I'm just learning about what all the fuss around Brave is. But I'd be interested to hear how Google seems to be the ethical choice for a daily driver browser currently. It's obviously fine to not want to use Brave, but how is it the inferior choice when compared to Chrome (or even considered a sidegrade)? Even with all the issues mentioned I'd still recommend it as the lesser of the 2 evils compared to Chrome.
The commenter I'm replaying to implies they're using Chrome primarily, and then reacted negatively to the mention of Brave. I'm asking how Chrome use is the acceptable choice and Brave is seemingly so bad in comparison.
I don't think the commenter you are replying to is arguing that chrome is a better choice. He or she knows it's bad but didn't make the change out of lazyness (no offence).
Change has a cost, especially if it implies changing habits. So people will just delay or avoid them.
obviously, but when you have the option of just, not using chrome at all, why would you use anything chromium based to begin with, google is literally the problem here lmao
You are right, I should have been more specific. He's openly homophobic. I'm also pretty sure that's not the case for Mozilla as he was Mozilla's CEO and was pushed out over this specific thing.
I don't know why you are shifting from CEO to employees.
My personal reason, I looked at their code and it was amateur town. Hacked together trash. There’s a proper way to modify Chromium and they didn’t follow any of it. In contrast, Vivaldi’s coders knew what they were doing. I don’t actively use or support Chrome, but if you’re going to do something, do it right.
I could see this as part of a metrics thing - if Google sees a big drop in users right after the rollout, it's harder to brush it under the rug as having no correlation.
Brave is a great browser and the only chromium one I would ever use but mentioning it on Reddit OR Lemmy will cause you to get mass downvoted unfortunately
The browser lets you customize the dashboard so you can make the browser look as clean or minimal as you want with almost no distractions
Biggest issue I have with Firefox is that some websites can be broken but 99.9% of the time this is not Firefox’s fault and the only one to blame is lazy developer's
Firefox out of the box doesn’t come with specific features that the websites that I use need which is why I haven’t made the switch yet, biggest one is that Firefox doesn’t work with Keychron’s in browser software that is used to customize their keyboards. Again this is not Firefox’s fault because Firefox didn’t adopt the feature because of security concerns which is completely valid and even commendable.
When you use nightly, you're using an unstable application that is likely to have many bugs that cause freezing or crashing. Reading the changelogs is a necessity when using unstable software. Using nightly builds of any application requires additional care on the part of the user.
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 mean yeah, all these big tech companies are trying to make their products feel faster, because that's the only space they can compete. When it comes to privacy, they all lose.
Google just maliciously makes their websites work way worse on Firefox. For YouTube I personally just use FreeTube on desktop and Tubular (A NewPipe fork) on Android so I never have to interact with that goddamn website
I'm fine with a slow update cycle as long as they don't wait too long to actually merge app breaking features, like when recently youtube changed a few things and videos would no longer load.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
In order to get away from that, they need to find alternative ways of making money, like showing ads, which loops us back around to the guy above saying they're making bad decisions.
Your point is fair, but their real problem is they bloated up to absorb their insane budget and they are going to have to strip down to a reasonable size for a browser company before trying to establish a non-google revenue stream.
How the hell would you know this? There's a reason no grassroots project is able to compete with Chrome, Firefox or Safari, and it's not for a lack of trying.
And if you're going to tell me they should stop doing Pocket etc., then please refer to my comment above.
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.
The 501(c)(3) non-profit form of tax-exempt non-profit, which is what the Mozilla Foundation continues to be, is not allowed to do so. That's why they opened up the for-profit Mozilla Corporation subsidiary that does most of the Firefox development.
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.
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.
Manifest v3 was why I switched to FF a while ago - it was going to only be a matter of time even with the delays so I figured I should switch early. I still like how chrome looks a lot more and wish we had tab grouping, but google can take uBO from my cold, dead hands.
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.
The biggest pro for me is the vertical tabs. It's got the same vertical tabs that Edge has which are great. I only use Edge at work but it's great especially when you have a web based production environment like nCino that you work in all day and have dozens of tabs open. You can group them up nicely and keep yourself organized. Floorp is based off of Firefox ESR so it's on an older build (but up to date security). The current build is based off FF 115 while FF is on 129 now.
