News about Firefox

Robin

News about Mozilla and Firefox. Mozilla is an advertising company now. Perhaps future releases should use a different default browser?

brianthehughes

I miss Netscape.

If your information flows through it. It is profiling you.

It may be a browser or your ISP.

2025

vimanuelt

It’s time to develop applications that surpass web browsers, enhancing efficiency, security, and user experience. The dominance of global groupthink is part of the problem as well.

grahamperrin

vimanuelt I liked Apple's OpenDoc.

teekay

I installed LibreWolf and it's great, perfect drop-in replacement for Firefox and has great privacy settings turned on by default. Wouldn't mind that as a default browser.

ninos

Mozilla sent a new post about the new Terms of Use (TOU)
[https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/update-on-terms-of-use/](https://)

grahamperrin

ninos … a new post …

👍️

Highlighted by The Register:

TL;DR Mozilla doesn’t sell data about you (in the way that most people think about “selling data”), and we don’t buy data about you. We changed our language because some jurisdictions define “sell” more broadly than most people would usually understand that word. …

Robin

It's conspicuous that the new TOU doesn't include all that stuff about privacy anymore. Like the meme, it reads like "all your data are belong to us."

brianthehughes

Always was, will be.

Trying out LibreWolf

Robin

Good alternatives to try. I'm on Brave-browser after today's upgrade, but ungoogled-chromium is excellent as well.

vimanuelt

Ungoogled-chromium would be a nice default web browser replacement.

Robin

YES! Ungoogled-chromium would be ideal, along with a /hosts file or other means of blocking ads and stuff. Google (like Firefox) is an advertising company after all, so naturally they hate ad-blockers and pop-up blockers. But ungoogled-chromium could have all that stuff.

There's a long, convoluted process to enable some "Chrome extensions" to work in ungoogled-chromium, and it worked until this last upgrade. When that happened I found, to my great delight, that Brave-browser was listed in the Software Station! So that's what I'm running now.

vimanuelt

Yes, the Brave browser is nice. With 101 package dependencies it is a bit heavy.

Robin

Yessir, it depends on a bunch of "Linux-compatibility" stuff unfortunately. That is, until it gets ported to FreeBSD someday. It takes up a bit of storage space, having to have all those dependencies, but the user experience is roughly the same as ungoogled-chromium. It's quick to load and performs very well, blocking ads and so forth. I disabled all the "special features" (wallet, bitcoin stuff, VOIP, etc). Now with Skype being abandoned, I wonder if the VOIP options in Brave will become popular.

vimanuelt

Leaning on Linux compatibility can make native web browser ports less likely, which means fewer optimizations and weaker system integration. The way to fix that? Show why native support is worth it. Better performance, more stability, and smoother system integration all make a difference. Make porting easy with good tools, and give developers reasons to care, whether that’s support, funding, or just making the process less painful. Push for upstream support when possible. Relying too much on compatibility layers is a crutch, it works for now, but real support is always the better long-term move. :-)

Robin

Firefox gaslighting users

vimanuelt

Robin If something is truly a serious issue, then rather than just complaining, people should work toward a solution, especially in the open-source world, where crowdsourcing solutions is a proven model. If privacy concerns with Firefox (or any software) are a major issue, then why not fork it, contribute to an alternative, or support projects that align with those concerns? Complaining without action doesn’t solve anything. :-)

grahamperrin

Maintaining An Independent Browser Is Incredibly Expensive

https://mastodon.bsd.cafe/@grahamperrin/112273460281379415

vimanuelt … why not fork …

It's easy to underestimate the cost.

Robin

Complaining doesn't solve anything, but making others aware of issues might. I won't do that here anymore.

vimanuelt

Bringing a solution is always nice is see. :-) Problems were meant is be solved. ;-)