is not much different.
I use it for work but at home with gaming and stuff it’s just not sustainable
Proton keeps getting better and better. I long for the day when I can ditch windows completely and it might not be too far away.
If by “not too far away” you mean “5+ years ago,” then sure. That’s how long I’ve been gaming Linux-only, anyway.
Is it possible to mod Bethesda games on Linux?
Yes, I’ve done it myself following some tutorials online for Skyrim SE. It’s not as simple as on Windows but it’s definitely possible.
Yeah you just use Mod Organizer 2 same as on Windows.
How’s Factorio on Linux?
If I can play that I’ll move.
it’s native since inception, i believe
prolly even runs better than on windows, although it doesn’t really matter since it’s so freaking optimized
It works perfectly fine for me.
Proton is made by Steam, which locks you into their platform.
However Wine in general, as well as Lutris also keeps getting better which is great.
Proton can also be used by other tools like Bottles. It’s very similar to Lutris but with a more general purpose focus, rather than just gaming.
What games do you play that aren’t compatible? I don’t play many of the really mainstream games. I think the last game I played that wasn’t compatible at the time was genshin impact.
Leaving google isn’t hard.
Leaving YouTube specifically, however… Well, it’s been getting easier as content seems to be less and less frequent or quality.
I use piped/newpipe etc. and simply support creators i watch via patreon/direct donations/merch. Less money for shitty ad company more money for creatives.
Maps is the last one to replace. There are so many ads now that I’ll tolerate a lower quality alternative.
There’s are some OpenStreetMap-based apps that are worth checking out. Some of them are made for specific purposes, while other are for general navigation. I’ve tried some of them through the time with various success, though I’ve still haven’t found a favorite to stick with for good. But I believe making the switch is definitely possible and probably worth it!
You can install all the mentioned apps through F-Droid:
- GraphHopper Maps
- OsmAnd+
- Organic Maps (hike/bike)
- Alpi Maps (hike/bike)
- SeaMapDroid (nautical)
Additionally, use Transportr for public transport navigation almost anywhere in the world, and GMaps WV, a restricted WebView wrapper for accessing the web version of Google Maps. Intended for use when OpenStreetMap isn’t enough.
I use OSMAND
I can definitely recommend maps.me it’s a great app with default offline maps. It was a great tool when traveling abroad without internet
This is true, I still use youtube and I don’t see it changing soon since there are no viable alternatives.
Closest I’d say would be a service like Odysee. Can’t really say whether their practices are better than yt or not, but I can at least confirm I’ve found a few channels I don’t wanna sub to on yt also have accounts on Odysee. As to whether or not they made those accounts/channels is a different story.
Peer tube but no one actually makes content for it far as I can tell.
and you can’t watch content from other instances right?
Personally, I can’t imagine what is on YouTub that’s worth watching. I don’t know, I haven’t used it in ages.
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VSauce2 is so weird. His topics are interesting and research behind the vids is done well, but the presentation is, well, not for me. Too many jump cuts and “reveals”.
I think that’s unfair, there is so much content there and so many content creators that saying there is nothing worth watching just comes out as snobbish.
The sheer variety is the key to YouTube’s dominant position. Whatever subject you want to watch something about, there’s a very good chance you’ll find it.
GraphHopper
I can’t speak for your particular interests, but in my experience there is something for pretty much every niche. That’s what keeps YouTube in their dominant position as well.
Nebula is a good alternative
I still worry that leaving Reddit is going to make it tilt to the right. I spent a decade posting there in the hopes that it would nudge people towards sanity.
I think it probably already is somewhat, but there comes a point where trying to change the system from within becomes futile and complicit.
I’d rather be out here making a better place.
The right use it and all other social media sites for coordinated disinformation. No matter how much you try to combat it you’re going up against people/ideas with deep pockets and a lot of resources meaning your voice is just a drop in the bucket.
Sure, but there are a lot more of us, and we make more sense.
