The internet & technology thread

[Mark]

This is the thread for discussion on the internet, how it is used and all things associated, from AI to smartphone use.....and how these things can affect voting and politics in genera....

[leftieliberal]

I did use Firefox with add-ons for a long time, but I find that Brave gives me all I need in the way of protection. I have to use Google Chrome for one particular application.

[John Chanin]

Edge on the desktop, but I have Firefox as a back up, though there aren't any sites at the moment I need it for. Safari on the tablet.

[Rafwan]

Like John, I mainly use Edge on the PC and Safari on iPad and iPhone. But I also use Firefox and Chrome on both PC and iPad if I want to open a lot of tabs together, e.g. on one issue I am temporarily interested in. Since I now mostly use iPad, I mostly use Safari.

I almost always use StartPage for a search engine, not Google directly.

[Mark]

With regards to the votes in the poll, the results were pretty much exactly what I expected.

I can see who voted, but, as far as I know, I can't see which way members voted.

I wonder if there is any correlation between browser choice and political views.

There are several things that are known.

Firstly, in terms of market share, official stats show that, like here, Chrome is way ahead of the pack. No surprise, in real life, it's also what the majority of people I know use.

Where it gets a little interesting is what comes next.

The official stats show Firefox on 2%, Brave and DuckDuckGo barely registering at way less than 1% each.

The combined total of these three is less than 3%, here, it is almost a quarter.

There was also some reporting on the use of Adbocking. Opera does this by default, but, for other browsers, it was highest among Firefox users (42%), Chrome on 18%, Edge users the lowest at 6%.

Many Firefox users also, via add-ons, block scripts and trackers, the latter generally what's used to gather the official browser use stats, the latter also blocked by default with DuckDuckGo.

All very interesting, but, where it gets more interesting for us, on polling site, is the issue of political advertising.

As discussed on the main thread, we could see political ads via streaming such as ITVX, due to a loophole in the law which has kept political ads off mainstream TV.

THere is also the question of online political ads...the question that lends itself is this : who is blocking the ads and hence, won't see them? We have at least an idea of this by choice of browser, but does that have any correlation with party support?

[mercian]

Just for the record I use the Opera browser with DuckDuckGo as the search engine on my PC.

[EmCat]

At home (when logged in) - Safari (with uBlock Origin, so no ads)

At work (occasionally dipping in, but not logged in) - Chrome. Corporate level adblocking means no ads either