6 ms·

Google Just Gave 2B Chrome Users a Reason to Switch to Firefox

128 points by axiomdata316 7y ago

yhoneycomb 7y ago
Before I opened this, I really couldn't think of ANYTHING that would be big enough for me to care enough about to switch. But disabling ad block? That's insane. If that really comes to fruition, there is no way I'm sticking around.
- keyfl 7y ago
  After all the outrage I am sure they won't follow through. Or so I hope...
- r00fus 7y ago
  > But disabling ad block? That's the fear. The reality is they want to use the AdBlock+ (ABP) model of getting a trickle cashflow of adblocking users (and allowing so-called "Acceptable Ads"). If you are seeing this as the thin edge of a very hard wedge into the concept of adblocking, you're in good company. Google/ABP need to start small, offend as few users as possible then make it acceptable and move the conversation to "which ads should/n't be blocked" instead of "all ads should be blocked", all while preserving their revenue stream.
blacksmith_tb 7y ago
That's a bit hyperbolic though. I imagine a high percentage of HN users block ads, but the overall rate is more like 25%[1] I suppose Forbes' editors weren't so excited about "Google gives about 500M Chrome users a reason to switch..." 1: https://www.statista.com/statistics/804008/ad-blocking-reach-usage-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/804008/ad-blocking-reach...
- Retric 7y ago
  Add blocking is not consistent between browsers. Desktop chrome users are much more likely to block advertising.
- d0100 7y ago
  I have fellow developers that live in ad-infested browsers... Like wtf!?
- ballenf 7y ago
  Consumers have demonstrated repeatedly that they will react strongly to losing the option to do something even if they're not currently doing it. And it's even worse coming from an ad company. Undermines trust massively, even for people who've never changed a default (no) privacy setting.
- garkin 7y ago
  It's more like "25% and counting". It was ~3% 10 years ago. Tendency is pretty obvious and omnious for Google and like.
- rstuart4133 7y ago
  As far as I know on Android Firefox is the only one that does ad blocking well. That't because it supports plugins, including uBlock Origin. It's market share is 0.36% It was ad blocking that drove me to Firefox on Android. Screen space is precious on mobile, and ads taking up a lot of it drove me nuts. I found I preferred the UI but sorely missed Chrome's "translate page option". (I changed my search engine to DuckDuckGo for the same reason - google search now shows so much "useful" ancillary information I have to scroll past to get to the actual search results I switched to DuckDuckGo just to avoid the scrolling). But at 0.36% I'm in the noise region as far as browsers concerned, which I assume means most people don't care about ad blocking or noisy search results, apparently.
plorg 7y ago
Do 2B users use uBO, or do most of them use ABP or uBlock? Because I don't see much pushback from the authors of the later, and it anything they have a vested interest in design choices that negate the power of their greatest competitor.
- Rebelgecko 7y ago
  2B is probably the total number of Chrome users. I'd be curious how many Ublock Origin users there are though. The # of installs counter on the Chrome extension store maxes out at "10,000,000+".
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - devoply 7y ago
    Adblocking estimates are around 30% total.
pmoriarty 7y ago
This could also be a boon to external ad-blockers like Privoxy.[1] Using Privoxy, you could have ad-blocking and continue to use Chrome. [1] - http://www.privoxy.org http://www.privoxy.org
0x54D5 7y ago
I've been using Firefox for personal and Chrome for work but this will make me start using separate Firefox profiles for both.
chanwitkepha 7y ago
I use Adguard DNS. It can help because it work at DNS Level to block Advertiser Domain. https://adguard.com/en/adguard-dns/overview.html https://adguard.com/en/adguard-dns/overview.html
- homero 7y ago
  I just started using https://www.nextdns.io/ https://www.nextdns.io/ that offers so much customization and a whitelist
- delhanty 7y ago
  This was insightful from Pieter Levels Twitter: https://twitter.com/levelsio/status/1054985994838130688 https://twitter.com/levelsio/status/1054985994838130688 > The accidental thing nobody noticed is how @Cloudflare is suddenly in the best position now to take over the Web Analytics industry now that adblockers are all blocking JS-level Google Analytics, since Cloudflare can track users on the DNS-level So once DNS blocking becomes the norm, the power to do evil will switch from Google to Cloudflare.
  - chanwitkepha 7y ago
    Umm....Agree....maybe is worst than google.
  - Ayesh 7y ago
    DNS analytics are pretty much useless for web analytics due to wildcard records, multi layer caching,etc.
- imiric 7y ago
  In principle this is a good service, but in practice why would one trust a closed source third party if privacy and content blocking is a major concern? A pfSense machine with pfBlockerNG is open source, fully customizable, and can block at the DNS and IP level. Since blocking content effectively changes how the web looks, and can occasionally break web sites, I'd rather have full control over the service than to pay someone to configure it for me. Plus, the BSD camp has yet to let me down. :)
