If only Ladybird development had taken off sooner. The best balance of {respectful defaults, security, privacy, extensibility} out of the top 5 browsers seems to be Brave[1] for now, which isn't the most ideal situation.
the recent firefox privacy policy stuff seems way overblown to me, like you can read the firefox source code and know they aren't shipping your inputs off to google or whatever.
On the other hand, brave has provably run afoul of stealing cryptocurrency donations, and trying to trick users into adding referral codes unintentionally.
Firefox is a less bad option, even with the recent stupid policy changes they've made.
Or there are a bunch of other options that care about privacy (see https://privacytests.org/). Brave, Librewolf, Arc, Zen, Orion (Kagi's thing). I tried Orion for a few days recently, but it started crashing randomly and felt unstable and slowed down after real-world use (3-6 windows, many many tabs, dev tools, etc).
I really wish there was more competition here from the smaller, privacy focused players...but the reality is building a browser is insanely difficult for the modern web.
Firefox didn't make stupid policy changes. Firefox made policy changes they were legally required to in order to comply with a stupidly-worded California law.
And thank WHATWG for making it impossible for indie players to remain compliant with modern standards by turning W3C's eminently reasonable and wholly sufficient specifications into a hulking monstrosity that's simultaneously large enough to be used as a stress test for your mobile browser's rendering engine (seriously. go try to load up 'view-source:https://html.spec.whatwg.org/'. At the time of writing, the HTML for that single-page version is over 98,254 lines composing over 15MB of plain HTML) while simultaneously quite literally being defined as a continuously moving target.
> Firefox didn't make stupid policy changes. Firefox made policy changes they were legally required to in order to comply with a stupidly-worded California law.
They had other options, including not collecting and selling user data. The California law is working as intended.
They're not selling user data in any sense that any ordinary, reasonable person would understand, only in California's excessively broad definition that may technically cover a litany of entirely noncommercial uses, like using opt-in customer metadata to improve their own free product, without distributing it to any third party at all.
Businesses like to avoid risk where possible, and Mozilla's lawyers pushed this wording to ensure compliance with the riskiest possible interpretation of California's ambiguous and poorly-worded law.
The Mozilla Corporation sharing user metadata with the Mozilla Foundation to assist with internal decision making may technically meet California's definition of "sale of data" despite constituting absolutely nothing even vaguely resembling what laypeople would consider a "sale of data".
Note that the CCPA's "third party" clause is part of an "OR" set, alongside "another business". Mozilla Foundation and Mozilla Corporation are respectively "another business" relative to each one's self, despite not being unrelated third parties.
The problem is not that Mozilla is actually selling user data (they're not in the sense that any layperson would understand "selling data" to mean), the problem is the way the California law is worded.
As usual, tech-illiterate politicians aren't even competent enough to write laws with the nuance and understanding required to not botch the entirely good and justified intention without pointing a loaded legal gun at the heads of the genuinely innocent. Think along the lines of the CFAA's legal risks to good-faith security researchers¹, or how the DMCA would technically criminalize discussion of how to decode Pig Latin if that was used as a copyrighted media protection technique.
It appears you are trying to explain why CCPA's does not meet the laypersons definition of "selling data". After reading your explanation I'm none the wiser. Given no one has replied, I suspect that's true for most people. They've just scratched their head and moved on.
I was about to do that too, when it dawned you probably have no idea people don't understand what you are saying. Maybe an example would help. Its needs top be something a layman would not consider to be "selling data" but the CCPA defines that way.
Claiming that users just don't understand what selling their data means is incredibly patronizing. Everyone colloquially understands that "selling user data" isn't limited to just selling ZIP archives of our browsing history, but also includes e.g. targeted advertising by the likes of Google, which is precisely why we sought alternatives that explicitly promised not to sell our data.
