Have you not heard the news? Mozilla essentially have become an advertising company by acquiring adtech start-up called Anonym. I think the only way to escape this bullshit is by installing privacy-enabled Firefox fork (such as LibreWolf) or to wait for an alternative web browser to rise up (like Ladybird or Servo) which has user freedom and privacy in its first priority, which is something that Mozilla doesn’t seem to care lately.
no I don’t, I have not keeping up with browser news lately after switched to Floorp, not sure if I still live long enough to see Ladybird or Servo officially released
Mozilla’s slowly creeping in the surveillance with adding integrated crap like Pocket and AI driven Fake Spot. I’m really glad Librewolf’s made a privacy focused fork of their browser without all that nonsense.
TLDR: Mozilla wants your data and it’s opt out. If you’re on FF 128 it’s already on and you will have to turn it off manually. Shame how they have fallen this low. The LEAST they could have done is show a pop up announcement when the user upgraded to 128.
Also: +1 to Librewolf. Mozilla is definitely going to try more scummy crap like this in the future. Definitely the better option over Firefox.
Looks really cool. I hope we don’t have the overreliance on one rendering engine in the future. Once one or the other comes out I’ll definitely try it out.
You joking? 😆 I don’t want to discourage you from giving rust a try but come on. Have you ever talked to a developer that spent any real time with rust, anyone that got as far as multi threading?
Maybe I’m misunderstanding, but I just read that whole article and it sounds like a good implementation? Companies want to know how effective their ads are, and I like their approach of trying to find a way to provide this without wholesale personal data collection. They even say at the end that they don’t get the data either. It sounds like a reasonable thing to try and standardize.
I’m not commenting on implementation itself but rather on how Mozilla went about with an opt-out approach into the collection program (even if it was for testing) to a community they have cultivated with the promise of privacy.
Collecting my data is a big deal. It doesn’t matter how it is used. I should at least consent to it.
I’ve read the announcement. Sounds reasonable and sufficiently private to me. So saying “Mozilla wants your data” sounds misleading and like an overreaction to me. Also might help to mitigate the arms race in privacy protection versus tracking for ads and worse stuff.
Mozilla is definitely going to try more scummy crap like this in the future.
How do you know that?
Even if, there will still be alternatives. But right now, Firefox is the best browser with regards to privacy and security. It even passed minmum ratings by the german IT security authority, contrary to other widely used browsers.
I’m with you on the opt-out vs. opt-in part. That’s not a nice move. Regardless of that, Firefox is still the best choice. I hope they will continue to improve.
A lot of sites? Or more like just a few? Personally, the ratio of working vs broken sites is like 100 to 1 and when a site is broken, its usually one of those shit pile SEO listicle sites or some absolute trash heap of ads. Every time I’ve disabled the protections I’ve regretted it.
A lot of the web is useless trash nowadays and Librewolf has done a good job of filtering that for me.
Click fraud is a big thing, with lots of counter measures, I don’t see how they could go past them as they are saying themselves that they have a very naive approach. To me it’s useless at best, but more probably counterproductive.
I think you’re right about click fraud. Actually, I use AdNauseam primarily to disrupt non-consensual targeted advertising. Even if the impact is small, I’m obfuscating my profile as a form of protest against tracking.
How is this better as a protection against tracking? You are still making requests to trackers, this is so easy to counter, make multiple tracking requests, filter out want changes, keep what’s the same and you have some tracking data.
inb4 “lol @ using twitter in 2024” I just steal memes from it, and mastodon/bluesky simply aren’t up to speed yet.
Weighing options though I’ll go with Firefox and shitty twitter experience rather then Chrome and the ads everywhere experience. Not really a contest there. Just idle complaints.
I really hope there’s a significant rise in Firefox -and derivatives- usage share. It will be good for everyone, even those stuck on Chromium browsers.
I don’t think google wants to get hit with another antitrust lawsuit for web browsing, so I am sure they will figure out some other deal to funnel money to Firefox
Good point. Could be like MS and Apple in the late 90’s. When Apple was on death’s door, Gates invested in Apple so MS would have faux competition for regulators.
Honestly at least they’d be forced to revamp their business model and focus on their users. I’d willingly donate to them monthly if it went to firefox directly and they acted in our interest accordingly
I use firefox, I mostly like it, but it still doesn’t support chromium style tab groups (no, that one extension is not similar), and its webgpu implementation also doesn’t work on most websites more than a year after Google made their version available by default
I’ve been using Vivalid, they have ‘Workspaces’ (as its Tab Group analog) which is different but in a way that was a pleasant surprise and kind of reminds me of older systems. Imagine working with one tab group at a time and the rest disappear when you’re not on that workspace.
It’s chromium based, but it’s pretty custom at this point. Chrome extensions are still compatible, but the interface/etc will throw you a bit if you’re looking for something that’s a direct swap.
Not sure if this is “that one extension”, but I use Simple Tab Groups for Workspaces-like functionality, similar to Edge and Vivaldi. I know, it isn’t tab groups, but I use it similarly.
I’m guessing, they’re referring to multi-account container tabs. It’s what the Chrome feature took heavy inspiration from, but of course without the privacy protection aspect.
