this post was submitted on 08 Nov 2024
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"Time to switch to uBlock Lite or another ad blocker"
No. Time to switch to Firefox or derivative such as Librewolf.
Unfortunately I'm stuck with Chrome at work so having something like Ublock Lite available is somewhat helpful. I just hope it still blocks youtube ads because they're the worst.
I strongly suspect that is exactly what they're trying to stop.
You can't run
firefox --profile /somewhereor (Windows) Firefox portable?Firefox portable keeps me sane at work. I don’t give a shit about the IT policy of either chrome or edge.
You should be able to bring up
about:profilesin your browser and set up and launch profiles from there.I am running a portable LibreWolf on my work issued, locked-down-with-a-chastity-belt-and-thrown-the-keys-into-the-fires-of-Mount-Doom-in-Mordor laptop with uBlock extension installed.
Try that and see if it works.
clearly not that locked down if they’re allowing an external device access. cute story tho
Did they mention external device access? I only see a mention of portable LibreWolf which I assume is referring to the “can just be ran from a folder dropped anywhere on the filesystem” version of portable, not necessarily that it’s an external device.
This sort of exaggeration is typically used for comedic effect. Sorry for trying to throw a smile on a random person’s face. You must be very fun to hang around at parties.
Contact the admin
I consider browser ab blocking a reasonable accomodation for ADHD and I'm not even joking. I haven't had to ask for this yet but, seriously. Banner ads are extremely distracting.
I think it makes sense
ah you too work for a company that will let you install firefox but no extensions or addons??
fml
We handle a lot of IP so I can't install anything on the PC that isn't pre-approved (like MS Teams). I am able to add certain extensions like Ublock but not others like Keepa (Amazon price tracker).
Can you install Brave? Because that has ad-block built-in.
My company enforces specific add-ons for Firefox so I installed and use LibreWolf which our admins don’t lock down - only Chrome and Firefox. I wanted a browser that I would use separately from my work that didn’t specifically need their add-ons which include traffic sniffing crap. I know that if I want to do any personal browsing and guarantee it’s personal, I should use my own device but I was honestly just annoyed by the additional CPU cycles the security add-ons were using.
it seems to work on youtube so far, but that could also be due to the previous custom filters I installed months ago when yt ramped up their "no adblocker" campaign. UBO still works in the sense that all of the filters and lists you've installed are still there and functioning, you just can't update the extension. I'm still running UBO alongside UBO lite and it's working fine for now (knock on wood) until I can afford a new Windows machine.
when I swapped my laptops, I already had chrome on the newer ones which I'm still using, but when I heard about this ublock origin saga, I started putting all my passwords in protonpass, and customised my Firefox install to my liking, CSS and everything. All ready to switch now, and I'm gonna be thanking my past self profusely for actually choosing to switch instead of vegetating.
Lynx
Brave is actually very good and seems to have a great blocker
ps. their mobile browser has also been great on older phones
Is Brave the one with the built-in crypto scheme and its own ads?
not enabled by default, but if you want to use them, yes
i haven't seen a single ad or been annoyed by any crypto shite so far
I installed Brave earlier this week and that's mostly true. There's some built in stuff that will show by default, notably the toolbar buttons and the notification style alert on the new tab page for one of those things mentioned, but you can just close the notification and remove the toolbar buttons and you're set.
That said, I think it's still in the data monetization market like Alphabet with anonymized tokens, though I don't remember the details.
this is disabled by default, i think that is the BAT system that also uses crypto somehow
i also made a handful of tweaks to tidy up the UI, easily done in the settings
ps. Brave has also built-in P2P and TOR features among other features
actually an interesting browser
Be careful with the Tor features, they allow you to open some onion sites but don't supply the extra anonymity/security of the actual Tor browser.
good point, i think this feature just makes it easier to access TOR domain sites without an extra browser rather than being the anonymity tool that TOR browser is
Yup, it's my backup to Firefox if I need a Chromium browser for whatever reason.
To add: the CEO got kicked out of Mozilla and switched to crypto after he was caught donating to outlaw gay marriage.
that was before 2008 as far as i can tell, has eich and/or the organisation continued to act homophobicly?
He got caught sending money to a bigoted organization, got in trouble, and then embraced dark money.
Until he makes it right to the LGBTQ+ community and makes his finances public, only a fool or another bigot would give him the benefit of the doubt.
i didn't see any mentions of eich using dark money can you link me to more info? that's interesting
You are being obtuse because you don't mind supporting homophobia but don't want to feel bad about it.
i was just checking to see if you were making things up
No. Brave has a history of modifying links you click on to add affiliate information. The only time to use Brave is if user agent spoofing for "chrome only" websites doesn't make it work.
ps. i also first started using Brave when certain streaming sites refused to work in Firefox :)
Try this: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/chrome-mask/
thanks, but it's a performance/timing/codec issue on an older laptop as the same sites work fine on a much higher spec machine
they appear to have stopped that 4 years ago and apologized for the mistake
Right, but I don't trust them as a result and I don't feel comfortable recommending them or not pointing it out. Meddling with links you click is malware behavior.
they have not acted as malware since correcting this mistake
Also the recent case when they installed VPN. In general, they give off the impression that they don't respect users' consent a lot. Mozilla has been similarly sneaky, like with the opt-out ad tracking recently - thus I would only consider Librewolf or hardening - but Brave seems to be more extreme in their advertising business.
the VPN was a feature of the software at the time and not enabled unless you signed up but as you point out if software changes its service without explicitly telling users these days it feels bad
Welll yeah - point was that they installed a service without consent. And not just a browser feature, but something crossing a whole another boundary. AFAIK also, while the tunnel itself was not enabled, the service itself was turned on automatically.
according to the minutes of research i did ;-) i got the impression the service was disabled by default. i don't know the tech details otherwise so i don't know if it made the system vulnerable or unstable in any way. i didn't find anything like that.
more to the point is that they should have said that VPN resources were being installed