I'm not making the claim that users don't understand what "selling their data" means, I'm making the claim that Mozilla is not doing anything that any reasonable person other than a lawyer interpreting the CCPA in the most unreasonable way possible would consider what Mozilla is doing to be "selling of data". It's an internal transfer between the Mozilla Foundation and the Mozilla Corporation that doesn't even involve money. No payments. No third parties whatsoever. In the CCPA's poor and ambiguous wording, this does technically constitute "sale of data", as the CCPA defines it. Please read my other newer posts in this thread.
> The reason we’ve stepped away from making blanket claims that “We never sell your data” is because, in some places, the LEGAL definition of “sale of data” is broad and evolving. As an example, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) defines “sale” as the “selling, renting, releasing, disclosing, disseminating, making available, transferring, or otherwise communicating orally, in writing, or by electronic or other means, a consumer’s personal information by [a] business to another business or a third party” in exchange for “monetary” or “other valuable consideration.”
How is the CCPA stupidly-worded when that's what a layman would think "selling data" means?
I do wholeheartedly agree with your sentiments about the WHATWG though, as someone who contributed to Pale Moon's development. That web browser cartel should be investigated by the US government for anti-competitive practices as they did with Google and Microsoft.
>How is the CCPA stupidly-worded when that's what a layman would think "selling data" means?
Because it is the twisty logic that lawyers can apply which is relevant to mitigate legal risk, not what a layman would think.
Where I work, our lawyers are convinced that running our code in the cloud to run our service counts as "distribution" under the terms of open source licenses. Because a cloud employee might accidentally look at it or something? Who knows. A lawyer sees legal risk in things you or I don't; they should know I guess!
The Mozilla Corporation sharing user metadata with the Mozilla Foundation to assist with internal decision making may technically meet California's definition of "sale of data" despite constituting absolutely nothing even vaguely resembling what laypeople would consider a "sale of data".
Note that the CCPA's "third party" clause is part of an "OR" set, alongside "another business". Mozilla Foundation and Mozilla Corporation are respectively "another business" relative to each one's self, despite not being unrelated third parties.
The problem is not that Mozilla is actually selling user data (they're not in the sense that any layperson would understand "selling data" to mean), the problem is the way the California law is worded.
As usual, tech-illiterate politicians aren't even competent enough to write laws with the nuance and understanding required to not botch the entirely good and justified intention without pointing a loaded legal gun at the heads of the genuinely innocent. Think along the lines of the CFAA's legal risks to good-faith security researchers¹, or how the DMCA would technically criminalize discussion of how to decode Pig Latin if that was used as a copyrighted media protection technique.
So I've read the CCPA again, and I've realized that Mozilla may have made an error in quoting the relevant part of the law in their blog. This part they quoted:
> As an example, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) defines “sale” as the “selling, renting, releasing, disclosing, disseminating, making available, transferring, or otherwise communicating orally, in writing, or by electronic or other means, a consumer’s personal information by [a] business to another business or a third party” in exchange for “monetary” or “other valuable consideration.”
Anyway even then I'm not sure if the Foundation would've been considered "another business", since "business" is defined first as any "legal entity that is organized or operated for the profit or financial benefit of its shareholders or other owners", which MoFo clearly doesn't do. There's the second definition might've covered the Foundation (since they control the Corporation which is covered by the first definition), but AFAIK the Corp doesn't share any consumer personal info back into the Foundation (if it does that would be concerning)
I was sitting here thinking everyone else was wrong under the assunption that almost nobody here actually tried to read and interpret that wording in the least generous way possible (i.e. how lawyers intetpret everything), but I guess the joke's on Mozilla and I for reading the wrong version.
Your attention to detail here is exceptional and commendable. I used to feel that Mozilla's decision here was defensible and misunderstood, but it's now looking more like Mozilla and I are guilty of misunderstanding, after reviewing your claims here.
Thank you for having the patience to explain in such detail! Posts like yours here are part of the magic that elevates HN discussions over so many other forums on the web these days :)
The blog was written by product management, and most likely legal just generally told them that they got their justification from the CCPA's definition of sale, and the PR/marketing just searched for it and gave it to the blog post's author. Since Wikipedia is usually the first result in a search engine (and even has its own infobox), that's probably what they went with.
