Idly noting how "hey this is Mozilla's latest bullshit and here's how you can work around it" is becoming a monthly or even weekly occurrence now.
So, how about that idea for a community browser project?
@joepie91 I am generally interested in the technology, but trying to build a bug-for-bug compatible browser in a world of "designed for Googlenet Explorer and tested with nothing else" sounds soul-sucking.
I suspect the web is lost until Google gets broken up.
@freakazoid I would personally feel it very unwise to rely on a government - *especially* the US government - for the continued existence of the web.
I don't think we can afford to do so, in fact, and like with everything progressive, a government isn't going to do it until the relevant pressure from *outside* the government builds up. Like by building something, for instance.
@joepie91 I should probably have said "unless and until", the workaround for the excessive certainty of the English word "until".
But my real point is that I don't think the problem of Google's dominance over the Internet can be solved by another browser if that browser's goals are substantially the same as Firefox's, if that makes any sense. You end up having to play constant catch-up, either because you're having to keep changing your own rendering engine or because you have to keep incorporating upstream changes into the one you're built on.
And if Mozilla can't manage more than a miniscule market share even with its millions in revenue, how is another browser? Honestly I think we'd be better off if they just die so that Google has less ability to pretend not to be a monopoly.
I'm not trying to discourage doing anything about it; I just think another browser can't have enough impact in the current world to be worth the huge effort it would take.
And honestly, I kinda hate the web. It's become a platform for delivering shitty proprietary apps. We need something else entirely.
@joepie91 One idea that's been bounced around before, and I think there may be projects for now, is to give up on trying to support "the web" and just support some subset of it that works across a lot of sites. Then build sites with that subset.
@freakazoid I think this is a reasonable idea in principle, but also something that is prone to takeover by primitivists and/or toxic minimalists if not very careful (with all of the accessibility and likely racism issues that that implies).
You'd have to ensure that there is a very clear answer to "what do we actually need from a web platform", *and* that the answer to that doesn't just come from white folks.
@freakazoid @joepie91 Gemini may be the simplified version of the web that we need. Is it oversimplified to the point of toxicity? Quite possibly. Must admit I haven't yet gotten into it, as it doesn't seem very interesting. Perhaps it has not yet reached critical mass, but as likely as not it's too white. No doubt any number of constituencies would want features added, and I would hate to see that face a wall of resistance. Nevertheless, standards bloat is a thing. https://astoundingteam.com/wordpress/2020/04/21/standards-bloat-is-a-thing/
@n8chz @freakazoid Gemini does not provide the features that the general public expects from the web and, crucially, does not intend to.
Trying to make Gemini the new Thing For Everybody would not be good for either Gemini *or* the general public, I suspect, and just lead to a lot of conflicts in vision.
@n8chz @freakazoid (Aside, I don't consider Gemini to fall under 'toxic minimalism' specifically because they actually recognize that they are a niche thing for a specific group of people, and they don't claim to be "all anyone needs")
@joepie91 @freakazoid I think they've got the right idea with protocol simplification. It may be they're oversimplifying, but I do think overly-complex standards are part of what's taking the web out of noncommercial hands. The non-technical public, even assuming it doesn't want an at least partially noncommercial web, is almost certainly not well served by monstrously large entry costs.
@n8chz Your mention of what the non-technical public wants makes me realize that this really needs to be about communities. Because it doesn't matter if we build an alternative browser if everything people want to actually interact with is locked up in Google and Reddit.
One thing I've noticed over the past decade is that I've been interacting with more and more niche parts of the web, and far less with the mainstream parts. I barely use web search anymore. It's like the mainstream web is mostly gone for me aside from interacting with specific businesses I patronize.
@joepie91 I need to do some reading on primitivism, but I'm pretty sure I know exactly what you mean by "toxic minimalism" (I think the article was called "against mindless minimalism") and I agree it's something to be avoided. And I think you have given exactly the prescription to avoid it, which is to actually listen to people and take their needs seriously.