PhasmaFelis 7y ago
> Google is planning to restrict modern ad blocking Chrome extensions to enterprise users only > the software giant is not backing down: It says the only people that can use ad blockers following the change will be Google’s enterprise users. > Google sent me a statement by email, which reads: "Chrome supports the use and development of ad blockers. We’re actively working with the developer community to get feedback and iterate on the design of a privacy-preserving content filtering system that limits the amount of sensitive browser data shared with third parties." These can't all be true. Which is it? The last one sounds weasel-wordy to me: it might be saying that they want to allow people to block targeted ads and see random ones instead, which is obviously not ad-blocking and would make "Chrome supports the use and development of ad blockers" a bald-faced lie.
- SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
  Google isn't banning any ad blockers directly. They're just deprecating an API which many major ad blockers use, and the replacement API is different enough that those ad blockers can't be ported to it. They claim that the deprecation is about security and performance. In particular, I don't think it's true that Google said "only people that can use ad blockers following the change will be Google’s enterprise users".
  - creato 7y ago
    > They claim that the deprecation is about security I mean, it kind of obviously is. Giving random extensions downloaded from the internet access to the URLs of every request ever made by the browser is a pretty insane security hole. My impression is that other browsers (Safari) already removed this kind of API, or never had it in the first place.
    - SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
      As far as I can tell, they're not deprecating the API allowing extensions to snoop, only the piece that lets an extension say "don't process that request until I tell you it's okay". (In the design doc's terms, they're deprecating only the blocking version of webRequest.)
snomad 7y ago
All the more reason to use Host block lists such as https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts
- zwaps 7y ago
  yeah that's actually the point of the outrage. Using block lists is nice, but modern adlockers can do much, much more. If you just use lists, chances are the Ad industry - with the help of Google, will find a way to circumvent it. They probably already have, see anti-adblock-blockers. Nowadays, you can invent clever ways to get around all this. With the new Chrome - you probably can't. In the future, it'll probably be such that every website asks you to disable adblocking or you are blocked from the site.
b_tterc_p 7y ago
The interesting thing about ditching all of your ad blocking users is that you’ve ditched the segment that shows the slightest interest in improving their ux. Hyperbole to assume all will leave of course, but I wonder what this will do to user expectations
maverick74 7y ago
I bet they'll backdown! There's no way they'll loose control over their users. This will be changed and they'll find another way to force ads on their users without loosing them. Wait and see!
- maverick74 7y ago
  Now, for sure ad publishers are happy with this and for sure will make their services usable only with chrome. Thank God we can change browser user agents :)
dheera 7y ago
Okay, so they are crippling the webRequest API. I'm sure we can still block ads by injecting some masterfully crafted jQuery cocktails. Ad blocking will still be possible. (Edit: Whoever just downvoted me -- you work on the Chrome team, I guess?)
- zwaps 7y ago
  There was a time where I had to use some outdated ad blocker. ALL news sites would display this "Disable your Ad blocker if you want to read this site" full screen block (that was, of course, not blockable with an easy host list). This is probably Google's roundabout way to defeat adblocking as a whole. Disable your adblock, or don't visit any website with Google Ads. Your choice.
  - dheera 7y ago
    Yeah I think Fortune magazine did that to me. I just installed another plugin to automatically inject some JavaScript to get rid of the "disable your adblocker" curtain. As long as bytes of content are being sent over my Ethernet cables, I will find a way to render them.
_bxg1 7y ago
It is worth noting that revamping the browser extension permissions model is something that should definitely be done. Browser extensions up until this point have been a massive security hole: they basically get read/write permissions on every web page you visit. Of course, content blocking could've been part of that new security model. As Google tightens its grip, I wouldn't be surprised if someone starts a genuine fork of Chromium. Not just Chromium plus some extra stuff like Brave and Vivaldi, but a real, doesn't-rely-on-upstream-changes-fork. Microsoft seems like the most likely candidate for doing so.
- devoply 7y ago
  I think Huawei should start an open-source community-based fork of Chrome and Android as an offset to Google and American monopoly on the web. (kidding, sort of).
  - trickstra 7y ago
