Asking after the privacy debacle and manifest. I’m not keeping up closely, but iirc Firefox is the browser recommended because of Ublock. After the privacy data issue I’ve noticed broken trust from Firefox users, recommendations in favor of switching browsers, and predictions saying Firefox is going downhill fast and that their forks won’t be maintained for much longer.
So I’m here asking the seasoned sailors’ thoughts, aye. Is this just a storm passing by or are you really considering jumping ship?
The whole firefox controversy was overblown. Hardened firefox is still the way to go.
It seems the alternatives are worse but I’m definitely trying out one of the Firefox forks
Switched to Zen and Mullvad
Yea sticking with firefox , but with arkenfox hardening… bugfixes are more important than fear of some wordings , at least for now. Vanadium in GOS on the phone.
There is no benefit to using Firefox unless you really like uBlock Origin and will not consider another kind of adblocker.
Mozilla is just controlled opposition lead by the same greedy executives as Google anyway, using it won’t make a difference. It’s at best 3% market share won’t stop Google from pushing their crap to everyone else either.
Problems of the modern web in general cannot be solved by just another browser engine. What it really needs is simplification. A way to make it do what it does now but faster and in a way that is easier to implement, but I don’t see anyone doing that in the near future.
i wasn’t as plussed as everyone else over it, though i am concerned. i still donate to mozilla as, ultimately, i believe they’re still good for those who champion an ethical, open, and not for profit internet.
i have switched to librefox, though, just because i like their developers and the fact that they’ve embraced mastodon and the fediverse. i also have firefox and nightly (though i use fennec on android because it comes through f droid)
Is Fennec trustable? They had that one vulnerability incident I can’t name and that’s when I first heard about them.
it’s basically just the latest firefox without the proprietary stuff, google services, and telemetry. i’ve never had an issue :)
I’m skeptical about Ladybird, that’s why I have such high hopes for Servo
I doubt that would be the case for Ladybird if the devs keep being how they are.
Can you link to more info on this
It stems back to a PR from the SerenityOS project where someone changed a “he” to a “they” in the documentation and the PR was declined for “personal politics”
Here’s an article about it: https://hyperborea.org/reviews/software/ladybird-inclusivity/
It does leave out this response by Kling on Twitter:
as well as disabling anti-freedom features like DRM
Do they just try to remove DRM from media as it comes down, or can you not watch any DRM media at all on it?
They disable it by default, because it requires the execution of proprietary code, but you can reenable it.
and predictions saying Firefox is going downhill fast and that their forks won’t be maintained for much longer.
Possibly true, but abandoning ship is only bringing us closer to that timeline. People seem to be completely ignorant/delusional about how much work these forks will require to maintain if Mozilla’s full time employees stop working on Firefox. If you have a practical reason to use another fork (like maybe a feature Firefox doesn’t have) then I totally understand using that instead, but if you are simply making some kind of ethical protest change like all the new LibreWolf users who are so loudly virtue signalling at the moment then you need to think seriously about whether this course of action will ultimately end up hurting your ideals. Mozilla definitely has a big communication problem and I understand the desire to distance oneself from an organisation that repeatedly disrespects its supporters and never learns from its mistakes, as it is very fatiguing to endure their constant failures and the massive fall-outs from them, but ultimately I feel like switching away from Firefox is still an emotional decision rather than a rational one.
What other problems has Firefox had? Everything I search sends me to this recent controversy
If Linux can be developed, then a public fork run the same way for browser can too. It’s possible just no interest yet.
A huge chunk of Linux development is subsidized by the hundreds of corporations which depend on it and pay developers to maintain things. There is no corporate interest in developing and/or maintaining an alternative browser engine when chromium already exists and dominates the market.
Yea I thought of that and have no real answer. But should that be solved, without advertising income, it would change everything
It would be amazing of course, and my entire attitude towards Firefox would change overnight if we had that kind of guaranteed security. At the moment I just look at it as the best least-worst option for the short to medium term future. I recently learned about Ladybird but that is still a fair way off, so for now my priority is to continue supporting Firefox and trying to avoid a future where Google has theoretical control over everything.
It’s mostly overblown. You can watch here or read here. The internet is overreacting again, but Mozilla has done fuck all to grasp why just yoinking understandable language and expecting people to understand legalese and draw lines to their Privacy Policy is making people upset or confused.
Imo, people jumping ship is justified, because a company that makes $37M just on investments should do better about being vocal and prescient champions of privacy. Even if their actual privacy policy is the same as it was a year ago, their failure to communicate with their supporters in a way they can understand should have consequences.
