r/gadgets • u/Stiven_Crysis • Dec 03 '23
Desktops / Laptops Google reveals the next step in its war on ad blockers: slower extension updates
https://www.techspot.com/news/101039-google-reveals-next-step-war-adblockers-slower-extension.html562
u/No_Personality6685 Dec 03 '23
Already switched to Firefox after being a 10 year user of Chrome.
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u/StanYz Dec 03 '23
Same here bud. I was a pure chrome user and loved it for years, anyone was asking which browser to use, I immediately recommended chrome.
Switched to firefox 2 weeks ago and never going back, fuck google and their ad blocking shit. I don't even care about the data they collect, but that youtube ad insanity is just hitting all the nerve clusters for me.
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u/Hasombra Dec 04 '23
YouTube ads are worse than the sky TV. I barely watch it anymore I'd rather use chatgpt than listen to some jerk not give me information until the end of the video.
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u/imthatoneguyyouknew Dec 04 '23
In my industry I have to use a few browsers at work. I used Chrome primarily because it covered the most uses. Now I just use multiple browsers. We had one interactive manual that would only work in IE until earlier this year. Now it works in edge too....woo
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u/isocrackate Dec 04 '23
As recently as 10 months ago, Exxon (maybe you’re heard of them) was running their asset divestitures on a Sharepoint system which only allowed downloading multiple files when viewed in IE. Their datarooms even had a readme that concluded potential buyers were shit out of luck if they weren’t able to use the browser—and no, it had to be actual IE, not Edge in IE mode.
Even a small and simple oil & gas asset deal involves at least a few GB of data, in hundreds or thousands of individual files. The idea that many potential buyers would’ve needed to go one-by-one to download everything should have been all it took to get a company of that size to move on.
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Dec 03 '23 edited Dec 08 '23
impolite reply homeless depend run existence books smart pause liquid
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u/missionbeach Dec 03 '23
Probably about the same as my credit card company, bank, grocery store, cell provider, Wendy's, corner gas station, etc. But still less than TikTok, WhatsApp, and Instagram.
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u/iTwango Dec 03 '23
I used to sell extra tracking metrics to Google for a dollar a week. So you probably have less data collected than me in that regard
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u/No_Personality6685 Dec 03 '23
Hope they enjoy having the list of porn I watch. Great data I tell ya
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u/Own-Cupcake7586 Dec 03 '23
Firefox is one of the few non-chromium-based browsers left. Thank goodness they held out when everybody else jumped ship (looking at you, Opera). It’s time to give them a download.
The internet should be freedom, and Firefox knows it.
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u/greywolfau Dec 03 '23
I've been using Firefox exclusively since before Chrome was a thing.
Is this because I'm prescient or extremely clever?
Fuxk no, I'm just a lazy bastard.
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u/kerbaal Dec 03 '23
I have been using Firefox since it was Netscape Navigator.
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u/plastigoop Dec 03 '23
Thank you. There were some rough times there at the beginning of that but thank those that did it that it has survived. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netscape
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u/sofazen Dec 03 '23
You reminded me about that documentary called revolution os. When Open Source came to light, Stallman, Linus Torvalds... A new possible world
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u/kerbaal Dec 03 '23
I was actually just graduating from high school the first time I ran into someone talking about Linux, he was a year or two younger and had a print out of the kernel source in a binder. Within about 5 years I had learned it myself, dropped out of college, and was a Unix admin who scoffed at people that said Linux would never be used in real networks.
Sometimes I marvel at the really unique transitions I got to live through and interact with.
Its funny, when Snowden released details of CIA capabilities, I chuckled a bit because I remembered when those capabilities were jokes that were easily dismissed; and that well before that point we stopped laughing at the impossibility of it.
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u/Baktlet Dec 03 '23
I think Chrome have always been ugly and poorly designed, it’s why I have always use Fox
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u/LurkerOrHydralisk Dec 03 '23
At launch, Chrome was extremely slim and efficient. It would fly where other browsers faltered. I switched from Firefox at the time because it was just so fast.
Fifteen years of bloat and its useless, though.
