Endangered Fox?
December 9, 2023 2:10 AM Subscribe
A somewhat obscure guideline for developers of U.S. government websites may be about to accelerate the long, sad decline of Mozilla’s Firefox browser. There already are plenty of large entities, both public and private, whose websites lack proper support for Firefox; and that will get only worse in the near future, because the ’fox’s auburn paws are perilously close to the lip of the proverbial slippery slope. [via Hacker News]
The Atlanta Journal Constitution recently stopped supporting Firefox, so that subscribers can't login to their website using Firefox. They never said they did it on purpose, but after I repeatedly reported the problem to them, they told me to switch to Chrome. Instead, I cancelled my subscription.
(their terrible biased coverage on Cop City did not help)
posted by hydropsyche at 4:18 AM on December 9, 2023 [43 favorites]
(their terrible biased coverage on Cop City did not help)
posted by hydropsyche at 4:18 AM on December 9, 2023 [43 favorites]
I had no idea FF usage was so low! It's now my main since I don't use Apple as much as I used to. Is it really that hard to support multiple browsers these days? I've been using them since NCSA Mosaic and I know they are generally big messes but I thought they were generally able to grab the same stuff and display it. Has it gotten harder to support multiple browsers than it used to be?
Hoping the Chrome debacle above helps people get into it. Also hoping the folks at Mozilla will see this and attempt some new outreach and marketing…
posted by SaltySalticid at 5:16 AM on December 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
Hoping the Chrome debacle above helps people get into it. Also hoping the folks at Mozilla will see this and attempt some new outreach and marketing…
posted by SaltySalticid at 5:16 AM on December 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
Gee, now that Firefox is the only browser that'll let you block ads, I wonder if some wealthy and powerful people have an interest in convincing the public that it's on its last legs, can't be trusted, isn't worth switching to...
posted by MrVisible at 5:23 AM on December 9, 2023 [129 favorites]
posted by MrVisible at 5:23 AM on December 9, 2023 [129 favorites]
Some folks probably don't know that Firefox on Android supports uBlock Origin, the best ad blocker. It's an absolute game-changer for mobile browsing.
There is also a nice extension to open sites in archive.is, which is nice for reading Money Stuff.
posted by novalis_dt at 5:26 AM on December 9, 2023 [43 favorites]
There is also a nice extension to open sites in archive.is, which is nice for reading Money Stuff.
posted by novalis_dt at 5:26 AM on December 9, 2023 [43 favorites]
Mozilla have also made it very clear where they stand when it comes to ads, tracking and user privacy:
Obviously, this is bad and it shouldn’t be a surprise to anybody who has followed our work in Firefox that we believe this needs to change. We’ve been working for years to drive the industry in a better direction. In 2015 we launched Tracking Protection, our first major step towards blocking tracking in the browser. In 2019 we turned on a newer version of our anti-tracking technology by default for all of our users. And we’re not the only ones doing this.posted by fight or flight at 5:31 AM on December 9, 2023 [39 favorites]
We believe all browsers should protect their users from tracking, particularly cookie-based tracking, and should be moving expeditiously to do so.
How does this differ from putting "content" on Facebook or "Xtwitter" where anybody who isn't logged in cannot see it?
I suppose if a government disappears up a corporate asshole, the citizens pay the price?
posted by BYiro at 5:32 AM on December 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
I suppose if a government disappears up a corporate asshole, the citizens pay the price?
posted by BYiro at 5:32 AM on December 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
Also, as pointed out in the Hacker News thread, many users of Firefox (and other niche browsers) use settings which block Google Analytics by default. The US government monitoring uses Google Analytics. Therefore, it's not an accurate picture of browser usage. (Not to mention the fact that it suggests said monitoring is already somewhat in the pocket of Google, therefore has a vested interest in making sure everyone keeps using it.)
posted by fight or flight at 5:36 AM on December 9, 2023 [44 favorites]
posted by fight or flight at 5:36 AM on December 9, 2023 [44 favorites]
Wikimedia, which appears to get its browser statistics from the user-agent string rather than google analytics, reckons Firefox is on about 3.4%, down from 10% in 2015. Firefox Mobile barely exists (0.53%).
posted by Klipspringer at 5:55 AM on December 9, 2023 [8 favorites]
posted by Klipspringer at 5:55 AM on December 9, 2023 [8 favorites]
This is grim news. I can't remember when I started using Firefox exclusively on my own machine, but it's been at least 15 years—long enough that I'd be at a real loss if I had to switch to another browser. I'm a big fan of Thunderbird, too, but I guess that's not threatened in the same way as Firefox.
posted by heteronym at 6:00 AM on December 9, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by heteronym at 6:00 AM on December 9, 2023 [6 favorites]
I've been using Firefox on Windows for the last 10 years or so, and Firefox on Android for several years also. I keep Edge (Chromium-based) around in case I bump in to something Firefox doesn't work with. But so far, such problems have turned out to be out-of-order websites, not issues with Firefox compatibility.
posted by Western Infidels at 6:15 AM on December 9, 2023 [8 favorites]
posted by Western Infidels at 6:15 AM on December 9, 2023 [8 favorites]
In fact, because the iPhone is so popular in the U.S. — which is obvious from what you see on that aforementioned government analytics page — Safari pulls large numbers that also hurt Firefox.
I'm posting this comment from Firefox on my iPhone.
posted by 3.2.3 at 6:30 AM on December 9, 2023 [10 favorites]
I'm posting this comment from Firefox on my iPhone.
posted by 3.2.3 at 6:30 AM on December 9, 2023 [10 favorites]
I'm telling everyone I know (who don't already know) that the time to switch away from Chrome is now because of a million Google-y reasons, but especially because of the Manifest-V3 shit. Hearing that their adblockers will stop working on June has caused a couple of people to switch and others to at least hear me; I hope there's a bounce in FF numbers mid-2024.
I switched from FF to Chrome way back when, but went back to FF after the big re-write that put tabs in separate processes (a la Chrome). I even use it on my iPad, even though it's just a reskinned Safari just to try to keep the numbers up.
posted by Ickster at 6:30 AM on December 9, 2023 [8 favorites]
I switched from FF to Chrome way back when, but went back to FF after the big re-write that put tabs in separate processes (a la Chrome). I even use it on my iPad, even though it's just a reskinned Safari just to try to keep the numbers up.
posted by Ickster at 6:30 AM on December 9, 2023 [8 favorites]
This thread gave me the impetus to install Firefox on my phone. Shoulda did that years ago.
posted by ob1quixote at 6:34 AM on December 9, 2023 [12 favorites]
posted by ob1quixote at 6:34 AM on December 9, 2023 [12 favorites]
So it's got a market share similar to... let's see... Volvo in the American auto market.
posted by clawsoon at 6:49 AM on December 9, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by clawsoon at 6:49 AM on December 9, 2023 [6 favorites]
This thread gave me the impetus to install Firefox on my phone. Shoulda did that years ago.Same here. I did have it installed a couple phones ago, but it was kinda slow and I switched to the DuckDuckGo browser. I reinstalled Firefox this morning and I'm quite pleased with its performance so far.
posted by heteronym at 7:01 AM on December 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
So i stopped using Firefox on my iPhone because extensions don’t work and so aggressive ad blocking doesn’t work, whereas safari you can install extensions for.
