4 ms·

> I predict Firefox will see a large uptake in market share if ad and content blockers become ineffective on desktop Chrome. I predict you're right but not eno

> I predict Firefox will see a large uptake in market share if ad and content blockers become ineffective on desktop Chrome. I predict you're right but not enough for it to make a difference. The one thing that I've come to realize is that we're losing. The web is now closed. Owned by Facebook and Twitter for the most part. Facebook screws you over on privacy but most people don't care. Sure... you and I do, however, the masses don't care about defecting as long as they save $0.99.

this_user 7y ago
> Owned by Facebook and Twitter for the most part Add Apple and their walled garden to that list. When Intel first attempted to introduce "Trusted Computing" in the early 2000s, there was a huge outcry. Few years later Apple comes along with something that is much more restrictive, and now people are happy to accept that you can only do with your device whatever the manufacturer allows you to do.
- pjmlp 7y ago
  Apple is the surviving of the 8 and 16 bit home computer cultures of vertical integration. The PC only escaped that model due to Compaq's reverse engineering trick and IBM's failure to take it back. Something that most OEMs are quite found of having back as per current Android and laptop models.
hedora 7y ago
This is simply not true. People do care about online privacy, and they care more than they used to. I care about my privacy, but the steps I can take to protect it are inadequate. I am in the vast majority (97%) according to this survey: https://blog.malwarebytes.com/security-world/2019/03/labs-survey-finds-privacy-concerns-distrust-of-social-media-rampant-with-all-age-groups/ https://blog.malwarebytes.com/security-world/2019/03/labs-su... Here are some numbers from the article: An overwhelming majority of respondents (96 percent) feel that online privacy is crucial. And their actions speak for themselves: 97 percent say they take steps to protect their online data, whether they are on a computer or mobile device. There is a near equal percentage of people who trust (39 percent) and distrust (34 percent) search engines across all generations. Across the board, there is a universal distrust of social media (95 percent). We can then safely assume that respondents are more likely to trust search engines to protect their data than social media. When asked to agree or disagree with the statement, “I feel confident about sharing my personal data online,” 87 percent of respondents disagree or strongly disagree.
- CodeMage 7y ago
  > I am in the vast majority (97%) according to this survey: It's easy to dig up a survey someone did that supports the conclusions you wish were true. It's much harder to find the actual state of reality. If you click through to their report, you'll realize that there's not much information about their sample, other than this: From January 14 to February 15, 2019, Malwarebytes Labs conducted a survey on nearly 4,000 participants to measure respondents’ confidence in their own privacy and security practices, as well as their confidence in privacy being maintained by businesses. There's absolutely no information about the demographic breakdown of the participants and no way to access the dataset itself. In other words, we have no way of establishing that this survey is worth anything more than a blog post on a site that tries to promote its software.
CodeMage 7y ago
> Owned by Facebook and Twitter for the most part And gated by Google, for the most part.
CharlesColeman 7y ago
> I predict you're right but not enough for it to make a difference. Change doesn't happen quickly. If you expect and require it to, then you're going to be guaranteed disappointment. > The one thing that I've come to realize is that we're losing. The web is now closed. Owned by Facebook and Twitter for the most part. A big reason why "we're losing" is that kind of defeatist attitude.
- irq 7y ago
  > A big reason why "we're losing" is that kind of defeatist attitude. A big reason why losses can be so bad is that approach of refusing to accept reality. It robs you of time & resources that would be better spent on a solution for what happens after.
  - CharlesColeman 7y ago
    There's a big difference between surrender and "accepting reality" when formulating tactics and strategy. >>> ...[it's] not enough ... to make a difference....we're losing. The web is now closed... ...is more surrender than anything. Many, many important social changes in the past century happened because some group of people refused to "accept reality" and surrender to the status quo, and instead embarked on a seemly quixotic effort against all odds to change it. They don't all succeed, but many do. Don't smother that success in the crib.
    - ajsnigrutin 7y ago
      Yep, it just takes a "NewHotApp(TM)" for the kids to migrate to there, forget about their facebook accounts, and their parents will follow in a couple of years. Considering most younger people don't actively use facebook anymore, their (facebooks) only chance is to buy the NewHowApp company every couple of years (khm.. instagram.. khm,... whatsapp..)
CryptoBanker 7y ago
You may not have noticed, but that $0.99 is a hell of a lot more to the "masses" than it is to you l. Some people need every dollar
bad_user 7y ago
Successful technologies become a success due to early adopters, power users, developers that target those technologies. Lose the sex appeal, make the techies angry and the monopoly starts to wither away. How many people here have installed Chrome on the computers of their friends and family? Is there anybody here that never did that? I remember recommending Chrome, even though I was a Firefox user, because Firefox on Windows tended to get infested with crappy toolbars and other extensions. Well not anymore. And that whole recommendation process can always happen for another browser. All it takes is for the developers to come back to Firefox. And I've seen a noticeable shift happening among my peers ever since Quantum.
ajsnigrutin 7y ago
> The one thing that I've come to realize is that we're losing. The web is now closed. Owned by Facebook and Twitter for the most part. Nah.. They're both losing users. The problem with "modern" internet is, that there's more and more people using it, and that makes the numbers 'weird'. The number of IRC users is probably higher than it was in the late 1990s/early 2000s. But back then only geeks used internet, and only they were on irc.. and now.. a lot of them are still there, just that now there is a bunch of of other people on facebook. As we've seen with myspace, digg, etc., and as we're seeing with tumblr and also facebook now, younger, more tech-savy users have no issues with changing platforms.. from facebook to tumblr to snapchat to instagram to SomethingNew(TM). One "bad" turn of events, one company that doesn't want to sell to facebook, and the "owned by" sentance will be completely different in a couple of years.
- DragoCubed 7y ago
  As one of those younger users, I still have an account on all of those and still use many. Instagram is from Facebook, Tumblr is from Yahoo which is owned by Verizon. A lot of funny content is taken from TikTok, Tumblr, Instagram, Reddit, Twitter, Facebook and more and reposted over and over through those platforms. This is directly in response to "As we've seen with myspace, digg, etc., and as we're seeing with tumblr and also facebook now, younger, more tech-savy users have no issues with changing platforms.. from facebook to tumblr to snapchat to instagram to SomethingNew(TM)."
- iotku 7y ago
  >The number of IRC users is probably higher than it was in the late 1990s/early 2000s. But back then only geeks used internet, and only they were on irc.. Rumors of IRC's death have been disproven fairly frequently, but at least when I was active on IRC everyone I've talked to had the impression that IRC as a whole was losing users throughout the early 00s. I suspect services such as slack and discord killed off a lot of IRC users as of late as well. Wouldn't mind being disproven, but at least personally IRC has fallen out of favor except for very specific use cases (like Linux distro support) rather than just chat in general.

