(I know many of you already know it but this incident I experienced made me so paranoid about using smartphones)

To start off, I’m not that deep into privacy rabbit hole but I do as much I can possibly to be private on my phone. But for the rest of phones in my family, I generally don’t care because they are not tech savvy and pushing them towards privacy would make their lives hard.

So, the other day I pirated a movie for my family and since it was on Netflix, it was a direct rip with full HD. I was explaining to my family how this looks so good as this is an direct rip off from the Netflix platform, and not a recording of a screening in a cinema hall(camrip). It was a small 2min discussion in my native language with only English words used are record, piracy and Netflix.

Later I walk off and open YouTube, and I see a 2 recommendations pop-up on my homepage, “How to record Netflix shows” & “Why can’t you screen record Netflix”. THE WHAT NOW. I felt insanely insecure as I was sure never in my life I looked this shit up and it was purely based on those words I just spoke 5min back.

I am pretty secure on my device afaik and pretty sure all the listening happened on other devices in my family. Later that day, I went and saw which all apps had microphone access, moved most of them to Ask everytime and disabled Google app which literally has all the permissions enabled.

Overall a scary and saddening experience as this might be happening to almost everyone and made me feel it the journey I took to privacy-focused, all worth it.

  • @[email protected]
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    104 days ago
    • A family member might have searched it
    • An ad network might have reported on your piracy (especially now with privacy sandbox)
    • Your media player might just be doing some tracking and/or insecure searching for metadata
    • Siri or something might have popped open
    • You googled to get to the piracy website
    • You may have just looked up the movie, and the movie was popular with pirates

    Don’t get too paranoid

  • @[email protected]
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    335 days ago

    Person in a privacy community using YouTube and multiple Google accounts thinks the only way they are being tracked is through phone microphones…you can’t make this shit up.

    • zerozakuOP
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      05 days ago

      As I have already mentioned in the post, I am not that deep into privacy rabbit hole that I am completely degoogled my life. If I did, I wouldn’t have any privacy concerns to begin with ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

      On why I haven’t done it yet is simply because it is extremely hard. If you go full privacy-focused, you lose out on convience and vice versa. I’d like to stay in balance.

      • @[email protected]
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        215 days ago

        You focused on the wrong part of my comment. The issue isn’t that you have Google accounts or use YouTube, it’s that you seem to have very little understanding of how much data is being collected about you through these avenues. Instead you focus on some conspiracy theory about phone microphones which is still yet to be proven despite years of technologically illiterate people telling us that “the only way they could have known that is if they were listening to me!!!”. I don’t understand how you get to the point of posting in a niche privacy community whilst still being so completely clueless and misinformed.

        • zerozakuOP
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          -65 days ago

          I was in the same belief that phones do not listen to our mics for years until that news of Facebook employees leaked chat came out.

          • @[email protected]
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            105 days ago

            Let’s assume the incident you referred is true. It’s still not the phone microphone that’s doing it, it’s the spyware/adware/malware app you installed from play store.

            Solution? Degoogle and stay away from tech giants like meta, apple, etc. Use opens source alternatives.

            If you are still paranoid, Android 13 and onwards, whenever your cam/mic is being used, you can see a green microphone or camera logo on the status bar top right.

          • @[email protected]
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            25 days ago

            What are you referring to? I searched for this and the results were just the CMG story. That wasn’t even proof that the technology existed, let alone was being used.

            • zerozakuOP
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              14 days ago

              Yes that was the story I was referring to. It doesn’t really take that much technological effort to listen to your mic and send bits of data to server.

  • @[email protected]
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    385 days ago

    Yet again, someone mistakes an anecdote for evidence. And evidence is also not the plural form of anecdote.

    I’m sure we have people here who are tech-savvy enough to have actually examined the kinds of data that their phone is sharing.

    If you have something like Google Home or Amazon Alexa, then yeah, those would be sending voice data back, and yeah, they could probably use it for advertising. But as far as I know, there is no evidence that phones are “always listening” and “always sending information back” when they’re idle.

  • @[email protected]
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    505 days ago

    Most likely the website you pirated your movies from stored cookies in your browser which then were picked up by Google/YouTube.