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/add-ons-firefox-ios
Do i misunderstand? Is there actually a way to block ads in Firefox on ios?
posted by congen at 7:01 AM on December 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/add-ons-firefox-ios
Do i misunderstand? Is there actually a way to block ads in Firefox on ios?
posted by congen at 7:01 AM on December 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
So it's got a market share similar to... let's see... Volvo in the American auto market
that's not a very relevant comparison since browsers are free software and cars are an expensive, rapidly depreciating material item that is required for navigating most of the American landscape
posted by kokaku at 7:07 AM on December 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
that's not a very relevant comparison since browsers are free software and cars are an expensive, rapidly depreciating material item that is required for navigating most of the American landscape
posted by kokaku at 7:07 AM on December 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
Mod note: Link in post fixed, carry on!
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 7:10 AM on December 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 7:10 AM on December 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
generally speaking supporting firefox is pretty low effort, and the majority of the time when something doesn’t work in firefox but works in chrome it’s because firefox is adhering closely to the documented standards and your code is just wrong, while chrome is happily silently fixing the broken code so that it works. Safari is the real pain in ass to support, especially iOS safari.
posted by dis_integration at 7:16 AM on December 9, 2023 [11 favorites]
posted by dis_integration at 7:16 AM on December 9, 2023 [11 favorites]
I've had firefox forever on my various laptops with all the tracking extensions enabled and I haven't seen ads in recent memory, I'm guessing because of the Ubock origin and I also have the facebook blocker thing that constantly pops up in the boxes whenever I'm about to input my email or something, I love it and this news makes me very sad and I hope FF can hang on.
They recently sent me a fundraising email which I got deep into the donating part of it until they asked me for my home address. I know this is silly because I'm sure anyone wanting it could find it easily, but that stopped me in my tracks. I will now go back and donate to their efforts.
I already pay for the firefox VPN that I almost never use, and their browser is one I would pay to use over chrome any day.
posted by newpotato at 7:29 AM on December 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
They recently sent me a fundraising email which I got deep into the donating part of it until they asked me for my home address. I know this is silly because I'm sure anyone wanting it could find it easily, but that stopped me in my tracks. I will now go back and donate to their efforts.
I already pay for the firefox VPN that I almost never use, and their browser is one I would pay to use over chrome any day.
posted by newpotato at 7:29 AM on December 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
Folks dismissing the decline in Firefox market share are whistling past the graveyard. This actual article is a bit alarmist although that 2% market share thing is a meaningful threshold with practical consequences. Every single measure of market share shows Firefox in a long slow decline; here's a graph that shows Firefox tumbling from 30% to 3% in the last 13 years. (data source).
What's frustrating is Firefox and Mozilla are incredibly well funded thanks to the Google search deal. They're taking in $450M a year and have over $1B in the bank. The core browser product is quite good. But something is not working.
Gee, now that Firefox is the only browser that'll let you block ads
This really isn't true. I assume you're talking about the Manifest V3 change which several ad blocker authors, most importantly Gorhill of uBlock origin, say will cause problems. I'm not thrilled about the change either but it doesn't stop ad blocking entirely. There's even a uBlock Origin Lite which works in V3. Click the word "However" in that page for a long description of drawbacks, they are significant, but it will mostly work to block ads.
When Google disables V2 (in June 2024) it won't magically make all ad blockers stop working. It might be a market opportunity for Firefox though.
posted by Nelson at 7:32 AM on December 9, 2023 [12 favorites]
What's frustrating is Firefox and Mozilla are incredibly well funded thanks to the Google search deal. They're taking in $450M a year and have over $1B in the bank. The core browser product is quite good. But something is not working.
Gee, now that Firefox is the only browser that'll let you block ads
This really isn't true. I assume you're talking about the Manifest V3 change which several ad blocker authors, most importantly Gorhill of uBlock origin, say will cause problems. I'm not thrilled about the change either but it doesn't stop ad blocking entirely. There's even a uBlock Origin Lite which works in V3. Click the word "However" in that page for a long description of drawbacks, they are significant, but it will mostly work to block ads.
When Google disables V2 (in June 2024) it won't magically make all ad blockers stop working. It might be a market opportunity for Firefox though.
posted by Nelson at 7:32 AM on December 9, 2023 [12 favorites]
Having ad-blocking on mobile android is a game changer, I reckon. I just installed based on that.
posted by idb at 7:34 AM on December 9, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by idb at 7:34 AM on December 9, 2023 [6 favorites]
many users of Firefox use settings which block Google Analytics by default.
No need, Firefox has blocked that by default since 2019
Firefox market share on desktop is just under 7% so much of the overall decline is due to growth in mobile devices which don't give you any choice of browser.
posted by Lanark at 7:39 AM on December 9, 2023 [7 favorites]
No need, Firefox has blocked that by default since 2019
Firefox market share on desktop is just under 7% so much of the overall decline is due to growth in mobile devices which don't give you any choice of browser.
posted by Lanark at 7:39 AM on December 9, 2023 [7 favorites]
Firefox works great on Android. You can make it the default browser on your mobile device. It even supports ad blocker extensions natively.
posted by Nelson at 7:41 AM on December 9, 2023 [13 favorites]
posted by Nelson at 7:41 AM on December 9, 2023 [13 favorites]
What groovy cool magic Web stuff is the government trying to do that can't be done by using W3C and/or WHATWG standards?
posted by Ayn Marx at 7:42 AM on December 9, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by Ayn Marx at 7:42 AM on December 9, 2023 [6 favorites]
The core browser product is quite good. But something is not working.
My guess is that a decline in computer literacy is playing a large role here. To install Firefox, you have to be the type of person who knows that you can change your default browser, to know enough about other browser options to know that Firefox even exists, and to care enough about your privacy that you will go through the hassle of actually doing it.
I think there are just fewer and fewer people like that these days, as tech companies push us towards these integrated, non-customizable, opaque computing sorts of products. More people just use what is put in front of them.
I'm not saying it's the only reason but it seems like a big potential reason to me.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 7:57 AM on December 9, 2023 [37 favorites]
My guess is that a decline in computer literacy is playing a large role here. To install Firefox, you have to be the type of person who knows that you can change your default browser, to know enough about other browser options to know that Firefox even exists, and to care enough about your privacy that you will go through the hassle of actually doing it.
I think there are just fewer and fewer people like that these days, as tech companies push us towards these integrated, non-customizable, opaque computing sorts of products. More people just use what is put in front of them.
I'm not saying it's the only reason but it seems like a big potential reason to me.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 7:57 AM on December 9, 2023 [37 favorites]
It seems to me that Chrome has the benefit of being the product of an advertising company, which advertises it heavily so it can be used to distribute their ads. So the disparity in market share isn't surprising.
posted by MrVisible at 7:58 AM on December 9, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by MrVisible at 7:58 AM on December 9, 2023 [5 favorites]
Firefox is all I use. It's awesome. I'm shocked people don't use it as well.
posted by tiny frying pan at 8:04 AM on December 9, 2023 [9 favorites]
posted by tiny frying pan at 8:04 AM on December 9, 2023 [9 favorites]
Anecdotally I'd second Kutsuwamushi. I think Firefox was also harmed by the period from, I dunno, maybe 2015ish where Chrome was just demonstrably faster. I used Firefox all through college in the aughts (it was also then the default on our university PCs) but abandoned it for Chrome because Chrome worked better, I was using an android phone, and I had to be in the google ecosystem for work so using Chrome was just easier. I switched back to Firefox on both PC and my phone about 6 months ago because of Google trying to crush ad blockers and have been pleased that the transition was easy and Firefox does pretty much everything I liked about Chrome just as well. A couple of things involving embedded video don't work in mobile for some sites but that's mostly because of my aggressive anti-tracker settings not the browser.
posted by Wretch729 at 8:06 AM on December 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by Wretch729 at 8:06 AM on December 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
What groovy cool magic Web stuff is the government trying to do that can't be done by using W3C and/or WHATWG standards?
