> Just stop using browser extensions.

> The browser is the modern operating system...

This is kind of like advocating to only use vendor-provided software on your actual operating system because any third party software might be insecure (ignoring the fact that the OS itself may be as well). Some people might be able to do that but the overwhelming majority of people would not find that tenable, so suggesting that one just not is neither productive nor realistic.

I see it as yet another piece of propaganda from the corporate-totalitarianism side of the war on general-purpose computing. They started squeezing people into the browser, then they slowly castrate the browser and turn it into another tool of control. No userstyles, no userscripts, no extensions, no URLs... All in the name of "security", of course... and people will blindly believe.

The frog continues to cook slowly.

People really do need additional functionality beyond what the browser provides.

The browser should offer the user controls on what data plugins can remit from the computer.

The "JSON prettifier" example is exactly what compromised my browser once, long ago. I only found out because I noticed the "this extension is no longer available on the Chrome store" mention on the chrome://extensions page or something of the sort.

It was silently ex-filtering list of all URLs I visited against a unique identifier.

"exfiltrating"

What about password managers? The browser built-in ones aren't always the best choice.

Why not?

1. Lack of a master password, so anyone who knows the password to your laptop knows all your passwords

2. Inability to access them anywhere, anytime

3. Possibility of compromise in case of compromise of system[1]

4. No sharing

5. Absolutely terrible password generation (a string of random characters)

[1]: https://null-byte.wonderhowto.com/how-to/hacking-windows-10-...

What’s wrong with a string of random characters?

Harder to type, harder to remember

It's from a password MANAGER.

As far as I know, none of the browser-provided password managers let you sync outside of an internet-connected account system. I can sync my passwords over my local network just fine.

I think that technically Firefox does, but it’s not easy to run your own account and sync server.

Yeah. All extensions are potential malware. The only extensions I trust are uBlock Origin and those made by the EFF.

All software is potential malware. Sometimes the definition of malware depends on whether you're the user or not!

Yes, but sometimes software comes from people who are generally trustworthy. Free and open source software from official Linux distribution repositories has a very low chance of being compromised.

wym

How is your argument different from "don't use software to solve problems"?