this_user 7y ago

> Owned by Facebook and Twitter for the most part Add Apple and their walled garden to that list. When Intel first attempted to introduce "Trusted Computing" in the early 2000s, there was a huge outcry. Few years later Apple comes along with something that is much more restrictive, and now people are happy to accept that you can only do with your device whatever the manufacturer allows you to do.

pjmlp 7y ago
Apple is the surviving of the 8 and 16 bit home computer cultures of vertical integration. The PC only escaped that model due to Compaq's reverse engineering trick and IBM's failure to take it back. Something that most OEMs are quite found of having back as per current Android and laptop models.

hedora 7y ago

This is simply not true. People do care about online privacy, and they care more than they used to. I care about my privacy, but the steps I can take to protect it are inadequate. I am in the vast majority (97%) according to this survey: https://blog.malwarebytes.com/security-world/2019/03/labs-survey-finds-privacy-concerns-distrust-of-social-media-rampant-with-all-age-groups/ https://blog.malwarebytes.com/security-world/2019/03/labs-su... Here are some numbers from the article: An overwhelming majority of respondents (96 percent) feel that online privacy is crucial. And their actions speak for themselves: 97 percent say they take steps to protect their online data, whether they are on a computer or mobile device. There is a near equal percentage of people who trust (39 percent) and distrust (34 percent) search engines across all generations. Across the board, there is a universal distrust of social media (95 percent). We can then safely assume that respondents are more likely to trust search engines to protect their data than social media. When asked to agree or disagree with the statement, “I feel confident about sharing my personal data online,” 87 percent of respondents disagree or strongly disagree.