Hiring cheap devs who only know how to optimize for Chrome?
The idea that a website does/doesn’t support a browser is a bunch of web 2.0, websites-as-apps bullshit.
I constantly run into seemingly dirt-simple sites that should work in any browser fail to load or crash, for no apparent reason. I mean, your site is for a brewpub. Why should it not work in any damned browser of moderately recent vintage?
posted by Thorzdad at 8:07 AM on December 9, 2023 [19 favorites]
Hiring cheap devs who only know how to optimize for Chrome?
The idea that a website does/doesn’t support a browser is a bunch of web 2.0, websites-as-apps bullshit.
I constantly run into seemingly dirt-simple sites that should work in any browser fail to load or crash, for no apparent reason. I mean, your site is for a brewpub. Why should it not work in any damned browser of moderately recent vintage?
posted by Thorzdad at 8:07 AM on December 9, 2023 [19 favorites]
Firefox is my desktop browser and has been since it was Mozilla. I use Edge when sites don't work in Firefox, although I'm carefully watching to see if MS adopts V3. Safari on iOS is my only mobile browser since I don't do much web stuff on my phone. I'm not sure what I'll do if FF goes belly up.
posted by tommasz at 8:22 AM on December 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by tommasz at 8:22 AM on December 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
I have been and continue to be a Firefox user (including Beta on mobile), but holy shit there have been some clunker decisions in the process of this product. I get that Pocket pays some of the bills, but damn that stuff clutters up the interface, and I really appreciate the recent emphasis on conserving memory and on performance, but... that has not always been a focus.
Also, the Firefox PDF viewer is extremely untrustworthy, and reliably turns sheet music from MusicNotes into zalgo. My bug on that was closed as cannot duplicate, and... Uh...
These days I also can't use the Mac emoji/Unicode widget to insert into Firefox text fields, I have to enter my text elsewhere and copy-paste it.
And chasing download links to find APKs to run on this Kindle Fire sure is an activity.
I run it because I think we need alternatives, but the software development process there is severely broken.
posted by straw at 8:27 AM on December 9, 2023 [7 favorites]
Also, the Firefox PDF viewer is extremely untrustworthy, and reliably turns sheet music from MusicNotes into zalgo. My bug on that was closed as cannot duplicate, and... Uh...
These days I also can't use the Mac emoji/Unicode widget to insert into Firefox text fields, I have to enter my text elsewhere and copy-paste it.
And chasing download links to find APKs to run on this Kindle Fire sure is an activity.
I run it because I think we need alternatives, but the software development process there is severely broken.
posted by straw at 8:27 AM on December 9, 2023 [7 favorites]
The difference is what I see on websites using Firefox with unlock vs what others see using Chrome is unbelievably striking. Sometimes I’ll get called over to a co-workers computer to look at something and so. many. fucking. ads. I understand the whole idea of ads being the financial center for so many websites, but there are so damn many of them and they keep working on ways to make them more obtrusive. Sites that don’t work with an adblocker mean I avoid the site unless absolutely necessary and then I’ll do anything I can to minimize the onslaught. The good news is that the dev community doesn’t just throw up their hands and take no for an answer without a fight, and odds are good we’re going to see new countermeasures if the current ones stop working.
posted by azpenguin at 8:29 AM on December 9, 2023 [13 favorites]
posted by azpenguin at 8:29 AM on December 9, 2023 [13 favorites]
No love here for Opera? I've been using that exclusively (with built-in ad blocker) since Opera Mini was the solution for Symbian non-smart phones. I know, new Chinese owners, but still. I do have Firefox on my laptop for testing websites in another environment.
posted by St. Oops at 8:33 AM on December 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by St. Oops at 8:33 AM on December 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
> What groovy cool magic Web stuff is the government trying to do that can't be done by using W3C and/or WHATWG standards?
> The idea that a website does/doesn’t support a browser is a bunch of web 2.0, websites-as-apps bullshit.
The actual USWDS documentation is nothing like this. The very first words of it are:
The argument in the linked article is that companies will use this 2% thing as an excuse to develop sites that work only in Chrome and Safari and not Firefox. As a prediction about the future, that seems a pretty safe bet, but only because it already happens - it's not like they need an excuse.
As a criticism of the USWDS, it's an extremely cherry-picking take.
posted by automatronic at 8:35 AM on December 9, 2023 [12 favorites]
> The idea that a website does/doesn’t support a browser is a bunch of web 2.0, websites-as-apps bullshit.
The actual USWDS documentation is nothing like this. The very first words of it are:
USWDS components are built on a solid HTML foundation, progressively enhanced to provide core experiences across browsers. All users will have access to the same critical information and basic experience regardless of their browser, although those experiences will render better in newer browsers. If JavaScript fails users will still get a robust HTML foundation and all the necessary content.They have also clearly paid a lot of attention to the gov.uk design standards, which are excellent and based on similar straightforward principles.
The argument in the linked article is that companies will use this 2% thing as an excuse to develop sites that work only in Chrome and Safari and not Firefox. As a prediction about the future, that seems a pretty safe bet, but only because it already happens - it's not like they need an excuse.
As a criticism of the USWDS, it's an extremely cherry-picking take.
posted by automatronic at 8:35 AM on December 9, 2023 [12 favorites]
Isn't Firefox playing some kind of see-we're-not-a-monopoly role in the antitrust trial against Google? Would Google have an interest in keeping it alive just for that reason?
posted by clawsoon at 8:36 AM on December 9, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by clawsoon at 8:36 AM on December 9, 2023 [5 favorites]
I honestly don't understand how people use anything but Firefox both on desktop and mobile. Every so often I accidentally launch the default Google Chrome android browser on my phone and it's absolutely appalling how bad the ads are on mobile browsers.
Chromium is faster? Yeah, not when you compare Firefox + uBlock origin to Chromium without a functioning adblocker and you start counting those ads as part as the performance metrics and bandwidth hit.
I was helping someone with a Windows 10 laptop the other day using Edge just trying to download a printer driver and nearly a dozen popup ads, surveys and other nonsense got in the way of just downloading the driver installer, and these were just the "official" internal crap and cruft being thrown up by the Canon support site without any 3rd party ads.
Y'all should really be using Firefox.
posted by loquacious at 8:56 AM on December 9, 2023 [20 favorites]
Chromium is faster? Yeah, not when you compare Firefox + uBlock origin to Chromium without a functioning adblocker and you start counting those ads as part as the performance metrics and bandwidth hit.
I was helping someone with a Windows 10 laptop the other day using Edge just trying to download a printer driver and nearly a dozen popup ads, surveys and other nonsense got in the way of just downloading the driver installer, and these were just the "official" internal crap and cruft being thrown up by the Canon support site without any 3rd party ads.
Y'all should really be using Firefox.
posted by loquacious at 8:56 AM on December 9, 2023 [20 favorites]
I just switched back from Chrome to Firefox to see what's going on. So far, so good.