I've been using Firefox for the last 4+ years and it's been mostly fine. I have Chrome for the very occasional site that doesn't behave right, but they're few and far between (like maybe once a year).
Remember, the business model[1] of Brave Software, Inc. is various cryptocurrency schemes including the BAT currency ad scheme integrated into the Brave browser. Also, the CEO and co-founder of Brave Software, Inc. is Brendan Eich, a financial supporter[2] of the CA Proposition 8 same-sex marriage ban.
Brendan Eich is also the inventor of JavaScript and the former CTO of Mozilla.
While I don't support Prop 8 personally, I don't think we should judge technical products on political opinions of their author. You may think it's funny to advocate for bans and boycotts, until the other side does it too and we get a world split in 2 (or more).
There is nothing funny here at all. I'm so cynical about all of it that, as a many years long Brave user, I'm actively discouraging people from using it, because if Brave ever has enough users to be a problem for adtech, it will be destroyed. So if the crypto stink or ancient crimes against the progressive project can help forestall this for a few years, then at least they're good for something.
As for Eich and JavaScript; technically, I doubt more that 0.1% of working coders are fit to lace his boots. Myself included.
> While I don't support Prop 8 personally, I don't think we should judge technical products on political opinions of their author. You may think it's funny to advocate for bans and boycotts, until the other side does it too and we get a world split in 2 (or more).
Eh. It's one to not knowingly support a bad person, e.g. if they kept their opinions to themselves. But once an individual has made their positions crystal clear, it's a lot harder to morally support their innovations. Someone can do great work in tech, but if they are a known total piece of shit, I may/probably will avoid their products. I find a lot of tech-types try hard to decouple the humanity aspect from the innovation aspect - I presume this is a veiled attempt to get an "be an asshole" pass. Reality is people won't want to be around us if we suck as a humans, no matter how much code any of us put down.
Brendan Eich was against Gay Marriage at the same time that Barrack Obama himself was against Gay Marriage. A detail often forgotten in the rehashing of old grievances.
IMO, calling Brendan evil or bad is the kind of moral shortcut that Progressives love taking. A microcosm of the election, really: all the capable moderates were effectively canceled or marginalized by self-righteous radicals, who deemed that the only "good" candidate was someone who couldn't even win a primary.
The controversy was misinformation, and the parent post wasn't even what the controversy was. People thought FF had been doing it before. The reality is, as I understand, they just updated their terms to cover all possible legal issues - including that some things you command Firefox to do involves using your data.
> including that some things you command Firefox to do involves using your data.
Mozilla has never used the data you upload/send via Firefox to non-Mozilla websites (as it should be), and they shouldn't have that permission just as Epson the company shouldn't have the right to use for any purpose a paper marked as classified just because some fed employee sent a digital copy of it to an Epson printer.
And they don’t have that permission. Why is everyone skipping over the part of the sentence that specifies that this is only “for the purpose of doing as you request”. As you request! This is night and day to any other TOS I’ve ever read.
Seriously. Imagine the despair at Mozilla as no matter what they do, people they help and who support FOSS and privacy, tear them apart - seemingly out of habit, or like it's the cool thing to do.
"for the purpose of doing as you request" is still permission for using my own content, no matter how limited the scope they want to make it look like. It's not Mozilla Corp itself that is processing my inputs behind the scenes when I upload my photos to Imgur, is it? It's my own locally installed copy of Firefox.
See my reply to the other comment. They still have permission, and it doesn't matter how limited they try to scope it. It should be none because they have no business having a license over my own content I upload to non-Mozilla websites: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43263232
Except for the specific cases where their Privacy Notice does give them permission to collect and sell user information, such as collecting information about what topics users are making search queries about.
Excerpts from the Privacy Notice that I have read, and attempted to get you to read:
> Mozilla processes certain technical and interaction data, such as how many searches you perform, how many sponsored suggestions you see and whether you interact with them. Mozilla's partners receive de-identified information about interactions with the suggestions they've served.
> Depending on your location, Mozilla derives the high level category (e.g., travel, shopping) of your search from keywords in that query, in order to understand the types and number of searches being made.
