No
this post was submitted on 28 Feb 2025
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Privacy
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This is probably a good opportunity to promote the Lemmy communitiy for LibreWolf: [email protected]
Maybe, but I'll stay on the non-Chromium end of things. I'll definitely try out some competitors, such as:
- Mullvad Browser
- Zen
- LadyBird
I still support engine diversity, but that doesn't have to be mainline Firefox.
That said, I don't think the TOS is as bad as people claim, so I'm in no rush.
I was trying out Mullvad Browser and clicked on a Discord link and it launched the Discord app on my computer.
I was shocked that a security-oriented browser would launch an external application without warning by default. Even Chrome prompts the user first.
Hmm, that is odd.
Played around with zen this afternoon - worried about what appears to be their stance of deferring to Firefox when it comes to privacy policy etc. (Also found what appears to be a weird glitch where the flatpak version crapped out when I tried to set up multiple profiles - appimage worked well.)
Installed waterfox instead. I have only used it for perhaps 2 hours so far, but I already feel like I like it better than default Firefox.
I think my main problem with these smaller browsers is that it's more work for me as a user to keep tabs of what happens around these projects. If the browser I pick has a usage rate of 0.03% instead of 3%, I expect that only 1/100 as many eyes are going to keep up with what this browser (developer) is doing, meaning that I will be much, much less likely to hear about any fuckups from the devs.
I tried to, but both Vivaldi and Brave had issues I couldn't get over and in the end I decided to have a time out by switching to Firefox ESR with custom policy and autoconfig.
Whatever happens in April will probably take time to land on ESR so I will hopefully have plenty of time to adopt about:config changes or actually switch to another browser.
I don't feel like switching back to LibreWolf, since I already used it ages ago and learnt to make my current setup with upstream Firefox, so it would be kind of pointless and what would I do at Chromium? Three months and ManifestV2 is permanently killed and what extension doesn't say to run better on Firefox? I have been observing at least uBlock Origin (manifest V2), Privacy Badger (v3 in Chrome) and NoScript (also v3) and I think at least GitHub discussions said they all have shortcomings on Chrome.
I still don't see Mozilla as a bad actor, especially in comparison with the villany that is google and microsoft. It's still a great alternative for privacy newbies and average users, although I personally made the switch to librewolf (desktop) and iceraven (mobile) a while ago. Both being forks of firefox, development for actual firefox is essential for either of these to survive, so Mozilla still has my support albeit indirectly
Mozilla’s only reason of existence right now is so that Google can skirt an antitrust case.
Edit: to be clear, that in itself makes it a bad actor.
I don't subscribe to this theory.
They don't need to keep firefox on life support to avoid an antitrust case. A chromium fork could serve the same purpose.
That might be true, but the fact that the competitor is using their engine as base could be used against them. It also doesn’t change the fact that they have Mozilla wrapped around their finger.
the fact that the competitor is using their engine as base could be used against them
Not really.
they have Mozilla wrapped around their finger
There's not really any evidence of that. Sure Mozilla has done some stupid things, and they're not the champions of internet privacy we would like them to be, but it's really just hyperbole to say they're wrapped around google's finger.
I guess we just disagree what kind of influence having your company derive 90% of its income from a competitor can have.
Librewolf / IronFox for me, Mozilla can fuck right off with their cloud services, added value and hunger for telemetry. Their 2% userbase is about to shrink even further.
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No, because I haven't used mainline Firefox in years.
I'm pretty happy with LibreWolf on desktop and IronFox (available on Accrescent btw!) on Android (GrapheneOS)
Unfortunately it's still much less secure than Chromium, but I want and need a proper adblocker to maintain my freedom online. And I'm definitely not using Brave...
The only kinda usable Chromium browsers are Ungoogled Chromium and Trivalent. I think I might try building Trivalent on macOS at some point. Maybe also gonna apply some patches from Thorium, as long as they don't compromise security.
Unfortunately it's still much less secure than Chromium
What does that mean?
Any thoughts on Vivaldi?
I use Waterfox as my primary and Vivaldi as my secondary browser for when a site just really wants a Chromium based browser...it's great, Chrome minus Google, plus a few nice extras. For those old enough to remember when Opera was a popular alternative browser (before getting bought up and turned to garbage) -- Vivaldi is from the guy who made Opera.
No thoughts on privacy, but I have been using Vivaldi for many years now and it's good. Pretty customizable if that's your thing.
Well it's proprietary and in my opinion extremely bloated.
I've been using Firefox since it was Netscape, and I'm 'concerned' but not going anywhere yet.
Exactly the same situation here. I'll wait for a while and see what happens.
Yeah, same here... I'm cautiously worried, but more for other things that have happened than these last changes.
Nope.
Not that I don't think it's a dumb move from Mozilla, but the options right now are:
- Stay with Firefox
- Move to a Firefox-based browser
Especially since I use Mozilla's services I'm sorta in their ecosystem right now. Maybe once I've moved passwords off I can consider moving, but even then on Android the only browser that supports uBlock is Firefox afaik, which makes it my YouTube client of choice.
100% recommend moving off firefox's password manager, as it's generally much more insecure than something like Bitwarden
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a password manager is better.
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Chromium for work and mulvad for home.
I'm mainly trying to work out how to get off windows.
Linux Mint. You'll get a thousand other recommendations which you can perhaps explore once you're more comfortable with Linux but for the easiest most Windows-like experience just get Mint.
You don't even need to ditch Windows completely, if you're uncomfortable with that, because you can dual boot meaning when you turn your PC on it asks would you like to open Windows or Linux
If you don't like it, well, at least you tried. I think you'll have a great time though exploring free software to do tasks you would have had to pay or subscribe to previously.
Take your time, ask questions on forums if you need to, and most importantly, enjoy it. Enjoy the experience of learning how computers actually work, enjoy personalising your machine to truly be your machine.
Good luck, and have fun!
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Yep. I've switched to Waterfox, but I need a browser for my phone(I run iOS, yes I know), any suggestions?
Probably Ironfox
It seems like that's Android only?
Yeah sorry, don't know about Iphones
Brave is unfortunately still the best browser on iOS when it comes to privacy. I absolutely despise of the company and especially their homophobic CEO, but there aren't better alternatives available right now.
That's very unfortunate :/
No, if I read that correctly the terms do not apply to me as I don't use the "Executable Code version of Firefox".
Is there anything in the new ToS that's even bad? Like, there are lots of people breathlessly ranting about how privacy is dead because Mozilla mentioned the existence of third parties and gibberish like that, but when I read it myself it mostly seemed like they were just saying that if you use third party services through Firefox then the third parties will have your data. That seems kinda like a nothingburger of a controversy to me. I dunno, I'm not a lawyer, maybe I missed something, but if so I certainly haven't seen anybody else explain it properly.
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Librewolf. Mozilla will just keep enshittifying their browser. My biggest hope is that chrome is split off from Google and Mozilla loses their funding from google (500M/year). It's way more than they need and they refuse to actually compete with Chrome/Chromium. Instead, they are content being the excuse for Google not to be sued for being a monopoly.
Hopefully the charade will end before Trump leaves office. Either because the US courts force google to split or because the EU finally grows a pair and declares Google and their tech to be a liability. My bet is that a new browser like LadyBird will give Firefox a reason to actually improve, but it'll be too late.
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