A handful of companies monopolise the web, with unprecedented access to our data. But there are many more ethical – and often distinctively European – alternatives

A handful of companies monopolise the web, with unprecedented access to our data. But there are many more ethical – and often distinctively European – alternatives

  • Em Adespoton@lemmy.caEnglish
    1·
    6 days ago

    Why doesn’t it mention the Fediverse at all???

    Seems like they’re advocating using a Fairphone running e/OS, Ecosia as the search engine, LibreWolf as the browser, LibreOffice as the office package, and W for social media?

    • WesternInfidels@feddit.onlineEnglish
      2·
      6 days ago

      The steady exodus from Elon Musk’s X has benefited smaller, independent alternatives such as … German-developed Mastodon

      • cabbage@piefed.socialEnglish
        2·
        6 days ago

        This is probably a much more efficient “mention of the fediverse” than if the journalist had started trying to explain that there is this federated network of independent social media sites bla bla bla.

        The people reading this are looking for something they can understand. I expect naming Mastodon and leaving it to them to check it out will convert more people than if they started trying to explain what it is.

        I’m a bit weirded out by all the attention given to w-social.eu by mainstream media, though. First of all it doesn’t exist yet, second we have no reason to believe it will actually be decent, third we have good reason to believe it won’t be.

    • CountVlad47@feddit.orgEnglish
      1·
      6 days ago

      Someone once said “don’t let perfection be the enemy of good” … or something like that.

      Anyway, my point is it’s good that this kind of stuff is starting to get into mainstream media, even if they don’t go into as much detail as they could.

      They might not have wanted to scare people off by giving them too much information all at once, especially things like the Fediverse which even lots of tech savvy people don’t really understand.

    • itsmistermoon@piefed.socialEnglish
      1·
      6 days ago

      Yeah, that was my main criticism of the article, it completely omitted social media.

      Also, the author mentions Codeberg as the “developer” of Librewolf, so it seems is not the most tech savvy around.

      • Sockenklaus@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        1·
        6 days ago

        Huh, I wouldn’t say, the article mentioned Codeberg as the developer of Librewolf.

        It says:

        An even more private (but still free and equally effective) version of Firefox is LibreWolf, which was developed on Codeberg, a German nonprofit.

        To be honest this sentence doesn’t make any sense at all: Librewolf wasn’t developed, it is in active development. But it is true that it’s being developed on Codeberg, which still doesn’t convey a lot of information to the reader… I dont know if this article is very helpful at all…

        • itsmistermoon@piefed.socialEnglish
          0·
          6 days ago

          It previously said “by” Codeberg, so the author either catched the error or read someone else pointing out the mistake.

      • SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.orgEnglish
        1·
        6 days ago

        Step one to moving to Linux should be switching to open source alternatives to the proprietary software you use while you are still on windows. If all the programs you use are already open source, then switching to Linux is so much easier.

  • yeehaw@lemmy.caEnglish
    0·
    6 days ago

    My gripe on a browser is I want one that whe. I click a link it’s opened in a container by default so it can’t scoop up all my cookies and browsing history.

    Right now my flow is Firefox focus as default browser, then if it’s a page I want to view later or keep open I share it to Firefox. Kind of annoying but ideally I have this in just one browser.

    And as I write this and checked, Firefox for Android now does this lol. Vivaldi, the one recommended in the article does not. Not to mention I try and support something that is not chrome-based. We need alternatives

    • ChunkMcHorkle@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      5 days ago

      Floorp, a Firefox fork, containerizes also. Floorp does it in the same manner, meaning you create the containers and assign sites, and only after that does that site automatically get containerized. I do something similar to what you’re doing, but it’s between Firefox and Floorp. I wish they’d start containerizing sites by default, but for now this is what I do.

      • WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        2·
        4 days ago

        I wish they’d start containerizing sites by default, but for now this is what I do.

        afaik strict tracking protection has been doing that for long

      • ChunkMcHorkle@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        5 days ago

        Huh, I was just writing that I wished Firefox would do this, so thanks! I’ll check it out. Much appreciated.

        EDITED to add: unfortunately it’s not for me. I tried it out in automatic mode (recommended) and while it worked perfectly, as soon as I enabled it my browser started to get unstable, pages would lock, mouse pointer would disappear, etc. And then as soon as I disabled the extension all went back to normal. So it’s a no-go for now. But thanks for letting us know it’s there.

          • ChunkMcHorkle@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            4 days ago

            Yeah, I wouldn’t worry about the safety of the extension, though. I have a lot of extensions going already, and this is not the first one to go bonkers as a later addition. So chances are excellent it will work for others just fine.

    • imetators@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      0·
      6 days ago

      LibreWolf doesn’t open tabs in containers, but it is kind of hard coded to never save cookies, passwords, trackers. Every time you close and open browser, it is like to open a freshly installed browser on a freshly installed OS.