{% if switch('firefox-tou') %}
<p>Firefox is independent and a part of the not-for-profit Mozilla, which fights for your online rights, keeps corporate powers in check and makes the internet accessible to everyone, everywhere. We believe the internet is for people, not profit. You’re in control over who sees your search and browsing history. All that and exceptional performance too.</p>
{% else %}
<p>Firefox is independent and a part of the not-for-profit Mozilla, which fights for your online rights, keeps corporate powers in check and makes the internet accessible to everyone, everywhere. We believe the internet is for people, not profit. Unlike other companies, we don’t sell access to your data. You’re in control over who sees your search and browsing history. All that and exceptional performance too.</p>I think/fear that in the long run, there will be fewer and fewer ways to participate in activities and communities on the web on your own terms, as only a vetted, allowlisted set of client builds (that may be "open source" on the tin, but by that point it is effectively meaningless) will be able to pass CDN "anti-abuse" restrictions. It will not be a better web, but it sure will be more profitable for some.
This is an amazingly common psychological trap. You wouldn't believe the number of people, men as well as women, who end up in the therapy chair, at the police station or at the hospital A&E, because they are "stuck" with a violent and abusive partner.
The modern tech landscape is all about abuse. People use fancy names for it like "enshitification" or "rot economy" - but at the end of the day it's about domination and abusive relations.
A very common position here is that the victim sees "no alternative".
And... surprise surprise, where they get that idea from is the partner, friends, group/organisation that is also toxic and colludes in gas-lighting and co-abusing the victim into a limited worldview.
Once the victim spends any amount of time outside that mental prison, they regain perspective and say... "Oh, so I actually do have choices!".
Derivative browsers don't really count here, as they depend on the upstream to not hurt them. For instance, if the parent project completely removes something essential for privacy, it it a lot of work to keep it in your code. The Manifest v2 removal is an example. Over time, when other changes are built on the removal, this creates an increasingly high burden. Eventually, the child project is starved. You simply do not want to be in this position.
This is because users decided that they want a browser that spies on them.
At least in Germany in hacker and IT-affine circles, you will often be frowned upon if you voluntarily use Chrome or Edge (except if you have a really good reason).
That's largely the same here, at least for anyone worth their salt. But how does that matter when Mozilla's pulling things like this?
For years now your only browser choices are "Google", and "funded by Google", and it shows.
I can't even give someone too hard of a time for using vanilla chromium or similar anymore; Not like it's any worse than literally every other browser offering nowadays, minus rare exceptions like librewolf or ungoogled chromium that also add a whole host of minor technical complications to use.
It's not what Mozilla does, it's about what Mozilla says/claims.
Mozilla is a deceptive/defective entity here.
What happens when Alice is with Bill, but Bill is also abusive to a lesser extent? And "don't have a browser" is not an option.
So often arguments on this axis come down to how much convenience are you going to give up for the trust relation you desire. We get stuck if we mistake convenience for necessity thereby bringing absolutes into a continuous trade-off problem.
I'm thinking lately the myth of the "browser" and "web" as coherent data spaces is something even Sir Tim gave up on, right? If the centre cannot hold constellations of specialised clients (which are already "apps" in a sense) look like enduring in the near future at the expense of interoperability and standards. The "best browser" will be the one that strikes the most deals with the parts of the network people want to connect to. It's just like the best "game console".
That seems really bleak for the Internet qua people's network.
No doubt http/s and the worlds of port 80/443 will endure eternal, but the "Universal" search and information space the pioneers and then proto-Google aspired to now seems so remote that the idea of a "browser" is itself a little ridiculous to beards like me. I think today the "browser" has become a clique of PKI suites and CAs, at the behest of banking and retail, backed by broken but well meaning regulation, and unwittingly creating this monster we still call "The Browser". anyway, peace.
[0] I use w3m for 99% of my daily drive and a sandboxed degoogled chromium for any of the "messy stuff"
Sometimes the more aggressive privacy settings stop some sites from rendering properly unless you add canvas exceptions, for example Openstreetmap and UK National Rail.
I'm happy to make the effort.
/Librewolf on desktop, Waterfox on mobile.
Not to be overly whataboutistic, but we tolerate sooo much more from other players. It's annoying how we hold some to a higher standard, but ignore others doing worse. I get people are disappointed in Mozilla and wants them to do better, but it's a bit like the "we live in a society meme", where those doing good must be perfect or else..
Saying, well, why aren't you upset that Chrome is evil is such a confusion of ideas I barely know how to respond. Yes, I know Chrome is evil, I've been telling people that for many years, and I don't use it.
People use FF, _because_ they can hold it to a higher standard. That's the entire point.
Who is "we"? It certainly doesn't include me.
Someone who tries to gain your trust only to betray it gets a stronger reaction than a known bad actor doing what they are known for? Color me surprised.
> I get people are disappointed in Mozilla and wants them to do better, but it's a bit like the "we live in a society meme", where those doing good must be perfect or else
You are talking like mozilla made a mistake. Yet their response was not to apologize but to claim people are just confused.
How much shit can Mozilla pull before people are allowed to say enough is enough?
any alternatives will be good as long as firefox is alive. if firefox itself dies, then that's an entirely different matter.
Switching to forks makes it a matter of when, not if.
All the forks are dependent on FF's current funding for their own long-term viability.
accomplishing this is going to be a major feat. again. i admire your optimism. my pessimism tells me that there are a lot of ways this can go wrong.
the big risk is that mozilla won't go out with a bang. they will stick around and even without funding try to hold the reigns. that will make it hard for other organizations to step in. while many have a vested interest in keeping firefox alive they may want to get a seat at the table.
(i am just making this up as i go, so don't take it to serious, but i just had a thought of what ideally might happen:)
when mozilla loses its funding from google they realize that in order to continue there needs to be an organization that is comprised of all the above organizations that want to support an open internet. they get together to form some kind of super organization like a consortium where they all are a member of and all contribute to the continued funding of firefox.
The larger impact I suspect this will have in my life, is that I'll increasingly turn to not using websites, opting instead to using tools like yt-dlp.
These changes didn't just happen because of a bunch of greedy ad pushers. This and many other changes over the last few decades came about by taking my tax money and pouring it into these companies to gain compliance to state agendas. This isn't something the 'community' will be able to stave off.
If the internet is just going to become another medium like TV, Radio and newspapers were for so many years, adding on top the ability of the producers to watch me watching them, then it's over. The tech community is full of intellectual dishonest sellouts. Game over. Let's push letsencrypt again in response to the state backdooring the certificate authorities, duuurrr. "AI", duurrrr.
How does discovery work with tools like yt-dlp?
It doesn't really concern me yet. I'll wait for the controversy to die down and examine it then.
There are a bunch of locked Google docs linked in the issue, probably internal privacy guidelines.
I can't say that this surprises me, perhaps they are looking for alternate revenue streams in case Google cuts them out?
To HN: Will you be quitting firefox over this change, or is there simply no better place to leave for?