after many months, and being blocked by more and more external servers, it is clear that image proxying is seriously degrading the user experience

By “external servers,” does that mean external to the Lemmy network itself?

I’m interested how Mastodon handles this, since it is a much more active social network that also encourages media sharing.

Acceptable Ads is bullshit on many levels:

• It’s made by an ad company
• The same ad company runs multiple popular ad blockers (including AdBlock Plus)
• There are no standards on privacy invasion

uBlock Origin, or at least uBlock Origin Lite on Chromium-like browsers, are must-haves.

The best browser you can set up for a family member, IMO, is Firefox. Disable Telemetry (which should rid them of Mozilla’s own ad scheme too), install uBlock Origin, remind them to never call or trust any other tech support people who reach out to them, and maybe walk them through some scam baiting videos.

I’m still evaluating which Chrome-likes are best at actual ad blocking, and the landscape is grim.

It’s probably the nature of the change, too.

1. It’s easy to add a switch to disable the button.
2. It doesn’t cut into their bottom line.
3. It’s damn good PR.

Other stuff that people have been complaining about, like the massive backlash against baking in 3rd-party AI, won’t make the cut.

Relatively benign things like tab grouping are challenging, so despite being much more popular, the easier-to-implement AI features were given a fast pass to Release versions of Firefox.

Are there raw numbers on how many people use web browsers in general? Firefox releases a report, and it’s definitely been dipping, but that dip might be accounted for by a switch to other browsers (based on its percent of market share).

I’d be curious if you had any good sources for this, because my searches are mostly yielding crappy listicle blogs.

I’ve seen their reasoning, but I don’t agree with it. The biggest counterexample to their concerns are other browsers: Firefox is no trouble maintaining its IP, and Brave is fully open source yet has not been formed once AFAIK.

I’m very aware of its built-in bloat, but the ad blocking still seems to perform more like an MV2 ad blocker than an MV3 one (more is blocked even when using the same lists), and it allows you to natively select individual elements to block yourself.

In my personal experience, and with great regret, I must say that Brave does a better job with its built-in ad blocking than Vivaldi has. Even after I did my damnedest to tweak the ad blocker settings (adding more lists from more sources, removing the “allow some ads” list, etc).

Based on every browser statistic page I can find, about 2/3 of mobile traffic is through Google Chrome. There’s no ad blocker on that.

And mobile traffic is significant nowadays - it comprises around half of all traffic anywhere, despite requiring the viewer to be hunched over a phone or tablet.

No argument from me there. I didn’t mean to come across this argumentative, I just wanted to point it out here because of the context of this post (someone looking to move away from Firefox). And because, to me, ad telemetry still is a black box.

Mozilla is adopting a ton of the things that were wrong with Brave. Recently, Brave criticized Mozilla’s PPA data collection for being too centralized, which implies to me that otherwise, there’s a lot of overlap between the two allegedly “private” systems. I don’t trust Brave telemetry, but it seems not even they can come up with many ways to differentiate themselves from Mozilla.

If they’re different somehow, I would love to know how.

In a way other than accrued trust or distrust, that is. At this point, I don’t think Mozilla is owed any inherent trust.

Santander Bank user [solved by reducing ETP to Standard] (almost lost this user we’ve had since 2003!):

Give this employee a raise

How worried should people be if they are on the latest version of Fennec, which was last updated for 129.0.2 a couple months ago? (For anyone who isn’t keeping track: that’s not ESR (128 is), and it’s two major versions behind Firefox Release).

I wasn’t going to make a generic comment about how cryptocurrency is only worth money to people if they can convince other people to also purchase the cryptocurrency…

… But then I looked at your post history, and it’s like a week of pivoting conversations to be about Monero.

• New GPU released? Perfect for mining Monero.
• FBI made fake cryptocurrency? Monero isn’t fake.
• People shouldn’t store your information, so use Monero
• Taylor Swift donates for hurricane victims? Monero is worth more than her!

Edit: oh god it was worse than I thought

• All cryptocurrency is good… JK just Monero
• Good YouTube video? They should accept Monero.
• Good nudes? (NSFW) Take my Monero
  (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)
  (probably more, but mods removed many)
• Their phone wallpaper? Anime girl Monero

It’s worse: I would say every group is malicious. Ad companies try to look like they are policing themselves, in the hopes that they don’t suffer external regulation. But back when AdBlock Plus started this nonsense, people made uBlock Origin in response. People wouldn’t just take the ad industry at its word.

Now… For some reason, people have changed their minds.

There’s actually a whole group called the Acceptable Ads Committee who decides on making advertisements distinct and unintrusive… But they don’t have any policies regarding privacy invasion.

They also partner with popular ad blocking software developers, such as AdBlock Plus.

They also have eight members, via their other name “eyeo”, on the W3C PATCG committee (alongside Mozilla, Facebook, Google, more ad companies).

Let’s say there’s a table, and sitting at it are nine companies that want to wring every penny out of consumers by any means necessary. Mozilla sits at the table.

How many horrid companies are there at the table now?

Theres a massive difference between advocating for something bu havinf some power and influence, and doing so with the power of a monopoly.

And what a table it is.

I have no idea where you got this idea I’m advocating for an adtech monopoly.

Explanation here

You continue to put words in my mouth

Are you sure about that

You are the one who began demanding an argument about Anonym

This was a bizarre thing to read, because I never brought up Anonym, never even mentioned them.

You brought them up. Right here.

It’s strange that you would accuse me, or anyone else, of arguing against something you brought up yourself. WTF

How did you get an endorsement for adtech industry lobbying out of my other comments?

Already addressed

how would my comments insinuate that I want them to create a monopoly?

Having enough political power to exert control over an industry is monopoly control in my book. Not yours?

I’d rather Ads not exist. I’d rather tracking not exist. But…

Ads and tracking. Hmm.
I hate to see “but” after a statement like that.

Mozilla planting a flag on that hill only means they go extinct unless the political, legal, or economic environment of our society changes.

WTF? Up until recently, they did plant their flag on that hill. Mozilla fight tracking. They blocked it. And you know what? Unlike you, I’m willing to take the stand that they did the right thing there.

And I have no idea why you would say that their decision to do that for years up until 2022 was a bad thing.

While you repeatedly insist (without basis) that services must use ads to exist, let me remind you: you are on Lemmy.

Google is one of the largest members of the Private Advertising Technology Community Group, which allegedly seeks to replace traditional advertisement tracking with new, more private advertisement tracking. (Other members include Facebook, many ad corporations, and an unfortunate name you my recognize.)

If you have heard of Topics, FLoC, “Privacy” Sandbox, etc, those proposals are all closely linked to this group.

The W3C launders and legitimizes sponsors this commission, so these may become canonical web standards in the very near future.

I’ve talked to a few people who have insisted that the standards established by this committee should be mandatory… Not on the web level, but on a government level.