JPEG XL support in Waterfox is nice.
this post was submitted on 06 Oct 2024
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Asklemmy
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There are two choices, Chrome/Chromium and Firefox. Firefox is the good one.
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.
It's absolutely unnecessary.
Ads should be tailored to the content of the website they are on. Not to me in any way whatsoever.
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.
No, that's the thing. I don't need to be tracked, not even if it's privacy safe.
Then we continue to use anti-tracking extensions and block all ads. This is not for you.
I don't need ads either though. But showing ads isn't really immoral. However, tracking you wherever you go to manipulate you into buying stuff by using psychological profiles is a totally different evil.
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.
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?
I didn’t read too much into it, but roughly speaking: Because the technology by design aggregates data immediately and drops any personal identifiers/ the unaggregated data in the process. Other companies can build whatever they want on that, but if done properly, it is impossible to reconstruct user-specific data points and profile the users that way.
This type of privacy-preserving aggregation technique is not new, it is fairly common for things like demographic data, where you want to know things like population density and incomes for some area, without just publishing an exact address with corresponding income for every person (as an example).
Edit: I think I missed your point a little bit. I am unsure, but it seemed that Anonymous is responsible for designing the framework, not doing any tracking (i.e. it wouldn’t necessarily be “put all trust into them collecting it”). Maybe rolling out that technology could be done in a way of blocking other tracking, or maybe it is intended as a basis for regulations to take up. Maybe someone else can give more informed input on that.
I don’t give a fuck about ads. And so should my browser.
But the people employed to create content on all the websites and YouTube channels you use regularly care quite a great deal about advertisement or they’d have to do something else for a living.
What, you don’t use free services online?
I have YouTube premium, so that part of my money is distributed to those creators. I also have subscriptions for news sites, podcasts and comics through Patreon and other services.
And to be clear: I don’t have a single problem with advertising — I have a huge problem with tracking me wherever I go online. When I’m on a site for Japanese language learning, show me ads for flights to Japan but stop tracking every website I visit.
I am paying for the services I use.
We sound similar. I’ve also been happy to pay for the services I use.
Although I hope you’ll agree that your second comment is a lot more moderated than the first :)
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Thanks for sharing this, hope ya continue 🤙
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.
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.
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
Floorp and Zen are to Firefox what Vivaldi is to Chrome.
They provide a better UI and other features and strip out a lot of the bad stuff from the parent browser.
But fundamentally, Floorp and Zen and Vivaldi would not continue very long if the upstream decided to suddenly stop producing code, or altered their codebase in a significant manner. (This is what killed Palemoon and Seamonkey). This is always a threat.
So really, it's a shit situation for browsers right now. Just choose a browser engine and then pick whatever UI you like the most on top of it.
I'm optimistic that Servo turns out to be the new Mozilla without repeating its mistakes. It should be the reference implementation browser upon which everything will rebase and it should remain non-profit. This was the original goal of open source Mozilla 25 years ago but then the techbro crew rolled in and started grifting.
(I'm also aware that WebKit still exists but Gnome Web is seemingly the only browser built with it and there are no extensions).
Today the Mozilla Corporation is just a place for the already wealthy to funnel money into their golden parachutes. It's a grift. Personally I think it's time to move on. Last week I pulled the plug, deleted my ~/.mozilla directory, so for the first time in a quarter century I don't have anything Mozilla-related installed.
Servo is still worked on by linux foundation but I think it's in experimental
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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.
Can you give an example for this user tracking? I'm using firefox and I can't think of anything that isn't opt-in.
Nothing of this is opt-in:
By default, Mozilla collects […] information about the number of open tabs and windows or number of webpages visited. […] The data collected is associated with a randomly generated identifier that is unique to each Firefox client.
and
Firefox by default sends data about what features you use in Firefox to Leanplum, our mobile marketing vendor […] Leanplum tracks events such as when a user loads bookmarks, opens new tab, opens a pocket trending story, clears data, saves a password and login, takes a screenshot, downloads media, interacts with search URL or signs into a Firefox Account.
and
[Leanplum collects] certain information, which may include your browser’s Internet Protocol (IP) address, your browser type, the nature of the device from which you are visiting the Service[…], the identifier for any handheld or mobile device that you may be using, the Web site that you visited immediately prior to accessing any Web-based Service, the actions you take on our Service, […] We also may collect information regarding your interaction with e-mail messages, such as whether you opened, clicked on, or forwarded a message.