    • Kairos
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      305 days ago

      That’s not how that works. There were likely ads on the page which brings in Google cookies and shows the page the user is on.

      OP make sure all third party cookies are blocked. They’re not needed anymore.

    • zerozakuOP
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      05 days ago

      There is one more thing I haven’t mentioned here. The device where I pirated the movie is different and is on different Google account and my Google account on which I opened the YouTube was different.

      • @[email protected]
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        235 days ago

        You just mentioned 2 different Google accounts: if your devices are connected to Google accounts they are already getting a lot of information from you that way, and Google knows that those 2 accounts are related.

        • zerozakuOP
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          -315 days ago

          That’s absurd to think they link two different Google accounts and recommend stuff on YouTube. This is less believable than them listening to mic 24/7.

          Also the device I pirated content on, has only one Google account registered.

          • davel [he/him]
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            195 days ago

            This is very much believable, and a thousand times more believable than your phone listening to you to send you ads.

          • DarkSirrush
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            215 days ago

            Doesn’t matter, google is well known for tracking related accounts using a variety of methods - be it location data, connected IP, tracking cookies, device proximity, even things like usage habits, etc.

            • @[email protected]
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              55 days ago

              Can confirm. I have a few accounts for keeping different interests separate in YT. I also keep those accounts in different container tabs, but recommendations tend to leak anyway. Google knows what I’m up to.

          • @[email protected]
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            125 days ago

            2 accounts consistently reporting the same IP, location and user habits etc being linked is more absurd than nobody ever noticing excessive uploaded data from their phones? It is very easy to monitor the amount of uploaded and downloaded data on a device, lots of people would have noticed by now. The amount of storage, bandwidth and processing power that would be required to monitor the audio from hundreds of millions of android users globally 24/7 would make this the dumbest business decision ever when there are so many easier and efficient ways to track users.

          • @[email protected]
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            4 days ago

            It’s not absurd at all. They know the IPs, they know those devices use the same network, and they also know where they are located pretty accurately: the Google Street View cars also scan for WiFi networks and map them to their location.

            2 devices consistently connected to the same router, to the same network, in the same place… must belong to the same person or to 2 people sharing a home. If cookies set by other websites and seen by Google show similar browsing habits, it’s probably the same person.

    • @Tehdastehdas
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      33 days ago

      A phone can notice when it’s in the hands of a security expert and start acting normal. Before dieselgate, Volkswagen cars had been emissions tested for years without finding anything suspicious. Turned out VW used the car’s sensors to detect when it was being tested.

      • @[email protected]
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        3 days ago

        correct.

        the level of unsubstantiated cope in this thread is mind boggling. from people many of whom should honestly know better.

    • Nougat
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      25 days ago

      tl;dr: “Strike that, reverse it.”

      They can bid all they want to put ads in front of me, I ain’t gonna see them. Of course, they probably know that, too.

    • @[email protected]
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      5 days ago

      no, they don’t

      Please be careful with your claims.

      In my experience, whenever investigating these claims and refutations we usually find when digging past the pop media headlines into the actual academic claims, that noone has proven it’s not happening. If you know of a conclusive study, please link.

      Regarding the article you have linked we don’t even need to dig past the article to the actual academic claims.

      The very article you linked states quite clearly:

      The researchers weren’t comfortable saying for sure that your phone isn’t secretly listening to you in part because there are some scenarios not covered by their study.

      (Genuine question, not trying to be snarky) Will you take a moment to reflect on which factors may have contributed to your eagerness to misrepresent the conclusions of the studies cited in your article?

      • .Donuts
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        95 days ago

        Of course a researcher is never sure something is 100% ruled out. That’s part of how academic research works.

        My eagerness stems from being tired of anecdotes presented as evidence supporting a weird privacy conspiracy. This takes away from the actual issue at hand, which is your digital footprint and how your data is used.

