Each time I install Firefox, I end up wasting a non-trivial amount of time carefully working my way through the settings in order to disable the pile of defaults that are as 'easy' to deactivate as they are infuriating. When updating the browser, some of these changes get rolled back, and some of them become more difficult to adjust, either by being removed from the options menu, or by being obscured in about:config - maybe the name has changed for no reason, or maybe the behaviour now depends on an entirely different configuration value.
A particularly obscene case is the auto-updater, which has gotten so bad that I have literally given up on figuring out how to disable it. (At least on Windows; firefox-esr on debian is, so far, free of this insanity) (Ever noticed how forced automatic updates in software get pushed by security fanaticism, but mostly exist to steal your data and ruin your day while they're at it?)
You, apparently, see an easily-deactivable feature in a clear and extensive settings menu. I see an ever-growing eldritch labyrinth, built solely to prevent me from having a straightforward internet browsing experience, all the while the browser's performance is slowly but surely - and noticeably - worsening in the new versions.
Anyway, screw you, Mozilla. At this point I'm only using firefox because I don't see much of a choice either.
Would you mind expanding on this one so I can better understand what you mean?
I'm guessing the "ruin your day" part is that you have to interrupt your workflow for some minutes? But it's not entirely clear to me how automatic updates "mostly exist to steal your data" -- excepting software which is already stealing your data anyways (so I don't understand how automatic updates factor in). Does manually updating somehow protect your data from being stolen in a way that automatic updates don't? Or you just don't update?
Except they have used the language of "not now" and hidden the link away instead of making it a button with equal prominence to the yes button.
That's not the behaviour of an organisation which thinks its users will be happy with what it's doing, it's the behaviour of an organisation which is trying to trick them.
Just wonder the reason? Is it because it support the monopoly of google rendering engine? Or other reasons?
Brave seems more trustworthy than FF to me right now.
1. Unverified Brave Creators UI - Two days after the complaint, Brave issued an update to "clearly indicate which publishers and creators have not yet joined Brave Rewards so users can better control how they donate and tip. Tom Scott, the original complainant, tweeted in response: "These are good changes, and they fix the complaints I had!".
2. Affiliate Links to Crypto Exchanges - Two days later, Brave released a new version which they said disabled the auto-completion to partner links, followed by a blog post explaining the issue and apologizing. Def the most scummy of the list IMO.
3. DNS Leaks with built in TOR - An issue was discovered and fixed via their Bug Bounty program, where they have an average 6 days to bounty payout.
4. A company violated their terms of service.
I definitely have my biases, although I don't use Brave daily anymore. But I don't think the controversies section you linked is particularly egregious or indicative of bad faith.
Their ad setup works the same. The browser downloads an entire country-specific catalog in one go, and decides what to show you completely locally. Whether you trust their cryptographic setup that tells them you've seen an ad is another thing entirely and is its own brand of black magic.
But the basic setup is simple. They sell adspace and show you ads from that local catalog. Brave takes a cut, users get a cut. They have a tipping service to compensate creators.
There's definitely parts that might be suspect, like that proof of having seen an ad.
And even if it all works just as intended, there is the concern that ads that don't track are generally less valuable so even widespread adoption of Brave's system would cause a decrease in ad revenue and thus ability to keep sites up and running. We've already seen the fallout of Apple's recent anti-tracking changes, and Brave's system is definitely similar in effect.
But Brave have just proven to be an unethical, borderline scammy project. And I'm saying this as someone who owns crypto and can see the value of advertisement in some cases.
Here are a few cases documented on wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_(web_browser)#Controvers...
And I'd add that having a business model where you put your own adds on top of ad-blocked ones is the most hypocritical thing to do.
Plus, Google controls Chromium and Firefox is literally the only alternative now. They push changes that are against or in in ignorance of of web standards because they can. Downstream browsers like brave,edge and opera basically have to accept whatever Google says. This isn't good for the web at all. Frankly there should be an anti-trust suit against Google for this because it is very anti-competitive.
But that's not available on Android or Windows (the WebKit port exists there, but no good UI frontend as far I know)... which are the two big platforms. (because Apple doesn't care enough about those I guess?)
It does replicate a lot of buggy behaviour in Safari so from what I can tell you can be reasonably sure that your website works in Safari if it works in WebKit, but that's the only use I've found for it so far.
As for a good UI on Windows, I think you should be able to compile GNOME's WebKit browser for Windows. It'll look terribly out of place like any GNOME application in a different environment, but I think it should work well enough to use?
If you used it in the past from the Debian repos, they didn't use to do security or feature update servicing for WebKit in their repositories. That's no longer a thing nowadays.
