Well, Mozilla seems to be making some pretty questionable decisions, So I’m considering switching browsers for the third (Is it the third?) time. The thing is, I really like the way Firefox works, so I’ve been trying out the more famous Forks like Waterfox and Librewolf, although I’m going for Floorp. However, I’m wondering: is using a fork enough? I mean, they are Forks maintained by other people, but is there a chance that whatever Mozilla does to Firefox could affect those Forks? Should I jump to a totally different browser like Vivaldi?
Mozilla isn’t doing anything to Firefox. The Anonym purchase you linked to was literally to acquire a technology they developed which would, if implemented web-wide, end the dystopian nightmare of privacy invasion that is the current paradigm where a few dozen large companies track everything everyone does on the internet all the time. “Privacy preserving” isn’t just a buzzword in that article - privacy is actually preserved, and the companies involved (including Mozilla) learn nothing at all about you - not your name, not an “anonymous” identifier, not your behavior, nothing. Moreso, Anonym didn’t just create this technology, the entire company was purpose-founded to create this technology.
There’s a lot of misinformation floating around about Mozilla in particular at the moment. Very little of the animosity they receive is truly deserved once you dig past the narrative and find out what Mozilla’s actually up to, and why.
Continuous Mozilla hit pieces coming out….
I wonder which company motivated only by greed and the fact that their entire business model is “obliterating your privacy” is behind them
It’s the one that will “do no evil” - right?
Either you make a deal with the devil or use the company that made the deal so you don’t have to
Limited Liability Corporations exist for that very reason. I think a dude in France made a deal with a cave lion of some sort.
Removed by mod
Ads should be tailored to the content of the website they are on. Not to me in any way whatsoever.
Then you might be interested in this new technology being tested by Mozilla that aims to replace tracking cookies.
Removed by mod
Then we continue to use anti-tracking extensions and block all ads. This is not for you.
Removed by mod
Like it or not, ads are still the most popular way to pay for online content. I despise ads and I hope some kind of micro-payment solution catches on and offers an alternative, but until then there needs to be a way to reward people for their work, so ads and full-on subscriptions it is.
Thanks for sharing this, hope ya continue 🤙
So instead of multiple providers tracking people all the time there will be a single company doing it, but it’s okay because I should trust them for what reason? Why wouldn’t tracking companies just use their own tracking on top of this new technology?
Using a Chromium-based browser when you’re bother by ad tech makes no sense whatsoever. Chromium is mostly developed by an ad company.
Remember folks, Chromium project is under Google’s control. They don’t care about web-standards. They just make their own standards since they have a 70% market share. The only notable Chromium fork which is worth mentioning is Ungoogled Chromium.
Vivaldi is a no go, it is proprietary software and also based in chromium. I’ve had similar thought process to yours and I am also using Floorp. Librewolf is great but too privacy hardened for the common lay user. These forks are cleaning the s*** out of firefox so no need to worry.
There is the source code but the Eula conflicts with it and the ui is only proprietary
None of the forks are immune to Mozilla enshittifing the engine itself.
Browser engines are complicated beasts, the w3c specifications are thousands of pages and a proper engine would have to implement it all.
It’s the reason why not a single chromium fork is able to maintain manifest v2 in defiance of Google, because they would have to then maintain the engine themselves for the most part
Floorp is just Firefox with some extensions, Vivaldi iirc is still chromium underneath etc etc
Your best option is just plain old Firefox configured the way you like it
There are a couple of new “from the ground up” browsers being developed at the moment but they aren’t ready from what I understand
I would like to add Librewolf, which is = Firefox - (Mozilla tracking/recommendations) + security hardening
Don’t expect it to behave like a normal browser. If you think some feature is disabled, it’s to avoid browser fingerprinting, not because it’s buggy. Read their FAQ before committing to the browser.
I never got on with librewolf, it just feels like one of those things that doesn’t really benefit me much and needlessly makes life harder
Use Librewolf if
- You do not approve of Mozilla’s direction with Firefox (I personally don’t have an issue)
- You don’t want to be fingerprinted by every websites
- Want to be very privacy conscious
If these are not your requirements, stick with Firefox. When you switch to Librewolf, you have to give up some QoL features (dark mode, adaptable screen size and more). Unfortunately, privacy in the modern web requires some sacrifice.
There are two choices, Chrome/Chromium and Firefox. Firefox is the good one.
I’ve tried many but waterfox has been my home since earlier this year. it comes configured out of the box with about the privacy settings I’d normally use, as well as my preferred userchrome built in.
Using a Firefox clone saves you the hassle of manually remove all the stupid annoyances and user tracking Mozilla enables by default. But that’s basically it. Except a preconfigured setup and a new name and logo pretty much nothing is different.
Vivaldi is just Chromium with a non-free UI.
So I’m considering switching browsers for the third (Is it the third?) time.
I don’t think switching browsers is a big deal. Obviously switching every day would be a burden and being forced to switch is annoying, but I don’t think the switch has to be a big all or nothing.
I do think Firefox or one of it’s derivatives are probably the best choice, but I’d say be flexible. I use Firefox for the majority of my mobile browsing, but Chime sneaks in depending on the task. On my laptop I use Chrome most of the time, but I’ve also got Firefox open for others. Perhaps that’s insane, but it works for me.
If you like Firefox, keep using Firefox. If you want to try a derivative, test them out. If they suck in 6 months, try something new. Try a bunch of new things.
At the end of the day the best option is the browser experience you like best.
JPEG XL support in Waterfox is nice.
Since the discussion has come up, let me ask this here.
I have been using Mull for sometime now. It’s all good but are there any forks of Firefox that are like chromium forks eg Cromite? Cromite is really good as it offers a ton of extra features too. Mull is great as far as privacy is concerned but I want few features as well. Especially if I could change the app logo and launch animation to stock Firefox that’d be great.
