Mastodawn

Puffy Dec 29, 2023

This December, if there’s one tech New Year’s resolution I’d encourage you to have, it’s switching to the only remaining ethical web browser, Firefox. According to recent posts on social media, Firefox’s market share is slipping. We should not let that happen. There are two main reasons why switching is important.

“Red Panda” by Mathias Appel is marked with CC0 1.0.

1. Privacy

Firefox is the only major browser not built by a company that makes money from advertising and/or selling your personal data. There’s been a lot of talk about websites tracking users using cookies, fingerprinting and other nefarious technologies that hurt your privacy. But owning the browser puts Google, Apple and Microsoft in a position where they don’t even need those tricks. We need to use browsers that are independent, and right now that means Firefox.

2. Browser engine monopoly

Wikipedia lists four browser engines as being “active”. Browser engines are the bits that take a web page’s code and display it on your screen. Ideally, they conform to the official W3C standards, and display all elements as it describes. If that’s the case, web developers can easily write sites that work on all browsers. No proprietary vendor lock-in nonsense, just glorious open standards at work.

It’s happened before

In the early 2000’s, Internet Explorer had a massive 95% market share. This meant that many sites were only developed for use with IE. They’d use experimental features that IE supported, in favor of things from the official HTML standard. This was a very bad situation, which hindered the development of the World Wide Web.

Currenty, Chrome, Safari and Edge all use variations of the closely related Webkit and Blink engines. If we want to avoid another browser engine monopoly, we need to support Firefox, and its “Gecko” engine.

Firefox is actually really good

If Firefox would be a bad browser, I would not recommend you to switch. It’s fast, has a nice user interface, and feels every bit as modern and elegant as its competition. I’ve been using it as my main browser for a couple of years now, on Linux, Windows, MacOS and Android. As a web developer, I usually have at least three browsers open, but when I go look something up on the web, I pick Firefox.

So please, help save the web by using the best browser out there. It’s an easy thing to do, and it makes a big difference.

https://roytanck.com/2023/12/23/in-2024-please-switch-to-firefox/

#Firefox #privacy

Download the fastest Firefox ever

Faster page loading, less memory usage and packed with features, the new Firefox is here.

Mozilla

Jarjantifa Dec 23, 2023

@roy Firefox has been my default daily browser for years now. It's great. Works entirely as intended. Supports all the extensions you might want. Supports cross platform synchronization of bookmarks (I use it on android, Linux and windows). And it doesn't have any of the "trying-to-lock-you-in" crap that the other browsers have.
On my work laptop I sometimes use Edge... OMG what a piece of crap that's become. You need to install an extension to get rid of the f-ing MS homepage. Do Not Use Edge!

thediemustfall Dec 24, 2023

@roy I’ve been thinking of switching to Brave. Is that a bad option?

BG McKay (Brian) 🇨🇦Dec 24, 2023

@thediemustfall I use both Brave and Firefox. Happy with both of them

Ben Ramsey Dec 29, 2023

@BGMcKay @thediemustfall Brave is a Chromium browser. Their business model is dependent on ad revenue; the ads are optional, but if you turn them on, you can get rewarded with some kind of cryptocurrency. The founder and CEO of Brave donated money to California Proposition 8.

For these reasons, I won’t use Brave.

BG McKay (Brian) 🇨🇦Dec 29, 2023

@ramsey @thediemustfall thank you for that info

JW prince of CPH Dec 29, 2023

@thediemustfall @roy Well, Brave = Chromium, which makes it at least somewhat beholden to Google. More importantly, though, Brave CEO Brendan Eich is a homophobic COVID denier crypto-bro, which is why I dropped it & finally switched to Firefox (Eich was fired from Mozilla for these views).

Spencer Dec 29, 2023

@thediemustfall @roy Here's a good summary why you shouldn't use Brave, by @corbin: https://www.spacebar.news/stop-using-brave-browser/

Stop using Brave Browser

Seriously.