It’s important to present people with the contrasting view when they’re presented with disinformation. It’s natural to believe the first thing you read if it’s just a narrative with no dissent.
leaving reddit is easy leaving google is pretty damn difficult
The hard part is the cost difference (I haven’t looked terribly deeply yet) Family Proton (3TB) is 395 AUD (when you sign up for 2 years)
2 TB, 125 AUD per year for google drive, and it’s per year.
Pro-rata that’s literally twice as expensive, and you have to sign up for 2 years to get that rate, which makes moving my stuff a hard pill to swallow :(
Is there a plug and play service that’s as good as proton without the hefty premium?
(The single plans are even more steep, 24 months, 158 AUD per year for only 500 GB…)
This is something I wrote in another thread earlier but it’s relevant here too
A security guy popular in the internet, Ollam, recently left Delta’s program because they are changing it to be more pay to play vs miles traveled or something. Delta walked it back but he’s sticking to his guns. In his rant, he said something poignant. Something to the effect of “if your significant other raises their hand like they’re gonna hit you, but they don’t? The time to leave is now.” (Video)
(Quote)
I replaced gmail with protonmail and everything else with nextcloud. Couldn’t go back.
Hosting your own nextcloud I’m guessing?
If so how did you install it?
Their docker stack is pretty simple to setup
Nope, I don’t have a server and I also want to secure my files in a different location so I paid for hetzner.
After a lot of privacy switching I finally did try NextCloud, but I couldn’t get port forwarding to work on my Internet and gave up… For now
You are probably behind a nat. I contacted my isp and they disabled it, since it works perfectly!
What do you mean nat? For me there is an app with an option (apparently no other way) and it didn’t worj
Compare what your router reports as ip and compare what your public ip is. If its not the same then that means you are behind a nat(?)(or something else) and you can’t port forward now.
Question: can email from gmail be imported into proton mail?
Yes, they even have a walk through on how to do it.
Based
Honestly. Off the back of this debacle I switched to Firefox and duckduckgo. Previously I used to use the shit out of incognito because I hated that when I searched for something once that I then get that thing popping up everywhere else in ads etc. Since the switch I no longer get the feeling of being stalked.
NoScript helps a lot, too. I suppose other extensions also. It’s horrifying how many sites embed Google and Facebook tracking, including ones that really shouldn’t like medical sites and banks.
DuckDuckGo has an extension that blocks trackers.
My concern is saving my email and photos before my account is randomly banned one day with no customer service and no recourse. God only knows what data they already harvested from when I used to back up my photos with their service.
Just grab a copy using Google Takeout, then after that use Syncrify, FolderSync, Resilio Sync or something else to automatically copy your phone media to your computer.
Definitely the first step is to get more SSDs. I was traveling a lot and barely used a desktop or even a laptop for 6-7 years. I’ll check out those sync systems, thanks.
On the topic of this, what is the best alternative out there? A few years ago I’ve tried a couple options, out of curiosity, but the search quality was super poor for anything that’s not in English, and the accuracy of found content wasn’t always there
I reckon Kagi is the best search engine out there. It’s paid though. Second I’d have Qwant followed by DDG.
Best? Kagi. Best free? Probably bing or searx
https://ecosia.org as a search engine :) Uses bing in the background (and newly also google), but your data isn’t sold (AFAIK).
If you want opensource there’s YaCy
I’m on Kagi but I did the one time payment and am unsure about whether I’ll extend. Results are good but 10 dollars a month isn’t insignificant (cheap plan is orders of magnitude less than what I need in searches)
I tried kagi and wasn’t impressed. For all but one or two queries the results were exactly the same as ddg. Not to mention they had that stupid metric stating 78%+ unique kagi results for every search, even though that was blatantly untrue. They seem pretty dishonest as a company.
I use SearXNG. Google’s search results aren’t even good anymore so there’s really no excuse not to switch at this point. For awhile I couldn’t break the habit but recently Google has gotten considerably worse.
I used Ecosia for a long time (almost 5 years) but the search results are pretty bad. Often I had to use another search engine to actually find what I was looking for. DuckDuckGo is pretty good, Brave Search is OK as well but SearXNG is my personal favorite.
Hardcore Mode on IVPN is insane (it blocks Google). Sadly it’ll break a lot of stuff though, but fuck Google.
