looks like rendering adblockers extensions obsolete with manifest-v3 was not enough so now they try to implement DRM into the browser giving the ability to any website to refuse traffic to you if you don't run a complaint browser ( cough...firefox )
here is an article in hacker news since i'm sure they can explain this to you better than i.
and also some github docs
We need more browser options, not just Firefox and 20 versions of chrome.
If you have the funds, donate to Mozilla. They're not only the main developers of the only major competing browser engine, but also do a lot of other good work. You can hope for others, but with Firefox only having single-digit usage share it needs all the help it can get.
You can’t legally donate to Firefox, as it is developed by a Corp (Mozilla Corp.). Donations go to Mozilla Foundation, which does… other things with you money. In other words, your money don’t go towards FF development.
So, if you donate thinking that your money helps Firefox development, you're doing it wrong.
To be fair, there are about 20 versions of Firefox too. It’s just that most of them aren’t there to Hoover up ad revenue.
Idk about on Windows & macOS, but there are a lot of other options not based on Gecko (Firefox) or Blink (Chromium). Downside is that they don't have as many features or plugin support.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/List_of_applications#Web_browsers
I completely agree, but don’t forget that WebKit exists too on Mac and Linux with about the same market share as Firefox (at least based on w3school’s stats). Chrome/Blink dominate but all hope is not lost and there are more options, they’re just small. I think focusing on embracing Firefox/Gecko as it has so much momentum and community already is the most productive way forward though
The only reason WebKit has any market share left is because iOS/iPadOS forces it on their users even if you try to use other browser
Google basically made it so that it takes a large company to compete with all the """web features""" that they have, so good luck with that.
A good project to support would be the Ladybird.
https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity/tree/master/Ladybird
They don’t even have builds. How can we support tools the bulk of users can’t easily implement or recommend non technical people to try?
You can support by joining the project and helping them to fix issues. It's a young project, but they've been progressing really fast. Andreas Kling is one of the original developers of Safari, and in the past years he's been creating his own operating system (Serenity OS) and formed a team who've been doing their own JavaScript engine, web browser and a programming language together with the OS. It's a really fascinating story and I give all the respect for them for doing this. This is the work we have to do if we want to beat Google from taking the internet. It's us who need to step up and start fixing the internet.
https://awesomekling.github.io/Ladybird-a-new-cross-platform-browser-project/
https://serenityos.org/
I don’t disagree with you on alternatives but again it’s challenging for the technical folks amongst our peer groups to help adoption of an alternative if we can’t provide places for the folks we support to download the alternative and try it
There’s no way for any of my family or friends to understand how to build their own browser, let alone setup a WSL2 environment to make it work. Their eyes are going to glaze over at the thought then they’re going to go download something else.