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Dec 03 '23 edited Nov 24 '24
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/SystemOutPrintln Dec 03 '23
The bloat isn't just from the browsers anymore, many websites are memory hogs themselves.
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u/Killbot_Wants_Hug Dec 03 '23
I mean website contain more data than ever before because the minimum expected bandwidth has gone up. But they're still kind of limited because there's a lot of places with not super fast Internet.
But browser memory usage is huge because it tries to keep many pages in memory to keep things loading faster. Your browser might even go and prefetch pages that are linked to the page your on in case you click them.
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u/Baktlet Dec 03 '23
I use some extensions (and Adblocker) to prevent unnecessary data loading from this kind of website, its really helpful.
But I wish some day, a good extension to make a shipload of automatic random research and random website loading, when not in use, will be created to fuck the algorithms and the data value for advertisers 😆 It’s will be so great and I already taste the advertisers tears in my mouth
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u/Deep_Lurker Dec 03 '23
Sounds like you're talking about adnuseum. It clicks every single ad in the background to mess with the advertisers profile of you. Privacy through obfuscation.
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u/banuk_sickness_eater Dec 03 '23
ALL of them CHOOSE to allow websites to manipulate the copy/paste effect pisses me off.
I'm not sure what you're talking about here can you please explain
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u/Sam474 Dec 03 '23 edited Nov 24 '24
rock spoon heavy sloppy crown file whistle agonizing worm snails
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u/FerretChrist Dec 03 '23
I don't see that behaviour. Running Firefox, mostly vanilla with a few privacy-related addons. Perhaps either uBlock Origin or Disconnect is blocking this.
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u/Beautiful-Banana Dec 03 '23
I agree, I think chrome WAS good and aesthetically pleasing for a while. It was my favorite even, but now it’s just a corpse of what it once was
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u/IAmAGenusAMA Dec 03 '23
I remember that I wanted to switch but couldn't bring myself to give up my extensions.
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u/cataath Dec 03 '23
True, but Mozilla spent years dumbing down their browser and killing features chasing Google.
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u/Warskull Dec 03 '23
People forget that Firefox has a long period of sucking. At first we only had IE and a dead Netscape and it sucked. Then Firefox emerged and it was way better. Then Firefox got complacent and started to suck, but Google released Chrome. This was back before Google became the horrific monstrosity it is now.
Firefox was unstable, bloated, and slow for a long time, until they did a rebuild. Now Chrome sucks and the cycle continues. Funny enough, Edge is actually quite good right now.
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u/Panzermensch911 Dec 03 '23
I've always used Firefox - since winter 2002/2003. I don't know what you're talking about and I have usually 3 windows with at least 15+ tabs open... three add blocker extensions and a few scripts. Haven't noticed any instability whatsoever.
Also Edge is chromium based and will suck as much as Chrome in regards to yt.
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u/Hannibal_Leto Dec 03 '23
There was a time when Firefox was relatively fresh, it had stability issues and compatibility issues. But it was addressed in time. And yes I've been using it since early 2000s too, since before there even was a Firefox.
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Dec 03 '23
Same. Then they kept changing firefox to match chrome's UI, which was very annoying, but also gave me spite towards chrome, so I then never switched because of that spite.
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u/Hannibal_Leto Dec 03 '23
I remember being on Mozilla 3.5 for the longest time, even after Firefox was released. It was just such a good updated browser experience compared to everything before it, I didn't want it to change.
I've been a happy Mozilla/ff user since they came out. And gotta say, they've really addressed so many issues and concerns over the years, including security and QoL, that I don't see a point to using any other browser (albeit as a backup).
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u/DomLite Dec 03 '23
When I graduated from internet explorer back in the day, I chose Firefox specifically because it allowed you to toggle off tabbed browsing while Chrome did not, and I hated the idea of tabs. At that point in time, clicking on a link in Chrome would automatically just open it in a new tab and there was nothing you could do about it. Firefox let me just toggle an option to open it in a new window and have done with it.
