Me after Mozilla and Proton

Isn't one of the point of the phenom of enshifitication that it's near ubiquitous? The reason it can continue is because it reached a critical mass, leaving us few workable alternatives, like a symptom of monopolization. I'd wager some companies feel like they won't survive if they don't keep up, not sure if that assessment is true but I bet many think it is.

Enshitified product exists - > good alternative arises to meet demand - > good alternative becomes popular - > good alternative either becomes enshitified to maximize profits or is purchased by owner of original enshitified product.

The capitalist way.
- Get used to it. Nothing lasts forever.
- FOSS FOSS FOSS and self-host.
Ah the chaos theory reasoning. There can't be anything perfect when thinking about it as a whole but you can find sections in a diversified area that are mostly perfect at some point in time but nothing ever lasts.

Browsers I tried yesterday (on Linux):

Zen: neat, but the UI is too different for my taste
Floorp: also neat, but features I don't use
Waterfox: sweet spot for me

Librewolf and Waterfox seem pretty similar on paper. I went with Waterfox cuz idk. So far, Waterfox seems to be a drop-in replacement. I haven't noticed any problems with websites and haven't run into any bugs.

One note about Waterfox is that I would have liked if it was added to the official Arch Linux repos. I installed fine with the AUR, but still.

Bonus: Waterfox is available on Android! 🥳

Zen: is Firefox

Floorp: is Firefox

Waterfox: is Firefox

Librewolf: is Firefox

They are all dependent on Mozilla and its choices.
- There is some degree of independence. For example, if Mozilla releases some super evil patch tomorrow, I'm pretty sure everyone would just patch it out immediately. In fact, this is what most derivatives seem to do, patch out the ad/telemetry stuff.
  
  But yeah, these are all modified Firefox browsers. Hopefully, nobody was thinking these were unique, new, browsers.
- No, being a fork doesn't mean it's the same browser.
- There is currently no comptetive engine that isn’t owned/developed by a big company. Ladybird is slowly getting there, but it’s gonna take a while. Until then gecko engine is OK for now. It’s all opensource so we know when that’s no longer the case.
One note about Waterfox is that I would have liked if it was added to the official Arch Linux repos. I installed fine with the AUR, but still.

Same for LibreWolf.

Bonus: Waterfox is available on Android! 🥳

I was thinking I should ditch android FF, too...
- Ironfox is a solid alternative there too
Is waterfox independent of system1 now?

ETA: they are apparently: www.farside.link/reddit.com/r/waterfox/comments/14phsyl/a_new_chapter_for_waterfox/
- Here is the link without the need to open reddit. https://www.waterfox.net/blog/a-new-chapter-for-waterfox/
One note about Waterfox is that I would have liked if it was added to the official Arch Linux repos. I installed fine with the AUR, but still.

Available on Flathub.

I tend to go with Flathub before the AUR, if available. 👍
- I tend to go with Flathub before the AUR, if available.
  
  This is the correct way to Linux in 2025
Is Zen still a safe bet? I’m using it currently and quite like it actually so I’m hoping it’s still a good option. I just frankly am pretty ignorant of all this browser shenanigans.
I found waterfox on aurora store android and below this stores page it lists trackers found: Mozilla telemetry, Sentry. What is the point if it gives Mozilla the same data? Or is this not whst i think it is?
Try Mullvad browser, it works well in my opinion. It should be used with a VPN (i.e. shared IP address space) though.
There is also Epiphany. browser with the webkit engine.
I like Zen for its different interface. I like having a built-in vertical tab bar. It's not as focused on privacy and security as Librewolf is, though.

What happened to proton?

Their Swiss CEO decided that supporting an authoritarian American neo nazi regime was a good idea
- And they decided that posting on Mastodon was bad so switched back to r*****.
- How very neutral of him.
- He's not Swiss, he's from Taiwan
- There is that, but did anything happen to the service itself?
The creator is pro-Trump and they also recently stopped posting updates to Mastodon citing "they don't have the resources" for it, or something like that.