        • @[email protected]
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          5 days ago

          Of course a researcher is never sure something is 100% ruled out. That’s part of how academic research works.

          once again, that isn’t what they were reported to have said. [and researchers don’t need to repeat the basic precepts of the scientific method in every paper they write, so perhaps its worthwhile to note what they were reported to say about that, rather than write it off as a generic ‘noone can be 100% certain of anything’] it’s a bit rich to blame someone for lacking rigor while repeatedly misrepresenting what your own article even says.

          what the article actually said is

          because there are some scenarios not covered by their study

          and even within the subset of scenarios they did study, the article notes various caveats of the study:

          Their phones were being operated by an automated program, not by actual humans, so they might not have triggered apps the same way a flesh-and-blood user would. And the phones were in a controlled environment, not wandering the world in a way that might trigger them: For the first few months of the study the phones were near students in a lab at Northeastern University and thus surrounded by ambient conversation, but the phones made so much noise, as apps were constantly being played with on them, that they were eventually moved into a closet

          there’s so much more research to be done on this topic, we’re FAR FAR from proving it conclusively (to the standards of modern science, not some mythical scientifically impossible certainty).

          presenting to the public that is a proven science, when the state of research afaict has made no such claim is muddying the waters.

          if you’re as absolutely correct as you claim, why misrepresent whats stated in the sources you cite?

          • .Donuts
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            15 days ago

            I’ve said this elsewhere but it would be piss easy to prove. I think it’s weird that we’re talking about how something can be true because it hasn’t been disproven, but not that something can’t be true because it hasn’t been proven.

            • @[email protected]
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              5 days ago

              piss easy

              many domain experts dedicating significant resources to it’s study

              pick one.

              when your sources repeatedly don’t say what you claim they say, maybe its time to revisit your claims ;)

              • .Donuts
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                25 days ago

                It would be piss easy to prove your phone is always listening to you. Stop being obtuse.

                • @[email protected]
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                  5 days ago

                  always listening

                  i never claimed always, i specifically advised op to refrain from claiming always.

                  how can you pretend to represent a sound scientific approach when you misrepresent the scientific claims made in sources you cite

    • zerozakuOP
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      5 days ago

      I will watch these later. But recently one of the Facebook’s employee’s chat was leaked saying they listen to customer mics 24/7 via a third party. Google blocked the alleged third party and Facebook has ended ties with them too.

      What about it?

      • .Donuts
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        125 days ago

        It was an ad partner’s pitch deck, not much to do with Facebook itself. And it didn’t really explain how it would be listening anyway.

        Besides, if they were recording, processing and / or transferring audio, that would mean there’s data usage, battery usage, etc - stuff that’s easy to prove.

        The truth is a lot simpler (and scarier) and you will find that in the links I provided.

      • .Donuts
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        275 days ago

        If they actually prove something, I’d be happy to give them a watch. 40 minutes of some dudebro’s podcast with a phone in his hands doesn’t count

      • @breakingcups
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        155 days ago

        Hey, looks like you forgot to post them so we’ll ignore your comment for now until you do!

        • @[email protected]
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          5 days ago

          Listen, mister/miss. I tried it once and the reaction was bad because geopolitical reasons. Do I want to get banned by admin abuse? No. Do I want to start a political fight in a nice thread? Also no.

  • edric
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    305 days ago

    No, your phone doesn’t listen to you 24/7. With that out of the way, there are a number of places where youtube may have gotten that info. One possibility is that someone in your household looked up the movie and maybe checked if stuff ripped from netflix is indeed full HD. And since everyone in your family is using the same NAT IP, then it’s easy for youtube to target recommendations at everyone in that household.

    • beefbot
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      65 days ago

      I don’t doubt you, but it’s worth asking if your reasons for stating that our phones don’t listen to us 24/7 haven’t changed since you first formed the opinion.

      Lots of things are meso-facts (a true fact at rhetorical time we learn it, but no longer true later). Tech moves quickly. It’s worth not assuming anyone is right here, & asking: under what conditions could our phones be listening (enough to produce what OP experienced)?

        • beefbot
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          25 days ago

          But again, what I’m getting at here is, are we so sure it takes all that much anymore. Processing could take place in a shorter way now, more than it could when our current opinion was still true.

      • Chozo
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        65 days ago

        Watchdog groups have been monitoring these services for years now and have yet to find the “your phone is listening 24/7” smoking gun.