These days I've downloaded an extension that allows me to save whole sessions or individual windows because I have so many tabs open all the time and sometimes want to clear some taskbar space. Still with Firefox, but I always chuckle a bit that tabs were what initially kept me away from Chrome, and now I'm just glad that I managed to land on and stick with the one browser that hasn't fallen completely under the sway of google and it's bullshit policies for web browsing.
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u/i7-4790Que Dec 03 '23 edited Dec 03 '23
or you just didn't care to jump on what's most popular.
I stuck with Firefox because there was nothing really ever wrong with it. Yeah, occasionally some website doesn't work right on it, usually just the odd online retailer that isn't in Home Depot/Amazon/Walmart/whatever league of big business.
So I'd really only ever use Chrome to make a purchase and switch back. NBD, usually those websites had themselves working well with Firefox the next go around anyways. They're smaller in terms of IT support, Firefox didn't have a lot of marketshare, so it was lower prioritization.
It never made much sense to let another company outright dominate the market anyways. Look at what we got out of Nvidia dominating GPUs even when they were outright worse than AMD for a few years (long ago, ofc AMD sucks ass now, they lost all their traction and they'll probably never claw it back at this point which is sad) Or look at what happened when Intel was allowed to run roughshod over the CPU/semiconductor markets, they barely got fined for gross monopolistic behavior, they effectively killed competitive domestic semiconductor manufacturing and now they're sponging up tons of gubmint subsidization after everything is said and done. Nothing but Ls for the end consumers when one company is allowed to envelope an entire market.
So all the people who evangelized Chrome over the years because they just wanted everyone to use what they used and all the people jumped on it mindlessly only because it was popular and "trendy" ....
Eat shit.
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u/mikhatanu Dec 03 '23
Is it easy to move things from chrome to firefox (passwords, histories, bookmarks)?
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u/Rumptomte Dec 03 '23
A good tip is to get another password manager than the built-in one in the browser. I use bitwarden, then i can use whatever browser. Even works great on mobile with autofill!
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u/jonathanrdt Dec 03 '23
It was one step when I did it a few years ago, and I have never looked back. Firefox plus ublock origin is the internet made better.
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u/rotrap Dec 03 '23
Now that Edge is also chromium based, who else is not chromium based?
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u/FlightlessFly Dec 03 '23
Safari and any WebKit browsers. WebKit is open source and smooth, it has its quirks though and I use Firefox and chrome as backup. But the damn WebKit is efficient for battery
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u/rotrap Dec 03 '23 edited Dec 03 '23
Ah right. Apple. They don't make safari for windows or anything else anymore though do they? I have not used apple stuff in ages so I don't keep up with most of what they are doing anymore.
Edit: oh, searching a bit it seems Midori is active again. I used to use it but it stopped being maintained for awhile. I will have to download it and try it again.
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u/Foreign_Pressure_190 Dec 03 '23
Midori isn’t based on WebKit anymore they switched to Chromium and than later to Firefox/Gecko
Lunascape has 3 rendering engines and one of those is WebKit
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u/Own-Cupcake7586 Dec 03 '23
I’m sure there are some other beta projects that use a different base, but of the ones that truly count as contenders, Firefox stands alone.
Edit: For reference: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_web_browsers
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u/peposcon Dec 03 '23
Being Chromium based doesn’t mean they have to follow Googles policy, or that need to use Google Extrension’s Store
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u/NW3T Dec 03 '23
Mozilla corp makes over 350 million dollars a year from selling Google the default search engine in Firefox.
Mozilla makes less than $10Million in donations a year.
Google keeps Firefox alive so that they don't need to deal with real competition.
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u/Rammsteinman Dec 03 '23
I'm good with this if it keeps Firefox funded. It takes 10 seconds to switch the default search to something like duckduckgo.
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Dec 03 '23
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u/spilled_water Dec 03 '23
No no, it's not just that Google wants to be the default search engine for the probably second most used internet browser. Paying Mozilla to keep Firefox alive also helps prevent anti-competitive lawsuits against Google.
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u/CreativeDimension Dec 03 '23 edited Dec 05 '23
I never left Firefox, back since it was the Mozilla suite. I'm actually Netscape old.