I've tried but for some reason, I can never get them set up correctly and I'm not technologically illiterate. Its been a while since I tried it though since Floorp just works.
I like Vivaldi and they are going to keep V2 support for a while. I will switch to Firefox when it's gone, but for the time being I am happy they are keeping the support.
I would totally use Firefox if they had better first-party tab group support and syncing workspaces. They help with my tab messes which I need to keep organized
And even if they don't keep it: they got browser-level Adblock- and Tracking-Filters that you can just feed the same lists you'd put into uBlock
Sure it's lacking the spot-blocking, tool if there's a missed ad or a fine-tuned whitelisting but I think that browser will stay usable even if V3 is implemented.
It will block youtube ads if the video is embedded in another website. When I want to find a youtube video on my tv I just search it on DuckDucGo, since watching it there blocks ads and seems to bypass any restrictions they've placed on watching videos outside of youtube.
I need to set up a cheap computer and just run the TV as a monitor so I can have all the features I want, including a real browser with ublock. But in the meantime, this fixes the one issue I have with DNS level blocking.
You can get “android on a stick” computers and sideload some de-googled stuff. They plug right into the USB port of some smart tvs. You might be able to hack an Amazon Firestick too.
Step 1) Get a raspberry pi. Step 2) Open terminal and paste: curl -sSL https://install.pi-hole.net | bash Step 3) Point your DNS to the raspberry pi’s IP address.
I looked into making one a while back and it's honestly quite complicated if you're not a techy person. I gave up on it, though I think you can also buy them pre-built for a bit more money so you might look into that.
You absolutely don't need a pi to run pihole. They have a list of officially supported OSs that can run the software, regardless of the hardware (as long as it meets the insanely low system requirements), and it can also be run in a docker container.
There's was only a very brief period that I would have considered Chrome a better option and that was the period when Chrome had a mobile app and FF didn't. Other than that, I have never understood why you would use chrome.
I know FF didn't invent tab browsing, but definitely the first to do it successfully.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
I mean unless Mozilla starts getting sued by Ad companies to force them to ban ad blockers, I don't think that will happen because being able to have ad blockers is a major selling point.
But even if it does happen, Firefox is open source and has been forked, so the next alternative is LibreWolf.
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 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 you're talking about Google owned sites, there's circumstantial evidence that Google sets their sites up to do that intentionally in order to gimp competitors.
That's weird, something is definitely wrong. Are they set up in a similar way? The first thing that comes to my mind is: Are you using the same DNS server on both? Differences in DNS response time should be more noticeable than rendering time on most hardware. And I think Firefox doesn't use the system DNS by default but I might be wrong.
Do you mind checking? I'm curious now.
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
(yes i know it's "Chinese spyware" if the Chinese government really wants to know what youtube videos i watch for hours, what porn i browse, and what impulse purchases i make they can have it, i don't fucking care, when i want privacy i use Tor)
anyway i use Opera, and despite the fact it's been my browser of choice for over a decade i will switch to Firefox in a heartbeat if my ad blockers stop working and i'm forced to watch ads for over 3 days in a row (in uBlock devs i trust)
nah it's not rationalising, i really just don't care. I mentioned it there because the second i mention Opera anywhere the first reply is always "but did you know it's Chinese spyware?"
I like Opera's features like workspaces, tab islands, built in adblock, built in vpn etc. it really suits my scatter brain self
I also used to use opera, and thought the Chinese ownership made me uneasy, I only left due to their short term loan scandal.
But honestly I don't regret it because vivaldi has a lovely community. Opera just felt cold and faceless, and I didn't even know anyone else who used it.
Vivaldi has all the features (except VPN) and a lot more, so you won't find it lacking there
huh interesting! is it chromium based too though? I think at this point i'd mostly want to make a switch off chromium browsers with all the rumoured forced ads nonsense
Are you talking about manifest v3 or something else? Cause manifest v3 doesn't force ads, it just cripples third party ad blockers. Also viv, (and some others, like brave) already disable plenty of Google stuff like FloC and privacy sandbox
I am specifically waiting for this to happen so I can be part of the flood to Firefox when they finally throw the switch.
Why wait?
Also, Brave browser exists for those who are particularly attached to chromium.
