Although it’s the only place I’ve seen that leaves a chunk of silence while the ad plays.

Very weird, I am using it daily and it works just fine. Maybe you’re using an older version? Rather than using F-Droid’s repo, I use NewPipe’s own.

At least when it came to a laptop, I bought mine without a preinstalled OS - that is far more common than preinstalled Linux.

Well, I am pretty sure the FOSS apps I use don’t have external trackers at least.

Or, better, not use a car at all because automated license plate readers. Cars seem antithetical to anonymity in general. Better take a tram/bus/subway and buy tickets with cash. Or at least call a taxi if it’s really far from any transport stops.

Welll yeah - point was that they installed a service without consent. And not just a browser feature, but something crossing a whole another boundary. AFAIK also, while the tunnel itself was not enabled, the service itself was turned on automatically.

Also doesn’t do cosmetic filtering - like, it would remove the ad, but not the HTML box that used to contain it.

From what I understand, the limit on the lists is not the only problem with it - my main concerns are a) lists only being able to update together with the extension itself and b) some features apparently being fundamentally disallowed, like the element picker I am dependent on.

Also the recent case when they installed VPN. In general, they give off the impression that they don’t respect users’ consent a lot. Mozilla has been similarly sneaky, like with the opt-out ad tracking recently - thus I would only consider Librewolf or hardening - but Brave seems to be more extreme in their advertising business.

Ah, then I can sleep calmly I guess. There are some group pictures with me, but none have me tagged specifically so I guess that’s not as bad.

Well, everyone had their photos taken for their IDs, and these photos might’ve easily been stolen or leaked… Wonder if this would be enough for such a system.

Ah, okay. I just wanted Vanadium because it came with the OS, but if I were to install another anyway - I am content with a FF fork, where Ublock Origin is indeed available. I was just very surprised that Vanadium did not block the giant element that has “Ad” in its html name…

It says the content blocker there is “Basic + Adblock Plus”, and Adblock Plus is known for its not-so-great reputation (like whitelisted “acceptable ads”) compared to UBO.

Yes, but even things like Bitcoin or Litecoin are much easier to use privately than bank cards. You can swap from Monero to them if Monero is not accepted, for example. You can buy them without KYC if you know where to look. With a bank card or something like Paypal, you’d need to use a “drop” (a random person to KYC your accounts) if you want anonymity, which is illegal so a normal person wouldn’t risk it.

That said, while I use crypto for digital purchases like domains, I would rather use cash for physical ones. Or gift cards if available (where I am, they’re almost-nonexistent and the only ones I’ve seen can only be bought with another bank card).

It’s only been two years though.

Monero doesn’t quite work this way.

I really wish I could use Vanadium as my main browser, but two downsides are really noticeable: a) adblocking is not as good as with Ublock Origin (for example, on TVTropes the ads themselves were removed but not the HTML elements they used to be in) and b) the multiple-choice search engine turned out to be quite important for me. So a Firefox fork it is.

While I do use crypto for digital purchases, for physical ones I would much rather pay cash. I either shop in-person or order delivery to the online store’s physical office where cash can be paid, which is usually the only delivery method without extra cost anyway. Our big Amazon-like marketplaces only accept prepayment, but pretty much all others with a physical office accept payment on delivery.

Counterpoint - younger generations grow up in the same poverty as their parents (so that any subscriptions are unlikely) and even if they don’t - their media needs may not fully align with what their parents would buy. So children in my experience do find ways to pirate. Maybe not the best ways, but still.

I doubt any FOSS restriction is doable at all. As for the supply chain - xz showed this is indeed possible… But no one can guarantee that every encrypted client would be able to get such a well-hidden backdoor, and that it will stay undiscovered, and that it wouldn’t be invalidated with an update… But yeah, the only way this can be combatted is having more eyes on such software.