This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Remember that article awhile back about the FBI recommending you use an adblocker?
That means even the FBI recommends you don't use Google and Microsoft browsers anymore
Cue the Brave shills “recommending” to switch to Brave in 5..4..3..
Wait what's wrong with Brave?
I would argue that if you're choosing between chrome and brave, brave is still better.
It's not firefox
Man, I panicked at first because I have to use Edge at work. But this article clickbaited me, as uBlock origin lite is good enough for most people.
Still, screw Chrome, Edge, and Opera for being such dicks. It's always those three being the bottom tier browsers...
I think the other browser in your list have little choice, since they use the chrome rendering engine. Only Firefox still has it's own engine.
Government becomes more fascist, tech companies become more fascist.
People don’t like surveillance advertising, and most reject it when given the choice. Unpopular policies are squashed when the people are represented, and the Republican policies and interests of forced and extreme deregulation are being represented here, not the people’s.
That, and I believe advertising is inherently fascistic in the way that it distorts realty, and intrusively attempts to modify thinking with punitive, insulting, and psychologically coercive methods - it is corporate propaganda, and when it is combined with surveillance and purchased by the State, it becomes fascism.
I can’t wait for them to try and make ad-blocking illegal. We’re seeing a similar trend with the age verification firm Yoti “reporting” GrapheneOS users to “the authorities”, whatever the hell that Gestapo bullshit scare-tactic means. If FOSS software and ad-blocking are tools of privacy and freedom from thought manipulation, and those concepts are being attacked by a State-backed corporate entity, then the State no longer represents those values. Chrome, like so much other corporate software that has sunk to surveillance advertising with a healthy side of selling data to the government, is now just another fascist tool to punish democratic resistance.
Freedom from advertising is a human right.
The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. ...
~Edward Bernays From his 1928 publication - Propaganda
Edward is the father of modern advertising through psychological manipulation.
He's the reason bacon and eggs are breakfast.
I am posting this again in such a short time, but The Century of Self is required viewing in my opinion. That asshole you mentioned, Bernays, is one of the prime perpetrators for the state of advertising.
— Anyway, I do highly recommend (for those that haven't) investing the time and watching The Century of the Self by Adam Curtis. It is very illuminating as to how we've arrived where we are now with regards to propaganda and advertising which are rooted in the same psychological underpinnings.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ3RzGoQC4s
It appears to be on Netflix, as well.
I was the one who you posted it to and it's well worth a watch. I put it at 1.25 speed and that was about right.
Hey there, Pele!
I was going to mention two other docs to you that my friend and I found quite good (though different topics). They are:
I hope you can find them somewhere. If you torrent or what not, they are doubtlessly found there.
Ludites unite, might be time to go back to the old ways.
laughs in Firefox/Librewolf
No worries, play store-recaptcha is coming for you too!
Waiting for another player....
PRESS START TO JOIN
?
affects mobile the most obviously... but google's playbook is to basically have forced telemetry always and enforce integrity of their telemetry, and by extension advertising etc.
https://piunikaweb.com/2026/05/07/google-recaptcha-play-services-requirement/ - this just seems like an ok article for it, I did a simple web search and it came up, but others certainly exist if you dislike the source.
Looking forward to when they remove the old options & force PC users to scan reCAPTCHA QRs:
Zen is excellent.
For people who want an opinionated browser... Yes. They have sponsored shortcuts which cannot be disabled and they ghost out the option to in the settings. If you want to dig around the about:config and tweak things, fine, but I'd rather use a browser I can make my own. Librewolf is excellently bare bones.
Corpo banned it for compatibility with crap code apparently
Pretty fucked up considering how much malware and scammy bullshit come though ads.
Seriously. If Google really wants to shove ads down our throats, they could at least regulate them so they're not constantly horny scams. But that would cost them money, oh the humanity.
Over 10 years ago someone at my office had their work PC and user drive encrypted with ransomware because of a bad ad injection from one of those job search sites. Thankfully it was limited to nothing critical and incremental backups restore the drive...but hopefully they found a good lead because they were canned.
If they'd had a good ad blocker this would have been a non issue
I work in IT: Pretty much all the malware we deal with comes from ads. I've pitched making ad blocking standard but they never go for it, even though it's clear it would prevent an absolute shit ton of attacks. It's crazy!
Yep, sorry but not sorry. Advertisements aren’t safe. The industry has been ruined by bad actors and it’s a shame, but also not my problem.
I worked in ads only a few months and learned how fucked that industry was. They're basically given license to just run scripts in your browser, sucking as much info as they can. The fact that it hasn't been regulated to hell is shocking, and truly a failure of all leaders.
They’re basically given license to just run scripts in your browser
That's the crazy thing.
You want to show me an image, maybe an animated gif, and link it to your website where you're selling shit? Fine. Annoying, but fine.
But I don't care how many crocodile tears they shed about 'but websites depend on ad income' -- I am not letting random, unvetted advertisers run arbitrary code on my computer. I don't care if it's in a sandbox inside a sandbox. Exploits may be found, sandboxes may be escaped. And there's plenty of trouble they can get into even within their little sandbox, like running a fucking crypto miner or something.
So, yeah. Adblock and noscript everywhere and always.
Yes, they can host a GIF on their server & show it to me with a non-personalized link, & promote it where they believe the average reader might be interested in it. Or some reader(s).
Just show me the ads you’re showing everybody else, and make money from sales of useful things & services.
Honestly, not that shocking.
It's because people don't go into these offices with fire and guns. If a bunch of advertising people were slaughtered every few weeks things may get better.
Same goes for collections, eventually no one will want to do the job.
Internet Browsers store way too much data and have waaaay too many permissions. It's sickening.
More freedom coming straight from The Land Of THe Free©.
The more you tighten your grip, Google, the more ad revenue will slip through your fingers.
They could have sat on 30 second ads every 15 minutes till the cows came home and most of us would have been fine with it.
They could have sat on premium family for $9 a month for years and we'd have been ok with it.
They had to be greedy as fuck until none of us want to use their services.
The line has to go up. That is literally the law. The fact that Youtube has a larger income than Disney doesn't mean it will stop. They can never stop. They just can crash and burn down eventually but only after making a few people very very rich.
Not after they demonstrate the power of their evil browser. In a way, you have determined the choice of the ads that you will be shown first.
Good thing I don't use any of those shitty browsers.