    No need to be kidding IMHO. This could be a perfect opportunity for Huawei to show that there is life without google. Basically the only thing ROMs like Cyanogenmod were lacking was the support of a hardware maker, coming preinstalled by default. Today with F-Droid, Nextcloud, Openstreetmaps and Mastodon it would be doable.
- Mirioron 7y ago
  >they basically get read/write permissions on every web page you visit. But you can select on which sites the extension is active. You can even make it only active when you click on it.
  - hu3 7y ago
    Wouldn't that defeat the purpose of an adblocker?
    - johannes1234321 7y ago
      For an adblocker maybe, for other maybe less. And even the adblocker might be disabled on the online banking site.
privateSFacct 7y ago
What a bogus story. The issue google is trying to address here is that the adblockers get permissions to basically all browsing data. Google specifically says "Chrome supports the use and development of ad blockers." There is going to be a content filtering approach that doesn't require folks give full access to all browser activity to a third party. For example, google could provide hooks for a pattern list that the extension could populate to block content. But no browsing data would be shared with the extension. I know it's fun to go to immediate outrage - but Forbes is not the first place I'd be looking for thoughtful / balanced stories.
- zwaps 7y ago
  With what we know since January, the only reason Google implements it is because it will not allow sophisticated ad-blockers and anti-tracking extensions to work. Google does this such that you can install some sort of pseudo adblock, while Google Ads and Google Tracking (especially) still work - at least behind the scenes. And this comes directly from the dev of uBlock Origin. The article is absolutely correct, only that 2B users will of course not switch. But this move from Google is absolutely, 100%, meant to defeat effective ad blocking and any further privacy extensions that people may come up with in the future.
- throwaway2048 7y ago
  This has zero to do with privacy and security, because the APIs being removed only have to do with modifying pages, the ability to read data from pages is unaffected. The only real consumer of these APIs are ad blockers, they are quite obviously being specifically targeted. Painting this as all about user safety when it handsomely rewards Google's largest profit center is farcical. (the new static list of 50k filters will be completely trivial to workaround). The only thing that is bogus here is the people denying it has nothing to do with ad blocking.
  - privateSFacct 7y ago
    The extensions that want to do blocking would then not need to request permission to read and modify pages. As users we could pick adblockers that didn't require permission to ready all our activity. How is reducing the required permissions (significantly) not an enhancement to user safety. Your argument that we always must give extension authors full permissions to get anything done is a pathetic one frankly.
delhanty 7y ago
Possible dupe from yesterday perhaps? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20044430 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20044430 And not a bogus story in my opinion.
- dang 7y ago
  Yes, along with many other recent threads: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20052623 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20052623 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20038872 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20038872 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20050173 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20050173 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20037562 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20037562
MR4D 7y ago
Time for someone to start mass-producing pihole boxes and selling them online for $50-$100 and make a killing. If I had the time i’d do it!
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
pdkl95 7y ago
Cory Doctorow was right... it wasn't copyright that brought out the big guns in the War On General Purpose Computing. The real battles started when people utilizing the full power of heir computing devices started to threaten currently-profitable business models. The media companies saw media piracy and asked[2]: > "Can't you just make us a general-purpose computer that runs all the programs, except the ones that scare and anger us?" Google (and advertisers in general) is now asking ""Can't you just make us a general-purpose browser that runs all the programs, except the ones that programs that interfere with our business model?" [1] https://boingboing.net/2012/01/10/lockdown.html https://boingboing.net/2012/01/10/lockdown.html [2] Ibid.
jordache 7y ago
freakin' done converted!
steve76 7y ago
If you don't want to be tracked, improve your life yourself please. So much of violence, I think is a request. World! Show me something I don't know. It is up to the cultured to answer that request. To limit violence, not create it. All that's missing is a role for the hobbyist, the local presence, down to the individual of what those sensors do, and what the response is. Every dollar spent stopping you from descending into barbarity and rampine killing is a dollar not spent on metabolic timing of phytonutrients. Make humanity great again.

