this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2023
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For the millionth time, Stallman was right.
Yep, you send me html, my browser can interpret it any way that I want it to. If I want to ignore all of the image and script tags, I can. I don't need Chrome or even Chromium. As Stallman says, you should know what is running on your system.
We need to go back to html and css. Using an ad blocker and noscript literally breaks webpages. I just want to read the article! You know the content ppl actually come for
But how is all the bloat going to get to you then? HTML with some images is equally functional and loads in a fraction of the time, because it is actually efficient. Nobody could want that could they?
https://piped.video/watch?v=pq7NLMwynYg&feature=youtu.be
How the fuck are people using the internet without an adblocker?
It is pracitcally impossible to differentiate content from ads. And i was just talking about all the bloat without the ads. Thank you for sharing this, i never thought it'd be this bad.
It's such a bizarre situation. Either you heavily limit Javascript and basically destroy all web apps or you embrace it and get laughably slow websites with walls of ads that beg you to log in to actually view the page. Like if you look into it, it's genuinely shocking how much software is a web browser running JS under the hood.
I can see legitimate uses for java script, like popping out a menu. But it seriously needs its capabilities restricted.
You can pop out menus with CSS.
This is a bad take. How are you gonna do that? Force ECMA to scrap all the functionality deemed 'bad'? Wave a magic tech wand? At the end of the day JS is a tool, and like any tool it can be abused for nefarious purposes. The issue is that advertisers abuse this tool, and the sites they pay to be shown on allow it. Not because insert scripting language exists.
It just occured to me that I wonder how a text browser addresses all this
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/07/25/voters-progressive-trump-harvard-youth-poll-gop/
Just tried it on browsor
That doesn't mean his strategy and approach is good.
Who cares? Whether or not Stallman is a likeable person isn't what's important. His ideas are.
The way he presents them and approaches certain subjects is what's offputting. He's got this black and white atitude towards the world and how things work, when in reality, everything is just a shade of gray.
Could you give an example?
He says IoT devices are bad. He says most Linux distros are bad just cuz they don't use everything GPL licensed in them. Says don't use this, don't use that, yet the alternatives to what he proposes are... just no usable in the 21st century. Read pages in plain HTML, yeah right 😒.
It's the lingo he uses, he marks everything as bad, except for GNU or GPL licensed software. And that is off putting to most people and is why many new projects don't even use the GPL any more, they use MIT or BSD quite more often. The complete lack of any legal support for GPL projects from the FSF is also another reason. "There are just too many, we don't have enough lawers". Have you ever thought about, IDK, paying those people? Like you win one lawsuit, make a deal with the owner of the licensed work for him/her to invest part of the winning over to the FSF in order to actually pay these lawers and other people involved in the process. Do the same with every case, and you have yourself a sustainable system. No one wins this way, except those who infrindged the GPL license.
My 2 cents... doesn't mean that I'm right, but these are one of my personal reasons why I steer away from the FSF and RMS. These people are stuck in bitterness and grudges, no real insentive to offer a viable alternative whatsoever. It's like the Pale Moon project, except PM is much worse.
That's the price of internal consistency. Nothing you say is an argument against any of his points, you just don't want to give up the comforts you've gotten used to over the last decades. I get it, I don't want to either, but our lack of commitment is precisely why companies are able to abuse users so freely.
He's not giving viable alternatives! He just says "don't use this, don't do that". That's not constructive at all, just the opposite.
Times have changed, people change, technology changes. I was against using a smart device up until about 3 or 4 years ago, until I realized how way way behind I was behind everyone and how practical it can be. While everyone was just carrying around their phone and took pics of things that they needed to remember, I had to do the same with a camera... not to mention I had to remember to bring it with me every time I might need it (and you can't always know upfront if you're gonna need it or not). On the other hand, my phone is always with me, regardless if I need a camera or not.
This is just an example, there are so many other examples that make life easier. RMS and the FSF has nothing to offer, nothing to put on the table as a viable alternative, except "don't use that". They could have so much money flowing into the FSF just by copyright lawsuits, they could practically be swimming in money, but no, they decide to do everything on a volentary basis. You can't win if the playing field is always tilted towards the corps. You can only win if you play with their rules, and their rules are, invest money! They can have enough money to invest in devs as well, devs that will probably make a viable alternative of an OS to actually run on phones and be completely open sources, but... no, that's against their practices and beliefs 😒.
Well, I'm sorry but, you don't offer anything, just forbid things. Maybe I really don't want to use this or that technology, but it makes my life easier, so I'd rather use it than not 🤷. Saying "don't do this, don't do that" is the exact same mentality that PM has regarding stuff that doesn't work with the browser. "Just don't visit those sites". What? It's a browser, it fails at it's primary purpose, to browse websites. I'm sorry, but that is unacceptable. When your product doesn't fulfill it's primary purpose and your only reaction is "just don't do that", you need to seriously rethink what you're doing and in which direction this project is going.