Firefox is faster and it is much better about blocking ads and content pop-ups and so on. And it switched me over from Chrome with no bother (imported everything after my click to approve), so I don't have to worry about losing saved bookmarks and passwords and so on. So I made Firefox my default again. I have a soft spot for endangered animals and no such soft spot for gigantic corporations.
posted by pracowity at 8:59 AM on December 9, 2023 [6 favorites]
Firefox is faster and it is much better about blocking ads and content pop-ups and so on. And it switched me over from Chrome with no bother (imported everything after my click to approve), so I don't have to worry about losing saved bookmarks and passwords and so on. So I made Firefox my default again. I have a soft spot for endangered animals and no such soft spot for gigantic corporations.
posted by pracowity at 8:59 AM on December 9, 2023 [6 favorites]
St. Oops, Opera these days is using the same HTML rendering engine as Chrome (and Chromium and Arc and...).
Which kinda leads us back to there not being a whole lot of ways to differentiate browsers and maybe the rendering engine really is a commodity and we really lost the game back when we decided that the sites get to decide how the document renders, and with JavaScript.
(And one of the '90s rants on my blog that got my first major readership boost, back when people read blogs, predicted that. Sigh.)
Anyway, I'm here thinking about maybe I need to set up a Gemini server for my web sites...
posted by straw at 9:06 AM on December 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
Which kinda leads us back to there not being a whole lot of ways to differentiate browsers and maybe the rendering engine really is a commodity and we really lost the game back when we decided that the sites get to decide how the document renders, and with JavaScript.
(And one of the '90s rants on my blog that got my first major readership boost, back when people read blogs, predicted that. Sigh.)
Anyway, I'm here thinking about maybe I need to set up a Gemini server for my web sites...
posted by straw at 9:06 AM on December 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
Hiring cheap devs who only know how to optimize for Chrome?
A) I'm not cheap.
B) The client always has final say. ALWAYS.
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 9:10 AM on December 9, 2023 [5 favorites]
A) I'm not cheap.
B) The client always has final say. ALWAYS.
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 9:10 AM on December 9, 2023 [5 favorites]
I've been using Firefox (well, Mozilla, ig) since 2002 and so should you.
posted by DeepSeaHaggis at 9:11 AM on December 9, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by DeepSeaHaggis at 9:11 AM on December 9, 2023 [6 favorites]
→
Which is really Safari, because Apple won't allow any browser on their platform which isn't based on WebKit:
posted by scruss at 9:14 AM on December 9, 2023 [17 favorites]
I'm posting this comment from Firefox on my iPhone.
Which is really Safari, because Apple won't allow any browser on their platform which isn't based on WebKit:
2.5.6 Apps that browse the web must use the appropriate WebKit framework and WebKit JavaScript.— App Store Review Guidelines - Apple Developer
posted by scruss at 9:14 AM on December 9, 2023 [17 favorites]
This thread gave me the impetus to install Firefox on my phone.
Same. I've put it where Safari was, and stuck Safari in my Other Apps folder which is a burial ground of stuff I hardly ever use.
posted by joannemerriam at 9:15 AM on December 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
Same. I've put it where Safari was, and stuck Safari in my Other Apps folder which is a burial ground of stuff I hardly ever use.
posted by joannemerriam at 9:15 AM on December 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
I do most web browsing on my laptop, an aging MacBook Pro from (I think 2017?). I use Safari and have the free Ad Block Plus extension running on it, and it works well enough for me. I get zero ads on YouTube, and I think it blocks a lot of other stuff, too?
I do get the popup "It looks like you are using an ad blocker: Disable for now or Continue Using Ad Blocker" choice on a lot of sites. I just choose continue using and move on. I find some sites that will not let me in without unblocking the site... nine-point-nine times out of ten, I back out and don't bother with the site. I can always find my info somewhere else and it doesn't hamper my life in the slightest.
I do not know enough about various ad blockers... do some completely eliminate pop ups like this? Do some let you automatically bypass paywalls? Do these "good" ad blockers also keep you from being tracked, and your online behavior followed and hoovered up? What am I missing?
My life is such that I do not need to do a ton of web searching for my job or for necessary things. Most of my web time is for fun, or reading about hobbies, surfing Reddit for hobby-stuff. Metafilter! Lots of silly stuff, and educational stuff that sparks my interest... plants, gaming, science-lite, archaeology, looking stuff up on Wikipedia, some political blog-reading, etc.
So my experience with Safari and the ad-blocker I chose works just fine for me. I guess my question is... what does a "great" ad blocker really do? I'm sure I do not have the ultimate ad-blocking setup. Basically: what am I missing?
posted by SoberHighland at 9:17 AM on December 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
I do get the popup "It looks like you are using an ad blocker: Disable for now or Continue Using Ad Blocker" choice on a lot of sites. I just choose continue using and move on. I find some sites that will not let me in without unblocking the site... nine-point-nine times out of ten, I back out and don't bother with the site. I can always find my info somewhere else and it doesn't hamper my life in the slightest.
I do not know enough about various ad blockers... do some completely eliminate pop ups like this? Do some let you automatically bypass paywalls? Do these "good" ad blockers also keep you from being tracked, and your online behavior followed and hoovered up? What am I missing?
My life is such that I do not need to do a ton of web searching for my job or for necessary things. Most of my web time is for fun, or reading about hobbies, surfing Reddit for hobby-stuff. Metafilter! Lots of silly stuff, and educational stuff that sparks my interest... plants, gaming, science-lite, archaeology, looking stuff up on Wikipedia, some political blog-reading, etc.
So my experience with Safari and the ad-blocker I chose works just fine for me. I guess my question is... what does a "great" ad blocker really do? I'm sure I do not have the ultimate ad-blocking setup. Basically: what am I missing?
posted by SoberHighland at 9:17 AM on December 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
> I get that Pocket pays some of the bills, but damn that stuff clutters up the interface
In case you didn't know you can remove it.
"about:config" in the address bar, and then search for "extensions.pocket.enabled". Then just toggled it off.
posted by urbanwhaleshark at 9:20 AM on December 9, 2023 [8 favorites]
In case you didn't know you can remove it.
"about:config" in the address bar, and then search for "extensions.pocket.enabled". Then just toggled it off.
posted by urbanwhaleshark at 9:20 AM on December 9, 2023 [8 favorites]
I block ads with NextDNS. Didn't take long to set up, and now ads are blocked on all my devices, on any network, and within apps as well as in-browser. It makes free ad-funded apps usable again. Can also block OS-level trackers, IoT devices phoning home, etc. Free up to 300K requests a month.
I still see ads in the YouTube and Instagram mobile apps, as these are served from the same subdomain as content; don't think there any practical ways of blocking them while still using those apps.
posted by Klipspringer at 9:22 AM on December 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
I still see ads in the YouTube and Instagram mobile apps, as these are served from the same subdomain as content; don't think there any practical ways of blocking them while still using those apps.
posted by Klipspringer at 9:22 AM on December 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
What's frustrating is Firefox and Mozilla are incredibly well funded thanks to the Google search deal.
The very problem of Mozilla is that the users they should be treating well they treat like absolute shit. It's no mystery why Chrome has been eating Mozilla's lunch when Chrome in every update does some form of user-hostile crap and then says "yeah, deal with it" when Mozilla holds Firefox up as this shining beacon of virtue but then turns around and pulls an iTunes/U2 with Mr Robot ad-takeover of your whole UI, breaking tons of people with highly customized UI profiles with their Chrome-chasing "Proton" UI and justifying it to users as "waaa we can't be backward compatible forever, and besides the new UI is just like Chrome, you should use it for a while and get used to it!"