128 points by axiomdata316 7y ago

Before I opened this, I really couldn't think of ANYTHING that would be big enough for me to care enough about to switch. But disabling ad block? That's insane. If that really comes to fruition, there is no way I'm sticking around.

keyfl 7y ago
After all the outrage I am sure they won't follow through. Or so I hope...
r00fus 7y ago
> But disabling ad block? That's the fear. The reality is they want to use the AdBlock+ (ABP) model of getting a trickle cashflow of adblocking users (and allowing so-called "Acceptable Ads"). If you are seeing this as the thin edge of a very hard wedge into the concept of adblocking, you're in good company. Google/ABP need to start small, offend as few users as possible then make it acceptable and move the conversation to "which ads should/n't be blocked" instead of "all ads should be blocked", all while preserving their revenue stream.

blacksmith_tb 7y ago

That's a bit hyperbolic though. I imagine a high percentage of HN users block ads, but the overall rate is more like 25%[1] I suppose Forbes' editors weren't so excited about "Google gives about 500M Chrome users a reason to switch..." 1: https://www.statista.com/statistics/804008/ad-blocking-reach-usage-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/804008/ad-blocking-reach...

Retric 7y ago
Add blocking is not consistent between browsers. Desktop chrome users are much more likely to block advertising.
d0100 7y ago
I have fellow developers that live in ad-infested browsers... Like wtf!?
ballenf 7y ago
Consumers have demonstrated repeatedly that they will react strongly to losing the option to do something even if they're not currently doing it. And it's even worse coming from an ad company. Undermines trust massively, even for people who've never changed a default (no) privacy setting.
garkin 7y ago
It's more like "25% and counting". It was ~3% 10 years ago. Tendency is pretty obvious and omnious for Google and like.
rstuart4133 7y ago
As far as I know on Android Firefox is the only one that does ad blocking well. That't because it supports plugins, including uBlock Origin. It's market share is 0.36% It was ad blocking that drove me to Firefox on Android. Screen space is precious on mobile, and ads taking up a lot of it drove me nuts. I found I preferred the UI but sorely missed Chrome's "translate page option". (I changed my search engine to DuckDuckGo for the same reason - google search now shows so much "useful" ancillary information I have to scroll past to get to the actual search results I switched to DuckDuckGo just to avoid the scrolling). But at 0.36% I'm in the noise region as far as browsers concerned, which I assume means most people don't care about ad blocking or noisy search results, apparently.

plorg 7y ago

Do 2B users use uBO, or do most of them use ABP or uBlock? Because I don't see much pushback from the authors of the later, and it anything they have a vested interest in design choices that negate the power of their greatest competitor.

Rebelgecko 7y ago
2B is probably the total number of Chrome users. I'd be curious how many Ublock Origin users there are though. The # of installs counter on the Chrome extension store maxes out at "10,000,000+".
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- devoply 7y ago
  Adblocking estimates are around 30% total.

pmoriarty 7y ago

This could also be a boon to external ad-blockers like Privoxy.[1] Using Privoxy, you could have ad-blocking and continue to use Chrome. [1] - http://www.privoxy.org http://www.privoxy.org

0x54D5 7y ago

I've been using Firefox for personal and Chrome for work but this will make me start using separate Firefox profiles for both.

chanwitkepha 7y ago

I use Adguard DNS. It can help because it work at DNS Level to block Advertiser Domain. https://adguard.com/en/adguard-dns/overview.html https://adguard.com/en/adguard-dns/overview.html

homero 7y ago
I just started using https://www.nextdns.io/ https://www.nextdns.io/ that offers so much customization and a whitelist
delhanty 7y ago
This was insightful from Pieter Levels Twitter: https://twitter.com/levelsio/status/1054985994838130688 https://twitter.com/levelsio/status/1054985994838130688 > The accidental thing nobody noticed is how @Cloudflare is suddenly in the best position now to take over the Web Analytics industry now that adblockers are all blocking JS-level Google Analytics, since Cloudflare can track users on the DNS-level So once DNS blocking becomes the norm, the power to do evil will switch from Google to Cloudflare.
- chanwitkepha 7y ago
  Umm....Agree....maybe is worst than google.
- Ayesh 7y ago
  DNS analytics are pretty much useless for web analytics due to wildcard records, multi layer caching,etc.
imiric 7y ago
In principle this is a good service, but in practice why would one trust a closed source third party if privacy and content blocking is a major concern? A pfSense machine with pfBlockerNG is open source, fully customizable, and can block at the DNS and IP level. Since blocking content effectively changes how the web looks, and can occasionally break web sites, I'd rather have full control over the service than to pay someone to configure it for me. Plus, the BSD camp has yet to let me down. :)