> Mozilla may also receive location-related keywords from your search (such as when you search for “Boston”) and share this with our partners to provide recommended and sponsored content.
Your claim "That data doesn't leave the user's computer" is simply not true. Mozilla isn't selling empty files to their advertising partners. The only true and valid defense you've put up for Mozilla in the past week is that they're trying to anonymize the data before they sell it, but that's not nearly as strong an argument as you seem to think it is.
> Nothing personal or valuable leaves your computer. Maybe the location queries, but I expect they are anonymized.
You said "That data doesn't leave the user's computer". It does. You may not consider it personal or valuable and may trust Mozilla's anonymization to be sufficient, but well-written privacy laws rightly do not grant Mozilla (or anyone less trustworthy than Mozilla) that kind of wiggle room.
This is high and mighty, but didn’t they fire security team a year or so ago (couldn’t afford pay for higher ups)? I like how everyone just memory-holed that part and moved on… why would you recommend that to anyone?
I have very high hopes for Ladybird as it's being developed, but it's not really fair to call it Tier 1 when it's pre-alpha stage and not really suitable for general use yet...
Brave is definitely not a 'tier 1' browser in any world. Their whole existence had been mired in controversy after controversy[1], lots of these incidents involving privacy and general shady behavior.
Arc is kind of promising, but I never really tried it after discovering that it's the only browser I've ever seen that requires (!) you to have an account with them. The obvious next question is 'what for?'
It's much more efficient for the LLM to directly inject ads into your brain rather than the old way, where you might accidentally see the google results below the ads.
Google made a search engine. They became rich from ads.
Facebook made a social network. They became rich from ads.
OpenAI made a chatbot. They're trying to figure out how to become rich.
The adblock of the future will be buying $12k worth of GPUs in order to run an "ad-free" LLM locally.
Chrome with Ublock origin works through June 2025, via "browsers using the ExtensionManifestV2Availability policy will be exempt from any browser changes until June 2025". Discussion on how to enable: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41812638
One massive upside is there's now a less comprehensive mode that doesn't allow the extension to view and edit the complete DOM of every page, which has actually made me comfortable enough to use it for regular browsing as opposed to just turning UBO on for certain sites.
Another upside is that sites can now just use these banners that Lite cannot block.
We can finally block ads in our webpages and have ads! Win-win. This couldn’t be ever achieved without the truly titanic coordination efforts from google.
Will they though? I don't think they will for 2 reasons:
1. Ad blocking on Safari has worked like this for years and none of the major ad networks have chosen to act on that fact.
2. It has always been possible for ads to work around UBO in various ways but no major ad network has even tried (e.g. server-side embedding of randomly obfuscated JS).
Ad blocking on safari is obscure, I regularly see tech threads where people aren’t even aware it exists. Mobile ads blocking for default browsers was always a puzzle. This means too little market share to address.
It has always been possible for ads to work around UBO in various ways but no major ad network has even tried
Cause arms race with a dynamic blocker is expensive and futile. You are trying to s/UBO/UBO Lite/ in this sentence and convince things will work the same way, they won’t.
In general, uBOL will be less effective at dealing with websites using anti-content blocker or minimizing website breakage because many filters can't be converted into DNR rules (see log of conversion for technical details).
Not really. Not sure why you’re expecting me to dig through the sites and ads networks that don’t use differentiating techniques too often due to basically non-existing ubol userbase to this date. We’ll see how it goes in just a few months, I guess. I’ll be baffled if this fuzz was really about user security and not pushing ads down the throats. I’m also expecting to see more ads on mobile safari for it becoming compatible with the new widespread ad vulnerability.
You were referring to ad banners that Lite supposedly cannot block. I'm just asking for an example.
If you encounter them sufficiently frequently that they are a problem, you should encounter one over the next 14 days while this discussion is open and be able to share the link. If you can't, then either there is no evidence of the problem you assert exists, or the problem occurs so infrequently as to be of negligible concern.
