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Comment by pineconewarrior | Hacker News Reader

The 'switch to firefox' meme-storm and the still-horrible bugginess of mv3 made this inevitable.

What do you mean meme storm? Switching to Firefox makes you immune to annoying changes like this... I honestly don't understand why more people, especially on hn, haven't switched over still.

As a Firefox user, articles like this are just noise, not a possible attack on my personal privacy. When was the last technical scandal with Firefox? Adding an optional bookmarking service? How are people still defending chrome?

I tried to make the switch after last week's uBlock Origin Lite post but there are just so many rough edges. For example:

1) You go to https://i.imgur.com/vuUyLnz.gifv.

2) You decide to skip the beginning so you "Right Click > Show Controls" and use the controls to skip the beginning.

3) You decide to skip to the end so you move your mouse over to where the controls should be but they don't reappear.

4) They're gone and the only way to get them back is to "Right Click > Show Controls" again.

There are a lot of rough edges like that. I'd almost rather not use browsers than use Firefox in its current state.

imgur is intentionally disabling the controls in order to show their custom buggy ones, I don't know what you expect Firefox to do here.

Sounds like you're getting redirected to https://imgur.com/vuUyLnz. Make sure you end up at https://i.imgur.com/vuUyLnz.gifv.

Is it not this way in chrome too? I know imgur messes with the ui for no good reason.

Your other commentmentions i.imgur.com being the case? Maybe libredirext can help you never hit the i. Site?

> Is it not this way in chrome too?

Afraid not. In Chrome and Safari the controls reappear in step 3. In Firefox step 4 is required.

I wouldn't be surprised if it was an imgur thing but I have seen it in non-imgur embeds on reddit.

> Maybe libredirext can help you never hit the i. Site?

That could work. Thank you!

It's an imgur thing. It disables controls on every interaction with the video by doing `.controls = false` on the video element.

Chrome seems to ignore this attribute being set to false and continue to show controls anyway, which appears to be a spec violation from my reading of it. Of course it ends up being a desirable behavior in this case.

This is weird. Why not just go to https://i.imgur.com/vuUyLnz.mp4 ?

I mostly encounter them on reddit and it seems they just happen to use gifv.

Just skimming through the first few pages and it looks like all of the videos are gifv:

NSFW

https://old.reddit.com/domain/imgur.com/

Actually even firefox is switching to V3 and deprecating V2, they are keeping request blocking (main problem with v3) but why are they just following google?

> why are they just following google?

Mozilla gets 95% of its revenue directly from Google.

Firefox memes have been trending on reddit.

The extension management ui is terrible in Firefox and I haven’t been able to figure out how to disable or manage many multiple extensions.

You can't in bulk as far as I know, but can't you just go to about:addons in the URL bar? I don't use more than 5 anymore. How many do you have?

>Switching to Firefox makes you immune to annoying changes like this.

cough Proton cough

That being said, most of the extensions I use have survived the last two years of Firefox development.

Yes quantum was rough... I still miss vimperator. Though the speed increase was nice. Thank you, I did forget about this actually

> cough Proton cough

I'd take Proton any day over a neutered ad blocker

Switching to Firefox means accepting ads built-in to the browser, something that (AFAIK) Google has never done. You can, I suppose, go find the settings one by one and disable all the places they appear, but Mozilla can (and has) introduced new on-by-default ads with version upgrades, so that only lasts so long as your current browser version is supported.

I mean, sure it's great that ad blockers still work, but let's not pretend that Firefox is some kind of bastion of pro-user sentiment.

Absolutely true. That's why I use Librewolf. I can control updates when I want them via my system package manager. The developers don't really maintain a separate browser from firefox, just a distribution that removes Mozilla trackers and a few user hostile decisions (like those ads). Works very well for me!

> You can, I suppose, go find the settings one by one and disable all the places they appear

It's like one setting in about:config

> Switching to Firefox means accepting ads built-in to the browser, something that (AFAIK) Google has never done

Google might not build ads into the browser, but if you use it as they intend and log into the account all of your activity gets tied to your account. I would rather have pocket then not be able to sign into a google account without google signing it in across the browser

> I mean, sure it's great that ad blockers still work, but let's not pretend that Firefox is some kind of bastion of pro-user sentiment.

Yeah mozilla has a shitty track record I'll admit and firefox is a lower quality product, but at the end of the day it's still the lesser of two evils

> It's like one setting in about:config

Oh really, which one?

> at the end of the day it's still the lesser of two evils

Never said it wasn't.

extensions.pocket.enabled

Exactly - pocket is only one source of ads at this point. They keep adding them from different sources. I've actually compiled Firefox without Pocket for years now, and I still got ads in the browser after an update.

