#vivaldi browser

I had to choose a new browser for my laptop since I plan to do away with Google. I've got my personal google accounts as well as the google suite that we use for the shop. I'm tired of reading about how they keep hiring ex-intelligence from Israel, so I'm going to stop giving them my money and my data.

I went with Vivaldi browser because of their distaste for AI. I'm extremely fed up with every single platform or service I use pushing it on me, so I'm actively walking away from companies who are doing it.

Also, I created my new email account! I wanted to sign into Vivaldi so I could keep track of my bookmarks and things, so I had to make that choice. I selected Fastmail because they offer a minimalist inbox with no ads. It's not free, but I'm willing to pay for the pleasure of not having things sold to me.

Now every day I am logging a few things into the new browser and updating my emails. I'm also weighing whether I can live with a dumb phone when I am not traveling. I'm currently in the process of stripping away apps I don't need from my smartphone.

But I did take some time to set up Vivaldi (which took me a not unimportant amount of time!) and have used it a bit yesterday. Of course, both are a bit inconvenient because I actually have Firefox set up with a profile, and regularly use the "tabs on anothe device"-function. But since I want a browser for data safety reasons, creating a profile to get these features is not an option.

Instead I am going the "uncomfortable" route of needing to either KNOW my passwords (unsafe because one tends to choose simpler passwords this way) or have it stored somewhere offline (also not the safest but possible).

So I not only got myself some browsers, but I actually think about having three browsers with various safety levels for different browsing behaviours;

unsafe actions; i.e. watching youtube videos, listening to radio, reading the news. This one has a lot of ad blockers but little safety standards set up.

regular safety; i.e. anything that gets potential access to my computer like photo editing of locally stored files, downloading music and files, etc. This has adblockers and more safety regulations, like storing passwords is okay but third-party cookies are blocked and such.

safe browsing; i.e. e-banking (where it's not its own app), threema web, etc. Basically anything that needs a verification of my personal data. This one gets heavily secured, with no password storing, no browsing history, heavily adblocked and no java (not sure wether that's possible but we'll see), etc.

This seems like a huge thing now, but once it's set in place it should actually work pretty neatly.

I have made multiple posts about why you should use Firefox, and of course I get the reply "not all chromium browsers are bad, they are not all as evil as Chrome." And sure, browsers who use the chromium code are not required to do all the shady things that Google does with it.

Still, I think it's bad that chromium-based browsers are getting close to total market dominance. By this point it has made Google's competitors like Microsoft and Opera drop their own unique proprietary browser engines for chromium. Browsers are becoming a fucking monoculture at this point. And Chromium becoming the browser code base of choice empowers Google, since they are the ones who mainly develop, maintain and fund its code. It means supporting them in their quest to become an internet monopoly that can do things like drm the web itself.

So let me be clear: you are still supporting google by using chromium-based browsers. By helping out in making chromium the de facto standard for browsers, you are giving google power. They are the ones driving chromium development, they will set the standards. And those standards will be in Google's favor. They are an ad company, their goal is to kill off adblockers by making them impossible to use, first with manifest v3 for extensions and now WEI, their web drm.

Brave is a joke.

The supposed "good guy" chromium browsers people recommend are actually shady as shit.

The one i see recommended the most is Brave, and it's fucking terrible. For one thing, it is funded by right-wing techbro Brendan Eich. He was Mozilla CEO for some time, but then people found he was a massive homophobe who funded campaigns against marriage equality, and Mozilla forced him to resign. And that's why he created Brave. That's who you are supporting by using Brave.

It runs off chromium because that's the easy and lazy choice for a browser. And it's literally funded through cryptocurrency, probably the negative environmental impact is a plus in Eich's book. And its adblocker runs off the same dishonest business model as adblock plus does, it will not block ads if advertisers pay them for the privilege. This betrayal of the users is opt-in at least, and you get paid for watching ads, but it's in the aforementioned worthless crypto beans. Brave is a joke.

Vivaldi and the importance of open-source

And then there's Vivaldi, it's a freeware proprietary browser run by a for-profit company, which alone should scare you off it.