It may be overblown but I am seriously tired of the way Mozilla is being run. The CEO has a $7 million salary. Big red flags always appear each time they increase the salary also. May be a bit hyperbolic but that’s why I’m just using another fork after 20 years
They’re red flag, but even if their stayed purpose is correct at the moment, it sets the stage. All it takes now is a want to sell the data and there’s nothing to slow them down or tell us. Nothing to make them keep the setting to not share telemetry. A little baked in ai, some hooks to monitor …
Jumping ship to a fork is our only recourse. It’s that or ride it out and see if the gun is loaded.
Yup. I’ve been using Firefox for 16 years and I just switched to LibreWolf the other day.
I’ve been using Netscape/Firefox for almost 20+ years. Donated a good chunk of money.
I went to Waterfox
Yeah, and while I don’t have any technical qualms about the direction of Mozilla with regard to Firefox, I’m personally switching for peace of mind and because of the aforementioned inability to communicate well. I don’t like working with or supporting people that can’t just say what they mean. I mean, how hard would it have been to have a human-readable version for stupid people like me and have a legalese version for the lawyers?
Regardless, as people make decisions, they deserve to be informed. It would be stupid to decide to leave Firefox if all you knew was the uninformed outrage of the internet.
That’s fair. Personally I should have called it quits when they started including pocket in the browser, but better late than never.
That’s my take too - it’s probably not a big deal but damn Mozilla, do better in the rollout of a change like that.
I’m not interested in anything based off Chromium, and I don’t really like the idea of going with a Firefox fork much either. You’re not only trusting them to actually care about your privacy and security, and you’re not even just trusting them to actually catch and fix all of Mozilla’s shenanigans as well. You are also trusting them to constantly stay on top of all the latest security patches. There aren’t really any Firefox forks I trust with all 3 of those things at once. Even if there was, there are certainly no forks of Firefox that have anything even remotely close to the capacity necessary to maintain a web engine on their own, so you’re still trusting Mozilla to keep Firefox updated and secure for your fork of choice to even have a chance.
Until a new browser with a new engine comes along that actually lets me use the full uBlock Origin there’s not really any other option besides Firefox that makes sense. At least to me.
I am sticking with Firefox but looking at hardening with https://github.com/yokoffing/BetterFox
For privacy I recommend arkenfox
+1 I tried to apply betterfox even on mobile, I feel sort of improvement or could be placebo I’m not sure hehe…
I tested this some time ago and it benchmarked slightly better than default Firefox but also broke multiple sites
I mean yeah. I’m not a fan of the changes but there’s no way in hell anything Chromium based will fare any better… do they even have uBlock still???
Probably turn off the telemetry, try a fork like LibreWolf or maybe the Arkenfox user.js if you’d rather stay close to upstream.
I mean Chromium is an open source project, developers don’t have to do whatever Google demands.
I know Brave still supports it alongside their own ad-blocker, but apparently the CEO is a dick so people don’t want to use it for that reason.
I prefer betterfox because it can give you up to 30% more performance
I still recommend it with a little asterisk:
Disable a bunch of shit in it or download a privacy focused fork of it (like Librewolf)
That asterisk is a problem though, having to go through and make it secure is an issue. What if you miss a setting? What if you misunderstand a setting? None of it is particularly upfront and easy. It doesn’t ask you when you first install it to set this stuff up, it encourages you to just get stuck in and start using it straight away.
It’s not too complicated for a nerd whose hobby is computers or someone who has studied computers, but for the layperson it’s too much.
That’s why Librewolf is so good. It’s secure by default, with all the settings toggled to privacy and you can ease that off if you wish, for convenience or whatever.
Firefox essentially can’t seem to decide if they want to be FOSS or capitalist, that’s an issue.
You’re talking about security, but really, none of the privacy questions are about technical security of the product.
“What if you miss a setting?” Then they’ll give you article recommendations or send your search query to the search engine you’re targeting in the first place. They’re really a long way from what you can call a security issue, or sharing personal data with random third parties or data brokers.
if they want to be FOSS or capitalist
I really don’t see any basis for this take. It’s not about picking one of two extremes, and the most extreme niches in those.
They create FOSS, and look for privacy respecting partnerships and investment so they can keep it going.
They added ToS because they’re integrating services, like their synced/backed up browser data and other respectful integration.
That’s all a long way from malice, or significant problematic behavior. And you still have more choice than on the other biggest alternatives.
I don’t think it is the best we could have, I would like it a bit different too, but the way you make it out to be is way overblown if not wrong.
The other fun part is when it updates and changes your privacy settings.
It’s not too complicated for a nerd whose hobby is computers or someone who has studied computers, but for the layperson it’s too much.
