# Looking for UN-woke browser



## Pony

I've been using Firefox for... well, heck, seems like forever, but at least 15 years.

This morning, after updating, Firefox opened a page to tell me about all the _wonderful new additions_. 

One of these additions is a protector against <ominous music> *Misinformation*!

Yeah, I should have dropped Firefox when they fired its creator for actually having a thinking mind. 

But now, I am looking for suggestions for a simple, non-intrusive, non-invasive, and (most of all) _non-censoring _browser. 

I do use Duck, Duck, Go for my searches, but even that is showing me so much bologna that I still have to dig and dig to get to anything not parroting The Narrative.

Suggestions? (and no, I will not use IE nor Chrome)

TIA!


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## Nevada

Why not Chrome?


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## Cornhusker

*Meet the Free Speech Web Browser*
*The Dissenter web browser is built for The People, not advertisers. Block Big Tech ads and trackers by default. Discover a comment section on every URL online. Welcome to the free speech internet.*

Dissenter | The Comment Section of the Internet


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## Cornhusker

Nevada said:


> Why not Chrome?


Google is one of those who stifle free speech and spread division


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## sniper69

Have you looked into Vivaldi? Vivaldi Browser | Now with built-in Translate, Mail, and Calendar it is a very nice browser. 

and a link to their business model if your curious What’s Vivaldi’s business model? | Vivaldi Browser


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## Nevada

Cornhusker said:


> Google is one of those who stifle free speech and spread division


Do you have an example that I can try myself?


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## Cornhusker

Nevada said:


> Do you have an example that I can try myself?


For one example, Google owns YouTube. YouTube has deleted videos that don't agree with the liberal talking points, demonetized videos for not using the right words, etc.
They are censors, the want to control the narrative, they want you to know what they want you to know.
And seriously, who hasn't been getting those little covid alerts every time you step off the prescribed path?


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## Pony

Cornhusker said:


> For one example, Google owns YouTube. YouTube has deleted videos that don't agree with the liberal talking points, demonetized videos for not using the right words, etc.
> They are censors, the want to control the narrative, they want you to know what they want you to know.
> And seriously, who hasn't been getting those little covid alerts every time you step off the prescribed path?


We avoid google as much as we can. 

Their motto used to be, "Don't be evil."

Now we all know that the opposite is true. Google is evil.


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## Nevada

Pony said:


> We avoid google as much as we can.
> 
> Their motto used to be, "Don't be evil."
> 
> Now we all know that the opposite is true. Google is evil.


I never heard that. I have a gmail account, a 15GB google drive account, and I've had Google Voice phone service with free long distance for 11 years. I also use the Google Chrome browser. I never got a bill for any of that.

The only downside to those free Google services is no tech support. If you need tech support, go somewhere else.

Google has ben promising high speed internet service for a very long time but it has never materialized. I'd like to see it, at least to try.


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## sniper69

Nevada said:


> <snip>
> 
> Google has ben promising high speed internet service for a very long time but it has never materialized. I'd like to see it, at least to try.


Do you mean this one? Google Fiber | Your Internet. For Everything. It is available -just not everywhere.


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## Rodeo's Bud

I use Brave.


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## Pony

Rodeo's Bud said:


> I use Brave.


I mentioned the situation to my husband, and he suggested Brave as well. 

I'll try to make time to get that done today.

THANK YOU, FOLKS!


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## mzgarden

Hey @Pony I'm following along. Can you update us once you've moved to Brave? I've also used Mozilla forever and was not aware of this recent change - thanks for sharing.


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## colourfastt

mzgarden said:


> Hey @Pony I'm following along. Can you update us once you've moved to Brave? *I've also used Mozilla forever and was not aware of this recent change *- thanks for sharing.


Nothing has changed with Firefox, Chrome, etc. What has changed is the level of paranoia and fear—they've gone orbital.


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## Hiro




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## po boy

The best un woke browser is a library card catalog from 1958, i hope this helps.


