This is why proprietary software subjugates users. Stallman is right.
Of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these:
Stallman was right again.
Everyone going mad and many suggesting “if you have it use Safari instead!” when Apple implemented essentially this same thing quite some time ago in Safari 🤔
That said intentions are important. I have little faith that Big G’s goal is anything other than self servin.
It’s a very different thing when a browser with negligible market share does that.
Firefox mother fucker, do you use it?
Nobody’s going to use it when 90% of the web blocks everything except genuine Chrome on genuine Windows.
I have hope that the FTC will antitrust those cunts. At least I hope so. I’m not gonna hold my breath though.
Microsoft put Netscape and Stac out of business and got away scot-free, so yeah, not holding my breath either.
Google plan make people adict of their browser and now they want to dictate web standards!
That was clear when they launched their browser
Part of me wants to believe that this won’t be abused and it’ll actually make the web better. The other part of me knows better.
They could, theoretically, implement this on a way that just changes the pay structure for ad impressions but I think that all that will do is incentivize website owners using Google ads to block or nag “non-compliant” users… but here’s hoping they don’t abuse it I guess because there’s basically nothing we can do to change it once it’s out there. Genies out and all that
They outright said in their own press release it’s primarily to increase ad visibility by breaking ad blockers.
There’s no scenario where this makes the web better
The irony is that I wasn’t that against ads until they got super intrusive and started causing performance issues and breaking web pages. And of course the privacy problems with tracking cookies. But yeah, fuck all ads now, and fuck Google for trying to wring as much ad revenue out of me as possible. I switched to Firefox with uBlock.
Every now and then, I try to browser without an ad blocker.
That generally lasts until I encounter something that’s bad enough that I don’t really have a choice, and then I turn it back on.
The page needs to actually function. It needs to be possible to click on something and actually be clicking on the thing that you’re intending to.
And it can not have stuff that blinks in a manner that causes a segment of the population (which includes me at times, but not 100% of the time) significant neurological problems.
That last one has been the driving force behind stuff getting reenabled a fair bit.
Oh, and if it’s ads on video content, they need to be at least vaguely reasonable in regards to interruptions and length. Youtube is way past that at this point.
Stallman would disapprove:
