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?
Changing to opt-out telemetry from opt-in is the one I remember people fussing over
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.
New Chromium framework for browser extensions that severely limits their functionality. It neuters adlockers.
A: Not all of us did.
2: It sucked for a while, performance went down the toilet till they rewrote the engine in quantum.
Honestly threading was horrible for a decade there, while chrome had multi-processes running solid, even extensions didn’t kill it, even if it burned 500gb ram to browse bash.org.
Experiments were bad too, but you could shut those off.
Yeah, it’s amazing how few people remember just how terrible its performance tanked. The memory leaks were truly unbearable.
Who is this “we”? I still use it, never stopped.
Can’t come back to Firefox if you never leave in the first place
I use IronFox because firefox decided to support bad practices. Kinda like google removing “don’t be evil”.
Um Sir, this is a Lemmy
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
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.
Because Librewolf exists and Mozilla became an adware vendor.
I never switched, I installed Chrome, started it, saw the UI, hated it, uninstalled it.
Still using it here
Back in the early days Mozilla redesigned Firefox interface. It was so incomprehensively moronic that I moved to Chrome.
Firefox was late to use multiple threads for the UI so it was horribly slow and hanging every time a page was loading. I think It took them around 2 years to get this done while Chrome was running great.
Even I being a hardcore Firefox user, I went to Chrome for 1 year or so as it was intolerable.
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.
but why? why did you do that?
Can’t write your own comments?
I asked a fox that was actually on fire. It said “AIYEEEEEEE!” I trust it’s answer more than chatgpt.
How much of that is true? What did they sell? Is the conclusion even valid, given the (popular) alternatives?
I did a little checking and it all agrees with the reporting.
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
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. :)