UBO has 39M users on Chrome while UBOL has 2M, that doesn't seem non-existent. AdBlock and AdBlock Plus also both have slightly more than UBO and have both been using Manifest V3 for a while.
Is there any kind of alternative to uMatrix in the ManifestV3 world? I'm assuming no. It's just a shame that my browsing experience went to complete trash overnight. I'll obviously be moving away from Chrome where I can, but not sure what to do with my Chromebook.
You can replace the ChromeOS bootloader with upstream Coreboot and use SeaBIOS or edk2 payloads to turn it into a generic x86 laptop and install Linux.
uMatrix[0] (discontinued/archived in 2021)[1] and uBlock Origin (UBO)[2] are both by Raymond Hill/@gorhill.. he said he can only afford the time to continue with one and chose the latter. I'm guessing GP meant UBO. (UBOlite is also by @gorhill, but it's constrained by the browser)
No I meant uMatrix. It might not have been updated since 2021 but it didn't need any active development, it was perfect in my eyes. It was still available as an extension.
I feel like it should be mentioned that on the page that Chrome presents showing that the extension was removed they actively suggest installing UBO Lite. I'll leave it up to the reader to decide what that says about Google, but it's a pretty important detail that the original poster chose not to include.
Headline is a little misleading. "Forcefully disabled" is more accurate. This happened to me for uBlock and dozens of other extensions.
The top comment on that Reddit thread has the answer:
"You can still enable it. Not supported is a lie. It still works. On the extensions page you have to select "Keep" and then reconfirm. Then scroll down to the extension and click the slider. Then reconfirm AGAIN and then it will work"
Forcefully disabled, for now, with plans to permanently break it in the near future. The last officially-sanctioned workaround is planned to be killed in June.
This is on-par with asking how to keep using your 32-bit and PowerPC apps on MacOS. Not even OSX, but modern MacOS. The OEM is actively pulling support and working against you. There is no stable solution; at best you can have "This week we're doing X", and the correct solution is to move away from the unsupported software that depends on depreciated APIs that are being actively ripped out.
Having "no alternative" is one of the many reasons the open ecosystem we call the web, matters. Why having a single choice, especially one run by an ad agency, is a shite spot to be in. Unless you are willing to do your web browsing on an unpatched version of Chrome, or a fork run by a smaller team that "can totally keep up with Google's pace of development, trust us, those security patches made it in", you're kind of hooped.
Critical industrial software runs on windows 95, such is life. I've tried migrating to firefox several times last couple years, but essential functionality still lacking (though improving). I'll choose workflow over security, as I imagine many others will.
The days of Google engaging with the tech community, or even pretending to try and explain their decisions when it comes to Chrome, SEO, or search quality are long, long gone.
The claim is for security. I’ll leave it to the reader to decide if the fact it primarily affects ad blockers was a happy little accident or intentional on Google’s part.
They sell ads, uBlock is an Ad Blocker. Does it need anymore explanation?
They will give you all manner of justification for their actions but when it comes down to it, uBlock interferes with their ability to monetize you and they want it gone.
This abusive relationship people have with Chrome is reminiscent of MAGA folks.
Security. Extensions can't pull it remote scripts and execute them on a web page. Everything has to be in the extension so you know exactly what it is doing. All the browsers will switch to manifest v3, they all testing it now including Firefox.
Adding support for Manifest v3 is fine and not an issue for ad blockers. The issue for ad blockers is removing support for Manifest v2, which AFAIK Firefox has no plans to do.
Their crippling of ad blockers goes well beyond merely preventing ad blockers from downloading dynamic rulesets. The changes cannot all be justified by security.
Interesting conspiracy theory, but it would imply they were directly bribed by Google because their normal salary depends on the popularity of Firefox so frankly, it makes little sense.
Its not that scary because their patch sets form part of several other browser forks (ie cachybrowser but also several others) so they get a decent amount of scrutiny
I have no idea how random the librewolf maintainers are but the next iteration raising the bar for high-impact open source projects should definitely have a checkbox for "has a key maintainer with a active public profile/streetcred in industry" on the checklist.
