Almost all the links in my front homepage are sponsored now. What’s next, a few ads in the bookmark bar? How about when I enter a URL, I then have to type “McDonald’s” before I can actually navigate there?
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Wow, that’s levels of commercial removed that I did not think possible, given how much FF sell themselves as being against this sort of thing.
I think the downvoters can’t hold these two thoughts in their mind at the same time:
- Firefox is the best browser.
- Firefox has serious problems because Mozilla is a terrible steward of it.
Let the people downvote. These points don’t matter. I turned off the visibility of points. I am immune, my morale is unbreakable. The downvoters have no power here!
Firefox is the best browser
It’s only real competitors, in my eyes, are Firefox forks.
No it’s the complaint about one of the few transparent revenue flows Mozilla managed to pull off.
It’s disabled one step deep on the settings
There is a shitload of stuff going wrong with the Mozilla foundation and this doesn’t even make the top 10.
That’s the reason for my down vote: it’s nothing I want this community to focus on. It’s basically engagement bait with the topic “ads bad”.
Agreed. I love Firefox and don’t really like Mozilla.
This is why I torrent firefox pro using Limewire.
This has been the case for several years. Super easy to turn them off
Cool. Willing to say how or is that a secret?
There is a settings gear icon on that literal page that says customize next to it iirc
In Settings > Home, there’s a Sponsored Shortcuts checkbox.
Thank you.
No problem!
Firefox Desktop: Settings - Home panel - uncheck “Sponsored shortcuts” box.
Firefox Mobile: Settings - Homepage - uncheck “Sponsored shortcuts” box.
It’s a secret reserved for smart people
😪
it’s a secret only those who dare venture into the scary “settings menu” can learn about it. most don’t come back alive.
🚀 🕳 🤣
You should see brave lol
I bailed on brave when I learned more about the shenanigans that one dude pulled.
And Brave has significantly lower costs, given they don’t develop an own engine, but rather just put lipstick onto Chromium.
Or, ya know, literally any other browser that’s not a fork of Firefox.
I don’t mind as those are easy to switch off.
I think the best viable option for them is to either offer a subscription model. Or increase requests for donations.
what would a subscription even do?
Id say support Firefox development, maybe premium access to some of Mozilla’s services, possibly cosmetics in browser
support ff development: thats called donating
premium access to mozillas services: that’s already a thing but you subscribe to each one, like their vpn, pocket, etc
cosmetics in browser: thats just https://addons.mozilla.org
This was a bug
And looks like it’s been fixed :)
If we want software to be FOSS we have to stop bitching so much about developers trying to make the math work.
One could posit an ideal public sector development studio that takes grants from the state/federal government to produce useful Open Source software. Think public radio or public broadcasting, but for apps.
Hell, it isn’t even wild in the current moment. Modern day AWS and Azure subsidize much of its small/new user client base with the massive public sector clientele. OpenAI and DeepSeek are both the product of giant state-sponsored initiatives to develop AI that is free at point of service. Plenty of the original internet architecture was the product of public investment and grants, as was the university-centric ARPNET that would eventually be commoditizated into the commercial World Wide Web.
Look up the history of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications and the pioneering of Mosaic, the first widely available GUI-based web browser. It was the foundation for both Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator, which licensed the original design for the tiniest fraction of what it would ultimately generate in future revenues.
Seems fine to me, they need to make money somehow.
@UltraGiGaGigantic Sorry about that, not quite what is expected to happen. I understand that it has been looked into and has now been resolved.
The best thing about this is that you can turn it off
Better than the unlabeled sponsorship behind the default search engine.
Honestly, I don’t care. I don’t even look at that stuff, I just type in the bar thing what I want. Mozilla has to fund the project somehow.
So how exactly were you planning on them making money if they don’t take money from Google to be the default search engine and they don’t take money to place advertisements on the default home page?
Open source projects shouldn’t have “making money” on their priority list. I would donate to Mozilla if I had some guarantee that my money would actually fund Firefox development
But why does (some) people want every software to be open source if making money can’t be an objective? /genq
I’m not one of those people, and to be clear I support for-profit companies open sourcing code. Mozilla is a unique case where donations are a tiny fraction of their income and Firefox development is a tiny fraction of their expenses. I just want to donate directly to the parts I care about (Firefox, MDN).