I'm not touching brave with a 10 ft pole but thanks for your advertisement
I'm just learning about what all the fuss around Brave is. But I'd be interested to hear how Google seems to be the ethical choice for a daily driver browser currently. It's obviously fine to not want to use Brave, but how is it the inferior choice when compared to Chrome (or even considered a sidegrade)? Even with all the issues mentioned I'd still recommend it as the lesser of the 2 evils compared to Chrome.
No one is saying Chrome is the ethical choice, why are you reducing this to a 2 options choice?
I'm not.
The commenter I'm replaying to implies they're using Chrome primarily, and then reacted negatively to the mention of Brave. I'm asking how Chrome use is the acceptable choice and Brave is seemingly so bad in comparison.
I don't think the commenter you are replying to is arguing that chrome is a better choice. He or she knows it's bad but didn't make the change out of lazyness (no offence). Change has a cost, especially if it implies changing habits. So people will just delay or avoid them.
obviously, but when you have the option of just, not using chrome at all, why would you use anything chromium based to begin with, google is literally the problem here lmao
Lemmy always seems to hate Brave but no one ever says why
Why people always forget the simple:
Switching Google to Brave is not an upgrade is a sidegrade.
Firefox is
So you are sure that Google and Mozilla doesn't employ any homophobics? They obviously have some sort of mind reader?
You are right, I should have been more specific. He's openly homophobic. I'm also pretty sure that's not the case for Mozilla as he was Mozilla's CEO and was pushed out over this specific thing.
I don't know why you are shifting from CEO to employees.
Ah ya I didn't know about them being transphobic. That's a shame
I don't know, I've seen answers to this so many times on Lemmy.
I've seen this answered so many times it'd make your head spin, looney-toons style. If you don't know then you haven't been paying any attention.
My personal reason, I looked at their code and it was amateur town. Hacked together trash. There’s a proper way to modify Chromium and they didn’t follow any of it. In contrast, Vivaldi’s coders knew what they were doing. I don’t actively use or support Chrome, but if you’re going to do something, do it right.
brave is literally just chromium, it solves none of the fundamental problems other than being like, reasonably well built.
It's chrome, but if it didnt't try and kill you ever update. That's the difference.
I could see this as part of a metrics thing - if Google sees a big drop in users right after the rollout, it's harder to brush it under the rug as having no correlation.
Or perhaps try ungoogled chrome if you enjoy Chrome.
Brave is a great browser and the only chromium one I would ever use but mentioning it on Reddit OR Lemmy will cause you to get mass downvoted unfortunately
The browser lets you customize the dashboard so you can make the browser look as clean or minimal as you want with almost no distractions
Biggest issue I have with Firefox is that some websites can be broken but 99.9% of the time this is not Firefox’s fault and the only one to blame is lazy developer's
Firefox out of the box doesn’t come with specific features that the websites that I use need which is why I haven’t made the switch yet, biggest one is that Firefox doesn’t work with Keychron’s in browser software that is used to customize their keyboards. Again this is not Firefox’s fault because Firefox didn’t adopt the feature because of security concerns which is completely valid and even commendable.
While introducing opt-out tracking where you data is sent to advertisers. Get LibreWolf instead.
Oh I didn't know this fork, thanks!
Or just set the few relevant settings manually, if you need nightly/dev edition.
Until the next dumb shit Mozilla does without telling its users.
Except I've heard about every change from here. And as I read the nightly changelogs, it's not that hidden actually.
Yes, you're the exception, not the rule.
If you need to use nightly, you're already the exception to the rule. That means you need to read the changelogs.
No you don't. Why do you need to read the changelogs?
When you use nightly, you're using an unstable application that is likely to have many bugs that cause freezing or crashing. Reading the changelogs is a necessity when using unstable software. Using nightly builds of any application requires additional care on the part of the user.
The things I said apply to the people that need to use FF nightly/dev. And those people should know their stuff.
I'm about to reach a point where I just abandon technology. Become a full luddite and let it burn over its own hubris.
I’m really hoping Google’s antitrust case doesn’t kill Mozilla. Over 85% of Mozilla’s cash flow is dependent on Google paying for that search box.
If Mozilla stopped paying his CEO millions of dollars... and if they actually financed development with people donations...
We don't know what they pay their new CEO.
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
Still the best browser, even though the majority left it for the speed they think chrome has.