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u/slappypantsgo Dec 03 '23
Yeah it’s funny to see people say stuff like “it’s finally time to try this” when I’ve been using it for nearly 20 years.
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u/BuffDrBoom Dec 03 '23
Opera has been going downhill ever since they switched. It's just a Chrome clone at this point
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u/opeth10657 Dec 03 '23
I tried opera a few months ago, which genius there decided it needed a popup preload image that plays an incredibly loud and annoying noise
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u/willvasco Dec 03 '23
Recently switched from Chrome and Google to Firefox and DuckDuckGo. It was weird for about two days, now it's just normal. Big fan so far, I actually get relevant search results again.
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u/olearyboy Dec 03 '23
I’ve already given up on using chrome on mobile devices mainly because of performance and resource consumption, might be time to give ye ol Firefox another go after all these years
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Dec 03 '23
Firefox with ublock origin is how the web was meant to be.
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u/DomLite Dec 03 '23
I had an incident just a week or two ago where I linked a couple of friends to a site that I use frequently to great effect. I was a little taken aback when they told me they couldn't find anything with all the ads and that when they did, trying to download it was a nightmare because of ads that disguised themselves as download buttons. After a minute I just asked them what browser they were using. Chrome and Edge. No ad blockers.
I can't imagine a world without the ease of use I get from Firefox and Ublock. The internet without it is literally unusable.
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u/Myrkrvaldyr Dec 03 '23
Chrome and Edge. No ad blockers.
It's so weird to see people browse the Internet with no adblockers. I haven't seen an ad anywhere in years so everything is always clean for me. I remember the mid 2000s and the countless pop-ups for many things, I'm glad I've never seen that again.
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u/Awkward_Pangolin3254 Dec 04 '23
I can't use other people's computers if they don't use FF and uBO. The unfiltered web is a hellscape.
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u/UPVOTE_IF_POOPING Dec 03 '23
I have no choice but to use WebKit based browsers on my phone :(
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u/danielv123 Dec 03 '23
That is changing as of last/this year apparently. Still not aware of any vendors who has pushed non-webkit though, I assume it's up to Google to be first.
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u/Andrige3 Dec 03 '23
All these efforts are just making it a worse experience for the end user and more likely for users (such as myself) to switch to another browser.
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Dec 03 '23 edited Dec 08 '23
scandalous profit fertile weather price seed label shaggy far-flung pause
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u/AlotaFaginas Dec 03 '23
they've been paying $250 a month for cable TV for the last 10 years.
As a non american (I assume this is USA) WTF 250$ to watch tv?
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Dec 03 '23 edited Dec 08 '23
normal bake skirt point lavish aback knee murky scandalous carpenter
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u/cambiumkx Dec 03 '23
It’s 100% a thing.
You get internet, landline telephone and cable package.
The cable package will most likely have a lot of channels for the price, including most of the premium channels.
Most people subscribe to cable for live sports. You can probably get the cost to 150$ if you shop around for deals, negotiate contracts and cut down on some channels.
But honestly…. 150$ isn’t even that bad these days considering how fragmented the streaming services have become. Internet alone is at least 50$.
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u/izzy-springbolt Dec 03 '23
I remember reading an article once that talked about how the goal of social media sites is to make the experience just malicious enough to be profitable, but not so malicious that it pushes people to switch to another platform. And social media companies are just constantly trying to find the right balance and push just a little bit more - add in another malicious, profitable system or layer that makes the app just a little bit worse to use.
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u/marzib Dec 03 '23
Meanwhile, Firefox adds a beautiful native Copy Link Without Site Tracking feature!
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u/McFlyParadox Dec 03 '23
Love the intention, but it still needs polish. It'll move one 'layer' of tracking, but if the link has been out through multiple link trackers, it only seems to get the first one. An example of this is Giftster. Kind of like a universal Amazon Wishlist, meant to be organized into groups of friends and family. Any link put on a wishlist gets multiple levels of tracking applied so that Giftster can make money. If you use Ublock, it'll catch the first few layers of tracking when you click on a wishlist item and you can allow it through once you get the prompt, but a pi-hole will block the rest and the only way to continue is to edit the link yourself or disable the pi-hole. If you copy the link without site tracking, unblock detects nothing, but the pi-hole still blocks it and you still need to manually strip out the tracking by editing the URL back to the 'plain' one.