Correct me if I have missed something; I've got no skin in the game, I just see the drama a lot.
- So weird these business guys get involved into political crap. It's gotta alienate one side or another, simply lose lose.
- Found this the other day, and it sorta makes me agree that this is getting a little blown up
  
  https://lemm.ee/post/55314225
- Andy Yen, who probably doesn't keep up with U.S. news outside what he needs to for his company's business needs, said an egghead thing.
  
  Unless he said something else everyone is blowing this out of proportion.
Encountered someone from local instances in the wild.
Nothing. The CEO dared to congrat someone (Trump) that other people (including myself) heavily dislike from the wrong account. So, tolerant and rational people want to cancel him and his company.
- I'm sorry but what possible positive can you find in Proton doing that?
  
  In what universe does his kissing the feet of that dicator equate to us keeping our lives private?

I’m trying out 3 different browsers atm and I think I’ll just keep all 3 and cycle though or use at different privacy settings. I will miss Firefox and not having to think about my browser. Can’t wait to watch all 3 go to shit as well.

Librewolf seems exactly the same, but it breaks Lemmy for me. It's probably a setting I didn't know to turn off.
- It's likely the resist fingerprinting option. It breaks many websites or those that use bot checking thing.
Don't hold out on us! Which browsers?

This thread got removed where it listed all of the things reddit collects, but we shouldn't get complacent here either. We need to check our instances.

Some of the instances do this here. This is not a 100% haven. It’s great and waaaay better, but still, check into your instances, Lemmies.

I mean, someone made Graphene OS, a fork of Android. Surely someone can also do that for Firefox, right? 👀

There are several Firefox forks. Waterfox (based in Europe UK), Librewolf, Zen etc.
- I have been loving LibreWolf for a while now. Can really recommend it!
- Just chiming in to recommend Floorp. Have been using it for a few months now and really like it :D
- I tried Zen on Arch. Wouldn't even load pages. I'd avoid it for a while. 🤷‍♂️
- i switched from firefox to waterfox on my phone and have yet to spot any difference.
  
  i heard some websites might have issues (e.g. web versions of office software) and some settings are missing but in my own everyday use i didn't run into any of those yet.
- Which would yiu recommend librewolf or waterfox?

use truly foss apps. Anything that’s has a corp built around it is going to enshitify

Self-hosting and FOSS are the way to go. We saw this demonstrated when Raspberry Pi started acting stupidly as a company. There are so many alternatives that it is easy to switch. Unfortunately some things are pretty tough to self-host, like email and anonymizing VPN. But there are a lot of low-hanging fruit that makes it less painful to divest from bad companies.

The mozilla thing seems to be mostly bad PR, but yeah...

They took out the clause in their policy about not selling user data.

It's pretty obvious what follows that
- https://youtu.be/-8bTquKjzos That sums it up. The definition of what counts as "selling data" changed...
- Everyone keeps saying this, but no one has an answer for why, if they're definitely going to start selling all our data, they didn't say that in the new terms? I'll get upset when they actually change them to be shitty.

I went all-in on proton a few years ago but I dislike the direction in which they are going now. Does anybody have tips on how (and where) to switch smoothly. I could self host email but I've heard that it's a big hassle

I've been eyeing FastMail.

Self hosting is almost impossible with email these days. Places like Gmail and Outlook are going to consider you automatically suspicious until you've proven otherwise. Can't prove otherwise until you have a lot of legit email going through. The only way to do that is to attach the domain to a service that's already proven.

This isn't even getting into the configuration issues of running an email server without it becoming a spam relay as soon as it's turned on.
Depends what you want. If you want an experience like Proton with its own app then use Tuta. If you're happy with IMAP with a client like Evolution (Linux) or FairEmail (mobile for Android) or access via a website then mailbox.org are very good.
What exactly is their direction? I heard the ceo is an ass, but their software seems fine to me.

I wonder what is going to be Firefox reason to even exist if we already have Chrome and Edge?

