The anti-Big-Tech movement isn't a trend, it's a correction. Our societies spent 20 years accepting surveillance capitalism as normal. And now, we're slowly remembering we have choices.
Sure, switching browsers is a small thing. But small rebellions are how everything big begins, or so we like to believe. 🤞
If you think about those around you, have you noticed an increased awareness lately about what's behind the tech they use?
@TritTriton @user365 @Vivaldi > Even though most of the security-relevant code for Vivaldi browser is in Chromium, there is also some security-relevant code in the UI. If you think that specific security-relevant parts of the UI should be open-sourced to make Vivaldi more trustworthy, let us know, and we’ll consider putting it out as part of our code bundles, so you can check it for yourselves.
That's an unfalsifiable claim without source code access, how can you "check it for yourself" w/o it?
@ohir @TritTriton @user365 @Vivaldi “I prefer European™️ proprietary spyware (Vivaldi), it keeps me safe from the evil American open source project (Chromium)”
Braindead. There was no argument in that post beyond “we want to commercialize our brand and sell your data”, accepting spyware just because the people harvesting your data live in Europe, especially when non-spying alternatives exist, is just sad, but also hilarious.
@gsprs @TritTriton @user365 @Vivaldi I'd like to see how average grandma aims at compiling Chromium or TorBrowser from the sources. Heck, even seeing her checking Chromium macOS bundle before she self-signs the content to proceed with install would make.
Ignorance is bliss. Magic thinking soothes the reality.
@gsprs @TritTriton @user365 @Vivaldi
How do you know whether published binary reflects all and only what published source says?
Ah, you just *trust* in whomever published this binary. I for instance do not trust published binaries. I assume a malicious party might have access to the build pipeline. In fact a malicious party could have access to the private keys of trusted maintainer.
@TritTriton @user365 @Vivaldi, the small part of the code which is proprietary, but full auditable is the part related to the UI, nothing relevant to the privacy feature, but Chrome and EDGE are very hungry to this part, if they could fork it it would be the end of Vivaldi and all other Chromium browsers.
For Firefox and forks it is easy to be OpenSource, because there isn't any big corporation which use ore made Gecko browsers, not so with Chromiums as by far the most used and used also as base for the worst Data hogs out there.
Vivaldi as the only relevant EU browser and also the most advanced and feature rich existing one, need to protect more than others it's unique features and souvereign against the big global players, for the own existence and the one of others, in a brutal market of almost 100 different browsers and othe 70 which had already lost the battle.
Because this it's pretty irrelevant currently, if a browser is 100% OpenSource or only an 96%, there are more important other points, like the community, the ethics and transparency of the company.
Just switched to Vivaldi from Firefox, seems pretty good.
Also trying out OnlyOffice (Latvian?) office suite of apps and Qwant (French?) search engine - both looking good.
Thinking about ProtonVPN (Swiss?).
The problem is persuading others to change - most of the people I know just keep on using what they were given years ago. MS Windows, MS Office, Outlook, Google …
@sirrichard @gwentlarry @Vivaldi
Gwentlarry is on the right track! 👍 🎉 🙌 🇪🇺
A little bad luck with OnlyOffice is all. I've also stepped on that mine. Its a nice product, but from what I've read on Mastodon, its basically Russian and moved their legal seat to Latvia because of reasons you can all guess.
@leanderlindahl @sirrichard @Vivaldi
I only discovered it very recently.
Wikipedia say it was originally developed by Ascensio System SIA (Latvian) + New Communication Technologies (Russian) in 2009 as a collaborative project TeamLab.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OnlyOffice
Currently a complicated set up with the holding company based in Singapore. There are, it seems both open source versions hosted on GitHub and commercial versions.
It works for me & isn't Google, MS or Apple.
@gwentlarry @sirrichard @Vivaldi yes its a real pity, its such a nice app. It's also beautifully integrated in my Murena.io account (which to a large extent is NextCloud with another design).
There's collabora too (UK), but I think its paid only (for cloud/browser).
I only discovered it very recently.
Wikipedia say it was originally developed by Ascensio System SIA (Latvian) and New Communication Technologies (Russian) in 2009 as a collaborative project TeamLab.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OnlyOffice
Currently a complicated set up with the ultimate holding company based in Singapore. There are, it seems both open source versions hosted on GitHub and commercial versions.
It works for me & isn't Google, MS or Apple.
@gsprs @Thales_Curiosities that's honestly just an unreliable and outdated description of who we are, you're welcome to read about the connections Vivaldi makes and why we make them, we're fully transparent. But spoiler alert: none of them are malicious, they're just for your benefit
https://vivaldi.com/blog/decoding-network-activity-in-vivaldi/
@Vivaldi @Thales_Curiosities >outdated
The article I sent was last updated in 2022 and shows malicious user data collection, the post you sent is from 2019, there are some possible conclusions here:
1. Vivaldi has time travel technology?
2. In 2019 Vivaldi had no spyware but it was added somewhere between then and 2022?
3. That article is full of lies and the spyware was always present?
Replace whoever was responsible for this dumb reply with an LLM and you’ll get better results.
@Vivaldi I notice something which at the same time gives me hope and sadness.
Yes. There is a conscient aware that all those companies spy you, sell you and exploit you. Nobody argues they're evil and they couldn't care less about their users.
At the same time, there is resignation as has been accepted that, that cannot be changed. And even if you mention alternatives, almost always the comeback is the same: "How do you REALLY know they are not (or will turn to be) the same"
@Vivaldi you can smell something is awry when they're all paying dowries.
@Vivaldi I really hope I can switch to Vivaldi soon. But if I can't use it for work, I can't use it at all. And if the shortcut bug isn't fixed (we talked about it multiple times) I can't switch.
This stops my whole team at work from using Vivaldi actively.
Gagagoogle
Vivaldi Browser
Mx. Alba 
user.365
Trit’
Gabriel Pires
ohir
Catweazle
sirrichard
Leander Lindahl 🇪🇺
wizarro
Michael A. Lewis, PhD
NiLace
Kaito
Jamie Jones
DigitalDigger
kaiserkiwi 
тимурка