⊹˚₊꒰˶˃ ᵕ ˂˶꒱₊˚⊹ Code Anarchist

Chrome Tax

While the hell hole that is the r/browser subreddit has seen an influx of Chromium based browsers, there is a distinct lack of browsers based on Firefox. Aside from Zen Browser and the downpour of WKWebView wrappers its all been Chromium. The lack of Webkit derived browsers is understandable as the engine faces significant limitations. Firefox however is a completely operable and cross-platform foundation for new browsers. So why is no one using it?

Because Chromium is simply better. It has faster rendering, better extension support, more extensive web standards compliance, and a plethora of open source forks to dissect and replicate. Chromium's superiority represents more than just the power of Google in the browser market. It is the story of tech in the 21st century.

A company is left to grow to monstrous proportions, absorbing and killing any companies that could challenge its rule. And in return the users receive the better product that results from an economy of scale. The suite of new free products brought about by corrupt legislation seems like it has provided immeasurable value at no cost to the consumer. What have we ever paid for Google Chrome, right?

Oh god have we paid for google chrome.

The consumers of the world have become slaves to convenience, willing to trade every last vestige of privacy and attention to tech companies for free software and entertainment. The consumers complacence has created an environment festering in corporate controlled code vial enough to propagate these monopolies. Google no longer owns a search engine. They own: the browser, the search engine, the next generation of children who will never understand what it means to live in a world without constant surveillance. Google owns you, and every ounce of data your feeble body can produce.

The colonization of land of centuries prior has been co-opted by the colonization of attention and data. The tech companies of the modern day are left to fight veraciously for market value at the cost of the user. All to maintain a feeble tether to the companies status as a growth stock. Bad things happen if a company stops being a growth stock.

Privacy seems like a small price to pay for the software produced as a result, but the reality is privacy stands as a foundation for many of the rights people DO care about. Most people when you ask them if they care about online privacy will scoff and exonerate the status quo, but this reaction often comes from an ill informed or nihilistic perspective.

The free software that now infests every persons device creates a network of surveillance that ensures the continuation of the status quo. Without privacy how can a person be expected to critique the systems of power. A critical line written in Google Docs is siphoned off by a data broker who will then sell the data to police departments, government agencies, Palantir, and Flock Safety. The loss of privacy is ultimately a thinly veiled facade for the implementation of surveillance. Will anyone ever see that line of text critical of the government?

Silicon Valley has finally constructed the ideal implementation of power. The panoptic schema. Except instead of the prisoner never knowing exactly when they are being watched, they are always being watched. The only question is whether the watcher will enact retribution for their actions.

The slick haired and generously funded sales men that represent these companies tell the world everything is fine and that the technology will only be used to stop bad guys (brown people). The reality is that the power that comes from digital surveillance is dangerous no matter whose hands wield it.

Setting aside the construction of a global surveillance network resulting from companies willingness to sell user data to anyone and everyone. Consider the slow degradation of software that has become omnipresent over the past decade. Companies can only defer the inevitable plateau of growth for so long before the piper demands its dues. And with that comes the 3rd 30 second unstoppable add on youtube, the ever increasing subscription prices, and the encroachment of AI slop into every crevice of our lives.

Chrome cost the world more than what the price tag advertised, and the alternative Firefox was left indentured to google, scrounging for scraps to subsidize its single source of funding in the face of an ever unstoppable competitor. What makes Firefox different is the community around it. An anarchic collective of privacy nerds and unpaid developers willing to create hardened versions, privacy focused forks, of Firefox. A group of ultimately unrecognized developers can band together and maintain forks of one of the largest codebases in the world. Not for profit, but because they felt it was needed. This exposes one of the most buried attributes of humanity. When there is a hurricane people will organize a food drive. When disaster has struck and the world is at its most lawless people will come together to support one another. The internet is built on open source software, and the people that make up the internet are starting to realize how dangerous the capitalist layer of sludge that formed over it has become.

Sources