Is there a particular reason LibreWolf doesn't have automatic updates? It does seem a little inconvenient. I'm currently using Safari + AdGuard, which updates with the OS and from the App Store.
In Windows there's an optional updater service you can install at least. But I think the reason for this is that some people want to make 100% sure the browser doesn't make any connections on its own, even if it's simply for checking if there are new updates.
What remains unclear is why anyone who cares enough about their privacy to use LibreWolf would still be on Windows in the first place. Microsoft is easily ten thousand times worse than Mozilla.
Many games only work on Windows because their anti-cheat is kernel-level, and even if you ignore these games, you will still run into all sorts of issues with proton or rendering APIs. I would even go as far as asking how many games from the top 100 played games on Steam actually run on Linux natively, without compatibility layers. So no, Linux is not quite viable.
Only AAA games with that anti-cheat crap don't work on Linux, most stuff does. Whether or not it needs compatibly layers is irrelevant, many Windows games also use compatibly layers to some extent, you just don't notice it.
There's no shortage of games you can install through Steam on Linux. You need windows for GTA6 or the latest CoD or whatever, but saying Linux isn't viable at all is silly.
Some people prioritize freedom and privacy over being able to play the latest mindless clone game of what came before with slightly better graphics, but for those that don't, Windows and needlessly invasive AAA games are indeed a good option.
That's not true at all. AMD cards and drivers exist and are often competitive with Nvidia cards. Not to mention, the difference in FPS is often not as noticeable as you probably think.
AMD might be "competitive" but it's objectively worse. Also some games don't even support AMD's equivalent of DLSS. Also AMD sucks at inference, not even close.
> AMD might be "competitive" but it's objectively worse.
Nonsense. Their drivers are better and there cards have beaten Nvidia cards depending on the generation.
> Also some games don't even support AMD's equivalent of DLSS. Also AMD sucks at inference, not even close.
I don't think you really know what you're talking about here, and I don't think you would notice the things you think you would in practice. In short, you're making very poor excuses.
It's OK to say you're scared to make the leap and/or don't care about privacy so much as you do being able to play the latest crappy CoD installment.
If you're installing untrustworthy, closed source, proprietary third party kernel modules into your untrutworthy, closed source, proprietary operating system, why even bother with LibreWolf? You have a unambiguous revealed preference of not caring about your privacy or your security at all, regardless of what your stated preference is.
You seem to care about privacy to the point you risking Firefox selling your data based on a misinterpretation of a badly worded TOS, but have no problem letting random closed source binaries hook into the lowest level of your closed source OS which itself is known to be a privacy nightmare and not at all trustworthy.
For what it's worth, the included uBO extension's blocklists do get updated automatically, even though LibreWolf doesn't. What LibreWolf does offer is a slick Docker-based build tool/suite that's nearly easy enough for the typical Windows user to figure out: https://codeberg.org/librewolf/bsys6
> You give Mozilla the rights necessary to operate Firefox. This includes processing your data as we describe in the Firefox Privacy Notice. It also includes a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license for the purpose of doing as you request with the content you input in Firefox. This does not give Mozilla any ownership in that content.
The issue is that Mozilla Corp has a license over what private videos people upload to their Nextcloud for example, which doesn't make sense because it's not Mozilla themselves processing your input but the locally installed copy of Firefox. Mozilla doesn't need my permission to use my own content I'm about to send online just to provide basic functionality present for decades.
The explicit disclaiming of ownership is definitely good (the previous version didn't have that), but it's not enough. Mozilla should just nuke that section completely like they did with the AUP part if they're doing this ToU in good faith.
Given the reality of Google's own TOS, privacy policies and history of privacy violations, I'm not seeing a reason to pass up switching to a browser where the most effective ad blocking will continue to work (even on YouTube).
In 2008, Matt Cuts posted Google does not want rights to things you do using Chrome, which suggests they are not trying to claim or vet what you use Chrome for.
Even if there are privacy violations, that seems much less scary than what Firefox has suddenly decided to do. They're seemingly not only watching, but claiming rights! And or will kick you out suddenly if they decide your activity on the web doesn't meet their standards.