How convenient that this happens just a few days after Firefox implements the features that have been blocking me from switching for the last few years.
Still, I’m curious about other browsers. We know Chrome is killing V2, but what about other Chromium-based browsers? I saw below a comment espousing Brave, but I’d rather use Chrome than Brave because of the gross crypto bs. What about Vivaldi, Opera, and Chredge? Will they keep supporting Manifest V2?
Multi-window support on iPad is the main one. Less important, though it would have bugged me if they didn’t have it, is sustained Incognito tabs—which apparently they had until a couple of months ago, then removed without explanation, then added back in just 1 day ago, also without explanation. Found a thread on their forums with a whole bunch of people perplexed and asking what happened.
Your first point at least is an iPad thing. Nothing is fully featured on the iPad. Not even safari. It’s thanks to that exact fact that chrome is at least mostly fully featured on the iPad. If safari had comparable function, you could bank on them blocking those features from the chrome app too. There’s a deal made somewhere. I wouldn’t be surprised if cash flow from Google is why safari is still the same piece of crap it always has been. “Hey your R&D + return for safari only nets you 1% YOY. We’ll give you 2% YOY if you just don’t even bother.”
They only know raising prices and knee-jerk reactions to competitive moves in their market space. Additional functionality for the user is only granted when it’s being used as a cudgle against their competition. Never for users benefit.
If you’re seeing new functionality on the iPad Firefox app, it’s likely because Firefox figured out a way to implement it without paying apple because they want the user to have that function. Totally different ethos.
If you’re seeing new functionality on the iPad Firefox app, it’s likely because Firefox figured out a way to implement it without paying apple because they want the user to have that function
Nothing at all remotely like that. They just don’t have enough developers to have implemented it sooner. It’s an API that Apple introduced in 2019, that Google implemented within months, Microsoft implemented within a couple of years, and Mozilla finally implemented this July.
There are actually no alternative browser on iOS. Before the European Digital Market Act all iOS browser have to use webkit, so while you could install Firefox, Chrome and others, they were actually using Safari’s rendering engine. I believe that’s where a lot of the limitations come from. Now with the DMA Firefox could use it’s own rendering engine but this hasn’t landed yet. I don’t know if any other browser has switched from webkit yet.
Sort of. As you say, it’s more accurate to say that they’re forced to use Safari’s rendering, but everything else is up to them, the same as how any other app would be developed. That’s how they get their own features like bookmark syncing etc.
Being able to have multiple windows of the same app is a feature Apple introduced in 2019, and obviously Safari supported it immediately. Google Chrome added support for multiple windows after a few months. I switched to Microsoft Edge once they added support for it about a year, maybe 18 months later, and have just been waiting for Firefox to finally support it so I can switch to that.
Incidentally, 2019 is also the year Firefox finally added support on their desktop browser for a CSS property (column-span) that a site I used to frequent required to work. Though by that time I no longer used that particular site.
Well I for one hope they figure out an alternative income, like a premium subscription? Or perhaps look to get acquired by proton and get some integration going with those services? I’m no expert here, I just think that they have a lot of happy users, and there must be some way to figure this out financially.
I’m not aware of any non-profit with staffing the size of Mozilla. The problem is that you need to be able to make money and to set it aside for bad times, so you don’t have to fire employees the moment the donations falter.
On the plus side, the only shareholder of the Mozilla Corporation is the Mozilla Foundation, which therefore essentially cannot accept any of the profit the MoCo might make.
That’s a ridiulously low amount of money given the amount of users. I’d happily pay 10-20 bucks a year to keep mozilla alive. Not that I like it much, but more so than the big alternatives
Yeah, Apple seems to be able to fetch a little more than a billion per percent of the browser market (18% at 20B), but Mozilla is only able to score 0.5B for 2-3% of the market. Mozilla is getting a quarter of Apple’s rate.
That said, Apple has a lot more leverage than Google, and they can strong arm a better deal. I also wouldn’t be surprised if Safari users are just a more valuable marketing cohort. Firefox’s user base is going to have a lot more people who opt out of and or block targeted marketing.
The Google antitrust decision will result in Mozilla losing 90% of their revenue since Google won’t be allowed to pay them to use their search engine anymore.
The antitrust case is about Google and Apple, not Mozilla. It doesn’t mean the antitrust case will have any impact on Mozilla, because it’s not a major player, unlike Apple.
I guess Anonym, PPA, Cliqz, pocket, the default telemetry that is non-trivial to disable, and whatever this latest nonsense is are all just hallucinations.
If on a computer need more security uBlock + uMatrix + NoScript.
uBlock and uMatrix can block scripts, but I find NoScript’s fine grain control to be user friendly. Makes it a pain to browse the web though, until you setup each of your normal sites.
It started in june, for now it’s just showing a warning saying that the extension will soon no longer be supported. They’ll be disabled gradually until the beginning of 2025.
We need another meme like this about Firefox but with the first panel saying “Antitrust judgement against Google” and the second panel blank, without anyone coming to the rescue.
The large majority of Mozilla’s revenue comes from the money that Google pays to be the default search engine in Firefox.
lemmy.fosshost.com
Newest