https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/building-whats-next/
?????????????
Users can export saves anytime until October 8, 2025, after which their data will be permanently deleted. [...]
Meanwhile, new features like Tab Groups and enhanced bookmarks now provide built-in ways to manage reading lists easily. [...]
This shift allows us to shape the next era of the internet – with tools like vertical tabs, smart search and more AI-powered features on the way. We’ll continue to build a browser that works harder for you: more personal, more powerful and still proudly independent.
"We are stopping the thing that lets you make and share curated collections of offline pages with a little algorithmic affinity recommendation overlay because people don't want to manage reading lists and want to only have algorithmic recommendations.
Don't worry we basically fully replaced them with bookmarks (??) and a different tab orientation (??) because people still want to manage reading lists (??). But you can't actually import your pocket export to those things, and since they don't actually replace them we won't just move your data to them and will just delete it in a few months.
In conclusion, this is why pivoting to focus on the same gimmicks everyone else is focusing on and transitioning your personalized collections to generic AI slop reflects our being the most independent organization ever (???) Which lets us prioritize personalization (????)"
excuse me can you repeat that? blink twice if you need someone to come get you
I wouldn't say I know a ton of people, but I know enough, and none of them use Firefox unless they are a privacy wingnut or otherwise have some specific reason to hate Google and Apple. It just isn't a better piece of software than Chrome, it can't be and never will be, Google has infinity dollars, it competed on a different axis and that was fine for the people the use it because privacy is more important than perf or ux. The 2% of browser share that use Firefox are those privacy Wingnuts.
The one moz employee that frequently wanders into these threads once promised to show us the user research that is informing them and making them think "people who use Firefox are fine with ads, love them, don't mind having surprise advertising tech running in the browser that explicitly tells them it won't do that, and are apparently now clambering for more AI in their browser" and I suspect we probably won't. There just is no way that someone who thinks that the series of bad calls Firefox has made recently are actually fine would use Firefox.
i don't mean to spend multiple days ragging on mozilla, but reading this:
https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/internet-policy/amicus_brief/
and it's hard for me to express how i both feel for them and do not love the idea of firefox revenue going to zero, but also can't help but laugh at how this is pure slapstick and they are the clown trying to beg the rakes to stop hitting them in the face.
ok in this RPG you are mozilla. the federal government pursues google for antitrust finally (this is good). the federal government zeroes in on exactly your funding mechanism as one of the major remedies it seeks (this is bad). you are in a pickle. you need to hedge, you need to diversify, you need to abandon ship. everyone who cares about you knows that, but what do you do?
do you:
or....
@jonny it occurs to me that they could possibly use the current AI era to play catch up by ignoring it while everyone else is obsessed with it.
Then again, is they are under contract to not disparage Google, they're possibly required to use and hype AI.
I am absolutely one of the privacy nuts that used Firefox while everyone else was ditching it for Chrome, but the goodwill has been burned for years, IMO. It's hard to look Firefox in the UI.
@plaidtron3000 ta-da! the shit was just shit!
[echoing ha ha ha ha ha ha ha until all lungs flatten into a single sheet, incapable of laughter, smudged against the vacuum collapse radiating from the heart of a new physics]
@jonny @plaidtron3000 i ended up watching this entire thing from beginning to end. amazing
also when commenter said “When he said "I am the creator of all ukelele-whistling music heard in every advertisement throughout all of time I am sad" I felt that. Relatable af” I felt that. Relatable af.
*Pushes through the crowd at the recruiting desk like a pre-serum Steve Rogers*
Where can I enlist?
@jonny also all of this happened because they jumped the gun on "let’s do a US non-profit organisation because it’s the best way to do things according to (shitty lawyer #452)" instead of settling in like EU where a lot of the FOSS community is
Mastodon is guilty of the same thing btw
@jonny yeah at this point can the signal foundation adopt Firefox please
I already donate monthly for signal I'd donate a lot more for signal-flavoured firefox
@jonny Karen Sandler gave an excellent talk at #FOSDEM on saying no to funding: https://fosdem.org/2025/schedule/event/fosdem-2025-6481-when-is-it-right-to-say-no-to-funding-/
What I took away is that compromising your values for funding is always a mistake. Every time you dilute what you stand for, your biggest supporters and believers turn away from you.
I would love to throw money at Mozilla, if only the money went to the browser, and they stood up for the open web.
@jonny well, LIbrewolf seems a better choice. Even then, you will be owned by 52/8 54/8 34/8 and 35/8 netblocks from Amazon and Google unless you get rid of push, ping, shopping the control addresses and a few other things.
You see, they put a lot of work into this, mainly out of self interest. It's not for you.
If you're online, they will try to stop you from changing or even scrolling down to certain things in about.config
They infiltrate everything.
keep on eye on that pile of underwear.
@jonny @_r I'm a mere mortal, the kind of dupe who knows just enough to be concerned but not enough to track the latest wolf species or to know how to make an "active choice about telemetry" (PS those were some great scenes in Apollo 13 amirite). Digital privacy is less important to me than epic complicity, but both are important. I'm a devotee of @cyberlyra (Janet Vertesi) but too slow to implement her opt out recommendations. I guess what I'm getting at: if FF is going bad, what should a mere moral do? Besides vote?
I know this is like asking someone how to play bridge and I know it sounds selfish and childish. I also know enough to be worried about hundreds of millions of easily zombified users...
You're doing a great job! Nobody's perfect, we all just do what we can when we can. Keep it up!