Thanks, I didn't know that all this stuff is enabled by default. They don't even care to inform their users when you install firefox...
You can’t even turn all of this off via UI, but need to use about:config or user.js (the later needs to be explicitly enabled via about:config first).
Here’s my setup (except some specific settings based on my personal preferences that are not related to privacy).
// Do not leak URLs, IPs, etc. to external services
user_pref('browser.safebrowsing.malware.enabled', false);
user_pref('browser.safebrowsing.phishing.enabled', false);
user_pref('network.trr.mode', 5); // DoH explicitly off
user_pref('security.OCSP.enabled', 0);
user_pref('browser.contentblocking.category', 'custom');
user_pref('app.shield.optoutstudies.enabled', false);
user_pref('browser.urlbar.trending.featureGate', false);
// Disable hidden extensions
user_pref('extensions.pocket.enabled', false);
user_pref('extensions.screenshots.disabled', true);
// Remove new tab spam
user_pref('browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.showSponsoredTopSites', false);
user_pref('browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.feeds.section.topstories', false);
user_pref('browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.feeds.topsites', false);
// Disable telemetry
user_pref('datareporting.policy.dataSubmissionEnabled', false);
user_pref('datareporting.healthreport.uploadEnabled', false);
user_pref('toolkit.telemetry.unified', false);
user_pref('toolkit.telemetry.enabled', false);
user_pref('toolkit.telemetry.server', 'data:,');
user_pref('toolkit.telemetry.archive.enabled', false);
user_pref('toolkit.telemetry.newProfilePing.enabled', false);
user_pref('toolkit.telemetry.shutdownPingSender.enabled', false);
user_pref('toolkit.telemetry.updatePing.enabled', false);
user_pref('toolkit.telemetry.bhrPing.enabled', false);
user_pref('toolkit.telemetry.firstShutdownPing.enabled', false);
user_pref('toolkit.telemetry.coverage.opt-out', true);
user_pref('toolkit.coverage.opt-out', true);
user_pref('toolkit.coverage.endpoint.base', '');
user_pref('browser.ping-centre.telemetry', false);
user_pref('browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.feeds.telemetry', false);
user_pref('browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.telemetry', false);
user_pref('breakpad.reportURL', '');
user_pref('browser.tabs.crashReporting.sendReport', false);
user_pref('browser.crashReports.unsubmittedCheck.autoSubmit2', false);
user_pref('app.shield.optoutstudies.enabled', false);
user_pref('app.normandy.enabled', false);
user_pref('app.normandy.api_url', '');
// Disable AI bullshit
user_pref('browser.ml.enable', false);
user_pref('browser.ml.chat.enabled', false);
user_pref('browser.ml.chat.shortcuts', false);
user_pref('browser.ml.chat.sidebar', false);
user_pref('pdfjs.enableAltText', false);
user_pref('pdfjs.enableUpdatedAddImage', false);
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
Mullvad or librewolf both have ublock, add noscript, shelter, privacy badger
That's some clean internet but does require some skills using esp noscript
Pretty sure librewolf is only ublock origin + Arkane.js
Correct I am advising to add other extensitions for the people looking to deny even more useless api calls
Oh
Nothing questionable that Mozilla does can affect the forks, as long as the forks have enough manpower to sustain themselves. There are, in fact, a few examples of projects with questionable leadership getting abandoned by their userbase, as everyone migrates to the fork.
I think what you need to worry about is whether the fork you're using has enough momentum and developer time that it's going to stay alive. That's a concern whether or not you have a concern that the central leadership is going to do something obscene.
Except if they start to enshittify the gecko engine itself, like Google did with Manifest V3. There isn't a fork out there afaik that has the main power and expertise to maintain the complicated beast that is a browser engine
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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.
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.
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