The Spacebar

thediemustfall Jan 1, 2024

@sphars @roy @corbin Great information! Thanks for this. Brave is definitely not a browser I’d use. Fortunately, I’d only downloaded it and never used it. The registration and crypto-y bloatware was a definite turnoff.

Daniel Bohrer Dec 24, 2023

@roy btw, Mozilla also has a donation page at https://foundation.mozilla.org
Last I heard they are still largely funded by royalties from search engine providers…

Mozilla Foundation

Mozilla is a global nonprofit dedicated to keeping the Internet a global public resource that is open and accessible to all.

Mozilla Foundation

Anne Dec 24, 2023

@roy I used Firefox for quite a while years ago. Might be time to switch back.

Justified Ancient of Moomin Dec 24, 2023

@roy I switched back from Chrome to Firefox when the "Quantum" release came out in 2017 and never looked back. Every machine I touch that doesn't have Firefox gets it installed and made default.

Jaguarior Jones Dec 24, 2023

Claudius Dec 24, 2023

@roy I'm an unwavering Firefox user for almost two decades, but I wish they weren't taking half a billion dollars from Google.

Brendan Jones Dec 29, 2023

@claudius @roy Same. Feels a little disingenuous to say Firefox doesn’t make money from ads when their largest revenue stream by far is … entirely so Google can serve you ads.

That’s not a reason to not use Firefox, it’s still the best browser, and I honestly don’t know how I’d fix the situation if I were Firefox CEO (besides taking a massive pay cut); it’s hard to compete when all your major competitors come as free, bundled apps.

Artemis13Athena Dec 24, 2023

@roy I enjoyed reading this. It's so rare that I'm actually doing the right thing, so I'm delighted to know Firefox is a "preferred" browser. I love using Firefox!

💉*9 Roger Dec 24, 2023

@roy early 2000 every project we did resolved to be browser independent. That resolve never lasted more than a week before it locked into IE (I was coding back end, so on the periphery of this). I use FF exclusively now. Last time I looked the profiles worked better under Chromium, FF profiles were confusing. I'm not using profiles now though, so not a problem for me.

curtosis Dec 24, 2023

@roy @_dmh While I support encouraging people to move to Firefox (and am a FF user myself) there are a couple misleading elements here.

1) “Apple makes money from ads” is technically true, but that’s a long way from using their browser platform to enable it. It’s simply inaccurate to lump that in with the Chromium ecosystem’s approach to enabling ads. Safari’s privacy measures cost FB *billions* when they rolled out.

1/

curtosis Dec 24, 2023

2) There are good reasons to support rendering engine diversity, but calling WebKit and Blink “closely related” is like saying PostgreSQL and Ingres are closely related: true when the fork happened, but completely irrelevant at this point given the development since then. Again, while technically accurate, stating it this way implies a relationship that isn’t there.

As I said: I’m a FF user and fan. But we can support it without blurring distinctions that do matter. 2/2

Roy Tanck Dec 29, 2023

@curtosis I basicallyy agree with both points, but I wanted to keep this post short and easy to understand for non-experts.

I personally don't trust Apple one bit, but didn't want to go into that in this post.

And honestly, I don't know how different Blink and Webkit are these days, and whether they're different enough to call them competition. But an independent third option is preferable no matter what.

McSpadden Dec 29, 2023

@roytanck @curtosis do you plan to expand on your Apple position? would def read a post about it

curtosis Dec 30, 2023

@mcspadden @roytanck Not sure who this was directed to, but my argument is quite simple:

Google has a long, documented history of actively grabbing every bit of data they can to feed their ad machine.

Apple has a long, documented history of actively trying to *improve* privacy. Including having worse AI b/c they kept it on-device.

There are plenty of reasons to critique Apple, and nobody should blindly trust any service. But equating them is a bit like saying the FBI is as bad as the KGB.

