First focusing on AI and now this, already cancelled my donations, do we have a good fork to move to?
Is there a picture of what this actually looks / would look like? Honestly, although it is going down a bad path, it isn’t actually all that surprising. Firefox already has sponsored address bar suggestions by default.
Interesting… What would people shitting on other browsers for offering OPT-IN ads do now?
Oh, wait. Mozilla can do no wrong /s
Nothing to see here.
WTF?
It seems highly likely that you have mischaracterized the meaning of browser.shopping.experience2023.ads.userEnabled but it doesn’t matter. The mere existence of browser.shopping.experience2023.ads.userEnabled is damning enough on its own.
ill be happy to be wrong, but there is no alternative. if we dont support firefox; were all fucked.
Pale Moon is the only alternative I can think of, it’s independent of Gecko and FF
Last I heard, which was admittedly a long time ago, Pale Moon was dangerously out of date with respect to security and web standards and not much more than a meme. I feel like I remember a significant change in leadership relatively recently, but has Pale Moon actually become a viable alternative?
Beyond that, WebKit is still a thing. Ladybird is too though it’s still quite a ways from primetime.
Hence why we need a public option.
Don’t they already do this with Firefox Suggest?
I can live with ads but I’d prefer to pay a few dollars a year instead. I already support Mozilla through relay.
The problem is Mozilla started thinking about itself as a company, with its massive revenue from Google.
It isn’t. Firefox was most alive and most growing when it was still a grassroots initiative to build a better web browser.
When they go back to that - or someone forks and creates a charity with one sole focus (a great browser) I’ll start supporting them. I just don’t think Mozilla needs this size of org to build a better browser and and now they’re trying to do a bunch a crap I’m not interested in to justify their org size. They’ve got it back to front.
And I say this as a lifelong Firefox user.
The Mozilla Corporation is a for-profit company founded in 2005 by the Mozilla Foundation. I think part of the problem is more people don’t realize this. It’s the same reason you can’t donate to Firefox development, donations to “Mozilla” go to the Mozilla Foundation, not the company that builds Firefox.
Yes, but the profits of Mozilla Corporation are all owned by the Mozilla Foundation, which has to adhere to all the usual 501.c3 rules about spending (i.e. it must be in furtherance of the stated mission of the org).
The profits are owned by the Corporation, which is why the Corporation does all the crazy spending and paying millions to executives, because as long as there is enough separation what they do internally does not affect the tax situation of the Foundation. After the for-profit pays taxes, the non-profit can get dividends and other payments from them, but it is not just a way to wash away tax from all the money.
The Corporation acts like a company because it is one. This is different than Konqueror, Epiphany, or most of the Firefox forks.
That bugzilla page says they targeted version 122 for this change. I have Firefox 122 on my PC and when I look at the about:config page, that setting is still set to False. I think y’all are freaking out about a very small thing.
If you use Firefox, and you check your about:config page and you see true for that setting, then just change it to false and go about your day.
Or are we all just talking philosophically about this?
Sure, you can change literally everything about Firefox if you pay a time cost. The defaults do matter because that’s one more thing to fix when installing it. We could say this about any negative feature.
With Firefox sync you only ever have to do it once.
Firefox is a super easy install for me. Install login and all of my settings auto apply.
I agree with all of that. 👍
I just didn’t see anyone else addressing where the change lives in the browser and how to un-do it if you want to opt out.
Librewolf on PC.
Mull on Android
librewolf is a fork of firefox, without firefox librewolf also gonna die
By being a fork it wont die, but its true that its just a few folks running builds of mainstream work mozilla is doing
and same with Mull.
That’s not how forks work. A fork can exist independently of its upstream.
Can but how feasible is that?
True, but you really think firefox forks would have the resources to keep up with security updates and such? Mull for one is a fork that only changes the default privacy changes and nothing more
Pale Moon is the only independent fork that I know of that doesn’t depend on gecko or ff
Is Ublock Origin and Dark reader compatible with pale moon?
Waterfox is a good fork to move to
If Firefox goes down because of lack of funding, so will waterfox. You will be forced to move to Chromium for security and basic web features.
I’m not planning to move anywhere tbh.
Mozilla is almost 100% financially dependent on Google right now, if that funding goes away then so will Firefox, the Gecko engine, and likely all the forks. With all the layoffs happening in the industry, we can’t rule out Google shareholders looking elsewhere to cut costs too, such as the massive subsidization of Mozilla. The little we can do is allow Mozilla to find other sources of funding that are optional for users IMO
Yes, stuff like pocket is garbage. But at least Mozilla allow you to turn it off, which is more than can be said for Google: on Android devices manufacturers have to pay a hefty “fee” just to allow users to remove the Google search bar from the launcher. As a user you can get around this by installing a custom launcher, but as a manufacturer, you will not get Google certification: no SafetyNet (Play Integrity DRM, required by Banking apps), no Widevine, and Google will block GMS & their other apps on your product.
Regarding AI, mozilla’s memorycache is completely local (runs on the user’s machine) and does not call out to any servers. The new translation feature is the same. The only exception to this that I’m aware of is the AI helper on MDN, but the target audience of that site is already in a position to determine whether that is a useful feature or not.
I’m not planning to move anywhere tbh.
I do. If they go through with it than they’re not much better than Google.
If they don’t have enough money maybe they could start with cutting the CEO’s pay.
I haven’t read through the issue, but so far all of Mozilla’s endeavours into ads have been stellar privacy-wise.
And their CEO stepped back a few weeks ago. It’s well possible that the intermediary/new CEO won’t get as much payment, because losing them to a competitor will not hurt as badly.
already
How considering to show ads and allow to opt out is worse that google? Have you watch Youtube?
Likening this to the evils of google is such a wildly dishonest take lmao
On the contrary, it’s the only comparison you can make, since they are literally the only options.
Why? Do you really think Google started out evil, and not step by step by implementing “improvements” similar to this one?
this need to start from inside the company, lile the employers timing a walkout of something, other than that everything gonna stay the same
Librewolf
I found its privacy settings too restrictive. I ended up moving to Floorp which is much closer to the Vanilla FF
I’ve been hearing good things about waterfox
The tech communities are trying their hardest to get people to switch to Firefox. Meanwhile Mozilla is trying its hardest to get people off Firefox with decisions like this.
The purpose of Mozilla is to kill Firefox. That’s what Google is paying for.
Is this because of the new ceo?