I adjusted my entire digital life so I can do everything without ever connecting to Google services. I block them in my self-hosted Pi-Hole, on NextDNS and in my OPNsense Firewall.
Mainly I’m talking about random captchas that break. Everything else I can live with.
I refuse to use services that force me to surrender to Google. Why don’t people use hCaptcha, it’s not perfect, but it’s far better than this Google garbage…
That’s much easier said than done. Right now I’m dealing with a late payment on a website because first I couldn’t access the website via VPN (blocked by Cloudflare), then even after allowing the IP to bypass the VPN I couldn’t pass the hidden captcha. After completely disabling the VPN + Google blocker my real IP was blacklisted due to forgetting to clear cookies between the two. Now my credit is being impacted.
That’s why I isolate my financial stuff from everything else, separate device with a separate browser, separate dedicated IP address, etc.
They’re just starting it smaller scale. Within a year it’ll be pushed out to everyone broadly.
This is literally going to be what they did for FLoC. Basically release it as topics.
Google absolutely cannot stop tracking everyone at this point. I’m pretty sure they’ve put the entire house on the bet to track people more and do everything to ensure that Google Chrome tracks every aspect of your web browsing experience.
So while WEI is dead, I think Google’s boat is so far out to sea now that it’s either try this again a bit more gently or watch the ship sink. Everyone said FLoC was dead and they absolutely put it into the web browser with Topics. Nothing convinces me this is any different, they are absolutely going to, and I dare say have an existential need to, put this shit in everyone’s browser.
They get the permissions for the little thing that is worded vaguely enough to them funnel people into the larger thing
I’d like to believe that enough of us actually stopped using chrome and switched to Firefox the day they made that announcement that swayed them… But in reality I’m sure it was just the bad press and they’re going to try to find a different more sneaky way to do the same shit.
I’ve been using Firefox since it was Mozilla.
Amateur. I’ve been using Firefox since Netscape Navigator.
I was born a decade after Netscape navigator was launched. I’m legally an adult. Wow, you’re old!
What shall I say? The first browser I ever used was called “Arena” and it ran on a UNIX system because Windows back then didn’t even have (native) networking - you had to purchase TCP/IP for it from third parties back then.
And one of the first websites I visited was “the original one” on Tim Barners-Lee’s NEXT cube in CERN.
And guess what - there was a network way before the Web. We had chat, “social media” before it was called that, and played online multiplayer games. All without any spam or advertising.
… I still mud. Kind of funny having characters that haven’t logged on for 28 years.
Yep. Could be about as long for me. It was crazy back then.
you had to purchase TCP/IP for it from third parties back then.
LOL WAT?!! The precursor to the WinRAR subscription, huh…
And one of the first websites I visited was “the original one” on Tim Barners-Lee’s NEXT cube in CERN.
Wow, this is kinda like witnessing the moon landing live, right? That’s amazing!
And guess what - there was a network way before the Web. We had chat, “social media” before it was called that, and played online multiplayer games. All without any spam or advertising.
Interesting… Which chat server was this? And what year approximately?
Well, the TCP/IP stack we had was not at all like WinRar. You bought a box with a bunch of disks (5.25in) and some thick paperback manuals. The price was about 150$, and installation was tricky. It only worked with a certain set of network cards. But it did work together with the other network stack back then: Novell Netware, which did the majority of work in corporate networks back then.
The chat had a bit different structure back then. Messages went from client to client, and the “TALK” server only did coordination. There was a system, IIRC it was called NICKSERV or something where you globally registered your nickname.
I was not only watching things back then. I wrote a number of tools that made the rounds back then, a client for such a multiplayer online game that worked both in a text terminal and with a GUI, and a non-interactive NNTP (USENET) client that allowed access to our equivalent of the fediverse remotely. And I even wrote our companies first SMTP (email) gateway to the internet back then. Not “installed” or “configured” - wrote.
Wow, you’re old!
Well, I retire next year so, yeah, I’m that too.
Bah… NCSA Mosaic FTW.
I strayed away over IE6, then Chrome v1.0 for a short period, but then came back to my senses.
From now on, the only browser I’m installing is Firefox.