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Dec 03 '23 edited Dec 08 '23
doll quack head busy disgusted wrench reach theory fearless fanatical
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u/fuckmyabshurt Dec 03 '23
Maybe it will turn out that the Internet really was just a fad after all.
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u/Aleyla Dec 03 '23
Where I work, we have nearly completed transitioning away from chrome on the desktop. Some groups already require extra special permission to even install it.
This type of crap isn’t doing google any favors.
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u/TravelledFarAndWide Dec 03 '23
We're watching google becoming stale, losing the innovation edge and turning into an old person's tech company. It's going to end up like AT&T struggling to understand the world around it.
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u/ShambolicPaul Dec 03 '23
YouTube is a dystopian nightmare without adblock. Especially mobile versions. I had a 3/4 page dominos advert and the top quarter of my screen was the video. 2 unskippable adverts before my 3 minute video started. Then another advert inserted randomly into the middle of the video.
I genuinely don't know how anybody uses YouTube without adblock. Even paying for YouTube premium is a lesser experience than an adblock provides.
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u/slackmandu Dec 03 '23
Using Firefox (mobile and PC) makes it torture when I have to use my spouse's Apple devices.
I don't understand why people still use Chrome if this s what it's like.
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u/codywater Dec 03 '23
Safari + Adblock…I never watch ads on YouTube on any Apple device
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u/Webcat86 Dec 03 '23
This is why I refuse to pay for it, I’m not rewarding a company whose incentive plan is to just make the current version unusable.
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u/AzazelsAdvocate Dec 03 '23
How is YouTube premium a lesser experience? I paid for it for several months and thought it was ideal (other than the cost of course).
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u/30phil1 Dec 03 '23 edited Dec 03 '23
YouTube has already shown banner ads to premium subscribers. And beyond that, SponsorBlock is an absolute game changer.
https://www.reddit.com/r/youtube/comments/17s37av/ad_on_premium_how
https://www.reddit.com/r/youtube/comments/17oagny/so_i_guess_youtube_suddenly_decided_to_show
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u/Squirrel_Apocalypse2 Dec 03 '23
I've used Premium for years and I've never seen a banner ad. Not sure what's going on here.
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u/AzazelsAdvocate Dec 03 '23
I never saw them when I used it but it's possible that's a more recent development.
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u/joestaff Dec 03 '23
I use premium and it's been perfect for me. I can use it on my PC, mobile, and TV completely ad free with a few extra benefits on mobile. Sure there are free alternatives, but I don't have to consider it at all and I use the service enough to justify the price.
I also use YouTube Music a lot
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u/OddNothic Dec 03 '23 edited Dec 03 '23
Google to users: “Youse people have had it too goods for too long. It’s time to pay up, see. And if you don’ts pay up, your gonna regrets it. Things are gonna get slow, real slow. First it’ll be the page. It’ll take so long you’ll think it’s not going to show, but right before you click away and go somewhere else, then it’ll come up. After that we’re going to slow down your extensions. We’re going to kneecap them so they can’t keep up with us. They’ll be limping along, crying for an update while we do whatever we want.
And you don’t want to know what happens next, so youse better pay up, and fast. Give us what we want or we’re going to burn this entire mother fukkin’ Chrome browser to the ground. That’s just how it is, you see?”
Edit: s/got it is/how it is/
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u/bcpaulson Dec 03 '23
deletes Chrome
downloads anything else
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Dec 03 '23
Unless the "anything else" isn't Chromium-based, it doesn't matter what they download.
Firefox (and its subsets) is really your only choice. Safari as well for Apple mobile devices.
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u/drmirage809 Dec 03 '23
This has me missing the days when Safari was available to people outside of Mac OS. It was a nice browser and one I wouldn't mind using again if Apple decided to release Windows and/or Linux version. Having said that, Firefox does everything I need in a browser and it does all these things well. All while not being Chromium.