PhasmaFelis 7y ago

> Google is planning to restrict modern ad blocking Chrome extensions to enterprise users only > the software giant is not backing down: It says the only people that can use ad blockers following the change will be Google’s enterprise users. > Google sent me a statement by email, which reads: "Chrome supports the use and development of ad blockers. We’re actively working with the developer community to get feedback and iterate on the design of a privacy-preserving content filtering system that limits the amount of sensitive browser data shared with third parties." These can't all be true. Which is it? The last one sounds weasel-wordy to me: it might be saying that they want to allow people to block targeted ads and see random ones instead, which is obviously not ad-blocking and would make "Chrome supports the use and development of ad blockers" a bald-faced lie.

SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
Google isn't banning any ad blockers directly. They're just deprecating an API which many major ad blockers use, and the replacement API is different enough that those ad blockers can't be ported to it. They claim that the deprecation is about security and performance. In particular, I don't think it's true that Google said "only people that can use ad blockers following the change will be Google’s enterprise users".
- creato 7y ago
  > They claim that the deprecation is about security I mean, it kind of obviously is. Giving random extensions downloaded from the internet access to the URLs of every request ever made by the browser is a pretty insane security hole. My impression is that other browsers (Safari) already removed this kind of API, or never had it in the first place.
  - SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
    As far as I can tell, they're not deprecating the API allowing extensions to snoop, only the piece that lets an extension say "don't process that request until I tell you it's okay". (In the design doc's terms, they're deprecating only the blocking version of webRequest.)

snomad 7y ago

All the more reason to use Host block lists such as https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts

zwaps 7y ago
yeah that's actually the point of the outrage. Using block lists is nice, but modern adlockers can do much, much more. If you just use lists, chances are the Ad industry - with the help of Google, will find a way to circumvent it. They probably already have, see anti-adblock-blockers. Nowadays, you can invent clever ways to get around all this. With the new Chrome - you probably can't. In the future, it'll probably be such that every website asks you to disable adblocking or you are blocked from the site.

b_tterc_p 7y ago

The interesting thing about ditching all of your ad blocking users is that you’ve ditched the segment that shows the slightest interest in improving their ux. Hyperbole to assume all will leave of course, but I wonder what this will do to user expectations

maverick74 7y ago

I bet they'll backdown! There's no way they'll loose control over their users. This will be changed and they'll find another way to force ads on their users without loosing them. Wait and see!

maverick74 7y ago
Now, for sure ad publishers are happy with this and for sure will make their services usable only with chrome. Thank God we can change browser user agents :)

dheera 7y ago

Okay, so they are crippling the webRequest API. I'm sure we can still block ads by injecting some masterfully crafted jQuery cocktails. Ad blocking will still be possible. (Edit: Whoever just downvoted me -- you work on the Chrome team, I guess?)

zwaps 7y ago
There was a time where I had to use some outdated ad blocker. ALL news sites would display this "Disable your Ad blocker if you want to read this site" full screen block (that was, of course, not blockable with an easy host list). This is probably Google's roundabout way to defeat adblocking as a whole. Disable your adblock, or don't visit any website with Google Ads. Your choice.
- dheera 7y ago
  Yeah I think Fortune magazine did that to me. I just installed another plugin to automatically inject some JavaScript to get rid of the "disable your adblocker" curtain. As long as bytes of content are being sent over my Ethernet cables, I will find a way to render them.