> They're seemingly not only watching, but claiming rights!
Did you miss their clarification in the grandparent post?
> includes a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license for the purpose of doing as you request with the content you input in Firefox. This does not give Mozilla any ownership in that content.
> And or will kick you out suddenly if they decide your activity on the web doesn't meet their standards.
Google literally tried to have parents locked up for using an Android device to seek medical assistance for their child during lockdown.
Google was spying on the photos they took to send to their doctor, and Google's AI, based on a single false positive, decided they were guilty of kiddie porn.
Even after the police cleared them, Google refused to restore access to their account.
> Mark appealed his case to Google again, providing the police report, but to no avail.
Well, I'm addressing the "real issue" part of your comment. Whether people switch over it is their choice (I've already switched to another browser as my primary years ago, and it's not Gecko, Blink, or WebKit). But just because other bad, worse stuff exist doesn't mean Mozilla gets a pass on trying to sneak in a license over people's own content as well as going back on their promise of not selling users' data. Or the history of terrible decisions they made.
> going back on their promise of not selling users' data
Given that Google's CEO previously testified before Congress that the company wouldn't use information gleaned from your use of Google services to build out your advertising profile, I don't see "broken privacy promises" as a differentiation between Google and Mozilla.
Especially since Mozilla's post, linked above, says that their legal team now interprets selling ads as technicslly selling personal data in some jurisdictions.
They do have ads on new tabs, even if you can turn that off.
Again, I'm not seeing any reason not to switch to a browser where effective ad blocking will still work.
Not really. They responded with a blog post "clarifying" some things but the only thing they actually reversed course on was applying their Acceptable Use Policy to Firefox as a whole. They're still putting a weird copyright license clause in their terms of use which only makes sense for Mozilla-operated cloud services but is written to apply to anything you do with the browser, and their Privacy Notice still enumerates many ways in which they track user data and sell it—to which their only argument is that they shouldn't have to call it "selling data" if they try to anonymize it. They're not going to back down on collecting user data; they will continue with actions that prevent them from legally saying they don't sell user data.
Love all the work arounds - right click the button and inspect to undisable it, etc.
You can just install Firefox
But im scared of their bad privacy policy
But you’re logged into reddit, and you’re… using Chrome?
Why is FF the one app that you’re a privacy policy enthusiast when you couldn’t care less on every other app you’re using
Your mission is not to have invasive and possibly malicious ads then, like, Firefox does that. Its so weird to me why people make all these reasons to stay on Google Chrome when they allegedly hate it and its incredibly trivial to just use firefox
Others have workflows that may take weeks to migrate from chrom{e,ium-based} and something will be lost in transition anyway. I spent at least a few days, preemptively in 2024, to fully migrate to Firefox from Vivaldi. I haven’t had lower blood sugar levels in a decade. And when the dust over new privacy statement settles, maybe I’ll need to figure out ways to LibreWolf now.
It’s not as easy as “just install” if you are at advanced user/developer level.
If you are at an advanced user/developer level then it's pretty trivial to migrate and export whatever settings you need and import them into your new browser.
Ignore my other reply, for some reason I was sure you were commenting in a different thread and couldn't see context.
Your experience disagrees, that's fine, but could you give some examples? What exactly would take weeks to migrate? Certainly not extensions and settings or bookmarks, so what would? It's not a question of belief when we have empirical evidence to work with.
As I said below, I had to find a new way to manage my bookmarks due to the difference in how it works in Vivaldi. Also after some search I decided to write a custom search-with extension, which surprised me with learning web-ext signing. Another issue was with download location that works very strangely until you mess with about:config. Firefox also has scrolling tabbar, which I had to disable and restyle so I can actually see where tab buttons are. Spent time on finding a non-malbloat gestures ext. Still have to rewrite some ahk scripts for new bookmarklets placement. Failed to have custom shortcuts (ff has none). I remember having a few more issues but can’t tell now. Things like last tab standing, deciding which one of the history/recently closed lists to use, etc.
