diff options
Diffstat (limited to 'blog/posts/stop_using_chromium')
| -rw-r--r-- | blog/posts/stop_using_chromium/index.md | 14 |
1 files changed, 7 insertions, 7 deletions
diff --git a/blog/posts/stop_using_chromium/index.md b/blog/posts/stop_using_chromium/index.md index bbfacc2..ca89fc6 100644 --- a/blog/posts/stop_using_chromium/index.md +++ b/blog/posts/stop_using_chromium/index.md @@ -10,15 +10,15 @@ Chromium is the open-source foundation upon which Google's otherwise proprietary - Qutebrowser - [Many others](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromium_(web_browser)#Browsers_based_on_Chromium) -## Why is that a bad thing? +# Why is that a bad thing? Chrome and other Chromium-based browsers account for around 90% of the total web browser market share at the moment. This gives Google, a trillion-dollar for-profit advertising firm, immense control over the web and the standards on which it runs, control that it frequently abuses and inarguably should not have. -## What kind of abuses? +# What kind of abuses? You name it. To name a few recent examples: -### FLoC/Topics API +## FLoC/Topics API Google's response to the phasing out of third-party cookies, a system that had legitimate uses which were outweighed by the privacy violations they could be and more frequently were used to commit, was to introduce an API that was only capable of the sketchy parts. @@ -32,7 +32,7 @@ While theoretically better than third-party cookies, which make identifying you - [Ars Technica - Google drops FLoC after widespread opposition, pivots to "Topics API" plan](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/01/google-drops-floc-after-widespread-opposition-pivots-to-topics-api-plan/) - [Update 2023-09-08] [Ars Technica - Google gets its way, bakes a user-tracking ad platform directly into Chrome](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/09/googles-widely-opposed-ad-platform-the-privacy-sandbox-launches-in-chrome/) -### JPEG XL +## JPEG XL JPEG XL is a new image format created by the Joint Photographic Experts Group, who you may know as the people who brought you JPEG back in '92. JPEG XL is fully backwards compatible with legacy JPEG, supports features like transparency, lossless compression, and animation, and has far superior compression and support for far larger images with higher color depth than existing formats. It's objectively better in every way than everything it competes with. However... @@ -41,7 +41,7 @@ Google killed JPEG XL, plain and simple. It implemented opt-in support for it in - [jpegxl.info](https://jpegxl.info/) - [Free Software Foundation - Google's decision to deprecate JPEG-XL emphasizes the need for browser choice and free formats](https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/googles-decision-to-deprecate-jpeg-xl-emphasizes-the-need-for-browser-choice-and-free-formats) -### Web Environment Integrity +## Web Environment Integrity Web Environment Integrity is a proposal by Google (or, if you care about semantics, four Google engineers on one of their personal GitHub accounts) for a standard that would allow websites to check with a third-party attester to prove that a "web environment" - in other words, the user's web browser and operating system - is "trustworthy" and has not been "tampered with". @@ -55,13 +55,13 @@ Despite this spec being merely a proposal on a Google engineer's personal GitHub - [Vivaldi - Unpacking Google's new “dangerous” Web-Environment-Integrity specification](https://vivaldi.com/blog/googles-new-dangerous-web-environment-integrity-spec/) - [Ben Wiser (Google), Borbala Benko (Google), Philipp Pfeiffenberger (Google), Sergey Kataev (Google) - Web Environment Integrity Explainer](https://github.com/RupertBenWiser/Web-Environment-Integrity/blob/main/explainer.md) -### So what do I do then? +## So what do I do then? I implore you to use a browser that's not based on Chromium. If you're on a Mac, you can just use Safari, but otherwise, your only major option is [Firefox](https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/), or a fork thereof such as [LibreWolf](https://librewolf.net/). I get the impression that a lot of less tech-savvy users find the prospect of switching browsers, especially after years of using the same one, to be quite intimidating, but it's really not. Firefox is able to import all your bookmarks, saved passwords, and other browsing data directly from Chrome, and is highly customizable and has a rich ecosystem of extensions and themes so you can make it resemble what you're used to. Mozilla has an easy official [guide](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/switching-chrome-firefox) to import your data from Chrome, and it works with most other browsers as well. -### Cool, but I don't care. Let me look at your website. +## Cool, but I don't care. Let me look at your website. If you got redirected here, you may be able to circumvent it by configuring your browser to send a different user-agent string. I'd recommend clearing your cache after, in case your browser cached the redirect signal. |