this post was submitted on 07 Mar 2025
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

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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?

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[–] simpolomeo@lemmy.blahaj.zone 16 points 14 hours ago

The whole firefox controversy was overblown. Hardened firefox is still the way to go.

[–] Arfman@aussie.zone 6 points 18 hours ago

It seems the alternatives are worse but I'm definitely trying out one of the Firefox forks

[–] gunnm@monero.town 13 points 1 day ago

Switched to Zen and Mullvad

[–] LoveSausage@discuss.tchncs.de 19 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

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.

[–] cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone 30 points 1 day ago (1 children)

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)

[–] P4ulin_Kbana@lemmy.eco.br 1 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Is Fennec trustable? They had that one vulnerability incident I can't name and that's when I first heard about them.

[–] f4f4f4f4f4f4f4f4@sopuli.xyz 1 points 2 hours ago

The "vulnerability" was only that F-Droid wasn't keeping up with their builds, leaving everyone who installed it from F-Droid out-of-date, during a period of known Firefox bugs being exploited.

[–] Andromxda@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 4 hours ago (1 children)
[–] P4ulin_Kbana@lemmy.eco.br 1 points 2 hours ago

I use it, but I have some problems with it. I made a post about it.

[–] cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 22 hours ago

it's basically just the latest firefox without the proprietary stuff, google services, and telemetry. i've never had an issue :)

[–] Andromxda@lemmy.dbzer0.com 33 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I like LibreWolf, it's a privacy and security focused fork of Firefox.

But I'm really looking forward to Servo, hopefully it becomes usable one day.

[–] PiratePanPan@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 1 day ago (5 children)

Servo and Ladybird both look like the future of the web.

[–] Andromxda@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 17 hours ago

I'm skeptical about Ladybird, that's why I have such high hopes for Servo

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[–] matey@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

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?

[–] Andromxda@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 1 day ago

They disable it by default, because it requires the execution of proprietary code, but you can reenable it.

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.

[–] Ilandar@lemm.ee 37 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

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.

[–] Astra@lemmy.ml 1 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

What other problems has Firefox had? Everything I search sends me to this recent controversy

[–] Ilandar@lemm.ee 1 points 1 hour ago

One of the more recent examples from last year was Mozilla's announcement of PPA (Privacy-Preserving Attribution). Essentially the organisation is trying to create a new system for click-based advertising where an advertiser can be notified that you clicked on their ad, helping them and the websites which host their ads, without compromising your personal privacy. The way it has historically worked is you click on an ad and give away a ton of your personal data, or you straight up block all these ads and their trackers which makes a lot of the web unsustainable (because it is funded by advertising). Anyway, like with this latest controversy a lot of people didn't bother to read any of Mozilla's statements and instead based their entire opinion off clickbait headlines like 'Firefox's New 'Privacy' Feature Actually Gives Your Data to Advertisers' which made PPA sound like a reduction of consumer privacy, which it isn't. And again, like this current controversy, you also had a lot of privacy activists who do not live in reality claiming that anything other than a 100$ rejection of all advertising online equaled 100% complicity and that Mozilla had sold out on one of its core principles.

[–] limer@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

If Linux can be developed, then a public fork run the same way for browser can too. It’s possible just no interest yet.

[–] DaPorkchop_@lemmy.ml 13 points 1 day ago (1 children)

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.

[–] limer@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Yea I thought of that and have no real answer. But should that be solved, without advertising income, it would change everything

[–] Ilandar@lemm.ee 2 points 1 day ago

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.

[–] Telorand@reddthat.com 150 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

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.

[–] dicksteele@lemm.ee 79 points 2 days ago (5 children)

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

[–] rumba@lemmy.zip 4 points 1 day ago

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.

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[–] yozul@beehaw.org 30 points 1 day ago

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.

[–] giddy@aussie.zone 17 points 1 day ago (3 children)

I am sticking with Firefox but looking at hardening with https://github.com/yokoffing/BetterFox

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[–] LiveLM@lemmy.zip 31 points 2 days ago (2 children)

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.

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[–] Gormadt@lemmy.blahaj.zone 61 points 2 days ago (9 children)

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)

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[–] infinitesunrise@slrpnk.net 20 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

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 ...

[–] veniasilente@lemm.ee 15 points 1 day ago

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.

[–] jeena@piefed.jeena.net 41 points 2 days ago (13 children)
[–] Jinx@lemmy.ca 1 points 13 hours ago

Same, I’m done with Firefox / Mozilla…
Librewolf, Waterfox, Floorp seem like viable options.

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