It's a generally recognised principle in economics that we want competition to take place, and for consumers to have a choice - for a plethora of reasons too large to list here. The most important IMO is a political one though: we don't want monopolies for the same reason we don't want monarchies and dictatorships. Being the sole provider of any very important product puts an obscene amount of power in the hand of a single corporation (or a handful of them). We never want that much power to be so concentrated in so few individuals, because it's fundamentally injust, and always leads to catastrophe. Also consider that if that power is a corporation or a "private" individual, they're not accountable to anyone but their shareholders (who, in turn never want the corp to be anything other than a money making machine). Even a dictator is more accountable to his subjects than a multinational corporation is to anyone. So there you have it, that's why we need alternatives.
PLENTY of reasons if they oppose enshitification... but if they embrace it, then yes, they'll just be another pimple in the ass of enshitificated software
- Fucking look at YOU Gogole... Do no evil my ass! [youwerethechosenone.gif]
Allows other competitors to exist

Chrome/edge are the same (yes, I know edge is technically better)

If everything only needs to adhere to chromium then chromium can put propriety code that only they are privy to and when web standards are made around it all competition can’t exist

We already have webapps that say they only work on chrome

constructs like companies and software come and go but the individuals, the movement that strives for freedom stays the same

Cool cool, lumping "I love fascists, actually" together with "We're clarifying our legal positions"

So why does a free and ethical software need a user data collection policy that we have to agree to?

Why do they suddenly need to start collecting our data?
- I assume because either their legal department, or it sounds like maybe this new exec Varma, thought that the previous language opened them up to potential liability in some jurisdictions.
  
  The brightline for me is when the terms actually become onerous. If you were an extreme privacy nerd you were already using a fork anyway, for the average user there's nothing in the terms that's threatening yet IMO.

I've been trying the duckduckgo browser, I think I may stick with it. No idea what to do about email

I've started migrating from Proton to Mailbox.org. Mailbox supports IMAP, and they have a calendar as well. https://mailbox.org/en/

What happened with Proton?

The proton CEO praised Donald Trump's choice for who would lead the government's antitrust division, and now most of Lemmy think they're a Nazi company or something.

Just typical cancel culture bullshit. Where people choose to be outraged rather than attempting to understand a situation.
- They doubled down by leaving federated services in favor of Reddit, which certainly isn't a great look imo
- Yeah I agree it’s been an extreme reaction. Perfect is the enemy of good. Maybe most proton users will be willing to seek out even lesser known alternatives and even self host. But if you’re going to talk to a casual user about getting off of Gmail and then you say “Oh but not Proton” then they’re just going to stick with Gmail.
- 🤦 To be expected, at this point.
  
  The loyalty the left expects from others but never gives in return is truly a sight to behold. Essentially it boils down to "agree with everything they say and if you disagree with one thing, keep it to yourself or else you're a nazi."

The meme makes it seem lime there's some causal relationship though: because we tried to avoid big corp products and dampen enshittification, the alternatives we started to seek are going bad? I don't think so. The world at large is going to shit in a general stream of shitfulness, but I don't think we caused that development by trying to evade the shit.

It's good to have some variety - after all different things get shitty in different ways.

What about Proton? If you mean the fiasco a few weeks back then that's a false alarm where the internet just went apeshit over an innocent remark.

Edit: From what I've seen from these replies, it's all false alarms and nothing actually implicates Proton here. A Swiss company is not obligated to put up a disclaimer saying Trump bad every time they want to talk about American politics (which they only do so far as it pertains to their privacy mandate).

proton disclosed the identity of climate activists without even being forced to
- The article says they were literally forced to comply with the request by Swiss Law as the request went through the proper legal channels.
  
  They also only disclosed the accounts recovery email address. Everything else was obtained by Apple.
  
  Why is reading sources so hard for people?
- Seems like they only gave up the recovery email and ip address
- Okay now that's shitty.
  
  Edit: Apparently not.
Also their announcement to stop posting on Mastodon and this blogpost
- The blog post where they talk about privacy being a non-partisan issue that effects people everywhere on the political spectrum, and warn the reader that Donald Trump is going to have effectively no checks on his power?
ProtonMail removed “we do not keep any IP logs” from its privacy policy
They praised trump after the election
- That's the one I was calling a false alarm. Their CEO later clarified what they meant, but the short of it is: Republicans are more likely to go after big tech (he backed this up by facts), and apparently Gail Slater does have a good track record (including working under Lina Khan during Biden's term). Yeah Republicans bad blah blah blah, but that's quite literally not their problem.