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## HermitJohn

You will find all modern browsers are based on either Chromium or Mozilla-Firefox. But not all will have the "extras". Look at one called PaleMoon, it forked from an older version Firefox. Its probabably my favorite alternative browser. Its about as close to a modern full functioning browser you will find. The true independents just werent brought into modern world. Opera has been based on Chromium for some time now. Same with Edge. Iron is based on Chromium. Chrome is based on Chromium. So open source Chromium itself might be worth looking at as it doesnt have all the Chrome tracking and such. But for all intents and purposes depending what you want to do online, you will be using some variation of the two biggies. 

Oh another less known mozilla browser is Sea Monkey. Might look at it. Also Kmeleon though not sure how well its being kept up to date. Its a minimalist browser.


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## HermitJohn

As to unwoke, well not sure I want a browser that sleeps all the time, it will just lay there and not do anything, right?


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## Pony

colourfastt said:


> Nothing has changed with Firefox, Chrome, etc. What has changed is the level of paranoia and fear—they've gone orbital.


Just because you are comfortable having your information all over the place, as well as supporting Mozilla - which fired its creator/developer because he believes in traditional marriage - doesn't mean that the rest of us are paranoid.

And if we are somewhat paranoid, it doesn't mean that it's without reason.

But you have a nice day, Jolly.


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## Pony

I'm pretty much ready to head back to Linux, and use that with Brave while I hunt around for an acceptable GUI browser. If I can just carve out enough time, it will be fun to play with open source for a while. 

Anyone here use TOR? I read that it's an ESR, and more stable than other browsers based on Firefox.


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## colourfastt

Pony said:


> *I'm pretty much ready to head back to Linux*, and use that with Brave while I hunt around for an acceptable GUI browser. If I can just carve out enough time, it will be fun to play with open source for a while.
> 
> Anyone here use TOR? I read that it's an ESR, and more stable than other browsers based on Firefox.


I use a UNIX system (MacOS) so I'm far from worried about my online presence.


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## HermitJohn

I think anymore you really need a VPN, probably a pay one, if you want maximum privacy. Good luck, its like constant war cause data collection and tracking is how internet makes its money anymore. So eternal arms race between the two sides. 

Notice sites that ask you to whitelist them on your adblocker still complain even if you allow ads but block the tracking scripts. They mostly moan and complain about adblockers but ads are small part of their revenue. It however sounds creepy to ask to track your movements on the web for their financial gain. And usually not the site that does the tracking and data collection, they sell rights to third parties to run scripts that do this.


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## sharkerbaby

HermitJohn said:


> I think anymore you really need a VPN, probably a pay one, if you want maximum privacy. Good luck, its like constant war cause data collection and tracking is how internet makes its money anymore. So eternal arms race between the two sides.
> 
> Notice sites that ask you to whitelist them on your adblocker still complain even if you allow ads but block the tracking scripts. They mostly moan and complain about adblockers but ads are small part of their revenue. It however sounds creepy to ask to track your movements on the web for their financial gain. And usually not the site that does the tracking and data collection, they sell rights to third parties to run scripts that do this.


The issue at hand that was brought up by the OP was censoring and blocking what the browser co. believes is "misinformation". A VPN is not going to have any effect on that or change what the browser deems misinformation and counter the censoring that is happening.


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## HermitJohn

sharkerbaby said:


> The issue at hand that was brought up by the OP was censoring and blocking what the browser co. believes is "misinformation". A VPN is not going to have any effect on that or change what the browser deems misinformation and counter the censoring that is happening.


I already responded to that. Simple as Firefox and Chrome wont do what you want. You will need to try a third party browser, though since nearly ALL based on Firefox or Chromium, it may or may not have some of the features. And I suggested several possible alternatives though most are limited in many ways, they are made as light weight browsers, for older computers, etc. I suggested Pale Moon maybe one of best choices, its a fork of an older version of Firefox very different than current Firefox and presumably without what you call censorship. Pale Moon has its own set addons to block ads, etc. Not nearly as comprehensive as addons for Firefox or Chrome. IMHO, browser I cant block ads/scripts is useless. And the really old basic ones cant even do javascript or only very basic javascript. Nearly 100% sites use javascript anymore for basic navigation on their site, so good luck trying to go without.

