Can someone remind me why we stopped using Firefox a while back? There was some piece of news that broke everyone’s trust, but I can’t remember what Mozilla did. Was it a change in their user agreement?
Firefox is better than most but still smugly makes anti-user changes which are complete dog shit.
Remember when they turned off your ability to choose to load extensions that weren’t signed, because fuck you?
Fuck Pepperidge farm, I remember that shit.
Or how about DNS over https, because fuck you, user, why should you have any say over name resolution when you might use that power to block ads and malware?
When? There have been a few times people stopped using Firefox in large numbers.
One of them was when Chrome first came out. Firefox (and every other browser) at the time ran every site in one process. As sites became more reliant on Javascript, which was usually poorly written, that meant any one tab having a problem made other sites and even the browser’s own UI unresponsive, or sometimes crashed the whole browser. Chrome’s multiprocess model was a revelation. Firefox didn’t get its own implementation until 2016.
Recently, there’s been some movement away from Firefox due to Mozilla making decisions people don’t feel align with open source, the open web, and privacy. The one that has me looking at forks is the planned addition of terms of use to the browser. Terms of use are for an ongoing relationship between a service operator and a user; Firefox is local software I’m operating myself on a computer I own. Its fine for optional online services like Sync to have terms of use, but the browser should work without those.
I asked ChatGPT is similar question earlier this week. This was the answer.
While Mozilla has not been found to sell user tracking data in the conventional sense, the introduction of features like PPA (Privacy-Preserving Attribution) and changes in privacy policy language have understandably caused concern among users. These developments suggest a shift towards balancing user privacy with the need to support advertising models. Users prioritizing privacy should stay informed about these changes and adjust their browser settings accordingly.
Can’t write your own comments?
That’s what I was remembering, the terms of use.
I don’t even remember many times Firefox/Mozilla has changed its extension API and broken everyone’s add-ons. It gets tiresome.
Mainly once, if you dont count prehistoric versions
Still using it here
I have a silly reason! I got a windows phone and loved it, so was happy to use Edge (when it was still its own thing and not effectively Chrome).
Edge’s PDF viewer was great, and in general things were speedy, got out the way, and best of all it synced bookmarks to my phone. :) I also liked the rewards system for using bing, and between microsoft and google, I regarded google as worse ethically. (Obviously… yeah not a solid argument)
I think I switched back to firefox and variants mainly because I started caring about my data, open-source, and also those advantages Edge had were eroding in real-time, with adverts, nagging, and Windows things creeping in - the rewards ended, the chrome thing, it started feeling like the IE days again.
One of my coworkers uses it still, and it pains me to see what new AI gimmick is being shoehorned in.
If I stopped for dumb reasons, I like to think I came back wiser for it. :)
Who is this “we”? I still use it, never stopped.
Because I use only android or Samsung dex. It doesn’t work on dex & android seems forgotten. I use per site zoom to much.
Because Librewolf exists and Mozilla became an adware vendor.
The thing is, I never have. Chrome is absolute hot garbage and spyware, all the Chromium forks are all flawed and bugged and still feed into Google’s dominance because of engine and stupid Manifest bullshit. Firefox, despite all the stupid things Mozilla did and still does just works the best and is not Chromium.
Honestly, as a “non-power” Firefox user, the only issues I’m experiencing is when Google purposely slows down or messes with me simply because I use Firefox (e.g., YouTube).
Dunno, Youtube works fine for me, watching without account. I don’t use anything else from Google, so can’t say if anything else is shit.
Can you elaborate on the manifest bullshit thing?
Google sells it as an updated extension framework to improve security, privacy, and performance of extensions… But it also nerfs adblockers ability to block all ads.
There are some forks from chrome that haven’t implemented the new manifest thing. So if you really need to, look for those.
Here, this should help. tl;dr: Google updated how Chrome security works and it broke apps like every adblocker at the time.
It was intentional to block/break adblockers. Google is worlds largest advertiser…
It didn’t break adblockers “at the time”. It broke them intentionally. That was by design. Google is an advertising company dabbling in other areas. They don’t want a browser that can properly block their primary revenue.