With many years of dwindling market share, you'd think they might not be so "fuck you, we broke your shit, lol" to their existing userbase (which is likely savvier than the competition's, and don't like their UI to be broken because of Cargo Cult design management).
There's a decided virtue-signaling aspect to Firefox marketing, but they've actually never really wanted to deliver, and they're run by the same Silicon Valley VC techbro swine as everywhere else. Remember when they dipped their toes into the pump-and-dump world of NFTs and crypto? Oddly enough, this turned out to be one of the few idiotic things Mozilla has done in the last decade that they backtracked on.
They decided that in order to chase Chrome's market share they needed to ape Chrome's "fuck you, our new design is better, and we're breaking your profile so you have to go find your old bookmarks somewhere maybe in a backup. Good luck!" and then it was Pikachu surprise face when users like me switched over to Chrome.
With Manifest V3 I'm switching back to Firefox, under protest -- but now literally the only reason I'll use it is because of reliable ad blocking, because I'm under no illusions that any customization I do with Proton will be kept when whatever new crappy UI gets rolled out and they break my profiles so badly I have to start from scratch. Again.
Why will I switch to Firefox when I consider the management of Mozilla as 95% as shitty as Google's fecal-brained leadership? Because of that 5%. And why am I so angry at Mozilla leadership? Because they, at least, ought to know better, but they don't.
posted by tclark at 9:26 AM on December 9, 2023 [14 favorites]
The very problem of Mozilla is that the users they should be treating well they treat like absolute shit. It's no mystery why Chrome has been eating Mozilla's lunch when Chrome in every update does some form of user-hostile crap and then says "yeah, deal with it" when Mozilla holds Firefox up as this shining beacon of virtue but then turns around and pulls an iTunes/U2 with Mr Robot ad-takeover of your whole UI, breaking tons of people with highly customized UI profiles with their Chrome-chasing "Proton" UI and justifying it to users as "waaa we can't be backward compatible forever, and besides the new UI is just like Chrome, you should use it for a while and get used to it!"
With many years of dwindling market share, you'd think they might not be so "fuck you, we broke your shit, lol" to their existing userbase (which is likely savvier than the competition's, and don't like their UI to be broken because of Cargo Cult design management).
There's a decided virtue-signaling aspect to Firefox marketing, but they've actually never really wanted to deliver, and they're run by the same Silicon Valley VC techbro swine as everywhere else. Remember when they dipped their toes into the pump-and-dump world of NFTs and crypto? Oddly enough, this turned out to be one of the few idiotic things Mozilla has done in the last decade that they backtracked on.
They decided that in order to chase Chrome's market share they needed to ape Chrome's "fuck you, our new design is better, and we're breaking your profile so you have to go find your old bookmarks somewhere maybe in a backup. Good luck!" and then it was Pikachu surprise face when users like me switched over to Chrome.
With Manifest V3 I'm switching back to Firefox, under protest -- but now literally the only reason I'll use it is because of reliable ad blocking, because I'm under no illusions that any customization I do with Proton will be kept when whatever new crappy UI gets rolled out and they break my profiles so badly I have to start from scratch. Again.
Why will I switch to Firefox when I consider the management of Mozilla as 95% as shitty as Google's fecal-brained leadership? Because of that 5%. And why am I so angry at Mozilla leadership? Because they, at least, ought to know better, but they don't.
posted by tclark at 9:26 AM on December 9, 2023 [14 favorites]
I still see ads in the YouTube and Instagram mobile apps, as these are served from the same subdomain as content; don't think there any practical ways of blocking them while still using those apps.
The YouTube mobile site on Firefox Android works very well, and with uBlock Origin, has no ads.
posted by BungaDunga at 10:03 AM on December 9, 2023 [5 favorites]
The YouTube mobile site on Firefox Android works very well, and with uBlock Origin, has no ads.
posted by BungaDunga at 10:03 AM on December 9, 2023 [5 favorites]
I'm firmly planted in the Firefox/Thunderbird ecosystem and am very happy to be there. I don't have Chrome installed at all. My alternative browsers are Edge and Opera (yes, I know Opera is just reskinned Chrome, but it's the principle of the thing).
Lately, I've been finding web conferences don't work in Firefox. I've been having to boot up Edge for Teams meetings because although I have Teams installed, it barely works and mostly refuses to open. Google Meets also refuses to work with Firefox. Gee, I wonder why it's these two programs that are causing trouble. (add whatever sarcasm tag you'd like to this last statement.)
I'm not sure what I'll do when FF eventually dies. Move full time to Opera I suspect, but it's not a decision I'm looking forward to making.
posted by sardonyx at 10:04 AM on December 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
Lately, I've been finding web conferences don't work in Firefox. I've been having to boot up Edge for Teams meetings because although I have Teams installed, it barely works and mostly refuses to open. Google Meets also refuses to work with Firefox. Gee, I wonder why it's these two programs that are causing trouble. (add whatever sarcasm tag you'd like to this last statement.)
I'm not sure what I'll do when FF eventually dies. Move full time to Opera I suspect, but it's not a decision I'm looking forward to making.
posted by sardonyx at 10:04 AM on December 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
Maybe it was said upthread and I missed it but, if your uBlock Origin isn't blocking Youtube ads there are a couple of steps to take which you will find in:
this Reddit thread
posted by DeepSeaHaggis at 10:07 AM on December 9, 2023 [7 favorites]
this Reddit thread
posted by DeepSeaHaggis at 10:07 AM on December 9, 2023 [7 favorites]
Google Meets also refuses to work with Firefox. Gee, I wonder why it's these two programs that are causing trouble.
I've been using Google Meet for a while with Firefox and haven't experienced any problems.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 10:09 AM on December 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
I've been using Google Meet for a while with Firefox and haven't experienced any problems.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 10:09 AM on December 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
I can't even get a Google Meet to load for me in FF. I click the link and I keep getting flipped to a page that says something like "The session has ended."
posted by sardonyx at 10:11 AM on December 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by sardonyx at 10:11 AM on December 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
The recent Youtube ads fuck-shit-absolute-fuckery and impending Manifest V3 is why I just switched over to Firefox for personal use and jumped through all the many hoops required to get it (and uBlock) authorized by IT and Legal for everyone at my workplace.
Many, many other people in the "power user" or whatever category - the kind of people who had uBlock installed on Chrome - are doing this now. Probably not a significant %age of the market, but a loud and disproportionately influential one since they tend to be the people installing mom & dad's ad-blocker. I really hope things improve, but I am willing to dead end this one, same way that I'm planning to dead end no-Trusted Platform Module-enabled Windows before switching to Linux desktop.
All marketing is non-consensual assault of my mind, and as someone who has been in front of a screen every possible moment since I was writing BASIC on an Apple 2e at age 6, I would rather give up computers entirely and go non-violent Kaczinksky (bombs: no, manifestos: hell yes) than surrender on this point.
posted by Ryvar at 10:13 AM on December 9, 2023 [8 favorites]
Many, many other people in the "power user" or whatever category - the kind of people who had uBlock installed on Chrome - are doing this now. Probably not a significant %age of the market, but a loud and disproportionately influential one since they tend to be the people installing mom & dad's ad-blocker. I really hope things improve, but I am willing to dead end this one, same way that I'm planning to dead end no-Trusted Platform Module-enabled Windows before switching to Linux desktop.
