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?
I am lazy and have yet to switch to a new fork.
Misinformation
I’ve been back to Firefox for about a year now. Left chrome for it.
I use IronFox because firefox decided to support bad practices. Kinda like google removing “don’t be evil”.
Don’t you mean Netscape Navigator?
Because Librewolf exists and Mozilla became an adware vendor.
It was too noisy. My wife and I used to live in a small apartment. I’d leave my Linux box on all the time. Running Firefox, it’d periodically spin up the fan, which was loud enough to annoy my wife at night, and me during the day. Chrome didn’t spin up the fan. I switched and we stopped hearing my noisy computer.
This was a while ago. I can’t remember if it was Firefox or Mozilla at that point.
i think when they killed weave. such a dick move. one of many. may the CEO get most out of the bribe they get from google for selling out its users. i muria even the free and open things are shit.
No, chrome came out and was that much better than every other browser at first.
Is it though?
When Chrome initially came out? Not even close. Firefox was a bloated piece of crap, Chrome was slim and didn’t have all the bullshit that every other browser had.
Obviously, things have changed a little…
I think OP is mostly focusing on why people switched off of FF. Present behaviour isn’t super relevant to the conversation.
It was. It was crazy fast and lightweight at the time.
It gained massive market share.
It became the default development target for websites.
Other browsers started getting left behind.
Each step syphons users from other browsers, compounding issues.
The dev tools in Chrome were a revelation. I think Firefox had something similar (Firebug?) but the Chrome tools seemed better.
Was
Operative word.
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
Because I use only android or Samsung dex. It doesn’t work on dex & android seems forgotten. I use per site zoom to much.
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.
That’s what I was remembering, the terms of use.
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.
I asked a fox that was actually on fire. It said “AIYEEEEEEE!” I trust it’s answer more than chatgpt.
but why? why did you do that?
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.
Can’t write your own comments?
I still recommend floorp, I love the sidebar.
The recent main one seemed to be no longer promising to not sell user data, but it’s been a culmination of little things.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/the-firefox-i-loved-is-gone-how-to-protect-your-privacy-on-it-now/
Personally I’ve been kind of miffed since they decided to use the experiments feature to be paid to shill for the Mr. Robot tv show, including in their enterprise release, making people think they got hacked. But that was years ago and forgotten.
That was the final straw for me, I switched over to waterfox for nominally more privacy.
Firefox used to have a “we’re a browser that won’t sell user data” promise. Then they changed their TOS and removed the promise, adding:
When you upload or input information through Firefox, you hereby grant us a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license to use that information to help you navigate, experience, and interact with online content as you indicate with your use of Firefox."
When people reacted to their TOS they said it was an accident, it’s just boilerplate, don’t take it seriously.
Or in other words: an entity with a team of lawyers claimed ownership of all your data, and then downplayed it, and then has acted good since.
Personally I stick my head way into the alligators mouth and still use Firefox.
