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submitted 7 months ago by NotAnArdvark@lemmy.ca to c/firefox@lemmy.ml

I'll be emailing the site admin... or some contact at the site, but, is there anything else that can be done to try to put pressure on these websites that tell me "you're not getting the best experience... download Chrome."?

I know Firefox has a "Report a broken site" feature, but, the site isn't technically broken. They're just telling me to switch browsers.

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[-] NickwithaC@lemmy.world 79 points 7 months ago
[-] javasux@lemmy.world 6 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

What a privileged life to lead, where you aren't forced to use certain websites by (e.g.) your student loan servicer, or your utility company

[-] 7heo@lemmy.ml 4 points 7 months ago

You are only forced by yourself. I regularly find myself ridiculed, ostracised, blocked, etc.; but I never find myself forced: in our western societies at least, nobody (outside of cops during demonstrations, but that is an entirely different topic) forces you to do anything. Instead, you are coerced.

The thing with coercion is that it is always a tradeoff between a small immediate cost (that will either increase dramatically over time, or be compounded by another factor because of some non immediately obvious synergy) and a big immediate cost (that will however prevent the situation from devolving any further).

Since most people aren't intelligent enough to spontaneously interpolate the missing information, and understand the entirety of the situation they are enabling, they take the small immediate cost, only to find themselves fucked in the long run, act surprised_pikachu.gif, and argue that they could not have possibly seen it coming.

The fact is that this lack of intelligence, while partly stemming from an unfair, abusive system, is still mostly on them: intelligence isn't innate. Like strength, it is an ability that one develops and cultivates, and even though there are definitely genetic and environmental factors, they account for a small part of one's overall agency in this regard.

So, had they bothered to be honest with themselves and just checked that their comfort might very well have an unexpectedly disproportionate cost (especially after people like me would have warned them), they might have realised the importance of not giving in to the easiest "solution".

Case in point, in this instance, the website is either checking for the blink engine (which could be a technical requirement), the user agent (which would likely be borderline legal at best - at least in the EU, I dunno in other places), or just using JavaScript to probe the browser (beyond its engine). Depending on the situation, the course of action differs.

In the first case, further investigation is required (as to why the blink engine is technically necessary, and if it is legitimate. Probably isn't, modulo some additional development cost).

In the second case, spoofing the user agent is a good practice, even if only for privacy purposes. However, pursuing a legal action (on the grounds of antitrust, complying with legally required accessibility, etc) is probably also a good thing to look into, or at the very least trying to find other people who have the problem, to try and organise a more permanent solution (like resisting the coercion as a group rather than as an individual).

In the third case, the situation is most likely abusive, and while there might be some reasons for them to do this, I would definitely investigate the technical aspect and seek legal advice (same remarks as the previous point here).

Either way, compliance is an invitation for bullies to continue bullying, so refusing to comply, or being difficult (slow, requiring as much work as possible on their end, etc), and implementing malicious compliance might be your best course of action. Use a virtual machine with chromium if you have to. Try to find a way to exhaust their server resources (and make it plausibility deniable, such as having as many open and hanging connexions as possible, submitting files in a loop, use fuzzing and pentesting tools, etc. Be sure to read the doc, not everything is legal). Make your documents as big as possible. Try to find bugs to make them unreadable, render only on specific systems (windows 98, etc). In office documents, use macros that exhaust resources. Etc.

And as I said, find others, organise, unionise, and become hard to deal with. At the same time, report the issue as clearly as possible. If they fix it, make sure to stop the malicious compliance as immediately as possible.

[-] javasux@lemmy.world 0 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

So you're telling me to stop paying my bills in protest of Google Chrome, because I'm not technically being forced to pay my bills

[-] 7heo@lemmy.ml 3 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

You can also stop breathing in protest of people being mean to you, because you're not technically forced to breathe. Grow up. This is not what I meant and you know it.

[-] NotAnArdvark@lemmy.ca 54 points 7 months ago

Well, I submitted a "support" request:

For whatever it's worth - I'm disappointed to see that XXX is pushing for its customers to download Chrome rather than ensure that their website supports proper web standards. A website that supports web standards will work well on all browsers and will save you from trying to pressure your customers into changing their preferred browser.

Thank you for your time (and, this is my personal opinion, not the opinion of the organization I'm here supporting).