CodeMage 7y ago
> I am in the vast majority (97%) according to this survey: It's easy to dig up a survey someone did that supports the conclusions you wish were true. It's much harder to find the actual state of reality. If you click through to their report, you'll realize that there's not much information about their sample, other than this: From January 14 to February 15, 2019, Malwarebytes Labs conducted a survey on nearly 4,000 participants to measure respondents’ confidence in their own privacy and security practices, as well as their confidence in privacy being maintained by businesses. There's absolutely no information about the demographic breakdown of the participants and no way to access the dataset itself. In other words, we have no way of establishing that this survey is worth anything more than a blog post on a site that tries to promote its software.

CodeMage 7y ago

> Owned by Facebook and Twitter for the most part And gated by Google, for the most part.

CharlesColeman 7y ago

> I predict you're right but not enough for it to make a difference. Change doesn't happen quickly. If you expect and require it to, then you're going to be guaranteed disappointment. > The one thing that I've come to realize is that we're losing. The web is now closed. Owned by Facebook and Twitter for the most part. A big reason why "we're losing" is that kind of defeatist attitude.

irq 7y ago
> A big reason why "we're losing" is that kind of defeatist attitude. A big reason why losses can be so bad is that approach of refusing to accept reality. It robs you of time & resources that would be better spent on a solution for what happens after.
- CharlesColeman 7y ago
  There's a big difference between surrender and "accepting reality" when formulating tactics and strategy. >>> ...[it's] not enough ... to make a difference....we're losing. The web is now closed... ...is more surrender than anything. Many, many important social changes in the past century happened because some group of people refused to "accept reality" and surrender to the status quo, and instead embarked on a seemly quixotic effort against all odds to change it. They don't all succeed, but many do. Don't smother that success in the crib.
  - ajsnigrutin 7y ago
    Yep, it just takes a "NewHotApp(TM)" for the kids to migrate to there, forget about their facebook accounts, and their parents will follow in a couple of years. Considering most younger people don't actively use facebook anymore, their (facebooks) only chance is to buy the NewHowApp company every couple of years (khm.. instagram.. khm,... whatsapp..)

CryptoBanker 7y ago

You may not have noticed, but that $0.99 is a hell of a lot more to the "masses" than it is to you l. Some people need every dollar

bad_user 7y ago

Successful technologies become a success due to early adopters, power users, developers that target those technologies. Lose the sex appeal, make the techies angry and the monopoly starts to wither away. How many people here have installed Chrome on the computers of their friends and family? Is there anybody here that never did that? I remember recommending Chrome, even though I was a Firefox user, because Firefox on Windows tended to get infested with crappy toolbars and other extensions. Well not anymore. And that whole recommendation process can always happen for another browser. All it takes is for the developers to come back to Firefox. And I've seen a noticeable shift happening among my peers ever since Quantum.

ajsnigrutin 7y ago

> The one thing that I've come to realize is that we're losing. The web is now closed. Owned by Facebook and Twitter for the most part. Nah.. They're both losing users. The problem with "modern" internet is, that there's more and more people using it, and that makes the numbers 'weird'. The number of IRC users is probably higher than it was in the late 1990s/early 2000s. But back then only geeks used internet, and only they were on irc.. and now.. a lot of them are still there, just that now there is a bunch of of other people on facebook. As we've seen with myspace, digg, etc., and as we're seeing with tumblr and also facebook now, younger, more tech-savy users have no issues with changing platforms.. from facebook to tumblr to snapchat to instagram to SomethingNew(TM). One "bad" turn of events, one company that doesn't want to sell to facebook, and the "owned by" sentance will be completely different in a couple of years.

DragoCubed 7y ago
As one of those younger users, I still have an account on all of those and still use many. Instagram is from Facebook, Tumblr is from Yahoo which is owned by Verizon. A lot of funny content is taken from TikTok, Tumblr, Instagram, Reddit, Twitter, Facebook and more and reposted over and over through those platforms. This is directly in response to "As we've seen with myspace, digg, etc., and as we're seeing with tumblr and also facebook now, younger, more tech-savy users have no issues with changing platforms.. from facebook to tumblr to snapchat to instagram to SomethingNew(TM)."
iotku 7y ago
>The number of IRC users is probably higher than it was in the late 1990s/early 2000s. But back then only geeks used internet, and only they were on irc.. Rumors of IRC's death have been disproven fairly frequently, but at least when I was active on IRC everyone I've talked to had the impression that IRC as a whole was losing users throughout the early 00s. I suspect services such as slack and discord killed off a lot of IRC users as of late as well. Wouldn't mind being disproven, but at least personally IRC has fallen out of favor except for very specific use cases (like Linux distro support) rather than just chat in general.