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I wonder if we might need to start building and using freemium internet browsers, if we really want to have online privacy.
If you look at something like Firefox, it generally has a pro-privacy stance, but at the same time, they take massive donations from Google, to make their search engine the default. They literally can't survive without the biggest threat to online privacy. So why the hell are people trusting Mozilla here, when Mozilla is literally throwing any beginner user to the wolves with this move? What, doesn't your grandma also have a right to her data privacy? Just because someone doesn't know technology well enough to change a search engine, it doesn't make it right for Mozilla to essentially profit from their ignorance.
And this does not even get into the issue that we ultimately don't know what Mozilla does with some of your data, like bookmarks that you can sync with their server. If they're cash strapped, why wouldn't they make some extra money by secretly giving that away?
A freemium model might help a browser sustain itself without being dependent on donations from big tech companies that have ulterior motives and goals.
Gacha gaming has unfortunately shown that the 80-20 rule is strong. You can have 80% of the people using a product for free, while 20% are more than able and willing to whale like crazy and sustain the developer of the product.
It doesn't need to be as exploitative as the average gacha game, but what if a similar model could be made to work for other software? A crazy good browser that gets it's money from selling themes? People are perfectly willing to spend money for game cosmetics, you think someone wouldn't spend money for a nice browser theme?
It's a crazy idea, an insane one even. But is it any crazier than expecting the people who take money from the companies that threaten your privacy, to protect your privacy? Isn't that a conflict of interest? I don't even know why I didn't think about this before (the conflict of interest thing).
ひげ
@alyx pretty much. it has premium features you can pay for if you want. they also make money from their own ad program, which you can opt into in order to earn crypto but i don't do that because i don't really care. default search engine is their own search engine which is decent but i still use google for images. the built in adblocker is also really good and since it's built directly into the browser it's not affected by manifest v3 at all.
a lot of the crypto features are turned on by default so if you don't want them you have to turn them off but that's my only complaint with brave. a lot of people freak out that it is just chromium but chromium is still good and still open source.
@beardalaxy Yeah, I haven't used it since way back. I knew about the ad program, and their own crypto wallet. I even remember something about a system they advertised, that they'd share the ad money with sites/creators you whitelisted. But I have no idea if that ever actually worked, as in, if they actually ever payed any creators for you viewing ads on their stuff.
Didn't know about premium features though. I might have another look at modern Brave out of curiosity. Last time I used it, I ultimately left because it had a slow start-up time, and I didn't really find it justified to be that slow. Vivaldi feels pretty slow too tbh, but again, this thing is ridiculous in what it includes. It has a mail, calendar, and RSS client included in it for some reason.
@beardalaxy You mean the Brave browser? Haven't used that thing since it first popped up. I have no idea what it's doing these days. Is this it?