this post was submitted on 07 Mar 2025
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

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Asking after the privacy debacle and manifest. I'm not keeping up closely, but iirc Firefox is the browser recommended because of Ublock. After the privacy data issue I've noticed broken trust from Firefox users, recommendations in favor of switching browsers, and predictions saying Firefox is going downhill fast and that their forks won't be maintained for much longer.

So I'm here asking the seasoned sailors' thoughts, aye. Is this just a storm passing by or are you really considering jumping ship?

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 month ago (5 children)

i wasn't as plussed as everyone else over it, though i am concerned. i still donate to mozilla as, ultimately, i believe they're still good for those who champion an ethical, open, and not for profit internet.

i have switched to librefox, though, just because i like their developers and the fact that they've embraced mastodon and the fediverse. i also have firefox and nightly (though i use fennec on android because it comes through f droid)

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[–] [email protected] 37 points 1 month ago (10 children)

I like LibreWolf, it's a privacy and security focused fork of Firefox.

But I'm really looking forward to Servo, hopefully it becomes usable one day.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 month ago (3 children)

I am sticking with Firefox but looking at hardening with https://github.com/yokoffing/BetterFox

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

I tested this some time ago and it benchmarked slightly better than default Firefox but also broke multiple sites

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

For privacy I recommend arkenfox

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

+1 I tried to apply betterfox even on mobile, I feel sort of improvement or could be placebo I'm not sure hehe...

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago

I switched to Floorp about a month ago.

https://floorp.app/en

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago

Just switched to Floorp. Loving it.

[–] [email protected] 37 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (6 children)

and predictions saying Firefox is going downhill fast and that their forks won’t be maintained for much longer.

Possibly true, but abandoning ship is only bringing us closer to that timeline. People seem to be completely ignorant/delusional about how much work these forks will require to maintain if Mozilla's full time employees stop working on Firefox. If you have a practical reason to use another fork (like maybe a feature Firefox doesn't have) then I totally understand using that instead, but if you are simply making some kind of ethical protest change like all the new LibreWolf users who are so loudly virtue signalling at the moment then you need to think seriously about whether this course of action will ultimately end up hurting your ideals. Mozilla definitely has a big communication problem and I understand the desire to distance oneself from an organisation that repeatedly disrespects its supporters and never learns from its mistakes, as it is very fatiguing to endure their constant failures and the massive fall-outs from them, but ultimately I feel like switching away from Firefox is still an emotional decision rather than a rational one.

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 month ago

I'm not interested in anything based off Chromium, and I don't really like the idea of going with a Firefox fork much either. You're not only trusting them to actually care about your privacy and security, and you're not even just trusting them to actually catch and fix all of Mozilla's shenanigans as well. You are also trusting them to constantly stay on top of all the latest security patches. There aren't really any Firefox forks I trust with all 3 of those things at once. Even if there was, there are certainly no forks of Firefox that have anything even remotely close to the capacity necessary to maintain a web engine on their own, so you're still trusting Mozilla to keep Firefox updated and secure for your fork of choice to even have a chance.

Until a new browser with a new engine comes along that actually lets me use the full uBlock Origin there's not really any other option besides Firefox that makes sense. At least to me.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I’ll put my vote in for LibreWolf. Happy to help anyone with a ‘i can’t get librewolf to…’ or ‘this site is broken on librewolf’, etc to help you tweak it.

But i keep both installed. Libre for my daily driver. FF if there’s a site that i absolutely need to be identifiable for.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (3 children)

I will gladly take you up on this, not sure if it’s possible: trying to get the Toonami Aftermath site to work on librewolf

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

https://www.privacyguides.org/en/desktop-browsers/ and https://www.privacyguides.org/en/mobile-browsers/ will likely have documentation that is updated within a day of any relevant news being available

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

The browser project dedicated to open web standards steered by a compromised non-profit or the browser project dedicated to undermining the traditional web browsing experience steered by the largest advertising company on Earth ... Let me think ...

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[–] [email protected] 33 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I mean yeah. I'm not a fan of the changes but there's no way in hell anything Chromium based will fare any better... do they even have uBlock still???

Probably turn off the telemetry, try a fork like LibreWolf or maybe the Arkenfox user.js if you'd rather stay close to upstream.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

I prefer betterfox because it can give you up to 30% more performance

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

I am staying with FF until Orion is useable on linux. They just started development

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Left them 4 years ago (after 20ish years), so...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

What's a good alternative?

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Firefox with like 10 different settings checkboxes unticked through its settings to disable phoning home, prevent sponsored suggestions, prevent recommendations, etc. + ublock origin extension installed, obviously.

It used to be just an install and go ordeal. Now you have to have all these caveats. I used to send technical and interaction to Mozilla but given their terms changes I can’t be confident in them with even that much information anymore.

Final thought is I don’t see what Mozilla’s endgame is. It costs a lot of money to develop a competitive and impactful web browser, I understand that much. Where are they supposed to get their money from? Well. I don’t get paid millions a year to solve this problem, but it seems pretty obvious the current leadership have made their minds up to make Firefox yet another advertisement browser.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

For example from me, because I like their relay function.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

You mean the Email relay? There are great alternatives like SimpleLogin or Addy.io. Both have their own browser extensions, but you can also connect them to Bitwarden and use that for browser integration.

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