NotAnArdvark

[-] BearOfaTime@lemm.ee 50 points 7 months ago

I'd still report as broken. Fuck em

[-] bitwolf@lemmy.one 45 points 7 months ago

Spoof your user agent as chrome, test that it works with Firefox.

If it does report a bug.

[-] HouseWolf@lemm.ee 38 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

User agent switcher has fixed those issues 9/10 times for me.

I've also had times websites like Outlook or Youtube just run faster after lying to them about using Edge/Chrome...

[-] Roopappy@lemmy.ml 8 points 7 months ago

This is what I do. Works 9 out of 10 times.

[-] shrugal@lemm.ee 21 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

The notice means they know about the problem but don't care enought to fix it, probably because of economic reasons. The only "pressure" you can exert is to try to make them care again, by not using their site and by promoting Firefox to your peers.

[-] deathmetal27@lemmy.world 20 points 7 months ago

You could try posting on https://webcompat.com/ to report sites that insist on using another browser or sites broken on your browser.

[-] angrymouse@lemmy.world 3 points 7 months ago

How this service works? They try to contact the website owner?

[-] deathmetal27@lemmy.world 4 points 7 months ago

It's a volunteer undertaking. Basically people volunteer to report, triage and communicate the issues. If any bug is confirmed to be a browser bug or a website bug, then some volunteers will create a ticket on the browser or websites support sites.

Again there is no guarantee that all issues will get resolved but it's a good place to see if the issue is widespread.

[-] half@lemy.lol 15 points 7 months ago

My bank did this a few years ago. I bank somewhere else now.

[-] authed@lemmy.ml 14 points 7 months ago

fucking lazy developers ....

[-] joyjoy@lemm.ee 13 points 7 months ago

Use a user-agent switcher

[-] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 11 points 7 months ago

Don't use the website then

[-] stepanzak@iusearchlinux.fyi 8 points 7 months ago

My favorite situation that happened few times already was when I sent a link to webpage that worked for me in firefox with no problem to someone using chrome and it told them to use chrome.

[-] delirious_owl@discuss.online 6 points 7 months ago

Also email them that they need to support Tor Browser, for users who live in oppressive countries to be able to access their content

[-] Linus_Torvalds@lemmy.world 4 points 7 months ago

Search for webcompat

[-] mr_satan@monyet.cc 3 points 7 months ago

Never had this happen to me. Not sure if it's my browsing habits or something with my setup (basic if you ask me), but I've never encoutered such sites.

[-] 7heo@lemmy.ml 3 points 7 months ago

Please report the website as broken anyway. If the website is telling you to use another browser, in the scope of Firefox the website is broken. They deserve to know.

[-] thezeesystem@lemmy.world 2 points 7 months ago

Sadly not everyone realizes that sometimes your required to use the site and you can't just exit and not use it. Especially for medical websites and school sites or online learning etc.

[-] 7heo@lemmy.ml 3 points 7 months ago

Being required to use something does not mean accepting and opposing no resistance.

Malicious compliance is a thing. They make data non-interoperable for you, you make data non-interoperable for them. They waste your resources, you waste theirs. Etc.

Regroup, congregate, organise, resist.

[-] cy_narrator@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 7 months ago

I am actually surprised like why? What is so special about Chrome vs Firefox that your website will not work in either?

Can someone who is a Front end developer explain this to me? Any 0.001% case where this has to be done?

[-] grandel@lemmy.ml 1 points 7 months ago

I'm not a FE dev but I know some JS basics. I imagine the site uses some blink (the chromium engine) specific features or css.

Sometimes i also think it's for tracking reasons and they deliberately discourage other browsers

[-] breadsmasher@lemmy.world 2 points 7 months ago

What sort of website? Some random site advertising chrome? Probably nothing at all you can do

[-] michael_palmer@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 7 months ago

The Wizzair website showed an unskippable popup telling me I'm a bot. Therefore, I couldn't buy tickets. Changing user agent to Chrome (Windows) fixed the problem. However, a week later when I attempted to purchase tickets I got exactly the same popup that was preventing me from buying tickets. I was able to buy tickets only when I rebooted to Windows and used Chrome, nothing else helped the second time.

[-] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 1 points 7 months ago

Sounds like you need to take your business elsewhere

[-] michael_palmer@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 7 months ago

Unfortunately, that airport have only two departures per day, so I don't have any choice.

this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2024
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