McSpadden Dec 29, 2023

@curtosis @roy @_dmh thoughts on this? https://mastodon.online/@kerfuffle/111664953881568789

Kerfuffle (@[email protected])

Attached: 1 image #Mozilla asks for donations to reach half of their CEO's yearly salary, while people are getting laid off. Seems to me that the solution is simple. [edit] Okay, this has gotten a lot of buzz, and I'm happy people respectfully weighed in with arguments and counterarguments. I'm not giving up on #Mozilla and #FireFox, nor on other initiatives for a better web. I am, however, going to be muting this now.

Mastodon

curtosis Dec 29, 2023

@mcspadden @roy @_dmh I have no particular insight, other than generally finding US CEO pay outrageously disconnected from job performance, and very tired of the tax and employment laws being written to privatize profits and socialize losses.

James Britt Dec 29, 2023

Prefer Bromite because it offers better customisation.

https://www.bromite.org/

E.g. android Firefox does not allow you to set your own home page.

Bromite

Bromite is a Chromium fork with ad blocking and enhanced privacy; take back your browser

Bromite - take back your browser

aerique Dec 29, 2023

@jamesbritt @roy Bromite is a Chromium browser and thus uses the same rendering engine as Chrome which helps Google and Microsoft.

Spencer Dec 29, 2023

@jamesbritt @roy As far as I can tell, Bromite is dead. There is a fork by one of the maintainers called Cromite that is updated: https://github.com/uazo/cromite

GitHub - uazo/cromite: Cromite a Bromite fork with ad blocking and privacy enhancements; take back your browser!

Cromite a Bromite fork with ad blocking and privacy enhancements; take back your browser! - uazo/cromite

GitHub

James Britt Dec 29, 2023

Yeah, looks like the last release on F-droid was 2022.

Word of Mouth Dec 29, 2023

@[email protected] 100% this... I sometimes need to do cross-browser frontend work but pretty rare. I use chromium in that case.

Otherwise, I'm all #Firefox all the time, everywhere

@byAndreas🤟😌✨Dec 29, 2023

@roy my firefox is best friend with my #vivaldi #browser ; )
https://vivaldi.com

Vivaldi Browser | Powerful, Personal and Private web browser

It’s a web browser. But fun. It comes with a bunch of clever features built-in. It’s super flexible and does not track you. Get the Vivaldi browser for desktop, mobile, and your car!

Vivaldi Browser

Tekknovator Dec 29, 2023

@byandreas @roy Vivaldi has great features, but just another chromium variation. But I use it as secondary browser, next to Firefox as well. Vivaldi starts to feel bloated imho, because they try to cover too much ground with default features instead of extensions or plugins.

Gillinger has moved Dec 29, 2023

@roy I used to use Firefox and liked it well enough. Then they did an upgrade that changed all my settings/layouts etc and I couldn't get them to work the same again so I ditched it.
Mayve they've improved now. I'll take a look.

Gillinger has moved Dec 29, 2023

@roy Oh great. Can only download Firefox through Google Play, even from Mozilla's own website. Shurely shome mistake?

Gillinger has moved Dec 29, 2023

@roy Ah yes, now I remember why I stopped using Firefox for Android. Because the toolbar setup is shit! It can't do this:

Spencer Dec 29, 2023

@Gillinger @roy not sure which version of Firefox you downloaded, there's several variations of Firefox available for Android. Check out https://www.f-droid.org/en/packages/de.marmaro.krt.ffupdater/ to download the version you want. I personally like using Fennec on my device.

FFUpdater | F-Droid - Free and Open Source Android App Repository

Updater for privacy friendly browsers

pafurijaz Dec 29, 2023

@roy never stopped using since Windows XP so on, and now I'm using Linux over a decade, on Android only FireFox.

BramVanDriel Dec 29, 2023

@roy What about the DuckDuckGo browser? They have a brilliant feature that helps you watch YouTube without ads, and I really like their logo.

Should I switch?