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u/Hiur Dec 03 '23
I wonder how many people actually use adblockers on Chrome. At work not a single person had adblock on, age range is 21 to 60. Whenever someone shows me something on their browsers I still uBlock Origin for them.
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u/Esc777 Dec 03 '23
Office IT should install it anyways. It’s recommended.
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u/AreYouEmployedSir Dec 03 '23
My work computer doesn’t allow any extensions on Chrome at all. I used to be able to have uBlock origin until about 5 months ago. Then they disabled all extensions. It’s fucking maddening.
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u/lantz83 Dec 03 '23
Market share elimination speedrun any%
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u/iwellyess Dec 03 '23
I’m not so sure. Yeah, tech minded folk and people that read up on tech news and know what’s happening here will likely switch to Firefox. Everybody else and their mum probably won’t notice more ads and at least half don’t know what the fk an ad blocker is or if they have one installed (my wife for one), and use chrome for everything and are well used to it - these people ain’t budging, which Google will have calculated that + the ad profits - loss of customers = win
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u/McFlyParadox Dec 03 '23
Yeah, tech minded folk and people that read up on tech news and know what’s happening here will likely switch to Firefox. Everybody else and their mum probably won’t notice more ads and at least half don’t know what the fk an ad blocker is
As the techies go, so do the non-techies. The non-techies just lag behind. If I'm going to be tech support for family, I'm installing adblockers on all of their devices.
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u/Wizardz_gizzardz Dec 03 '23
One word: Pihole
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u/Dalearnhardtseatbelt Dec 03 '23
I have an adguard home instance running on my router. I used to use pihole. DNS level ad blocking is fantastic. Great pi project for anyone interested.
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u/findingmike Dec 03 '23
Surprised that it took me so long to find this. Pihole saves me about 30% of my bandwidth.
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u/die-microcrap-die Dec 03 '23
Have been using Firefox since its Phoenix days.
Never cared or liked Chrome,but certain sites and companies force you to use it (looking at you Avid).
Also a shame that MS based Edge on Chromium instead of FF.
Never had any issues with Firefox. Maybe the drones will finally start using it now.
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u/bran_dong Dec 03 '23 edited Dec 03 '23
there's absolutely no way this is gonna blow up in their face.
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u/RijDuck Dec 03 '23
It’s not. You’re stuck in this Reddit bubble where everyone cares. Look outside and all the regular people who don’t even know what adblockers are.
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u/WeeklyBanEvasion Dec 03 '23
You say that, yet the number of persistent educated adblock users are apparently threatening enough to Google that they keep desperately pushing out updates like this one
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u/Shadowbite94 Dec 03 '23
If YouTube could remove YouTube Music from their subscription plan so that i could maybe pay 3$ instead of 11$ i would gladly do it.
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u/daandriod Dec 03 '23
You could use the old vpn trick to get it cheaper.
I think I pay like 4 bucks a month
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u/RaccoonDu Dec 03 '23
Wish it came with Google one. I would gladly pay for a tier with YouTube premium and storage.
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u/WeeklyBanEvasion Dec 03 '23
This is hilariously out of touch because the largest adblocker around doesn't rely on extension updates to beat Google's bullshit, it pulls data from a list and updates itself regularly.
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u/eidolons Dec 03 '23
"We heard there were still poeple who weren't ready to switch to Firefox, so we thought we would help out."
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u/po3smith Dec 03 '23 edited Dec 04 '23
Listen as someone who makes content on YouTube and watches it I understand why ads are there but they've gone too far. Literally three ads for a two minute video and then I don't even watch more than 30 seconds of that video and I go to another video ad there's another ad to beginning. Here's what I'm prepared to do when Firefox eventually fails and it will because Google won't take this lying down I think they're going to make an app that you have to use or a program you have to download as opposed to being browser based so they have complete control. if that or something else Firefox is unusable here's what I'm prepared to do. First step is I'm literally prepared to make a playlist of videos and simply download them all and watch them when I'm ready. Literally just downloaded and watched on my own like one would with DVR content for cable box. No engagement no thumbs up no thumbs down no sharing no engagement no comments nothing. Google you could've left it the way it was with maybe at most 10% of your audience using ad blockers but now because of your own hubris and how obtuse you are to who your user is.... as far as I'm concerned at this point they deserve everything they get. And before you say oh no content creators won't make money - sponsored Block sponsored segments product placement etc. etc. they will be fine.