        • @Tehdastehdas
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          13 days ago

          Similarly before dieselgate, Volkswagen cars had been emissions tested for years without finding anything suspicious. Turned out VW used the car’s sensors to detect when it was being tested. A phone can notice when it’s in the hands of a security expert and start acting normal.

      • edric
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        5 days ago

        The conditions would be that all the controls that are in place to prevent it from happening are bypassed, which no one has proven yet. For example, Apple has developed their devices (assuming not jailbroken) in such a way where the camera and microphone usage indicators are hardwired and can’t easily be bypassed by software hacks. So if your phone was listening to you all the time, then the microphone indicator light would always be on. Listening 24/7 would also drain the phone’s battery and use up so much data it would be noticeable. Another example is Siri. It is actually designed in a way where there are 2 components. The first one is local on the phone and separate from the actual Siri component. It is what’s actively listening for you to call it. Once you call it, it then activates the actual Siri that transmits your voice inputs online.

        • zerozakuOP
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          15 days ago

          People saying it hurts battery usage, sends crazy amounts of network etc don’t seem to use the latest features from Google.

          Now playing, Adaptive audio are some features of android system that Google has given in recent years which listen to our microphones all the time and serve their purpose. I have used them in the past, although it said it consumes battery, I never experienced huge battery brain. Google also says these services work on device and never leaves the device, but I assume extracting few words from my audio and sending them to their servers at frequent times wouldn’t be such a technically demanding process like everyone are stating here on this post. It entirely possible and probably happening.

        • beefbot
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          15 days ago

          Thank you, this is the kind of detail I was hoping someone would describe, no sarcasm. To be specific, too, this is all probably easier on Androids / jailbroken iPhones

  • Chozo
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    265 days ago

    Listening to audio would be the least effective and most expensive method of data collection for advertisers. It’s not happening. They already have literally over a million data points on you, there’s nothing useful for them to glean from your audio that they don’t already have ad nauseum.

    You see thousands of ads and recommendations every day. You finally found one that was relevant to you. It’s not that deep.

  • Synapse
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    5 days ago

    This may be a simple coincidence. Maybe you had similar YouTube suggestions in the past but you didn’t pay attention because they come at random times. Like if you drive a Honda Civic, you tend to spot all the Honda Civic in the street.

    There would be an interesting experiment to make though:

    1. Take a snapshot of your YouTube recommandations
    2. Choose a subject that has nothing to do with any of the recommandations, let’s say “travel to the Bahamas”
    3. Hold a conversation with someone with both your phone’s present, mention several time going to the Bahamas.
    4. Check YouTube again, si if the topic of Bahamas is appearing.
    5. Choose another topic not covered by your recommendations, let’s say collecting stamps
    6. Put your phones away, have a conversation about collecting stamps
    7. Check YouTube recommandations
    • @[email protected]
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      5 days ago

      The problem comes is the suggestion of travelling to destination X (in your case, the Bahamas) doesn’t just pop up out of thin air - friends may have travelled there recently, perhaps there has been a recent advertising push, etc.

      Another family member looking up some destinations to travel, then speaking with you later - same external IP of the home wifi being reported, bam you get advertised the destinations they looked at the most.

      Choosing a “random” topic again also doesn’t come out of thin air.

  • The 8232 Project
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    5 days ago

    First off, if you’re concerned about phone privacy, consider a custom OS for your phone that respects privacy such as GrapheneOS.

    It’s easy to figure out that your device isn’t listening to a constant audio stream 24/7, since that would drain battery and send a lot of noticeable data over the network. However, it is entirely possible to listen for certain keywords as you mentioned, and send them encrypted with another seemingly legitimate packet. There’s no way to be 100% certain, but it is possible in theory without draining too much battery.

    The steps you took are good, making sure that apps don’t have any permissions they don’t need. Privacy is a spectrum, so it’s not “all or nothing”. As I mentioned before, if you’re seriously concerned about mobile privacy and want a solution, you can get a custom operating system that can remove any privacy invasive elements. GrapheneOS also allows you to disable the camera and microphone system-wide (although this functionality is present on some other Android builds).

    If it eases you any, a lot of these advertisements happen to be coincidence and trigger confirmation bias. It could be that those ads happened to show up by coincidence, or that advertisers managed predicted your interests, or that you got tracked by some other means while downloading the movie. The possibilities are nearly endless.