_bxg1 7y ago

It is worth noting that revamping the browser extension permissions model is something that should definitely be done. Browser extensions up until this point have been a massive security hole: they basically get read/write permissions on every web page you visit. Of course, content blocking could've been part of that new security model. As Google tightens its grip, I wouldn't be surprised if someone starts a genuine fork of Chromium. Not just Chromium plus some extra stuff like Brave and Vivaldi, but a real, doesn't-rely-on-upstream-changes-fork. Microsoft seems like the most likely candidate for doing so.

devoply 7y ago
I think Huawei should start an open-source community-based fork of Chrome and Android as an offset to Google and American monopoly on the web. (kidding, sort of).
- trickstra 7y ago
  No need to be kidding IMHO. This could be a perfect opportunity for Huawei to show that there is life without google. Basically the only thing ROMs like Cyanogenmod were lacking was the support of a hardware maker, coming preinstalled by default. Today with F-Droid, Nextcloud, Openstreetmaps and Mastodon it would be doable.
Mirioron 7y ago
>they basically get read/write permissions on every web page you visit. But you can select on which sites the extension is active. You can even make it only active when you click on it.
- hu3 7y ago
  Wouldn't that defeat the purpose of an adblocker?
  - johannes1234321 7y ago
    For an adblocker maybe, for other maybe less. And even the adblocker might be disabled on the online banking site.

privateSFacct 7y ago

What a bogus story. The issue google is trying to address here is that the adblockers get permissions to basically all browsing data. Google specifically says "Chrome supports the use and development of ad blockers." There is going to be a content filtering approach that doesn't require folks give full access to all browser activity to a third party. For example, google could provide hooks for a pattern list that the extension could populate to block content. But no browsing data would be shared with the extension. I know it's fun to go to immediate outrage - but Forbes is not the first place I'd be looking for thoughtful / balanced stories.

zwaps 7y ago
With what we know since January, the only reason Google implements it is because it will not allow sophisticated ad-blockers and anti-tracking extensions to work. Google does this such that you can install some sort of pseudo adblock, while Google Ads and Google Tracking (especially) still work - at least behind the scenes. And this comes directly from the dev of uBlock Origin. The article is absolutely correct, only that 2B users will of course not switch. But this move from Google is absolutely, 100%, meant to defeat effective ad blocking and any further privacy extensions that people may come up with in the future.
throwaway2048 7y ago
This has zero to do with privacy and security, because the APIs being removed only have to do with modifying pages, the ability to read data from pages is unaffected. The only real consumer of these APIs are ad blockers, they are quite obviously being specifically targeted. Painting this as all about user safety when it handsomely rewards Google's largest profit center is farcical. (the new static list of 50k filters will be completely trivial to workaround). The only thing that is bogus here is the people denying it has nothing to do with ad blocking.
- privateSFacct 7y ago
  The extensions that want to do blocking would then not need to request permission to read and modify pages. As users we could pick adblockers that didn't require permission to ready all our activity. How is reducing the required permissions (significantly) not an enhancement to user safety. Your argument that we always must give extension authors full permissions to get anything done is a pathetic one frankly.

delhanty 7y ago

Possible dupe from yesterday perhaps? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20044430 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20044430 And not a bogus story in my opinion.

dang 7y ago
Yes, along with many other recent threads: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20052623 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20052623 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20038872 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20038872 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20050173 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20050173 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20037562 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20037562

MR4D 7y ago

Time for someone to start mass-producing pihole boxes and selling them online for $50-$100 and make a killing. If I had the time i’d do it!

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

pdkl95 7y ago

Cory Doctorow was right... it wasn't copyright that brought out the big guns in the War On General Purpose Computing. The real battles started when people utilizing the full power of heir computing devices started to threaten currently-profitable business models. The media companies saw media piracy and asked[2]: > "Can't you just make us a general-purpose computer that runs all the programs, except the ones that scare and anger us?" Google (and advertisers in general) is now asking ""Can't you just make us a general-purpose browser that runs all the programs, except the ones that programs that interfere with our business model?" [1] https://boingboing.net/2012/01/10/lockdown.html https://boingboing.net/2012/01/10/lockdown.html [2] Ibid.

jordache 7y ago

freakin' done converted!

steve76 7y ago

If you don't want to be tracked, improve your life yourself please. So much of violence, I think is a request. World! Show me something I don't know. It is up to the cultured to answer that request. To limit violence, not create it. All that's missing is a role for the hobbyist, the local presence, down to the individual of what those sensors do, and what the response is. Every dollar spent stopping you from descending into barbarity and rampine killing is a dollar not spent on metabolic timing of phytonutrients. Make humanity great again.