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?

  • Admiral Patrick@dubvee.orgEnglish
    34·
    2 months ago

    I never fully did, but I did end up using Chromium more than I wanted to:

    1. Some poorly written sites refuse to work with FF. My water company, for example. They eventually fixed it after I complained multiple times. Now they display a warning that it’s “Optimized for Chrome” but no longer flat out prevent FF from logging in (you know, to pay bills and such).
    2. FF Desktop still doesn’t support PWAs, and their recent update says they’re working on it, but they’re half-assing it (installed web apps will still have the menu bars, address, bar etc). I self-host a lot of web applications and want them to appear like native apps. Hence, Chromium.
    3. There was some recent ToS / Privacy Policy change, and everyone was knee-jerking “time to abandon Firefox” as if there’s anywhere better to go. (This is probably what you’re thinking of)
    4. A good while back, Chrom(ium) was just flat-out faster. That’s been a while, and I think when FF’s “Quantum” update (or whatever it was called) came out in like 2016 or 2017, it put it back on par.
  • Kissaki@feddit.orgEnglish
    162·
    2 months ago

    That was overblown drama. They didn’t change anything in practice. They clarified things by writing it down. You disable some defaults and have no issue. Even if you don’t, it’s not nearly as bad as other popular platforms.

    I never stopped using Firefox.

    If you want I can look for a comment I made quoting the relevant terms a while back. Or you can look for it yourself.

    Simple forks still depend on upstream. I’d rather support Mozilla than not, given no better sustainable alternative. They do some good stuff like Firefox, Thunderbird, and mdn.

  • Lasherz@lemmy.world
    25·
    2 months ago

    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.

    • VodkaSolution @feddit.it
      91·
      2 months ago

      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

  • solrize@lemmy.world
    82·
    2 months ago

    I don’t even remember many times Firefox/Mozilla has changed its extension API and broken everyone’s add-ons. It gets tiresome.

  • RejZoR@lemmy.mlEnglish
    711·
    2 months ago

    The thing is, I never have. Chrome is absolute hot garbage and spyware, all the Chromium forks are all flawed and bugged and still feed into Google’s dominance because of engine and stupid Manifest bullshit. Firefox, despite all the stupid things Mozilla did and still does just works the best and is not Chromium.

      • Sandbar_Trekker@lemmy.todayEnglish
        5·
        2 months ago

        Google sells it as an updated extension framework to improve security, privacy, and performance of extensions… But it also nerfs adblockers ability to block all ads.

        There are some forks from chrome that haven’t implemented the new manifest thing. So if you really need to, look for those.

      • glimse@lemmy.world
        25·
        2 months ago

        New Chromium framework for browser extensions that severely limits their functionality. It neuters adlockers.

        • RejZoR@lemmy.mlEnglish
          13·
          2 months ago

          It was intentional to block/break adblockers. Google is worlds largest advertiser…

        • OutlierBlue@lemmy.caEnglish
          19·
          2 months ago

          It didn’t break adblockers “at the time”. It broke them intentionally. That was by design. Google is an advertising company dabbling in other areas. They don’t want a browser that can properly block their primary revenue.

        • Noerknhar@feddit.org
          22·
          2 months ago

          Understood, that’s something to be expected by Google, but complete shit.

          However, adblockers still work these days - see Vivaldi, so they found a workaround?

          • RejZoR@lemmy.mlEnglish
            9·
            2 months ago

            There is no workaround as most browsers download extensions from Google’s extension repository and they don’t allow extensions that don’t follow their bullshit manifest. Ironically, only Opera has its own extensions repository/store that can do that. Others rely on their own built in adblockers.

    • HKPiax@lemmy.world
      8·
      2 months ago

      Honestly, as a “non-power” Firefox user, the only issues I’m experiencing is when Google purposely slows down or messes with me simply because I use Firefox (e.g., YouTube).

      • RejZoR@lemmy.mlEnglish
        2·
        2 months ago

        Dunno, Youtube works fine for me, watching without account. I don’t use anything else from Google, so can’t say if anything else is shit.

  • ᕙ(⇀‸↼‶)ᕗ@lemm.ee
    2·
    2 months ago

    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.

  • BlackLaZoR@fedia.io
    54·
    2 months ago

    Back in the early days Mozilla redesigned Firefox interface. It was so incomprehensively moronic that I moved to Chrome.

    • k_rol@lemmy.ca
      4·
      2 months ago

      Firefox was late to use multiple threads for the UI so it was horribly slow and hanging every time a page was loading. I think It took them around 2 years to get this done while Chrome was running great.

      Even I being a hardcore Firefox user, I went to Chrome for 1 year or so as it was intolerable.

  • Rose@slrpnk.net
    5·
    2 months ago

    “We” didn’t stop using Firefox. Open source boycotts are complicated because the software is separate from the developers. You can keep using the software even if you disagree with the development organisation.

    Mozilla organisation is getting problematic for a whole lot of reasons. My issue with them is that they seem to be in the “more money than they know what to do with it” phase. They’re flush with cash, but it’s not reflecting to the product. If they buy an ad company and plan AI stuff, maybe things aren’t going well.

    Problem is, there’s no viable competing organisation. Protest forks of software don’t really work that well unless you can actually guarantee the development support. Compare this to what happened when OpenOfficeOrg successfully moved to LibreOffice - developers saw the old organisation didn’t work, so they made a new one that did.

  • sbv@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    86·
    2 months ago

    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.

  • Guidy@lemmy.world
    132·
    2 months ago

    Firefox is better than most but still smugly makes anti-user changes which are complete dog shit.

    Remember when they turned off your ability to choose to load extensions that weren’t signed, because fuck you?

    Fuck Pepperidge farm, I remember that shit.

    Or how about DNS over https, because fuck you, user, why should you have any say over name resolution when you might use that power to block ads and malware?