Even if Firefox were to win it’s still a bleak future because the ridiculously complexity and scope of browsers prevents new ones being made. Without the possibility of newcomers either the war never ends or there is one victor. We should start to abandon browsers in favor of apps that focus on each part of the browser (e.g. why does a browser need to render video to the screen when the user already has an app for that).
“Destroying an empire to win a war is no victory, and ending a battle to save an empire is no defeat.”- Kahless
Fuck that. I’m not switching between apps for every god damn function my browser does. I intentionally decline to install apps when I can just use the browser.
no unified password management (or even worse: everything gets just attached to your google/ios account - i hate apps that do not give me the option to keep stuff separate)
no history functions (esp. over multiple devices)
single apps getting bought out by marketing corpos or bad actors without getting notified
data sniffing apps are harder to reign in than my sandboxed browser tabs.
NO ADBLOCKING AVAILABLE IN APPS
I’m sure there are a lot more reasons, that’s just what came into my mind
Apps being created seperatly doesn’t mean they can’t interact with each other, so I don’t see those concerns as a problem. Is there anything fundamentally preventing the creation of new apps to do tasks currently exclusive to browsers?
Isn’t the possibility of single apps getting bought out an argument against having all your eggs in one basket? 🙃
i think i would get notified in some way if the Mozilla Foundation changes ownership, and since it’s open source that is not much of an argument. open source is getting more common the last few years, but it’s definitely not common
sure, it doesn’t mean they can’t. everyone making their own app also means that they don’t per default.
and you didn’t touch the point regarding NO ADBLOCKING IN APPS while the whole debate here is because alphabet doesn’t want effective adblocking in their browser.
I don’t know what to say regarding your claim of no ad blocking in apps because I don’t understand why you think that. I disagree because it’s the same game just in different apps, depending on the medium:
images then you could do what ad blockers fo now: block based on domain
-video you still disregard other ad files, or have a sysyem like sponser block
text (e.g.) on a Gemini client you’d need to detect the text that looks like ads.
domain based blocking systems are nice for a base level of ad removal, they do nothing if the ads are coming from the same domain. sponsorblock is nice, but it’s the work of volunteers to remove those ads - if youtubes userbase were splintered over thousands of apps it wouldn’t be feasable.
i don’t know when i have seen just text-based ads in the last 10 years. those are an non-issue, even for me. the issues are scripts, user profiling and tracking.
the big difference is: the browser gives webpages/apps a standardized environment where the user has the last word regarding what runs on it or not (if you are not using chromium anyway). in apps, the user doesn’t have that luxury, especially regarding tracking and profiling.
I value software freedom so I don’t promote proprietary apps that prevent users doing their computing the way they want. There’s not much I can do about how companies mistreat their users. Just contribute to free (open source) software, advocate for a culture that values freedom over convenience, and advocate for laws against proprietary software.
If the code of your app is like uBlock-Origin then you have the freedom to remove ads from your software. If an app dictates how you do your computing that’s a bigger issue than reckless feature creep leading to the end of browsers.
Even if Firefox were to win it’s still a bleak future because the ridiculously complexity and scope of browsers prevents new ones being made. Without the possibility of newcomers either the war never ends or there is one victor. We should start to abandon browsers in favor of apps that focus on each part of the browser (e.g. why does a browser need to render video to the screen when the user already has an app for that).
“Destroying an empire to win a war is no victory, and ending a battle to save an empire is no defeat.”- Kahless
Fuck that. I’m not switching between apps for every god damn function my browser does. I intentionally decline to install apps when I can just use the browser.
What’s the difference?
I’m sure there are a lot more reasons, that’s just what came into my mind
Apps being created seperatly doesn’t mean they can’t interact with each other, so I don’t see those concerns as a problem. Is there anything fundamentally preventing the creation of new apps to do tasks currently exclusive to browsers?
Isn’t the possibility of single apps getting bought out an argument against having all your eggs in one basket? 🙃
i think i would get notified in some way if the Mozilla Foundation changes ownership, and since it’s open source that is not much of an argument. open source is getting more common the last few years, but it’s definitely not common
sure, it doesn’t mean they can’t. everyone making their own app also means that they don’t per default.
and you didn’t touch the point regarding NO ADBLOCKING IN APPS while the whole debate here is because alphabet doesn’t want effective adblocking in their browser.
I don’t know what to say regarding your claim of no ad blocking in apps because I don’t understand why you think that. I disagree because it’s the same game just in different apps, depending on the medium:
domain based blocking systems are nice for a base level of ad removal, they do nothing if the ads are coming from the same domain. sponsorblock is nice, but it’s the work of volunteers to remove those ads - if youtubes userbase were splintered over thousands of apps it wouldn’t be feasable.
i don’t know when i have seen just text-based ads in the last 10 years. those are an non-issue, even for me. the issues are scripts, user profiling and tracking.
the big difference is: the browser gives webpages/apps a standardized environment where the user has the last word regarding what runs on it or not (if you are not using chromium anyway). in apps, the user doesn’t have that luxury, especially regarding tracking and profiling.
I value software freedom so I don’t promote proprietary apps that prevent users doing their computing the way they want. There’s not much I can do about how companies mistreat their users. Just contribute to free (open source) software, advocate for a culture that values freedom over convenience, and advocate for laws against proprietary software.
Until apps allow to install ubo I’ll stick to a browser instead of having less control than with manifest v3 and chrome/ium
If the code of your app is like uBlock-Origin then you have the freedom to remove ads from your software. If an app dictates how you do your computing that’s a bigger issue than reckless feature creep leading to the end of browsers.