Last week a new shiny browser (Arc) was released. It is by far the best browser that I’ve ever used. It’s well organized, fast, feels like an OS for the web (a great line from their marketing, btw).

I won’t be using it.

september 2024 goblin here: i am definitely now using it, lol. it’s honestly great. i hope firefox steals every one of their ideas. until they do, i am sticking with arc on mac. i still pay for mozilla’s vpn & relay though. they are still the only browser i am actively giving money to. so ya, arcs great, but mozilla is better for the internet. using opera gx on windows atm, because my aesthetic growth was stunted at 14 and i still love rgb-gamer-core.

There is nothing wrong with Arc, they aren’t some secret evil corporation that makes money solely off exploiting its user’s data (at the moment^*). The more competition in the browser space, the healthier the internet is. It isn’t even because it’s built from Google’s open-source browser engine like Chrome and Edge.

It’s because they are in the business of making money first and foremost. This will always complicate the ethics of products, regardless of their profit model or mission.

I love Firefox and it will stay my primary browser (although I have switched to Brave for a few productivity tools that keep crashing Firefox) because Firefox is built by the Firefox Corporation, which is owned by the Firefox Foundation, a non-profit guided by some pretty awesome guiding principles.

In my current attempt to unfuck the internet, the first thing I’ve learned is being intentional online means dealing with a lot of inconvenience. Nothing is simple when you start to remove yourself from the buffet of media and services available online.

Currently I am downloading the vinyl and tapes I own and adding the mp3s to my phone. Sometimes it’s simple, other times, the sites that used to host those files no longer exist. I just bought a cassette assuming that it would come with a download code, but no luck.

Trying to stream albums from bandcamp, attempting import mp3s into my phones music app, all of this is can be super tedious.

Recently I removed Messenger from my phone. Which means missing messages as I remind folks that I have transitioned to SMS, Discord, and Signal.

The thing is, I think it’s worth it. We’ve grown so accustomed to such an easy, cheap online existence that we’ve never really questioned what we are trading in return.

We are trading our data, our privacy, our attention, our behaviour, and little bit of our identity.

Hear me out.

Music is a huge part of my life. Same with anime. Same with some of the shows I really, really adore (the owls are not what they seem). I learn a lot about people through their interests and their collections. Recently I had a vinyl night with a friend and I felt I knew them better as I flipped through their record collection, excited to share in their passions.

So ya, using a browser has a vision I believe in is inconvenient at times. Ya, losing access to all the music ever is inconvenient.

I think the trade offs are worth it. In return we get: software that is more ethical, a better sense of ourselves, and a better sense of each other.