Chrome market share actually has been declining on desktops since this spring. Could be a factor
Can you actually stop using chrome on android? Because every link I click it opens in their webview app which is chrome
Dunno if this is what you mean, but you can definitely set another browser as default. Any context menus will change too: “Open with Firefox”, or w/e you’re using.
No, I’m not talking about default browser but the WebView app. For example I’m using Voyager for Lemmy, and if I click on this post’s link it will open the website in the WebView, then I can click to Open with firefox.
But WebView itself is still chrome as you can see
You must be on stock android. I think you can still swap out the webview component but I forgot how
You can customize Voyager to open links in default browser not in-app: Settings -> General -> Open Links in
Weird, I can’t see this option
It’s only available if you are using the native app. The PWA doesn’t have that option due to web limitations unfortunately.
Ohhhh I see. Yeah, I think Sync uses Chrome too. Sync has an option to always open links in external web browser, so that’s how I got around that.
It’s even crazier than that. On some versions of Android there is no webview, only chrome! I think that was around Android 8 or so they dropped webview then re-added webview in the next version
I’ve been using Firefox for a couple months now, no issues.
Yeah there is a setting and now when I click links it opens in Firefox. But if you use the Google search widget it still opens in chrome, which is to be expected I guess.
That’s not only a problem for google search, most apps uses webview to handle web links. They can do like Voyager and have a option to open the default browser instead, but most of them don’t bother with that.
To be fair I still think Google services, Microsoft, etc and all that jazz is great, I’m no corporate shill or some free software nutter, but the issue however is the consistent anticompetitive strategies and vendor lock-in used to compensate for a lack of innovation.
Imagine if you could, for about a month, up to a year long period, where you just use a de-googled phone, a live USB and a portable hard drive, you’ll actually have a different perspective and appreciation for what works with computers, printers, etc and our use of technology as a whole
Actually right now Congress is writing new laws for the Internet, and the EU is looking pretty hard as well, so they might be backing off just so they can get the new laws being written minimized.
Not proceeding for now.
Yes, something tells me that they will just switch to attempting to introduce this piecemeal so that fewer people will notice what’s going on.
‘Heard your feedback’ is becoming the death flag of future fuckery these last few years
more like they realised that the Irish data protection officer looked like they were gonna side with privacy advocates over anti-adblock, which is a precursor (and main usecase of) this API
Irish data protection office
I had to look this one up.
https://www.digitalguardian.com/blog/irish-data-protection-puts-google-notice-data-privacy-again
edit: that’s from 2020 about google, not chrome
Po-tay-to, po-tah-to.
Bet they’ll just rename it later, like what they did with FLoC to Ad Topics.
What’s funny is how these companies refer to ads as if it’s something we should be excited about.
“Good news! We’re implementing a new ad delivery feature for your enjoyment! You can now choose what ads to watch, yay!”
Some people actually like personalized ads!
I have no idea why, it feels counter productive to want them to influence you to buy shit you don’t need.
I like my ads to be as unrelated to me as possible, because I wouldn’t spend money on those things anyways.
I have to admit that it can be funny with personalized ads when you google something extremely expensive and get ads for it for months after. Many years ago I searched for a high speed camera (like the one the Slow Mo Guys use) and while I very much want one, I could never afford to spend 0,5 to 1,5 million Euro (or whatever the price was) on one camera. So it was amusing to see all the ads urging me (a then teenager) to buy one.
I looked up the backgammon start position, since then all Google wants to sell me is backgammon boards.
The most interesting and absurd ad I ever got on youtube was for a device for inspecting the coils on a huge grid transformer.
this has me thinking, i might actually be interested in looking at ads if they had only completely random things, like literally anything that exists. At least i wouldnt be annoyed with them so much.
In my experience, ad personalization is still so bad it has no impact, like in your last example. But at least now I’m not seeing random shit. I don’t really bother to try and counter targeted ads, and the vast majority of the ads I get are for products I actually already bought or never intended to buy but was researching for other purposes. Yes, Google knows I spent a lot of time researching drills, but guess what, Home Depot isn’t telling them I bought a drill, so I’ll get drill ads for a month. And yeah, I looked at a bunch of luxury sail yachts, private jets, and cars, but it’s not because I suddenly make more money. It’s because I’m interested in design and engineering. But Google just stupidly assumes I became a billionaire overnight and gives me 100’ yacht ads.
