The technically lirerate people aren’t exempt from the power dynamics created by the vast market share of Chrome and Google, created and reinforced by Google. Even if they/we have some more freedom to maneuver. We still only test our web app features on Chromium because there’s limited time for testing, if any, and we can’t convince product that making sure the feature works, or fixing bugs on a 2-3% browser is priority. If all the developers in the world used Firefox, it would still not change this power dynamic.

This is of course thanks to all the people shitting on Firefox over the years and saying that Chrome is just better and that there’s nothing wrong with giving Google control over the web. So yeah, thanks.

No it’s not thanks to those people. Blaming individuals for not stopping what a much bigger, infinitely more resourced, organized actor has been/is doing to maximize profit is shifting the material responsibiltiy from the actor with real power to the actors without. It’s like the personal carbon footprint oil&gas came up with to shift responsibility for climate pollution from themselves to individuals. Or plastic and recycling. It feels good to lay blame on those people who did something we did not but it doesn’t help change anything material beyond that. Divides us into camps which prevents us from organizing against the profit-driven culprits.

Erm, I don’t know where the author’s from but workplaces in North America outside of the software industry have always been authoritarian like that. Especially given that levels of unionization peaked at 1/3 of the workforce ever and are now way down in the US and Canadian private sector. The software industry experienced an exception to the tendency due to chronic labour shortage for nearly 2 decades that created expectations uncommon in other workplaces. Now it’s regressing to the mean. What we’re now experiencing has been the reality of most our comrades.