Life finds a way

Yarr

And then the plan to force everyone to abandon Firefox whether they like it or not.

1. Implement the misfeatures.
2. Movie and music websites will be the first to announce requiring DRM to be able to watch movies or listen to tunes.
3. The banks will be next. "For your safety, you must use an Official Approved Browser™ to be allowed access to your money!"
4. Then ecommerce sites. "You must have DRM enabled to be allowed to buy anything."
5. Then comes the social media sites. For your safety, of course...

At that point, the userbase of anything that's not Chrome or not DRM'd to death will be so eroded that virtually everyone else will abandon Firefox support, DRM will get enabled by default. Also, comes the lobbyists to Congress demanding changes to the DMCA to throw users in prison who dare to try to crack the DRM to block ads. "Ad-blocking is stealing!"

Google is such a bad company. People should discontinue use of all their software and at the very least stop using chrome or chromium. They’ve got the internet by the balls.

The year is 2023, every single major tech companies are racing each other to become Public Enemy No. 1. And the only Hero we have is the EU, will it be able to save the day?

We warned you about Chrome. We told you bro.

Google and Chrome really need to be broken up. Maybe people should start writing (physical) letters to the FTC asking to review Google's recent actions as monopolistic behavior.

It wouldn't be the first time. But showing the interest is the best way to get the ball rolling that we can do.

"Google engineers want..."

No. Google executives want this to happen. Google's CEO wants this to happen.

They want to change the internet and remove any little bit of freedom for their own corporate profits.

Fuck "do no evil" Google.

The internet is unusable without adblockers.

I’ve tried internet without adblock and it’s almost unusable.

Use Firefox.

Support Firefox.

Using alternative Chromium based browsers is not it.

Alright, today is oficially the day I switch to Firefox

We waste intelligent minds on this rubbish when we are facing an existential crisis in climate change.

Why's everyone blaming the engineers lol, pretty sure they're just doing what they're told right?

Man I love using Firefox.

News headline, October 2078

Google finds users are covering their ears and closing their eyes; releases nanobots to force eyes open and lock hands behind back.

Ad pushing is only part of the problem… These tokens will kill the #InternetArchive Wayback machine. It’s anti-library tech.

Anti-bot tech is inherently anti-human.

I find it disturbing that there are people out there who spend much of their time thinking about new ways to get people to see adverts. Surely it falls under the "bullshit jobs" category that David Graeber once wrote about.

I don't know if it's the Google engineers that "want" to do this

This shouldn't be surprising to anyone. And it's a death knell of the internet as we know it. It won't be today or tomorrow, but slowly, over the next few years, expect surface level internet services to be extremely user unfriendly. I expect normies to just accept their fate and pay access fees to literally every website and service they use, while more tech savvy or explorative people might find their way to federated spaces or Usenet, etc.

And another question: did someone already lay out a roadmap to google's collapse?

Right now we're going through a financial crisis, big tech needs to start making proper money so they try to squeeze the users. Google hopes to "drm the internet" to maximise ad revenue. Let's assume they succeed. 3 years from now the dystopia of dead adblockers is live, google and other leeches make bank off ads.

But there's no more adblockers and no more ad revenue left to squeeze out (because every internet user is already chained to a screen and force fed ads within ads). And shareholders demand increase in profits. What do they do then? Is there any hint of a long-term strategy? How long before the maximum theoretical ad revenue is reached and plateaus? Then COVID29 or something comes, fed raises rastes again and...?

Use Firefox.

Even the Android version lets you install uBlock Origin.

Google controls way too much. People need to stop using their products. Many people complaining right now are still using Google stuff. If everyone concerned stop using Google stuff, that would cause them to reconsider very quickly.

There are no laws stating that we have to watch or see ads, so forcing us to watch them feels like a huge overstep. Companies shouldn't be able to have this much control over a public service.

It isn't Google Engineers wanting to do it. It's Google engineers being told to do it.

I'm not even joking, shit like this is bringing back my depression.

Google engineers want me to stop using anything from google

This is why I recently switched back to Firefox.

Even if they do that, some people will just create illegal website mirrors that remove ads.

On reddit, people already copy paste articles when there's a paywall. I can totally envision that thing to be more common.

I am not fucking kidding, I will stop using websites if I cannot block ads. This is non negotiable. I don't care about your business model, I have zero money to give you. I tried the official reddit app, and uninstalled within a week.

Will use firefox until it gets broken into pieces. I would rather stop using the internet other than for necessary situations.

When will they understand, if I'm introduced to your product through an advertisement, I do not want to buy it. I will make a point not to. Do not annoy me. If your product is good enough, it will be bought.

It was not hilarious when MS tried to control stuff like this with IE.

This is a boring fight, and it is why tech companies need a broken up and a kick in the profits/pants.

Their examples are business issues where they want a tech solution.

These are working on a foundation that the internet today, with all it's venture capital money, "free" websites and services that run at a loss is how the internet should look. So they are building technical solutions to force some "trust" facilitate this internet. If a business or website cannot function or be profitable without this, that company does not deserve to survive. It's putting businesses ahead of users.

It works off the assumption that websites should know who the person visiting their website is (or that it's even a human.)

IMO, we need to return to the assumption that users are anonymous and remind people that you don't know who is on the other side so we should not trust at all.