Roy Tanck Dec 29, 2023

@BramVanDriel @roy As far as I know, DDG's browser uses your system's webview engine, which on Windows is Webkit-based. On Mac/iOS it's likely Safari.

So while it's definitely a good option in terms of privacy, it doesn't check the second box in my post.

BramVanDriel Dec 29, 2023

@roytanck @roy ah, of course.. thanks. Now I finally have a new year's resolution: switch browsers (again).

@roy I tried using Librewolf and Firefox proper, and I couldn't use them. After a week of both, I had to go back to Vivaldi. Firefox is missing too many features and extensions and is run by too many corrupt corporate suits.

They keep ruining any hope they had by focusing on frivolous features and not on features users a fully want.

Unfortunately, it looks like Chromium based browsers might be a monopoly; the best we can hope for is Chromium being ripped away from Google by the governments.

Ken Dec 29, 2023

@roy I'm a fan of Duck Duck Gp for privacy purposes.

Deb has moved! (see profile) 🇨🇦Dec 29, 2023

@OceanPinesGuy @roy DuckDuckGo, me too. It was recommended by EFF.

I noticed that Firefox added more privacy features ... is it adequately protected now that I can move back? 🤔

Sven (retired)Dec 29, 2023

@roy Ha, I was thinking to kick off a series with like one little thing to change every month. That is a great post to reference for the #1 that I had thought to be the starter anyways. 😅

AutisticMumTo3 Dec 29, 2023

@roy
I use the release version on my mobile & Nightly on my laptop (which in spite of being pre-release still a work in progress version is still pretty stable)

Flit 🦊 ❄️Dec 29, 2023

@roy There’s another option: if you don’t like the telemetry and unnecessary features that Firefox has (Pocket in particular), check out Librewolf, a fork of Firefox that strips all that out.

I’ve been happy with Firefox, but I think I’ll go ahead and try Librewolf at some point too

LibreWolf Browser

A custom version of Firefox, focused on privacy, security and freedom.

Rabbi Nathan Farb Dec 29, 2023

There is also Fennec on mobile, which is similar in that regard. I don't mind the pretty minimal tracking and telemetry on Firefox. I use it to save login info, for example, rather than a standalone app like bitwarden.

https://f-droid.org/packages/org.mozilla.fennec_fdroid/

Fennec F-Droid | F-Droid - Free and Open Source Android App Repository

Browse the web

@roy I have tried various things to get FF run fast, but failed every time; it’s the slowest browser for me on multiple machines and OS’.

Scientific Frontline Dec 29, 2023

@roy
My take on it.

Gɪᴀɴɴɪ’s Eᴠɪʟ Tᴡɪɴ 📚Dec 29, 2023

@roy What about Vivaldi and Brave? I’m usually browsing using those.

Mitex Leo Dec 30, 2023

@roy Firefox is my Secondary browser 😊

Joel at Seldon Crisis Dec 30, 2023

@roy This is great to hear. Firefox has been my default browser since it was Mozilla. I often have to use Chrome for development or Safari to test, and never use Windows unless I have to, and there it's usually Firefox as well. Sometimes I have issues with video playing and, from what I'm seeing here, can probably assume the problem is with something non-standard being done by the site (CNN especially).

Don Marti Dec 30, 2023

@roy I agree.

One of the hardest #webPrivacy problems imho is avoiding tracking on YouTube while still having an account on other Google sites.

The good news is Firefox has a feature called "Multi-Account Containers" that can make YouTube tabs and tabs for other Google sites (mostly) separate for tracking purposes.

The bad news is that there's still no one "YouTube Container" extension the way that there's a "Facebook Container." More steps are required but it works: https://blog.zgp.org/youtube-cleanup/

cleaning up YouTube

Jesus Michał "Le Sigh" 🏔 (he)Jan 1, 2024

@roy, the worst thing is that I still remember how enthusiastic I was about WebKit back then, as a powerful open source competitor that was finally able to break Microsoft's monopoly. How stupid I was.