All marketing is non-consensual assault of my mind, and as someone who has been in front of a screen every possible moment since I was writing BASIC on an Apple 2e at age 6, I would rather give up computers entirely and go non-violent Kaczinksky (bombs: no, manifestos: hell yes) than surrender on this point.
posted by Ryvar at 10:13 AM on December 9, 2023 [8 favorites]
I'm posting this comment from Firefox on my iPhone.
I've put it where Safari was, and stuck Safari in my Other Apps folder
Does Apple no longer require browsers on iOS to use WebKit (Safari’s engine)? Last I checked iOS Firefox was not actually a full-fledged Firefox.
posted by atoxyl at 10:21 AM on December 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
I've put it where Safari was, and stuck Safari in my Other Apps folder
Does Apple no longer require browsers on iOS to use WebKit (Safari’s engine)? Last I checked iOS Firefox was not actually a full-fledged Firefox.
posted by atoxyl at 10:21 AM on December 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
I use Firefox. What I want, and there may be an extension, is to set my cookie preferences so Firefox can intercept those popups and communicate that I'll take needed cookies and no others. And also one to block invitations to get notifications, which I will be subjected to in Hell, but, meanwhile, it's always No.
Google is increasingly unreliable for search, delivers ads aggressively, skews search towards shopping, etc. Bing is worse. If shopping-driven search was useful, I'd be delighted, but it's pay4play and useless.
Firefox is probably somewhat subject to If it's free, you're the product, but it's much less worse and I like it.
posted by theora55 at 10:22 AM on December 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
Google is increasingly unreliable for search, delivers ads aggressively, skews search towards shopping, etc. Bing is worse. If shopping-driven search was useful, I'd be delighted, but it's pay4play and useless.
Firefox is probably somewhat subject to If it's free, you're the product, but it's much less worse and I like it.
posted by theora55 at 10:22 AM on December 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
I am *so* ready to switch away from Android, it's a never-ending headache and we already have 4 Apple devices in the household anyway. We have the money to throw at a new phone for me in exchange for just a little bit less buggy of an experience, and I'm fine paying the ransom to not have Google peeping at every facet of our lives.
But Android allows ublock Origin to work under firefox. So that's a win by knockout.
posted by tigrrrlily at 10:24 AM on December 9, 2023 [5 favorites]
But Android allows ublock Origin to work under firefox. So that's a win by knockout.
posted by tigrrrlily at 10:24 AM on December 9, 2023 [5 favorites]
I block ads with NextDNS. Didn't take long to set up, and now ads are blocked on all my devices, on any network, and within apps as well as in-browser. It makes free ad-funded apps usable again. Can also block OS-level trackers, IoT devices phoning home, etc. Free up to 300K requests a month.
I was resistant to adopting Firefox across all my stuff until I adopted NextDNS. Once I had that in place with a few block lists, it became much easier: Platforms where Firefox can't run ad blocking plugins (iOS/iPadOS) don't require it to anymore. Given a mixed environment where I've got Macs, Linux laptops/desktops, and iOS/iPadOS devices, NextDNS + Firefox lets me use a single browser (with its shared tabs, synced bookmarks, etc.)
I do continue to use Chrome for work stuff because we're a Google shop anyhow. On a Mac Choosy + a few URL-matching rules makes sure most work stuff is routed to my Chrome work profile. On Linux Browsers doesn't have the matching rules but does just pop up a simple dialog when I hit a link outside a browser.
But the nice part of NextDNS is that Google's got nothing to say about the matter: Whatever browser I'm running is protected without having to do anything.
I don't know that the "it's actually WebKit underneath on iOS/iPadOS" distinction matters much to me: What matters is how my data is synced, and given three platforms with multiple machines my choices seem to be Chrome, Firefox, and a few others I've ruled out (e.g. Brave).
posted by Pudding Yeti at 10:25 AM on December 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
I was resistant to adopting Firefox across all my stuff until I adopted NextDNS. Once I had that in place with a few block lists, it became much easier: Platforms where Firefox can't run ad blocking plugins (iOS/iPadOS) don't require it to anymore. Given a mixed environment where I've got Macs, Linux laptops/desktops, and iOS/iPadOS devices, NextDNS + Firefox lets me use a single browser (with its shared tabs, synced bookmarks, etc.)
I do continue to use Chrome for work stuff because we're a Google shop anyhow. On a Mac Choosy + a few URL-matching rules makes sure most work stuff is routed to my Chrome work profile. On Linux Browsers doesn't have the matching rules but does just pop up a simple dialog when I hit a link outside a browser.
But the nice part of NextDNS is that Google's got nothing to say about the matter: Whatever browser I'm running is protected without having to do anything.
I don't know that the "it's actually WebKit underneath on iOS/iPadOS" distinction matters much to me: What matters is how my data is synced, and given three platforms with multiple machines my choices seem to be Chrome, Firefox, and a few others I've ruled out (e.g. Brave).
posted by Pudding Yeti at 10:25 AM on December 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
One thing Firefox has over Safari is that it actually renders graphics correctly. Safari takes shortcuts with rendering alpha composited vector elements that result in very obvious, obnoxious glitches. Also, its Javascript engine is arguably faster than Chrome or Safari for the extreme workloads I put it through. So, I'm a keep using it.
posted by seanmpuckett at 10:25 AM on December 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by seanmpuckett at 10:25 AM on December 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
I'm using Firefox right now on Android to type this comment but I have to say my usage of this browser is mostly ideological. It is unstable on my phone, and Chrome works better. I'm used to it but I wouldn't recommend it to a friend.
posted by potrzebie at 10:42 AM on December 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by potrzebie at 10:42 AM on December 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
That does remind me that Firefox made my Google Pixel 6a constantly restart. Every day or two I would find the phone had restarted — occasionally, it happened before my eyes. It sounds mad. An app shouldn't be able to do that. A browser app should hardly even be running when I'm not using it. But uninstalling Firefox completely solved the problem.
posted by Klipspringer at 10:47 AM on December 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by Klipspringer at 10:47 AM on December 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
What's frustrating is Firefox and Mozilla are incredibly well funded thanks to the Google search deal. They're taking in $450M a year and have over $1B in the bank. The core browser product is quite good. But something is not working.That something is anti-trust enforcement. Chrome hasn’t been faster than Firefox, much less Safari, for at least half a decade and it gobbles memory like nobody’s business. The reason people use it is because every Google product will suggest that you’re missing out if you don’t use Chrome, and Google chooses to make their products less reliable or slower on other browsers.
I don’t think there’s a “break Firefox users” memo - it’s more that they don’t do any QA or performance testing unless it makes the news. They famously made YouTube slower by relying on an early draft of the web components standard which only Chrome implemented, and then stalled for ages switching to the standard version which Firefox and Safari implemented. Things like Google Meet and GCP constantly have these weird reliability issues which only affect non-Chrome users.
What I’d like would be a requirement that any browser vendor be required to test any website in the same corporate family with all browsers which have more than 0.1% share and be required to fix any non-compliance with W3C standards within 30 days.
posted by adamsc at 10:47 AM on December 9, 2023 [5 favorites]
I don’t think there’s a “break Firefox users” memo
I'd heard differently
posted by subdee at 11:01 AM on December 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
I'd heard differently
posted by subdee at 11:01 AM on December 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
Me too, but that’s why I don’t rely on Reddit postings without looking at the details. That timer is specific to people who use ad blockers, not Firefox. They’re testing whether the ad video reports playback activity and if it doesn’t after 5 seconds they assume it’s due to an ad blocker.I don’t think there’s a “break Firefox users” memoI'd heard differently
My point was simply that I don’t think we’ll see a smoking gun memo saying “make them suffer” but rather intentional neglect and second class treatment.
posted by adamsc at 11:25 AM on December 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
What's frustrating is Firefox and Mozilla are incredibly well funded thanks to the Google search deal. They're taking in $450M a year and have over $1B in the bank.