The OP mentioned TOR. It combined with VPN has been used by people in dictatorships to get around blocks and tracking by the dictatorship running the internet access. TOR may or may not have censorship stuff built in, havent used it as its might cumbersome for daily use outside of such places.. Oddly I use latest version Firefox and have never had it censor me, except it will tell me some site is insecure, meaning it doesnt use HTTPS, but older HTTP. It then gives me the option to wear my big boy pants and go there anyway. Nothing political about it except Google forced universal HTTPS on everybody. Probably not a bad thing other than way they did it. Oh and there are indeed some malicious sites that you really dont want to go there, it will refuse those too. Usually those are guaranteed virus sites, seriously dont go there with an installed operating system, use a live linux version either from dvd or from thumb drive. One that cant be infected.

If you are worried about imagined censorship but not CORPORATE AMERICA tracking you and your browsing history, then well what can I say, good luck with that.


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## GTX63

You said "imagined censorship".


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## Clem

I would experiment with "Tails"

I use TOR most of the time, I have a small handful of sites I've been going to for 20 years or more, I use my own IP there, they've already got the goods on me.
Tails will go on a thumb drive and not leave a fingerprint, even on the machine you're using.
There's another one, I guess it's still around, called DSL for damn small linux, that's pretty small, and portable.


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## HermitJohn

Clem said:


> I would experiment with "Tails"
> 
> I use TOR most of the time, I have a small handful of sites I've been going to for 20 years or more, I use my own IP there, they've already got the goods on me.
> Tails will go on a thumb drive and not leave a fingerprint, even on the machine you're using.
> There's another one, I guess it's still around, called DSL for damn small linux, that's pretty small, and portable.


Damn Small Linux is VERY old. Just looked, the last post in their forum was in 2012. All development had stopped prior to that.

There are MANY linux and BSD that you can boot and run from dvd or thumb drive. Most can boot and run from that dvd without saving any settings or data. Think of them as demo versions. Only a few like Puppy that can run from cd or thumb drive and save settings and other files, you tell it where you want to create this file, can be to hard drive or thumb drive or anything that can be written to. In Puppy you can create save file or not, you arent forced to save anything. Not sure if it still exists, there was a Puppy that could boot from a rewritable dvd and put save file on that rewritable dvd. Rewritable dvds arent like regular dvds, they can be erased and rewritten to multiple times.

Even Puppy Linux has bloated quite a bit. I think smallest current one is like 300MB. Though might be links on the forum to unofficial bare bones stripped versions.

Tiny Core Linux probably smallest modern linux, but it really comes completely stripped, it will boot and if you want it to do anything else, you are on your own to add necessary libraries and software. Somebody on Puppy forum is developing a unofficial Puppified version Tiny Core that is usable. But its a one or two person effort. The unofficial Puppies may work well, may not. Person creating them may got bored and abandoned them. 

Probably the smallest usable out of box linux distribution still under development is SliTaz. Not sure what in world you are looking for. If you are looking for small or something that makes you invisible, the closest you will come is TOR combined with a good VPN. The freebies arent necessary good.

If you are looking for a non-nanny browser, well you have the choices. ALL modern full feature browsers are based on Firefox or Chromium. If you dont like the nanny stuff, try one like Iron or Pale Moon or TOR or several other variations of Firefox/Chromium. If you want minimalist try Kmeleon, it runs well in WINE by the way. But it doesnt have the addons which IMHO are necessary to keep from being tracked up the wazoo. At very minimum you need a cookie auto delete add on and an ad/script blocker. NoScript gives you whole lot control but can be pain in rear teaching it which scripts on which sites you want to allow. And be careful which version NoScript, some come with some sites whitelisted that you have to then unwhitelist. There is no miracle mini browser from 1995 that is going to get you anywhere. The web has changed a lot. Only a few sites use basic static HTML for web pages anymore. Old browsers will just pop up constant javascript errors or websites will refuse you entry cause you dont have javascript. There are some non-profit old style websites out there but very few and far between. You will need a modern browser to do much anymore. The only way to keep totally free is to just not ever go online and pay cash at the brick and mortar stores. 

