This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
just to be clear, for fear we mentally normalize this
to accept that another person has one sided authority to determine what you can and can't do with a tool, after it is in your possession is weird.
If you're still using Chrome it's a you problem.
Firefox + ublock origin + SponsorBlock for youtube is great. Works on mobile too!
firefox doesn't support HDR
😱
To add to this- playback also continues with the screen off too. So ya, ff mobile with those extensions is basically yt premium XD
I've been using a chromebook for the last 4 years and it's been great for my needs (youtube, streaming, porn, etc), but I am shopping for a windows machine now because fuck google.
I'm not too familiar with chrome books, i know some of them are insanely locked down to prevent this.. but see if theres a linux distro compatible with your chromebook, and if its possible to slap a linux install on it.
save you having to buy a new machine, possibly.
It works on Android, but I don't believe it works on iOS.
Thanks choom, you reminded me to reinstall Sponsorblock.
The other day I got to pondering whether people who work for ad serving companies have ad blockers on their work computers.
I didn't other than for testing, in fact I had to research and figure out ways to bypass ad blockers, to prevent social icons from being blocked etc. I even wrote that company a brand new admin website to replace their old one, they liked it so much that they laid me off a few months later even though they were already underpaying me because they wanted someone cheaper to maintain it, after announcing they had record-breaking year-over-year profits. I found a 30% higher paying job a few months later and been there since. lol
I used to work for an ad heavy mobile game and ad serving company couple of years ago, and I had ad blocking at dns level in my house. It blocks not only ads, but also most tracking and telemetry. My bosses wanted to know why my devices were not displaying ads or dialing back to home, they were pretty fucking puzzled. They were terrified others like me were around. Basically their entire business model depends of people not knowing how to block ads and telemetry
You won't get me off adblock, as of recently i've come to find we get significantly more ads compared to friends and family.
My dad plays wordfeud, so i install and play a set with him...about 5 seconds in i get frustrated at the 4th ad and my dad goes: "which ads".
My friends keep telling me i'm taking the youtube ads far too serious as they are only 10 seconds and show it to me too.
My youtube ads are 1 minute unskippable blocks before and after 1m 51s videos. I'll get a 1min ad block halfway into a 5 minute video even though youtube themselves claim they don't do that.
How the fuck am i so fucked when it comes to ads, my dads phone is almost completely ad free. Heck the google top suggestions that are basically paid for ads don't even show up on his phone.
He can play those free apps (advertisement feeding software) without getting any ads and he's adamant his phone isn't modified.
I wager your dad has a subscription or something he doesnt want to admit.
It's with all those silly free apps tho, sometimes i'll go there and have some fun game which he installs on the spot...no ads.
So it can't be with the apps itself.
Heck i've burned myself on a couple of those games where i would go: "i've played for weeks, might as well buy out the ads and save myself the headache" and it will still have ads, for power ups or some other similar things.
If you use android, just use adguard private dns. It will get rid of third party apps ads. For youtube you need revanced or newpipe
I tried setting it upfor my router.
But the insteuctions just go: "change ipv4 to x" and "change ipv6 to x".
There are no ipv4 or 6's so i need to add them, but it won't let me add without a specific name but it doesn't give me any requirements for the name.
So i'm stuck.
Eh, I haven't seen an ad on YouTube for years, I just use uBlock Origin on Firefox and they're all gone. You can also do that on mobile as well.
That said, I use Grayjay on mobile because it eliminates ads and also lets me sub to videos from other platforms. I have a few subs from Odyssee, one from Rumble, and a half dozen or so from Nebula. None of them display ads, and I only occasionally have some weird issue where a video doesn't load (usually just close and re-open the video and it works).
The DNS option is nice if you use an app that you don't have any control over, but for videos and regular web browsing, you can just use an ad-blocker.
It seems that many people here are not aware of how much Mozilla depends on Google, so switching to them is a small consolation. Maybe it's time to support the development of new engines like Servo and Ladybird more. Servo even recently released an Android version (currently not very usable, but I downloaded it just to show support).
Sure, but it is still the most usable alternative we have for now. I would avoid stock FF and use either Librewolf or hardened FF because the default browser spies too.
Really have hopes for Servo/Ladybird!
Of course, I also use LibreWolf, Mull... but we expose ourselves to security risks this way (as is currently happening with Firefox and Mull), and besides that, you have to trust projects more and more whose code is not reviewed as thoroughly.
Opera browser? The one that everyone was making a stink about a few years ago? The one owned directly by a Chinese based company, and was supposedly sending telemetry to China?
Plus the whole exploiting poor people thing: https://www.engadget.com/2020-01-19-opera-accused-of-predatory-loan-apps.html?guccounter=1
I stopped using Opera the second it wasn't Norwegian. I use Librewolf on desktop, Waterfox on mobile and Vivaldi as the "clean" browser when something k. Waterfox/Librewolf fucks up an important webpage I have to use
People are still using it thanks to them forcing (ig sponsors from yt videos) and appealing to young generations with the opera gx browser and Twitter account mostly.
With the regular browser I assume they got it by accident while downloading adware(this might have happened to gx).
The link you shared is the company profile only and doesn't mention any controversy about telemetry being shared with China.
I've been googling for a bit, and there are articles concerned this might happen from 2016 when the takeover was announced, and plenty of discussions on reddit, hacker news, y-combinator, quora and even on the official Opera forum (not deleted or redacted, mind you), but there wasn't any clear evidence that telemetry is being shared.
While the concern remains valid, I'm also asking myself whether it's that much worse than Chrome, Brave or Firefox sending telemetry to the US? I'm neither American nor Chinese, and would consider both governments hostile. Which one of them has access to my data is merely a choice between plague and cholera.
So in the end it's on informed users to block transmission of telemetry themselves, regardless of their browser of choice.
The link you shared is the company profile only and doesn’t mention any controversy about telemetry being shared with China.
I want to upvote this.
and would consider both governments hostile.
I want to downvote this.
So I guess I will do neither since I can't do both.
I would rather give my data to Firefox than a company who's entire business model is selling user data. That being said, you could use librewolf which removes telemetry. I use both Firefox and librewolf
I'm using Fennec which also removes telemetry, but many standard users are not comfortable installing apps that aren't on Google play.
The amount of people who only feel comfortable downloading on Google Play and also care about privacy I feel like is very small but I don't know.
Some people would rather give their data to opera then firefox 🤦♂️
Mozilla seems to be transitioning to becoming an advertising company so I wouldn't want them to have my data either.