"If you aren't paying for it, you are not the customer, you are the product" is a phrase that sometimes unfairly gets applied to open source projects to dismiss them. If it's open source and either community-run or run by a non-profit foundation like the Open document foundation for Libreoffice and or the Mozilla foundation for Firefox/Thunderbird, you are safe even if it's free.

But that phrase 100% applies to free products from for-profit corporations. These companies need to make profits at some point for for their shareholders, and if it is not from selling goods or services, it comes from things like selling your user's data or "attention".

That applies to Vivaldi, who makes big promises about how they will respect their users privacy and never sell their data. But promises mean nothing, Google also says they respect your privacy. And the thing is, Vivaldi is closed source. Not entirely, ironically the bits they got from Google's chromium are open source, but other parts of their code is closed-source. And what that means is, they can make any and all promises about what their browser's code does and there is nobody except Vivaldi that can check if their code actually fulfils those promises. Only Vivaldi has access to that code.

I'm no open-source fanatic, like I don't care if some random game i install and play is closed-source, as long as it is from a credible developer. But open-source is important for security and privacy, because that means someone else other than the company who develops the program can vet it's code for vulnerabilities and privacy violations. Your browser and e-mail client (vivaldi has an e-mail client too) should be open-source for your own safety, because those programs handle sensitive data like your passwords or your e-mails. Closed-source is not more secure, since Kerckhoff's principle applies to digital security and privacy.

And Vivaldi by being proprietary software fails that test. Their own justification is that being closed-source is "their first line of defense, to prevent other parties from taking the code and building an equivalent browser (essentially a fork) too easily." It's the same hypocritical argument that Red Hat used to justify making their Enterprise Linux distro closed-source. "It's fine if we use chromium's code to build our own browser, and expressly for making an Opera clone (that's the literal point of Vivaldi, that's why the name is a music reference), but if someone does the same with our product, they're evil." It's nauseating and alone justification to distrust Vivaldi as it is crying out to be trusted.

so i've been reflecting on what things i actually use and might be giving money to that are from the usa. and while 'i only buy books and music and locally grown food' is kinda true (rip to my beloved Beyond burgers, I'm still not sure what to do with you) i've realised something a lot more meaningful than policing what i eat (dangerous) or being too critical about the artists i support just because of where they were born (slippery slope into something i don't believe in), is to have a look at the tech I use on a regular basis and where my use of technology is putting power. and i've come to realise a kind of monopoly i never really saw before?

adobe, microsoft and google (as well as meta, i'm still not sure what to do with him) are probably the biggest ones i use for work and study and communication. and i can't actually afford adobe suite and if i quit my job i won't have microsoft office either, so it's a good time for me to find alternatives i'm actually happy with. i also need a new browser. poor firefox, they do so well, and they're not quite Big Tech (so idk, the jury's not fully out on them) but i'd like to see if there is just one that isn't usamerica silica valley yk?

good news! vivaldi browser is norwegian and idk. i'm happy with that. all i'm trying to boycott is Big Tech, that brings power that rattles around eventually into a war system, potentially, i don't know the ins and outs but i can give it my best guess, and we've never even heard of them, never heard of Norway having a big stake in tech, I'd love to be part of changing that!! it's still the global north but. small steps. i also am pretty happy with how the norway govt has responded.

also, the other big one i use is musescore to do music stuff. they also own audacity!! did you know that?? they're based in cyprus. the things that you learn.

libreoffice, which i've heard good things about, as well as ecosia, which i've used as my search engine for almost a decade, and viva designer, the only half decent and affordable alternative to adobe i could find, are all based in germany. and as much as i love their recycling policies it also has me wondering. is this just as bad? i'm not sure what else i can do without completely going off the grid and hand drawing everything or starting a plumbing apprenticeship (which would require me dropping out of uni and buying a car, not impossible, but i like urban design and can't afford an electric car yet let alone one that is Tradie Appropriate and Not Being Boycotted)

To whom it may concern, Vivaldi is excellent. Not the composer. I mean I guess he is too but I'm talking about the browser lmao. Much better than Chrome or OperaGX (also they're pretty much spyware).