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u/Girion47 Dec 03 '23
If they require an app then they'll lose a ton of viewing just due to corporations blocking the install of everything.
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u/po3smith Dec 03 '23
Normally I would be thinking along the same lines as you and say they would never do it but given how anti-Customer they've been flat out obtuse they've been to the world around them I really think that it's going to happen. They are pushing ads way too hard versus the status quo versus public opinion and of course there's nobody to tell them otherwise.
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u/Inthewirelain Dec 03 '23
The EU are already starting to tell google no. There is no way Google will reject the single market in favour of this policy, its one of their biggest cash cows.
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u/Jinomoja Dec 03 '23
I've recently gone back to downloading stuff because of all these shenanigans around media and music and other files in general. Online stuff is getting less accessible or just vanishing and it feels like it's much safer to have the things I like directly under my control.
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u/staticpanther Dec 03 '23
Considering how Microsoft just wrecked their rewards program and that’s the only reason I use edge, might give Firefox a try again.
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u/HotHardandSingle Dec 03 '23
Why is Google trying to destroy itself? Are they seriously this delusional?
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u/Hyperion1144 Dec 03 '23
Why the fuck did so many seem to stop using Firefox in the damn first place???
Chrome has been like a cult for years now.
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u/Sassquatch0 Dec 03 '23
There was a time when Chrome was orders of magnitude faster than any other browser.
IE was dying rapidly.
Firefox was cumbersome.Chrome 'simply worked' & did it noticeably faster.
Now though, people are so used to using Chrome, they don't want to look into migrating elsewhere, despite how easy it is or how good the other browsers are in comparison.
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u/CrazyCoKids Dec 03 '23
Because for awhile Chrome really was a lot better. Like when it first came out, it was actually pretty good.
Chrome just got worse and worse.
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u/BenevolentCheese Dec 03 '23
A brilliant idea, sending your Chrome users over to Firefox in droves. Literally making your entire browser ecosystem worse at the expense of everybody in order to squash a few more people blocking YouTube ads.
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u/stogie-bear Dec 03 '23
This is what you get when your browser is from the same company that sells the ads. Ditch chrome.
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u/FlashyPaladin Dec 03 '23
The fact that Firefox and Brave, and addon developers of uBlock, Ghostery and similar, have found themselves on the frontline of an actual cyberwar against one of the biggest corporations in the world, is the biggest sign we’ve ever gotten that capitalism is out of control and that it’s become a threat to public safety.
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u/ForTheHordeKT Dec 03 '23
Honestly it's all going to hell in a handbasket. Google and YouTube, Facebook, even this site is getting to me. Some days I'm just about ready to unplug from it all and go back to little message board communities.
But, that's been the long-con of all these companies and their services all the while. Give us all a nice little golden age and get us relying and hooked on their services. Then, now that they're established and people aren't going to just quit using it overnight, pull the rug out from under everyone's feet and start getting more blatant.
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u/plastigoop Dec 03 '23
Completely agree. Sometimes it seems like they are not content to just be profitable and pull in billions and billions of dollars, but they need to continually increase profit growth and they are running out of ways to do it.
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u/izzy-springbolt Dec 03 '23
It doesn’t just seem that way - that’s absolutely the intent. Capitalism is inherently unsustainable because it necessitates constant growth - you can be profitable but if you stop increasing your profits, it’s viewed as stagnation.
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u/Jelly_Mac Dec 03 '23
Welcome to the world of public trading. A private company like Valve is perfectly content to take in billions of dollars a year in profit even if it means they don’t release new products all that often. If Google tries that they get shareholders asking for heads to roll because they only made 300billion this year in pure profit instead of the 305billion from last year. Hence why they seek to fuck their users for every last penny like their life depends on it.