I’m back on Firefox now, but I did originally leave it because Edge had the speed. Not sure if that’s because it’s more optimized for Windows.
I mean yeah, all these big tech companies are trying to make their products feel faster, because that's the only space they can compete. When it comes to privacy, they all lose.
YouTube videos for some reason won't load for me on Firefox. I switched to the Waterfox fork and it's fine.
Well, Google has been caught trying to make their sites slower / malfunctioning on Firefox. Usually they get away with it by saying it's a mistake.
Google just maliciously makes their websites work way worse on Firefox. For YouTube I personally just use FreeTube on desktop and Tubular (A NewPipe fork) on Android so I never have to interact with that goddamn website
As someone who uses tubular I wish it got updated more tho. The number of debug versions I have installed from pull requests is like 5 at this point 😭
I'm fine with a slow update cycle as long as they don't wait too long to actually merge app breaking features, like when recently youtube changed a few things and videos would no longer load.
Chrome definitely has the more sleek and responsive UI.
But that's all Chrome has.
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.
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.
a lot of sites are unusable with librewolf for some reason
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.
Related announcement: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/privacy-preserving-attribution
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.
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 feel like this argument is fair enough. I think a pop-up informing the user about it and how to opt out is sufficient.
Can't wait for ladybird to come out! Finally something that speaks our language.
I think Servo is a better option, it's also being written in rust.
So long as it survives rusts complexity and lack of portability. I'm always down for more options!
rust is complex and non-portable?
i've never heard of this, do you mind explaining what you mean better?
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?
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.
Wasn't Firefox supposed to incorporate Servo in some way or another before Quantum was developed?
I think the Quantum release was what integrated some major components of the servo project.
Damn, 2026. I hope you CAN wait.
That or the free internet as we know it will be dead by the time it reaches production.
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.
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.
Respectefully disagree. Reasonable would've been making it opt in, not opt out and justifying it with "would be too difficult to explain".
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.
atleast its opt out
And in the meantime Mozilla keeps making worse decisions, too
Enshitification of all the things.
Someone who gives a damn needs to be in charge of mozilla but i dont see that happening.
As long as they are entirely supported by Google, they aren't going to try too hard to outcompete them.
In order to get away from that, they need to find alternative ways of making money, like showing ads, which loops us back around to the guy above saying they're making bad decisions.
Your point is fair, but their real problem is they bloated up to absorb their insane budget and they are going to have to strip down to a reasonable size for a browser company before trying to establish a non-google revenue stream.
How the hell would you know this? There's a reason no grassroots project is able to compete with Chrome, Firefox or Safari, and it's not for a lack of trying.
And if you're going to tell me they should stop doing Pocket etc., then please refer to my comment above.
"And then Mozilla management comes in from the top rope with the chair"
Seriously, for profit companies should not own open source projects.
That for-profit company is owned by a non-profit. They don't have shareholders to which they could pay out the profits.
You can't stop that. But you can use Librewolf if video download helper stops ignoring Librewolf.
I mostly use waterfox, which is very similar to librefox. I just like the more compacted UI and performance optimization they have done.
That's awesome. Does Video DownloaderHelper work there?
I believe so. Have not checked recently. All my Firefox extentions work as expected
Mozilla is about to collapse due to the Google antitrust ruling though.
Mozilla and its murder/suicide pact with Google falling apart may be the best thing that could possibly happen to Firefox.
Um, what makes you think that?
Mozilla makes about $590m a year.
$510m of that is from Google paying for the search engine default spot.
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.
They need to reform as a non-profit with user membership, an elected board, and fundraising like Wikipedia.
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.
The 501(c)(3) non-profit form of tax-exempt non-profit, which is what the Mozilla Foundation continues to be, is not allowed to do so. That's why they opened up the for-profit Mozilla Corporation subsidiary that does most of the Firefox development.
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.
This is the real answer
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 don't think you realize where and why Mozilla gets its funding.
Has it actually been confirmed when it's coming? I feel like this has been threatened for years now.
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.
https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/develop/migrate/mv2-deprecation-timeline
Ah I see. Boiling the frog as it were.
Well, as much as I hate Google I don't think that's the intention of this particular point, rolling out big changes gradually is standard.