Oh if you really feel like beating your head against the wall, there is an old DOS browser called Arachne. Yep it will run on DOS 6 or whatever last version DOS. Think it also runs on FreeDOS, open source version of DOS. It was a one man band effort long ago. I played with it and yes it could go online, but it was bit wobbly and could crash unexpectedly. Since DOS doesnt include much, this Arachne was basically a shell much like win3.1 that gave graphic interface to DOS. Oh there was also the QNX demo disk. Whole graphic interface operating system that fit on one floppy disk. It was cool back in the day. Didnt do lot other than really basic browsing. I think there are some of those free boot cds with bunch tools that include it. There is also a version linux that fits on a floppy but it was text only. Again ancient, how long since you've even seen a floppy disk or had a computer with floppy disk drive? QNX Demo Disk This site has screenshots of the QNX demo disk. And this one shows some modifications possible and some downloads. QNX DEMO disk


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## Vjk

Brave.
https://brave.com


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## Nevada

Pony said:


> Just because you are comfortable having your information all over the place, as well as supporting Mozilla - which fired its creator/developer because he believes in traditional marriage - doesn't mean that the rest of us are paranoid.


I remember that story. Following a little googling to refresh my memory, this incident happened back in 2014. The story was about Brendan Eich, co-founder and CEO of Mozilla, Evidently he donated $1000 to a political movement to ban gay marriage in California, then made an issue of it in social media. After being convinced that his actions reflected badly on Mozilla he resigned.

I happen to prefer Chrome over Firefox, but I have no reason to believe that either product has a political bent imbedded in its code.


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## Nevada

Pony said:


> I am looking for suggestions for a simple, non-intrusive, non-invasive, and (most of all) _non-censoring _browser.


I kind of doubt that Firefox code includes anything nefarious. The reason I say that is that Firefox is an open source product, which means that many thousands of developers from all over the world have eyes on its code. If Firefox contained code with no apparent purpose other than to censor or promote a political point of view, a volunteer developer would say something.

Anyone can download and browse Firefox code. You don't need to join the development team to have it. You can get it here:



mozilla-central: Summary


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## HermitJohn

Nevada said:


> I kind of doubt that Firefox code includes anything nefarious. The reason I say that is that Firefox is an open source product, which means that many thousands of developers from all over the world have eyes on its code. If Firefox contained code with no apparent purpose other than to censor or promote a political point of view, a volunteer developer would say something.
> 
> Anyone can download and browse Firefox code. You don't need to join the development team to have it. You can get it here:
> 
> 
> 
> mozilla-central: Summary


Chromium is also open source. Its what Chrome is based on (with spyware goodness added by Google). As stated before any kind of modern browser is going to be based on Firefox or Chromium. Just way it is. Pale Moon is probably only semi independent modern browser, its based on an older forked version of Firefox, then updated by them. You can try using something else but its going to be painful on modern websites expecting lot modern javascript abilities.

I did somewhat recently try the WINE version IE8. It handled some sites ok. Its the last version IE8 offered independent of windows. After that IE only came with windows and auto-updated along with windows. So not available to run in WINE using linux. So yea its pretty iffy but you probably can use IE8 and the last independent version Opera and some other older browsers but dont think it will be pleasant. 

Oh there is another weird option. You can run version of Opera intended for phones, well the last JAVA version. Install JAVA on windows or linux or whatever and you can run that version Opera. Very basic, I think I tried it few years back. It sorta works, but nothing like a modern browser for linux. windows or mac.


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## Markansas

Pony said:


> I'm pretty much ready to head back to Linux, and use that with Brave while I hunt around for an acceptable GUI browser. If I can just carve out enough time, it will be fun to play with open source for a while.
> 
> Anyone here use TOR? I read that it's an ESR, and more stable than other browsers based on Firefox.


i use tor however i also use vpn.. i like duck duck go browser however will use firefox for shoping for the tracking software. get better results.. then its ccleaner to clean out firefox and all others and of course malware bytes.. and yet i am sure they still know what key strokes i am typing for that could be in the hardware of the motherboard.. who know its a crazy road to go down under .. keep it simple duck duck go ccleaner and malware bytes will cover most things.. for keeping private that is dont forget tor and vpn..


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## Ronx

Rodeo's Bud said:


> I use Brave.


Your message is 2 years old so this may be very old news to you now but I found this forum because Brave has in fact gone woke :-/


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