I’d honestly be more worried about a random ad getting lucky and pre-emptively catching my interest. Targeted ads are so reactive it’s not a problem.
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more targeted ads means more spying. That’s bad news in theory and in practice.
I would rather have the ads based on the content I am viewing rather than me.
There’s also a difference between me being a good target for an ad they are going to run and that being a useful ad for me to see. Google optimizes stuff for the advertisers, not for the users.
If it actually tried to find ads for the users instead of finding users for the ads, maybe it would be okay. But that will never happen.
It obviously isn’t a necessity looking at how many Lemmy servers are running on nothing but good will
I don’t need highly specific targeted ads telling my exhausted monkey brain what I currently need in my life. I’m making plenty of poor financial choices with the slightly targeted ads I do see occasionally right now.
That usually means they will have something worse at a later time.
The most likely option is that they will rebrand and we will have to push back against a “completely new, completely different functionality” in a few months.
They have to figure out how to apply DRM to YouTube first.
I mean, Widevine is present in all browsers and actively used by Netflix for example. YouTube also uses this when you’re watching movies on YouTube Movies.
Not running DRM on the majority of YouTube content is also likely due to the added cost of running such encryption (the encryption is usually on a per-customer level, not one key fits all) and the added bandwidth and computer cycles required. Not to mention that this might be a legal struggle with the content creators.
Yeah, it makes me worried about what they have planned to replace it.
They had some of those changes already checked into their code base. It’ll be interesting to see how much of that code comes back out.
My money is on zero. They’ll comment it out and then turn it back on when no one is looking.
Comment out? Nah, they’ll just put it behind a feature flag so it keeps passing the tests.
…yet.
Yeah gotta wait for the heat on this antitrust probe to die down before doing the dirty.
The Advert People are easily startled, but they’ll soon be back, and in greater numbers.
This is your wake up to stop using Chrome and Chromium based browsers (e.g. Brave, Vivaldi, etc). Switch to Firefox if you haven’t already.
Tbf, I have tried but on Android the performance is dogshit. There is a few seconds difference between Firefox loading pages and Chrome loading unfortunately.
If there was a third option I’d gladly take it, but for now Firefox just doesn’t have the functionality and I’m willing to put up with the current state of Google shit. If it gets much worse I may just have to suck it up though.
I use Fennec (fork of Firefox)
the real problem will begin when big websites start blocking unverified browsers. it means the end of spam and ad blockers, but it also means the end of privacy.
My biggest problem is the security and sandboxing around Firefox. I use both, but I feel my passwords are safer in Chrome tbh
I use Firefox on Mobile with the bitwarden addon. Works well for me. Plus you export all your saved Google passwords into bitwarden. I need to make the switch on my PC now.
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But the add-on isn’t sandboxed like in chrome. Like i remember, depending on if you use an external MAC like apparmor or not, where if you’re runnimg in Linux and you’re using Firefox, websites could steal your ssh keys from ~/.ssh/
Malicious addons or websites could easily do the same thing, and steal your bitwarden credentials. Unless you have the premium version, you can’t put otp on it.
This should never be left up to Chrome. We need antitrust laws.
We’ll see how this shakes out in a year.
Eternal vigilance is the price for a free web.
Do we get freedom with it or do we have to double eternal vigilance to get both? 🤔
I believe the scale is
n * log2(n).Yes.
the web has been getting so shitty lately i’ve actually gotten into drawing and reading and vinyl and film, which i highly recommend as a backup plan; just the idea of this feels like the atomic bomb for the internet
The mainstream web… yes.
The back of the house has never been fucking better. Mastodon changed the game. Why hang out at some asshole’s website, hating the website, lacking features and full of advertisements to suck you dry, when you can just come down to the flea market of federated social media and shoot the shit with someone real?
“Flea market of federated social media” is an awesome description!