Understood, that’s something to be expected by Google, but complete shit.
However, adblockers still work these days - see Vivaldi, so they found a workaround?
There is no workaround as most browsers download extensions from Google’s extension repository and they don’t allow extensions that don’t follow their bullshit manifest. Ironically, only Opera has its own extensions repository/store that can do that. Others rely on their own built in adblockers.
I believe you’re thinking of a ToS change where the wording was incredibly vague, leading to some outlets to claim they were selling browsing data to 3rd parties and AI modelers. They changed it right after to specify that the data they were using wasn’t browsing data, and the data they did gather wouldn’t be used for AI. They are not as invasive as google, but you’re subject to Google on Firefox because of the ubiquity of their telemetry and search optimizations across websites. Firefox with an add-on such as noscript is much better than Chrome still, in my opinion. At the very least, it’s nice to have a browser that doesn’t work to undermine its own add-on functionalities.
This. It has been everywhere here around, if someone denies it, is lying! It was nothing in the end but in the meantime I tried Zen (based on FF) and it’s aesthetically more pleasing to me
I never fully did, but I did end up using Chromium more than I wanted to:
- Some poorly written sites refuse to work with FF. My water company, for example. They eventually fixed it after I complained multiple times. Now they display a warning that it’s “Optimized for Chrome” but no longer flat out prevent FF from logging in (you know, to pay bills and such).
- FF Desktop still doesn’t support PWAs, and their recent update says they’re working on it, but they’re half-assing it (installed web apps will still have the menu bars, address, bar etc). I self-host a lot of web applications and want them to appear like native apps. Hence, Chromium.
- There was some recent ToS / Privacy Policy change, and everyone was knee-jerking “time to abandon Firefox” as if there’s anywhere better to go. (This is probably what you’re thinking of)
- A good while back, Chrom(ium) was just flat-out faster. That’s been a while, and I think when FF’s “Quantum” update (or whatever it was called) came out in like 2016 or 2017, it put it back on par.
A good while back, Chrom(ium) was just flat-out faster
Performance was huge.
I was willing to put up with a little jank from my browser because I wanted a diverse browser ecosystem, but Chrome felt much, much now performant. After I switched to Chrome, browsing felt noticably better.
A good while back, Chrome was superior. Faster yes, but also more polished and intuitive as browsers go.
Also, Google was “Do no Evil”, and Firefox was good, but not great.
Today, Firefox is still good, and Google is evil.
Times definitely have changed.
Also, Google was “Do no Evil”
At the time Google seemed awesome. Gmail was a game changer - a usable webapp that was better than maybe clients.
Firefox was good, but not great.
Firefox was the best of a bad bunch. It was so easy for devs to move to Chrome because the experience on every other browser was bad.
#2 for me. The PWAs for Firefox extension broke one too many times so I gave up.
Good news - Firefox is actively developing built-in PWA functionality right now. There’s a discussion thread I’ll link you to when I find it.
EDIT - here you go, this also has links to further discussions: https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/how-can-firefox-create-the-best-support-for-web-apps-on-the/m-p/60561#U60561
There’s already a VERY early version in FF Nightly, but tbh it doesn’t yet really do anything you’d expect of a PWA.
Info on that: https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/how-can-firefox-create-the-best-support-for-web-apps-on-the/m-p/60561#U60561
The recent main one seemed to be no longer promising to not sell user data, but it’s been a culmination of little things.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/the-firefox-i-loved-is-gone-how-to-protect-your-privacy-on-it-now/
Personally I’ve been kind of miffed since they decided to use the experiments feature to be paid to shill for the Mr. Robot tv show, including in their enterprise release, making people think they got hacked. But that was years ago and forgotten.
That was the final straw for me, I switched over to waterfox for nominally more privacy.
What follows is a list of missteps Mozilla made since its inception. LibreWolf ftw. I hope Google has to divest of Chrome and forced to stop signing search deals to make them the default search engine on a browser. Can’t happen soon enough.
Changing to opt-out telemetry from opt-in is the one I remember people fussing over
I use IronFox because firefox decided to support bad practices. Kinda like google removing “don’t be evil”.