It took a few days to investigate, google, try and fail, take rest, try again. Sure, I can do this faster now due to experience, but you start with none.
That's fair, it took a bit of time for me to convert everything from Brave back to Firefox when I switched, but once you have everything you need in both formats, you never really have to do anything like it again, not until a third browser that's worth something comes along at least.
It's hard to believe you when I take ad blocking more seriously than most and would be more likely to notice a difference than most. You might not believe me about that, which is fine.
However, the claim in question seems like an objective claim for which empirical evidence would be very possible to provide, so until someone shows some clear examples I remain unconvinced.
Managing bookmarks, custom searches, tab deduplication/management, download path settings. I think I could name a few more but these are most important to me. Also just numerous pseudo-small things like “find a gestures extension that doesn’t suck or spy”. It’s not workflow, but is part of migration.
I believe "FoxyGestures" is the best solution for that piece on FF at least. (As a fellow gesture enjoyer it was one of the reasons I moved to Vivaldi from Chrome.)
Last time I checked, some of the Google Docs/Sheets functionality wasn't fully-baked in anything but Chrome/Chromium... Maybe this has improved though? I have a nice Chrome extension that automatically checks my various GMail/Workspace accounts and gives me an icon and popout thing so I can see previews without having to fire up multiple different tabs just for a quick glance.
This was part of why I moved to Vivaldi from Chrome about a year ago. But the fact that Vivaldi can only do so much (with the Chromium base) to stave off deprecation of the best ad-blocker has me considering a move back to Firefox now.
The rhetoric and weirdness about staying with Chrome are reminiscent to the rhetoric and weirdness justifying staying on Windows when Ubuntu (or...) and MacOS are right there.
There is no functional difference between chrome and Firefox. If you are at all dissatisfied with google it's trivial to switch. I don't think the analogy holds
- Cmd+Shift+P instead of Cmd+Shift+N for new incognito window is objectively wrong and can't be fixed
- Having separate Cmd+Shift+N and Cmd+Shift+T shortcuts for open last closed window/last closed tab instead of Cmd+Shift+T doing both is also objectively worse
- I can't rebind Previous/Next tab, at least on macOS
There's less extensions because Firefox failed on the last 1% of copying Chrome's extension API. Doing it correctly would've meant it's possible to install extensions on Firefox directly from the Chrome Web Store, like you can with the Orion browser.
Mouse scroll physics are too slow on macOS. One "tick" of my scroll wheel scrolls a bit more than half of how much Chrome and Safari scroll
There is no full screen mode that hides the URL bar
Every single time you're searching something, Firefox includes a list of ads for search engines I will never use for as long as I live (Bing and DDG) under a "This time search with..." guise instead of just showing me search results. There are tons of these minor design flaws which add up to making Firefox feel like a worse browser.
Chrome is a faster browser according to every bench mark I've seen and I can feel it.
Switching would log me out of all my websites and clear all localStorage data
There are plenty of crappy but important websites that don't work with Firefox and there's hardly ever a way of knowing that's the issue without opening Chrome and seeing that it works there. I'm not putting Firefox on my dad's PC just so he complains about not being able to access his bank, etc. Maybe Mozilla should focus on that issue instead of an AI website builder, ad server, etc.
The simple truth is that Chrome is convenient and people are lazy, and so they'd rather make excuses than switch to one of the dozens of privacy focused alternatives out there.
>Why is FF the one app that you’re a privacy policy enthusiast
because their favorite Youtube influencer told them so. That sadly is the reality of it, we're living in an age where people get their information off social media and clickbait, so some random legalese changes by Mozilla that don't mean anything get more attention than Google's pervasively bad privacy practices for the last 20 years.
Because Brave is a scam browser that nobody should be using. There are other chromium forks that don't scam you. Brave's history of scumbag actions isn't anything new.
This all makes sense when you think of the money at stake. Reducing a block usage by even 10% is worth billions of dollars a year in revenue for Google
1. https://eligrey.com/blog/choosing-a-browser/