You can use both the Technology Preview at https://webkit.org/downloads/ or check if the version is recent on your distribution however.
What? One of the main points of the project is to build a browser with a whole bunch of tinfoil like tracker blocking and anti fingerprinting measures. They wrote their own built-in adblocker with Rust so it won't get fucked by Manifest v3 since it's part of the browser. They're the only Chromium browser that does CNAME uncloaking, something that uBlock Origin can only do on Firefox.
Containers are unique to Firefox, Chromium browsers handle that via separate user profiles.
- "Sponsored" backgrounds (often crypto ads or credit cards!)
- "Cards" with more weird Crypto ads!
- Brave "news"
- Brave "rewards"
Yes I can turn all that of, and I have, but hard to recommend to normal users that dont spend 10min turning all the shit off.
They also did some weird link shit a while back.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/privacy-browser-brave-busted-f...
- Sponsored Backgrounds: just random places of the world like tropical beaches, Buddhist temples or mountains.
- Cards? Nothing at all.
- Rewards and news are under the settings menu and seem to be off.
Maybe Apple's App Store conditions prevent Brave to do a lot of its crypto stuff.
On Android, Linux or Windows I'm a happy user of Vivaldi.
No, these are just random backgrounds. At some point I started seeing backgrounds advertising Crocs and stuff like that, at which point I discovered the Sponsored backgrounds option and turned that off, leaving me back with random pics of scenery
So... I looked up its configuration and looks like Sponsored Backgrounds are activated... But, they don't work at all. I deactivated them in case they suddenly start working.
2. it's based on Chromium, contributing to the Blink monoculture
3. BATs are based on Ethereum, which has its own downsides (still PoW, speculation, ...)
Think of the type of business involved with that, and there's your answer.
They're very straightforwardly ad salesmen like every other browser out there, they've just tried to build an ad ecosystem that doesn't track users.
Like with Firefox, you have to change your preferences if you want privacy.
Search suggestions are displayed and the items are conditioned to your location, cookies... Pages which know how to trick themselves to the top of this suggestions get visitors straight from the user's navbar.
The main difference between Google/Microsoft's approach and Mozilla's is that the pages themselves don't pay to be displayed directly onto your browser's navbar dropdown.
Just take Google Chrome first.
These just clog up the interface and make it feel sketchy. I just want a normal FOSS browser, but I also understand the whole financing issue.
Mozilla has tons of money, but they just
1. spend too much of it, 2. on the wrong things, 3. and always want more.
One of the best parts about Brave is that they are trying to build independent revenue streams from things like integrated Jitsi features, an independent search engine and the like. Vivaldi builds in things like mail clients, RSS readers and a rudimentary notetaking tool.
In that vein, Pocket is a really good thing, and also helps combat link rot. The vocal Firefox userbase is moronically hostile to add-on services though, even if they are the ultimate key to Firefox's health.
http://dpldocs.info/this-week-in-d/Blog.Posted_2021_09_06.ht...
Such a thing should not exist in the first place. It is predatory and wrong.
> Firefox still has no alternative in the privacy / user-centric space
It is no longer in that space, because it contains advertising tech now.
Vivaldi perhaps https://vivaldi.com/ ?
It is still a chrome derivative, but it feel less shady and less spyware than Brave. And it's pretty good and configurable.
Firefox remain my first and main browser tho. I never ever used "proper" chrome, not even one day.
In a perfect world we'd have nothing but fully open source software funded by support contracts and commercial interest in offering superior software, but the world isn't perfect and so we have to compromise sometimes. But the browser is one place I draw the line.
> Of the three layers, only the UI layer is closed-source. This means that roughly 92% of the browser’s code is open-source coming from Chromium, 3% is open-source coming from us and only 5% is our UI closed-source code.
Thanks a lot for mismanaging your budget like seemingly every other non-profit, Mozilla.
The problem is mostly the way they introduced it.
Pocket is a good thing. It provides a reason for Mozilla/Firefox to exist.
People complain when the default is opted-in. Now someone makes something that by default is opted-out and... people still complain.
They ask that when someone uses telemetry, that would be shown upfront. When someone does that, they ask it to be disabled by default. And when we get disabled by default, where do we go? Remove the feature, ofcourse :)
Ads, privacy and telemetry is a hot cake topic on HN.
That button is actually a cheap way to support mozilla, if anyone cares.
Safari.
3rd party cookies make pervasive tracking much, much easier.
Firefox still has no alternative in the privacy / user-centric space (don't mention Brave, I'm gonna get mad). Mozilla has done a lot for the web, I can give them some slack for exploring different revenue models.
Still, I'm going to keep on eye for this kind of practices in the future. I don't want them to get too comfortable with it.