How is it user hostile when it protects people's privacy while also meeting the needs of advertisers? It's a win win.
A browser that truly protected people's privacy would definitionally not meet the needs of advertisers, because those needs are in direct opposition to people's need for privacy.
Hard disagree. A browser is supposed to be my user agent. It is supposed to work for me. It should not be engaging in compromises to my wishes in order to benefit others.
> Chrome should try and improve the ecosystem.
I think that there is much disagreement about what "improving the ecosystem" would look like.
Sure, but enabling sites to be financially viable to run is almost universally considered good. If something is not viable on the web either it will be built on another ecosystem or it won't be built at all. It ends up making the web a worse place to be and strengthens the competitors to the web.
If collectively we decide that intrusive advertising has to go and we need to more directly pay for labour online, then so be it. It doesn't necessarily have to stay the old way forever.
That isn't what's on the table, though. This impacts the ability to target ads. Targeted ads are absolutely not required for a website to be financially viable.
> If something is not viable on the web either it will be built on another ecosystem or it won't be built at all.
The history of the web demonstrates that this isn't true. There's an excluded middle there.
> It ends up making the web a worse place to be and strengthens the competitors to the web.
What are the competitors to the web?
But aside from that, in my opinion, advertising has made the web a much worse place as it is. Advertising has made the web more like interactive cable TV, and limits the variety of activities because only the ones advertisers approve of are effectively allowed.
There is a subset of sites where it is required. Or at least it is with how much resources they are investing into the site and free services they offer.
>What are the competitors to the web?
The biggest competitors are Google's Play store and Apple's App store.
>Advertising has made the web more like interactive cable TV, and limits the variety of activities because only the ones advertisers approve of are effectively allowed.
The existence of sites with advertising doesn't mean that sites without advertising can't exist.
I will never use a browser that serves anyone's desires over mine. That's absurd.
In any case, why in the world would I want to use a browser that is working against my interests and in favor of the interests of an industry that has done nothing but been abusive for a very long time?
I think this would be the best thing that could possibly happen for the health of the web, tbh. Imagine Google search results if every blogspam page plastered with ads no longer had a financial incentive to exist.
EDIT: It would kill some useful sites too, undoubtedly, but I think it would be worth the cost.
Referral links are a terrible business, with even less money and at the same mercy of the oligarch next door.
Intrusive ads disappearing would be transformative and good for the web for a good long while.
If those ads are targeted, then they're not giving it away for free at all. They're just demanding a different currency.
My "browser" runs on my computer, by me, for me. It is not beholden to "all of the stakeholders", or "the rest of the people in the ecosystem". If my agent acting in a manner that User Agents were originally intended to, only fetching the URLs that I - the user - want it to fetch, "would cause a disaster to the health of the web ecosystem", then maybe the current web ecosystem is bad and deserves to meet with disaster.
The web managed to explode in usefulness and popularity before surveillance capitalism became a thing, not because of it.
Are you meaning something different from the current state of affairs?
Because, that seems to describe things currently.
That's complete bullshit.
If it’s so great it would be any easy opt-in for users. But it’s not.