I’m not sure I buy this argument when there are videos visually walking you through every single step involved in hardening Firefox. Is that still too complex for your elderly parents or grandparents? Maybe. Is it too complex for Millenials and younger generations? Definitely not. The core problem here is just laziness. People are not willing to give up 10 minutes of their day to setup their browser for years of future use because “I don’t have time for that”.
The problem is not laziness, that’s what a nerd whose hobby is computers would do. The average person is not searching for videos to learn how to toggle the settings of their web browser, ffs. Firefox should be secure by default.
In that case your entire argument for LibreWolf is a complete waste of time, because this theoretical user you’re referring to also wouldn’t bother to download an unknown niche privacy browser. LibreWolf is essentially just hardened Firefox for people who are too lazy to do it themselves. The crossover between completely tech illiterate but also privacy-focused is an insanely small market.
Ah, I see, you’re a contrarian who just wants an argument. That’s not really my bag so this will be my last message.
Yes, the likelihood of the average person downloading Librewolf is slim. Using or not using Librewolf doesn’t make someone lazy. Not reading and toggling every setting in Firefox doesn’t make someone lazy either.
You’ve just explained that to make Firefox secure you need to watch some video of someone that you hope knows what they’re talking about. What if they miss something? What if they’re talking shit? I know, shocking, people lying on the internet, but it happens.
Firefox is a big name browser used by many people of varying backgrounds and technical ability. It should be secure by default. It is not. Librewolf I recommended to anyone reading this thread, which is probably someone tech savvy enough to try a different browser. But not all people are that tech savvy.
The root issue is Firefox not being secure by default. If there was no profit motive for Mozilla it likely would be.
You’ve just explained that to make Firefox secure you need to watch some video of someone that you hope knows what they’re talking about.
No actually, I didn’t. I suggested that anyone who is not confident/literate enough to work this out for themselves through self-research online can access extremely beginner-friendly guides on YouTube that step-by-step walk them through the setup. Everyone knows how to use YouTube, please don’t insult my intelligence by implying it’s some kind of semi-mythical resource known only to the the biggest “nerds”.
And based on the behavior of other shitty applications and devices what if an update silently changes one of those settings back to a problematic state? If they aren’t there to begin with I don’t have to worry as much
To be fair Mozilla doesn’t have precedent for this behavior but they also didn’t have precedent for this whole nonsense that started this drama a month ago. Things change
The browser project dedicated to open web standards steered by a compromised non-profit or the browser project dedicated to undermining the traditional web browsing experience steered by the largest advertising company on Earth … Let me think …
It’s incredible unfunny to read people here on Lemmy (or in the Fediverse in general) talk about dropping Firefox for Chrome or a Chromium browser. it’s like complaining that your country is going wrong by voting Trump.
I switched to https://librewolf.net/ on Desktop and https://gitlab.com/ironfox-oss/IronFox on Android.
Same, I’m done with Firefox / Mozilla…
Librewolf, Waterfox, Floorp seem like viable options.Using this as an opportunity to promote the LibreWolf community on Lemmy: !librewolf@lemmy.ml as well as their new Mastodon account: @librewolf@chaos.social
I’m not affiliated with them btw
I’ve been trying ironfox but it crashes when i tap “customize homepage”
have you experienced this?
Me too! I’m using graphene, are you?
Is Vanadium not as ideal compared to Ironfox? I’m new to GOS
If you use android, GOS or not, you are using chromium webview anyhow. So using a Firefox browser is just adding on. There is no way around that issue until a proper non chromium WebView is available (gecko is not). But before that happens we will more likely have decent linuxphones instead of android. Vanadium is way more secure than any other browser , only competition would be bromite, also chromium based. Firefox on mobile is light-years behind vanadium security wise, no excuse for not sandboxing. https://grapheneos.org/usage#web-browsing
According to the devs vanadium is preferred for security, something about Firefox not having comparable sand boxing (?). Not sure, they wrote in length about the reasoning but at a certain point my eyes started glazing over.
I’ve been using Firefox for a long time on desktop and mobile, so when I switched to graphene I just kept with it.
I may try to switch over to vanadium though seeing as I’m already in “switching” mode.
I tried Vanadium when the install was fresh. The adblocking is just not that good… For example, on one of the sites it blocked the ads, but left out the giant HTML elements they used to be in.
yeah, on graphene.
hmm can’t find mention of a bug for this combination. barely even the two mentioned in the same webpage.
I’m also on GrapheneOS running IronFox and customizing the homepage works fine for me.
maybe it’s caused by graphene+ironfox+some other setting or other app
Iron fox was updated over night for me and now no more crashing.
I just tried now for the first time and no it doesn’t crash when I press “customize homepage”.