Manifest v3 was why I switched to FF a while ago - it was going to only be a matter of time even with the delays so I figured I should switch early. I still like how chrome looks a lot more and wish we had tab grouping, but google can take uBO from my cold, dead hands.
Oh you can tab group and even window label in FF, check out the extensions
Agreed, I also miss the feature of being able to extend a screenshot on a page.
But uBO is a necessity now to browse the Internet. The ads are so bad now.
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.
Floorp for power users
I've been curious about Floorp. Are you using it as your daily driver? And pros and cons?
The biggest pro for me is the vertical tabs. It's got the same vertical tabs that Edge has which are great. I only use Edge at work but it's great especially when you have a web based production environment like nCino that you work in all day and have dozens of tabs open. You can group them up nicely and keep yourself organized. Floorp is based off of Firefox ESR so it's on an older build (but up to date security). The current build is based off FF 115 while FF is on 129 now.
Have you tried Tree Style Tab or Sidebery?
I've tried but for some reason, I can never get them set up correctly and I'm not technologically illiterate. Its been a while since I tried it though since Floorp just works.
I moved from vivaldi to it. Move the the side bar to the left and it felt just like home
I like Vivaldi and they are going to keep V2 support for a while. I will switch to Firefox when it's gone, but for the time being I am happy they are keeping the support.
Hell yeah, best customizable browser I’ve seen
about:config: "Am I a joke to you?"I would totally use Firefox if they had better first-party tab group support and syncing workspaces. They help with my tab messes which I need to keep organized
And even if they don't keep it: they got browser-level Adblock- and Tracking-Filters that you can just feed the same lists you'd put into uBlock
Sure it's lacking the spot-blocking, tool if there's a missed ad or a fine-tuned whitelisting but I think that browser will stay usable even if V3 is implemented.
Pihole for the win
That's not the same. DNS blocking is great but it can't block as well as a proper ad blocker.
No, but better then nothing and network wide
I use one too, but it doesn’t block certain things like YouTube’s embedded adverts. Also use uBlock Origin.
It will block youtube ads if the video is embedded in another website. When I want to find a youtube video on my tv I just search it on DuckDucGo, since watching it there blocks ads and seems to bypass any restrictions they've placed on watching videos outside of youtube.
I need to set up a cheap computer and just run the TV as a monitor so I can have all the features I want, including a real browser with ublock. But in the meantime, this fixes the one issue I have with DNS level blocking.
You can get “android on a stick” computers and sideload some de-googled stuff. They plug right into the USB port of some smart tvs. You might be able to hack an Amazon Firestick too.
Step 1) Get a raspberry pi. Step 2) Open terminal and paste: curl -sSL https://install.pi-hole.net | bash Step 3) Point your DNS to the raspberry pi’s IP address.
https://pi-hole.net/
It doesn’t really. I won’t give a whole course on DNS and network stuff, but basically it has zero effect on your download and upload speeds.
DNS is like a phone book. You type Wikipedia.org and DNS translates that to an address like 200.92.36.68
When you download stuff, that’s not going through the Pi at all. So there’s no negative effects.
Your own raspberry pi will probably outperform your ISPs DNS, since it's on your local network.
Also, just by blocking what it does, pages load a lot less, so they load a lot quicker.
If you don't want to tinker with a Raspberry Pi, a simpler alternative would be AdGuard DNS
https://adguard-dns.io/en/public-dns.html
(Configure manually -> Routers)
I looked into making one a while back and it's honestly quite complicated if you're not a techy person. I gave up on it, though I think you can also buy them pre-built for a bit more money so you might look into that.
Their Official website has easy to follow step-by-step instructions
You actually need a pi to run pihole, anything that can run docker would do
You absolutely don't need a pi to run pihole. They have a list of officially supported OSs that can run the software, regardless of the hardware (as long as it meets the insanely low system requirements), and it can also be run in a docker container.
Mozilla about to lose funding from Google antitrust consequences :(
There's was only a very brief period that I would have considered Chrome a better option and that was the period when Chrome had a mobile app and FF didn't. Other than that, I have never understood why you would use chrome. I know FF didn't invent tab browsing, but definitely the first to do it successfully.
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?
Which are those?
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.
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.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.
Regulations, like the Digital Market Act, are also a big factor.
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.