Pales in comparison to the $20 billion per year they're paying to be the default search engine on Safari.
posted by clawsoon at 11:33 AM on December 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
Pales in comparison to the $20 billion per year they're paying to be the default search engine on Safari.
posted by clawsoon at 11:33 AM on December 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
I've used Firefox on desktop for as long as I can remember. No complaints. It does what I want it to do. I was using Chrome on my phone for no particular reason, but Google's creeping embrace of the Be Evil ethos led me to switch to Firefox on iOS a few months ago. It's slightly slower and buggier than Chrome, but not enough to make me switch back. It works fine overall.
posted by dephlogisticated at 11:44 AM on December 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by dephlogisticated at 11:44 AM on December 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
I use Firefox. What I want, and there may be an extension, is to set my cookie preferences so Firefox can intercept those popups and communicate that I'll take needed cookies and no others. And also one to block invitations to get notifications, which I will be subjected to in Hell, but, meanwhile, it's always No.You're looking for Consent-O-Matic, available for Firefox, Chrome and Safari. I recommend it strongly (as well as Bypass Paywalls Clean).
posted by ambrosen at 11:50 AM on December 9, 2023 [22 favorites]
Pales in comparison to the $20 billion per year they're paying to be the default search engine on Safari.
Well yes, but then Firefox' market share pales in comparison to Safari. Doubly so given that Safari has almost complete lock-in on iOS and the perception that iPhone owners are particularly valuable ad customers. That Firefox payment is only going to get smaller every year as their market share dwindles. It's a bad situation.
posted by Nelson at 12:09 PM on December 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
Well yes, but then Firefox' market share pales in comparison to Safari. Doubly so given that Safari has almost complete lock-in on iOS and the perception that iPhone owners are particularly valuable ad customers. That Firefox payment is only going to get smaller every year as their market share dwindles. It's a bad situation.
posted by Nelson at 12:09 PM on December 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
Some folks probably don't know that Firefox on Android supports uBlock Origin, the best ad blocker. It's an absolute game-changer for mobile browsing.
Oh, God, yeah. When I switched from Chrome (NO ADBLOCKS FOR YOU) to Firefox with uBlock Origin the difference was night and day. I got so, so sick of the endless ads on Chrome, and there were way too many times when I'd have a conversation with somebody IRL and then 20 minutes later I'd get a bunch of ads on my phone that were directly relevant to the very thing we'd been talking about. I know people say it's coincidence or confirmation bias or whatever, but that's bullshit. On Chrome I was getting targeted ads about the weirdest, most obscure stuff, every day. My only annoyance with Firefox on my phone is that no matter what I do to disable auto-paying video, I get auto-playing videos anyway. I don't know what that's about but Firefox still kicks Chrome's ass up and down the pike.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 12:10 PM on December 9, 2023 [5 favorites]
Oh, God, yeah. When I switched from Chrome (NO ADBLOCKS FOR YOU) to Firefox with uBlock Origin the difference was night and day. I got so, so sick of the endless ads on Chrome, and there were way too many times when I'd have a conversation with somebody IRL and then 20 minutes later I'd get a bunch of ads on my phone that were directly relevant to the very thing we'd been talking about. I know people say it's coincidence or confirmation bias or whatever, but that's bullshit. On Chrome I was getting targeted ads about the weirdest, most obscure stuff, every day. My only annoyance with Firefox on my phone is that no matter what I do to disable auto-paying video, I get auto-playing videos anyway. I don't know what that's about but Firefox still kicks Chrome's ass up and down the pike.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 12:10 PM on December 9, 2023 [5 favorites]
My mom has, for many years, referred to the internet on her laptop as, "Foxfire," (which is adorable) and doesn't know that YouTube (or most of the rest of the internet) has ads. Because her son is not entirely worthless.
posted by straight at 12:19 PM on December 9, 2023 [22 favorites]
posted by straight at 12:19 PM on December 9, 2023 [22 favorites]
> Firefox and Mozilla are incredibly well funded thanks to the Google search deal.
Mozilla CEO's paygrade went from 1m a year to 6.9m a year in 5 years. Ask not for who the Cash-Cow moos, as it doesn't moo for you, the User
>uBlock doesn't block youtube ads
But Sponsorblock is full of awesome as GOOG aggressively monetizes Youtube (because GOOG isn't nearly profitable enough.)
posted by Fupped Duck at 12:20 PM on December 9, 2023 [6 favorites]
Mozilla CEO's paygrade went from 1m a year to 6.9m a year in 5 years. Ask not for who the Cash-Cow moos, as it doesn't moo for you, the User
>uBlock doesn't block youtube ads
But Sponsorblock is full of awesome as GOOG aggressively monetizes Youtube (because GOOG isn't nearly profitable enough.)
posted by Fupped Duck at 12:20 PM on December 9, 2023 [6 favorites]
I'm not thrilled about [Manifest V3] either but it doesn't stop ad blocking entirely.
The issue that I've heard is that Manifest V3 requires approval for some extension changes. That approval takes time. Ad blocker list updates are such a change that requires approval, and Youtube ad blocking requires a rapidly changing list, sometimes daily. Of course, Google owns Youtube, so it plays right into their own hands.
It is possible that, in that way that's weird with Google, the people working on the changes are actually making a good-faith effort to keep extensions working. But it has to do with organizational priorities, in that way that problems that obviously interfere with their bottom line are looked at immediately while less essential issues, according to their judgement, get put off, sometimes indefinitely. It's a process that means the people who decide on the changes can think well of themselves, but then look out from the ramparts to the public and wonder why everyone's so mad.
I am of the opinion that we never should have moved away from Firefox in the first place, I watched as it happened and continually didn't see why. I think I tried Chrome as main browser for a couple of years in there but just didn't see what the difference was, and at least Firefox had less corporate baggage. For awhile after I had Chrome as a second browser, but I stopped that with the new laptop I got back in January; my laptop is completely Chrome-free now. I do run Vivaldi, which is close enough to Chrome in its operation that it works if I encounter a site that doesn't work with Firefox.
But don't forget: we got everyone away from Internet Explorer back in its dotage, and it was outright packed into the OS. People abandoned it because it came to suck, and if ad blocking in Chrome is meaningfully prevented it'll mean Chrome will likewise suck, in a way that affects many people. This can be won.
I know, new Chinese owners, but still. I do have Firefox on my laptop for testing websites in another environment.
For all intents and purposes Vivaldi is the new Opera. It's even run by ex-Opera people. It is Chromium-based though.
posted by JHarris at 12:22 PM on December 9, 2023 [7 favorites]
The issue that I've heard is that Manifest V3 requires approval for some extension changes. That approval takes time. Ad blocker list updates are such a change that requires approval, and Youtube ad blocking requires a rapidly changing list, sometimes daily. Of course, Google owns Youtube, so it plays right into their own hands.