    • @[email protected]
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      105 days ago

      You should install Rethink and see how much garbage your phone constantly transmits and receives. And this is not even a kernel-level firewall, so who knows how much data Google actually exfiltrates…

      I don’t know about a constant audio stream, nor about keywords, but I noticed that Google Keyboard sends out some data every time you type anything. It’s not even that subtle.

      • The 8232 Project
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        85 days ago

        If anything, I love GrapheneOS for its “Network” permission toggle. It’s nice knowing that my keyboard (or any other unnecessary apps) can’t phone home.

        • @[email protected]
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          35 days ago

          GrapheneOS is certainly on my wishlist too, but Pixels are quite pricey. I guess Rethink is the poor man’s version. Just a per-app firewall.

          • @[email protected]
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            35 days ago

            Maybe Divest/Lineage could be an option instead. Although you have to choose a device wisely (and even among supported ones, some have trouble unlocking the bootloader), there is a chance you’d find a suitable cheaper one.

            Personally no regrets spending $300 on a Pixel 7a but still painful to hand over this much.

  • @Rolando
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    175 days ago

    The youtube algorithm determined the following: people who watch the kind of videos in your history, are also interested in recording netflix shows. And it was right, because you are in fact interested in that (general) topic. This is another possible explanation.

  • @[email protected]
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    105 days ago

    It’s possible that it’s inferred off the digital footprint of you pirating the content, also. People freak out a lot about being listened to, but I’d argue that’s an inefficient spying mechanism they probably don’t lean heavily on if they can avoid it. We’re all living on platforms that are knowably spying on everything you click on or read or do online and feeding that into giant AI models with everything about you. Like just by watching a pirated video on a Google TV device, Google’s hashing that and phoning that data home, possibly even matching that to the specific file, and adding that to an ad profile.

  • @[email protected]
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    105 days ago

    I’ve gotten ads for things I’ve just thought about. Never said anything out loud about or did any searches related to. It was something in a video I’ve watched dozens of videos about in the past. But on this occasion, I happened to think that I kind of want one for the first time. And I just so happened to start getting ads for them right after, also for the first time. They know way more about you than you think and don’t need to listen to you.

  • @[email protected]
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    95 days ago

    And how often. have you said stuff that you have not received advertising for? You will notice it when you get a positive match but not on a negative.

    Data collecting companies can predict/rate your behavior for more then 20 years based. Since then. it has been perfected. They know that you are interested in those topics without having the need to waste resources on recording and analyzing every single audio stream.

  • davel [he/him]
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    65 days ago

    Reporter: [REDACTED]
    Reason: BS

    Maybe I should have removed this post, because it is ridiculous.

      • davel [he/him]
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        24 days ago

        Exactly, it is “A community of privacy and FOSS enthusiasts, run by Lemmy’s developers,” and not a community for spreading nonsense like Google secretly listening to your conversations to better recommend YouTube videos to you.

  • Matt
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    5 days ago

    Root your phone and degoogle it if it doesn’t have LineageOS image. If it does have LineageOS image, then flash it. Oh, and don’t use Google and YouTube. Use Brave/Vivaldi for web search and Tubular for YouTube.

    • foremanguy
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      34 days ago

      I’ve seen a lot of people using Vivaldi as “private” browser. What is the point here?

      • Matt
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        14 days ago

        Because it’s one of the few browsers on Android that allow you to put your address bar down

          • Matt
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            14 days ago

            Firefox is okay but most websites break on it.

                • @[email protected]
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                  23 days ago

                  Those 2 might very well cause issues sometimes, you should try and fiddle around with their settings on the websites that complain, or outright whitelist them if nothing works and you want to use them, other times it really is the browser or even more often an artificial check of the user agent string (dick move on the dev’s side), so if you spoof a Chromium browser it’ll start working right away

    • zerozakuOP
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      14 days ago

      Bruh Brave or Vivaldi? Those are not even the best options out there

      • Matt
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        4 days ago

        Or anything else that isn’t Google Chrome.

        • zerozakuOP
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          24 days ago

          Yep I am not using that.