The fuck?? Isn’t this anti competitive behaviour?
this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2023
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In a previous generation, governments would go after this blatant anti competitive behaviour.
I'm sure the EU will still.
It’s just a shame that there’s really only one government organization globally that will still stand up to corporations.
To be fair China will send you to a reeducation camp or disappear you if you try to act like a western billionaire.
China will make you disappear for many things including speaking up against the genocide of religious minorities ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
For now
Honestly with the speed new BS crops up I don’t think they will.
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(3 replies)
If you're networked with the right people in the US, laws don't matter
Do you want to hear about the Microsoft "bug" that affected Firefox that was only recently fixed after 5+ years of getting reported?
Corporations really hate non-profit products that are superior.
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(17 replies)
It's bizarre how blatent this is. Google has so much power over web standards that Mozilla have to work really hard to make firefox work, but YouTube don't bother being subtle or clever and just write 'if Firefox, get stuffed' in plain text for everyone to see.
this isn't much different than when microsoft added code specifically to break windows 3.1 when run under dr-dos instead of their own ms-dos. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AARD_code
And it cost them 280 million in the 90s ouch
Something tells me they survived.
In my other comment I provide a link to the US DOJ anti-trust complaint center website.
Google has been doing this kind of thing for a while. If you try to use Google Meet in Firefox, you can’t use things like background blurring. Spoofing Chrome works in that situation as well.
And the stupid thing is that all I use Chrome for is Meets... And that's it. Do they really think they win me over?
Not you or me. But most people, yeah.
That is, as always, the problem: it works for them. The average Joe isn't going to implement a new filter into ublock...
BTW, this:
So this is part of a larger adblock checker, if the ad doesn't load within 5 seconds, it fails and triggers the adblocker warning. Since the ad should load in 3, they've set it for 5. If you have ubo, you won't see the warning that it then wants to pop up, it just seems (and is) a 5 second delay. Changing the UA probably removes this from Firefox because then the clientside scripts will attempt to use builtin Chrome functions that wouldn't need this hacky script to detect the adblock. Since they don't exist, it just carries on.
I was wondering how badly out of context the above quote must be considering the UA isn't checked in the function. Above poster is trying to construe it as a pure and simple permanent delay for Firefox.
That being said, the solution is still bullshit.
That is just the timeout function, not the call stack. It is likely called in a function that uses a UA check.
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(1 replies)
This is some ultimate scumbaggery.
The thing that gets me is they think no one will ever find this stuff. There are hundreds of thousands of people (maybe more) who are actively looking ways to block ads and get around this behavior. There's no way it'll ever go unnoticed.
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(6 replies)
This should be illegal, Firefox being their competition (tangentially)
It honestly probably is
EU might hit them for it. I have no faith that the US government is going to do anything.
This is why net neutrality is important. To prevent bullshit like this from happening.
That's not what net neutrality is about. NN is about carriers and ISPs treating all services and websites equally. Don't feature creep NN. It weakens the arguments for why why we need NN.
They do the same shit for Google search results. Search weather or stock tickers with a Chrome user agent* and you get a rich, interactive chart of the weather forecast or stock history. Search with another mobile user agent and you get a static snapshot of the weather or stock price at an instant in time.
There's even an extension for Firefox for Android which changes the user agent for Google searches to Chrome, to get the rich content.
* just a user agent, not an actual browser, which proves that it isn't about browser capability, but rather abusing their monopolistic market position in search to further their web browser's market share. Sound familiar, Microsoft from the 90's?
Let's hope Europe stars investigating Google as a gatekeeper. That seemed to work miracles on Apple.
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