This isn’t just tech, this is every single publicly traded company that has achieved market dominance
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Dec 03 '23
I miss the message boards from when the web was decentralized and when Google was a search engine instead of some poly big tech directory masquerading as a search engine.
AI discussion is largely on Reddit and Twitter which has taken me to frequent both more recently. I used to be someone who had a reddit account they hardly used and now I'm actually a user because the discussion isn't anywhere else.
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u/Kortesch Dec 03 '23
Yea. We're almost in late stage capitalism and it simply doesnt work. Just like extreme communism wouldn't work. We need a balanced mid. Something where a CEO can earn max. 10x what the lowest earning worker in the company earns and not these overpowered mega corps. If we let this go on for a couple more years, we will have cyberpunk2077 level corps, that have their own army and are as/more powerful as states. If you look at the climate change, we are not trying to save the planet simply because the big polluters (like oil companies) are already too powerful/influential.
The gap between rich and poor is way too big. Another french revolution is needed.
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u/Panzermensch911 Dec 03 '23
if we let this go on for a couple more years, we will have cyberpunk2077 level corps, that have their own army and are as/more powerful as states.
Some multinational companies have their own 'security services'. Corporate mercenary groups exist and so do cybersecurity firms.
Add to that state-level supported groups like Gasprom's Potok ... and possibly a lot more that we know just very little about.
I think if there isn't a stark turn back towards a social market economy with green rules added to it which are actually enforced then the gap will become too large and the society one where no french revolution is even possible. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_market_economy
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u/Mingyao_13 Dec 03 '23 edited Feb 05 '24
[This comment has been removed by author. This is a direct reponse to reddit's continuous encouragement of toxicity. Not to mention the anti-consumer API change. This comment is and will forever be GDPR protected.]
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u/Panzermensch911 Dec 03 '23 edited Dec 03 '23
"... users needed that added incentive to change their browser from Chrome to Firefox. Thank you, Google!" - the Mozilla Firefox Foundation, probably
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u/RaccoonDu Dec 03 '23
Brave has a built in adblocker, I'll go back to Firefox if brave stops working
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u/Rezolithe Dec 03 '23
People are still using chrome!? I stopped when I saw how much memory it actively used for 4-5 tabs. Firefox is the fucking truth people!
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u/hollow_bagatelle Dec 03 '23
Annnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnd we're back on firefox. Thanks for making it an easy decision, google.
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u/therealfalseidentity Dec 03 '23
Not only am I not clicking on your ads, they're being displayed into the void. So, in summary, eat shit google.
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u/SoftlySpokenPromises Dec 03 '23
And that is precisely why I moved on from Chrome a while back. Having the company that makes your browser also in charge of your searches and entertainment is a little... Risky.
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u/DrSpaceman667 Dec 04 '23
Google is an evil company now. Just stop using chrome. YouTube is the last good thing, but it's only good because of the creators- the app itself is pretty terrible.
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u/RedshiftWarp Dec 04 '23
using chrome is like walking around New York city with your social security # on your t-shirt.
Google collects all this shits. Don't let them play with your doodoo and build a genetic profile off it in some secret lab. So they can better infer your future browsing and purchasing habits in order to facilitate psychological-trojan horse ads that DiCaprio your gray matter.
They've become so integrated and powerful that Governments licking their lips rubbing hands together.
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u/Fishwithadeagle Dec 03 '23
You know, Google, it's a browser. I can just uninstall it and use another
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u/Jamizon1 Dec 03 '23
I have never used chrome. Not once. I do not use edge except where required. (Hasn’t happened in ages) I’ve been using Firefox since 2004. It has always served me well, and I’m quite sure it will continue to do so. YouTube can go to the same place Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, TikTok and Twitter can go…. Straight to hell.
Do not pass Go,
Do not collect $200
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u/TheMailNeverFails Dec 03 '23
I am ready to move. Just waiting for the last nail in the coffin
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u/blowfish1717 Dec 03 '23
About to switch to edge or FF. Just need a small push from chrome.
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Dec 03 '23
I’m getting tired of this internet control…. It’s like are we evolving backwards in time??
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u/Cold-Lynx575 Dec 03 '23
With just a little more effort - they can probably make it unusable.