Europe wants easy default browser selection screens. Mozilla is already sounding the alarm on dirty tricks

It would be nice if, unlike GDPR, some veteran UX leaders would be consulted before this legislation was drawn up.

GDPR was well intentioned, but many of the pop experiences are littered with dark UI patterns, and most of those pop up experiences are annoying as hell.

An amendment has changed the rules on that. They need to be as easy to reject as to accept. Lots of websites atm are breaking the law on this still.
- My hot take is that GDPR, CCPA, etc. should require sites to go through a standard user experience native to the browser’s chrome. Kind of like how Android and iOS handle tracking permissions for Play and App Store apps.
  
  That seems like it would be way easier to audit / govern, and it would be a better overall experience for end users.
- Oh, I'd noticed that a lot of sites now seemed a lot better. It's so frustrating when a site has you jump through 4 delays to reject, but accept keeps working fine. As soon as there is a delay now, I'm out of there.
  
  It'll be nice when we have the settings built into your browser and the sites need to comply so it's on them not you to verify your preferences.
It’s worth re-mentioning this whenever it pops up.

The GDPR does not mandate the cookie pop-up. The GDPR just says that companies cannot gather personal information about you without your consent,

If companies weren’t trying to build a profile about you all the time, they don’t need a banner in the first place. The GDPR is amazing because it makes it immediately obvious which rare companies actually respect you and your right to privacy, due to not needing cookie banners in the first place
- As someone from the UX side of the fence, I can assure you that there are a lot of legitimate convenience and or fraud protection reasons for why a company might store PII server side for the user’s convenience. Targeted marketing isn’t the only reason to store identifying information.
Others have said it already but... That shitty UX experience is the website's own fault. I suspect many of them make it especially shitty just to spite the legislation.
- That shitty UX experience is the website's own fault.
  
  It was a predictable outcome that politicians should have foreseen.
- I mean it costs money to design for and be compliant with. Doing it properly even more so.
You shouldn't assume the contents of the GDPR based on what most companies are doing. It's not legally consent, if it was not given freely. So, no dark patterns, no coercion, no inaccurate descriptions, nothing. You need to inform the user as accurately as possible and ensure that they choose what suits their interest. Then it's consent.

Didn’t Windows used to have a browser selection screen already? What happened?

If you have use the one in windows 10/11 its a bit of a nightmare. You have to manually change the default browser for all file types from edge to your new browser. And there are about 20 options you have to manually change over.
- Edge does a lot of things to annoy me on Windows, but this is not one. I do not think I had to change the default browser for every file type. Also the normal user would never notice this problem, as they rarely open HTML files directly.
- I'm pretty sure that is no longer the case.
  
  I haven't had any trouble switching my default browser around recently, at least.
  
  That said, they still tried and showed the lows they're willing to stoop to.
- Permanently Deleted
- I haven't used Windows since XP, but I'm interested in how that works. Do you have any link about this?
It was made as result of an EU settlement that only lasted about 5 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BrowserChoice.eu

I have absolutely no idea why they figured 5 years would be good enough.
- Obviously, the multinational billion dollar company would see the error of their ways in that period of time
- The idea is it gives enough time for competition to establish and then everyone completes on an even footing without fettering the original monopoly after it's no longer a monopoly in that space... arguably it worked as Chrome took over but all that's happened it it made a new monopoly 🤷🏻‍♂️
When was that?
- https://www.sitepoint.com/european-browser-choice-today/

We don't need AMP links on Lemmy. Please try to avoid them by posting links to the real article. We (mostly, I'd think) have ad blockers, so it won't be a problem.

We should have Lemmy auto translate these links to non amp versions, or just outright refuse those links
- FWIW there’s an iOS app called Amplosion that does just that.
Sorry for that, but I don't actually understand what you mean...

EDIT OK I've googled it and it seems to be a page that is sponsored by Google but I use Firefox and it worked fine with that - so is the problem that it doesn't work with certain browsers?
- Not only sponsored, but owned by Google.
  
  AMP links are basically Google repackaging other people's articles. It prevents the actual owner from getting a pageview and let's Google track you more invasively.
- Basically AMP is a copy of the website content hosted by Google for a "speedier load" but there are privacy, longevity, and general decentralization concerns with the "protocol."
Whats the difference between a AMP link and a non AMP link?
- amputatorbot.com sums it up. It was (is?) a bot for reddit

I don't really care what the ui is, I just want some ui that isn't just reset "accidentally" an an os update or is bypassed by a company (cough microsoft) just tailoring their applications so they always open in edge in flagrant disregard for open standards.

This is one of those things that is great in theory, but proper execution is going to be hard

Why? In windows you already have a dozen selection screens during installation, just adding one for the browser would be a huge deal.

OEMs could just install every popular browser.
- What determines a popular browser?
  
  Would smaller browsers like LibreWolf make the cut? What is the prerequisite? Should every small fork of a few dozen users be shown?
  
  Should security patch speed and security defense be shown? What about number if CVE's
  
  Which order are they shown in?
  
  Do they have descriptions, and how do you accurately describe the difference in web browsers in a short description?
  
  Should Firefox mention they're the only non-Chromium browser engine, and should it be grouped by browser engines instead?
  
  Is it really diverse if they're all just Chromium skins?
  
  If Firefox is going to be buried at the bottom of the list, is that really as fair as the first one in the list?
  
  What about if they unfairly resize their Edge browser as half the screen and preselect it as a default, while making the alternatives smaller and harder to see at a glance for people that just want to go quickly through the options.
  
  How do you accurately describe what the browser defines "private" as?
  
  At what point is the user too informed or too little informed? You don't want to information overload.
  
  This is why it's more complicated then just "show every popular browser".
- So, Chrome and Edge? No thank you.
Permanently Deleted
- One issue I can think of is that, if you list "all browsers," most are still chrome under the hood, thus stacking the seemingly "equal" choice.

Can’t read the article (Cloudflare blockade).

In principle there needs to be pushback on the power of defaults for sure. Yes, all the options are shit anyway, but that’s in part due to the #powerOfDefaults.

amp page;DR

We were here before when Internet Explorer 6 was the dominant browser.

It didn't reduce the usage of IE. People just pick what they know in those screens.

Despite numerous choice screens, we're still here 30 years later bringing up this shit every few years.

🤦‍♂️ 30 years you've all been arguing default browsers.

Lol I think I will have to stop using internet.

We could all start using search engines that filter out the shitty websites. But then what’s left? Ombrelo¹ filters out the Cloudflare sites which only scratches the surface of web deshitification & results are often less than one screen. So in effect, you’re right. The free world is getting so small we might as well unplug.

http://ombrelo.im5wixghmfmt7gf7wb4xrgdm6byx2gj26zn47da6nwo7xvybgxnqryid.onion/

Maybe stop using Windows?

I like the idea, but the reality is business simply can't. Too much stuff just isn't available on Linux (e.g. CAD), and small business can't afford the maintenance/support costs (Linux isn't anywhere near as turnkey as Windows).

Then there's training costs/lost productivity to unfamiliarity.

I'd love to help people move away from MS, I'm trying to for my personal laptop, but it's a challenge even for me, a near-40 year IT egghead (my first programming assignment was Fortran on punched cards).

My biggest barrier is OneNote. Nothing I've tried comes close to what it can do, anywhere near as easily. Obsidian is the front runner, and I find it clumsy and convoluted in comparison. Though the devs are working hard on it, even building tools to migrate from OneNote.

Now imagine trying to teach people who don't understand how Windows works to use any flavor of Linux. End users really have no idea how stuff works, and shouldn't - their abilities lie in doing things I have no idea how to do.