Security (not privacy): Firefox has shown in Pwn2Own contests and in security circles that it is not as secure as Chrome. Mainly because of overall security architecture and sandboxing techniques involved (remember the Chrome comic, I think even current Firefox has not implemented all security sandboxing which Chrome had from day 1). Firefox is trying to catch up but is overall behind. So there you have your technical disadvantage. I feel personally saver to visit unknown sites with a current Chrome based browser than with Firefox.

Also if you compare from a fingerprinting side of view then Brave is better than Firefox+uBlock (and all privacy lists involved). You can compare that easily between your Firefox and Brave here: https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/

For me personally I also don't want to miss Chromecast capabilities (it's a nice system and unfortunately there is no good alternative) in my mobile browser.

> Switching to Firefox makes you immune to annoying changes like this

No it fucking doesn't. Firefox have been aping chrome since version 4 and really sealed the deal with version ... 29, I think.

what does this mean in practice?

It used to be that firefox would copy chrome's ui, then they started copying the extensions, then they eliminated their better extensions. Now I expect they will fully embrace the latest gimped api from google.

> Switching to Firefox makes you immune to annoying changes like this

Unfortunately it does not, as other replies and plenty of HN Firefox posts demonstrate.

> I honestly don't understand why more people, especially on hn, haven't switched over still.

There are several important areas where Firefox is lacking. Automation on macOS is one of them (it’s the sole major browser without AppleScript support) but in every thread I see people complaining of something different.

I use neither Firefox nor Chrome. I don’t want to support Google, but it’s also not feasible to use Firefox as my daily driver or to support it in the tools I release.

You should switch to Firefox.

I have been a firefox user for almost 20 years!

I wonder what sort of hit to their userbase they'll experience when it finally happens for real. The internet is unbearable without ad blocking.

Virtually none, I expect. Especially since "without ad blocking" isn't on the table, there will continue to be ad blocking in Chrome.

But will the remnant adblocking in Chrome still work a few years down the line? Or will websites circumvent it? That’s the question.

Is it the question? No one's really asking it and it's obviously purely speculative.

What’s not speculative is that adblockers have to be constantly maintained to remain effective. As websites find new circumventions, adblockers respond with fixes.

Manifest v3 freezes the capabilities of adblockers in time (it regresses them). Perhaps it’s sufficient for today’s ads but over time websites will take advantage and the effectiveness of adblockers will wither: websites have a financial incentive to circumvent all those chrome users.

been using ad blocker on safari for years now. no issues.

You overestimate how many people use ad blockers.

Many terrified that these "hackers" will steal their credit cards and take in dump in their dinner plate if they install such extension.

When I showed Bypass Paywall plugin to some friends, they all freaked out and looked at it like some dark magic. They look at ad blockers the same.

My assumption is if you are installing chrome, you've got the technical chops to install an ad blocker. Otherwise, you'd be using Edge or Safari.

If your assumption held true, Chrome's market share would not be so large. Technical people are a minority after all.

It's a wrong assumption. Installing chrome requires no brains and google pushing it hard. A tool from my Motherboard maker would install chrome and make it default if you don't go into "advanced" install. You can end up with chrome as a default browser without knowing it. Shit, our work MDM policy installs Chrome on every work laptop.

"During the third quarter of 2021, the average global adblocking rate was estimated at 37 percent. Vietnam and China were top of the class, with a respective adblocking penetration rates of 44.7 and 43.7 percent. This was followed by 41.7 percent of surveyed Indonesians and 40.4 percent of surveyed South Africans admitting to using software blocking online advertising. In the United States, 34.2 percent of internet users said they used adblockers."

https://www.statista.com/statistics/351862/adblocking-usage/

Well, I guess that 1/3-1/2 of people who like to take internal polls also install adblock.

> I wonder what sort of hit to their userbase they'll experience when it finally happens for real. The internet is unbearable without ad blocking.

close to zero, as there are perfectly fine ad blockers that still work?

case in point: been using safari with an ad blocker for years now. no change in web browsing.

The switch to Firefox meme-storm may have ignited but I saw no actual movement of users to Firefox.

The vast majority of users wont notice until their extensions and adblocking actually gets broken.

Switching browsers is a big ask for a lot of people, especially tech people who have their settings and extensions just right.

In a past year I've switched to firefox and only use chrome for work-related stuff. It's quickly becoming a new IE

I don't think the meme-storm has anything to do with it. Desktop Linux is constantly memed, for example at times when MS does something stupid with Windows, and yet, Linux adoption is minor on desktops. People being loud, and putting their word in action are two very different things.

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