I do not study in detail if this combination is necessary, but:
All of them except uBlock Origin are in Arkenfox "Do not bother" extension list: https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js/wiki/4.1-Extensions#-dont-bother
Thank you a lot for sharing this link!
Ghostery, Privacy Badger and Disconnect do nothing worthwhile that uBlock Origin doesn't already do.
privacyguides.org seems quite solid for recommendations
Wonder if the recent antitrust ruling about Google paying for being the default search engine will affect Mozilla's funding.
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 started using Tree Style Tabs in Firefox and really like it. Maybe vertical tabs aren’t so bad?
Tab groups are in the works but we haven't heard anything new about it since March.
Mozilla could definitely be putting their development time into the areas that the browser is actually behind in
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.
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.
is that chromium?
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.
Vivaldi has 3 types of tab groups, workspaces, sessions, and profiles.
Take your pick
Pretty happy with Brave, but I'm guessing that being a downstream chromium fork they'll eventually be stuffed and forced into using V3?
Brave said they would stay on v2.
I'm using AdNauseam instead. So ad networks, what exactly are you collecting?
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.
the number of forks says ff is next. the ad machine needs your money.
The ad machine doesn't need my money. They never even asked. I am the product to them.
I mean unless Mozilla starts getting sued by Ad companies to force them to ban ad blockers, I don't think that will happen because being able to have ad blockers is a major selling point.
But even if it does happen, Firefox is open source and has been forked, so the next alternative is LibreWolf.
my issue with firefox atm is that both twitter extensions I use have been hobbled/removed by it for what looks to me to be spurious reasons.
https://github.com/kheina-com/Blue-Blocker/discussions/294
https://github.com/dimdenGD/OldTwitter/discussions/752
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.
uBO Lite works on Manifest v3 and it works quite well in my experience, so I kinda don't get the whole manifest whining
How is libredns vs nextdns on a day to day user?
Source: I made it up
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.
That doesn't seem to be a source for OP's message.
Firefox feels so much slowwr than chrome when loading sites for me
I'll take slower over ad-bloated every day.
If you're talking about Google owned sites, there's circumstantial evidence that Google sets their sites up to do that intentionally in order to gimp competitors.
That's weird, something is definitely wrong. Are they set up in a similar way? The first thing that comes to my mind is: Are you using the same DNS server on both? Differences in DNS response time should be more noticeable than rendering time on most hardware. And I think Firefox doesn't use the system DNS by default but I might be wrong. Do you mind checking? I'm curious now.
For me, switching from chrone to ff around 3 years it felt the opposite. Ff opens so much faster. Also scrolling is way smoother.
Sadly Mozilla is becoming the next Google of web browsers.
What?
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
I use Opera
(yes i know it's "Chinese spyware" if the Chinese government really wants to know what youtube videos i watch for hours, what porn i browse, and what impulse purchases i make they can have it, i don't fucking care, when i want privacy i use Tor)
anyway i use Opera, and despite the fact it's been my browser of choice for over a decade i will switch to Firefox in a heartbeat if my ad blockers stop working and i'm forced to watch ads for over 3 days in a row (in uBlock devs i trust)
wasn't tor created by DARPA?
Nah it was the United States Naval Research Laboratory.
If you want opera without rationalizing what the Chinese government does to you, you can try vivaldi.
nah it's not rationalising, i really just don't care. I mentioned it there because the second i mention Opera anywhere the first reply is always "but did you know it's Chinese spyware?"
I like Opera's features like workspaces, tab islands, built in adblock, built in vpn etc. it really suits my scatter brain self
I also used to use opera, and thought the Chinese ownership made me uneasy, I only left due to their short term loan scandal.
But honestly I don't regret it because vivaldi has a lovely community. Opera just felt cold and faceless, and I didn't even know anyone else who used it.
Vivaldi has all the features (except VPN) and a lot more, so you won't find it lacking there
huh interesting! is it chromium based too though? I think at this point i'd mostly want to make a switch off chromium browsers with all the rumoured forced ads nonsense
Yes, but built in adblocker like opera so it's unaffected
nah i'd not trust that, if chromium itself gets invaded by forced ads no chromium based browser is safe
Are you talking about manifest v3 or something else? Cause manifest v3 doesn't force ads, it just cripples third party ad blockers. Also viv, (and some others, like brave) already disable plenty of Google stuff like FloC and privacy sandbox