It is possible that, in that way that's weird with Google, the people working on the changes are actually making a good-faith effort to keep extensions working. But it has to do with organizational priorities, in that way that problems that obviously interfere with their bottom line are looked at immediately while less essential issues, according to their judgement, get put off, sometimes indefinitely. It's a process that means the people who decide on the changes can think well of themselves, but then look out from the ramparts to the public and wonder why everyone's so mad.
I am of the opinion that we never should have moved away from Firefox in the first place, I watched as it happened and continually didn't see why. I think I tried Chrome as main browser for a couple of years in there but just didn't see what the difference was, and at least Firefox had less corporate baggage. For awhile after I had Chrome as a second browser, but I stopped that with the new laptop I got back in January; my laptop is completely Chrome-free now. I do run Vivaldi, which is close enough to Chrome in its operation that it works if I encounter a site that doesn't work with Firefox.
But don't forget: we got everyone away from Internet Explorer back in its dotage, and it was outright packed into the OS. People abandoned it because it came to suck, and if ad blocking in Chrome is meaningfully prevented it'll mean Chrome will likewise suck, in a way that affects many people. This can be won.
I know, new Chinese owners, but still. I do have Firefox on my laptop for testing websites in another environment.
For all intents and purposes Vivaldi is the new Opera. It's even run by ex-Opera people. It is Chromium-based though.
posted by JHarris at 12:22 PM on December 9, 2023 [7 favorites]
I just tried to watch a movie on amazon prime, using firefox. Last week when i tried this and got an error, i brushed it off. This week, i googled the error message and found a reddit thread that said "try chrome".
Reader: it worked.
So now we use chrome for two things: amazon prime movies and ordering groceries (Local store's website locks up in firefox)
I am primed to believe that firefox, as a company that seems to still retain some shred of decency, will slowly be forced to wither away by market forces. or maybe my cold is making me melodramatic.
posted by Vatnesine at 12:27 PM on December 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
Reader: it worked.
So now we use chrome for two things: amazon prime movies and ordering groceries (Local store's website locks up in firefox)
I am primed to believe that firefox, as a company that seems to still retain some shred of decency, will slowly be forced to wither away by market forces. or maybe my cold is making me melodramatic.
posted by Vatnesine at 12:27 PM on December 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
I have found that some cases of sites "not working in Firefox" are the result of misbehaving extensions. I had a recurring case with some sites breaking, and after some troubleshooting the culprit turned out to be a Mastodon cross-server interoperability extension I had installed. In these cases, go under the HAMBURGER MENU, to Help, then Troubleshoot Mode to temporarily restart without add-ons and see if the site works. If it does, then it's time to try disabling each of your extensions, one by one, and see which one is causing the issue.
posted by JHarris at 12:47 PM on December 9, 2023 [7 favorites]
posted by JHarris at 12:47 PM on December 9, 2023 [7 favorites]
Aside: Hey! There's a Unicode character that resembles the HAMBURGER MENU! It's ≡!
posted by JHarris at 1:08 PM on December 9, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by JHarris at 1:08 PM on December 9, 2023 [6 favorites]
I'm not thrilled about [Manifest V3] either but it doesn't stop ad blocking entirely.
The issue that I've heard is that Manifest V3 requires approval for some extension changes. That approval takes time. Ad blocker list updates are such a change that requires approval, and Youtube ad blocking requires a rapidly changing list, sometimes daily. Of course, Google owns Youtube, so it plays right into their own hands.
Yeah this is the primary concern. Google/V3 are removing the ability for extensions like uBO to rely on block lists that are updated frequently and automatically. Now anything like an updated blocklist has to be packaged as an update to the core extension, and extension updates have to go through an approval process, which may take days or weeks. Meanwhile Google continues to make changes to the ads themselves, such as those on YouTube, on a daily basis in an attempt to bypass ad blocking. Whether intentional or not*, the end result will be poorer and less consistent ad blocking, particularly on Google properties.
* considering the actual real-world benefits of Manifest V3 (there are some, but they're minimal) and weighing those against the big hit in effectiveness for ad blockers, and bearing in mind that GOOG is worth $1.7 trillion and made most of it off selling and showing ads, I personally struggle to believe this is an unintentional consequence of an otherwise good-faith effort to improve user experience
posted by Two unicycles and some duct tape at 1:15 PM on December 9, 2023 [5 favorites]
The issue that I've heard is that Manifest V3 requires approval for some extension changes. That approval takes time. Ad blocker list updates are such a change that requires approval, and Youtube ad blocking requires a rapidly changing list, sometimes daily. Of course, Google owns Youtube, so it plays right into their own hands.
Yeah this is the primary concern. Google/V3 are removing the ability for extensions like uBO to rely on block lists that are updated frequently and automatically. Now anything like an updated blocklist has to be packaged as an update to the core extension, and extension updates have to go through an approval process, which may take days or weeks. Meanwhile Google continues to make changes to the ads themselves, such as those on YouTube, on a daily basis in an attempt to bypass ad blocking. Whether intentional or not*, the end result will be poorer and less consistent ad blocking, particularly on Google properties.
* considering the actual real-world benefits of Manifest V3 (there are some, but they're minimal) and weighing those against the big hit in effectiveness for ad blockers, and bearing in mind that GOOG is worth $1.7 trillion and made most of it off selling and showing ads, I personally struggle to believe this is an unintentional consequence of an otherwise good-faith effort to improve user experience
posted by Two unicycles and some duct tape at 1:15 PM on December 9, 2023 [5 favorites]
Consent-O-Matic, available for Firefox, Chrome and Safari
The problem with setting your preferred cookie preferences is that many websites will just completely break functionality if you don't agree to all their bullshit.
An alternative is I Still don't care about cookies, which just accepts everything, combine that with uBlock to prevent tracking and setting the Firefox preference to delete all cookies every time you close the browser and you never have to think about cookies again.
posted by Lanark at 1:17 PM on December 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
The problem with setting your preferred cookie preferences is that many websites will just completely break functionality if you don't agree to all their bullshit.
An alternative is I Still don't care about cookies, which just accepts everything, combine that with uBlock to prevent tracking and setting the Firefox preference to delete all cookies every time you close the browser and you never have to think about cookies again.
posted by Lanark at 1:17 PM on December 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
Firefox won't last forever, any more than NCSA Mosaic did. That's the real ancestor of Firefox, not Netscape Navigator as the article states. (Both are based on Mozilla, the direct descendant of Mosaic, now called Seamonkey.)
It won't be "market share" or the author's idea of "irrelevance" that kills Firefox. Seamonkey is still alive, after all. The only thing that will kill either of them is lack of interest or ability on the part of developers to maintain it.
Yes, Mozilla gets a lot of money from Google- but Firefox can keep going without any money at all, or any "relevancy" for that matter.
I'm hopeful that development of Firefox will continue for a while yet, at least until something better comes along. I don't see anything better on the horizon. I would like for this development to continue independently of money from Google or from anyone else. Money is unreliable, and Google notoriously so.
Contra the article, and as mentioned by others here, it doesn't matter that much if web devs don't explicitly support FF as long as they follow well-known Web standards and best practices. Reading w3c standards is boring, but hey, that's why they pay them kids the big bucks, right?? Unfortunately, as we all learned back during the IE5 days, web devs can't be bothered to read, and will just paste any old code they find on MSDN.
Sorry, I'm a little bitter. TASTE ME.
posted by Rev. Irreverent Revenant at 1:30 PM on December 9, 2023 [8 favorites]
It won't be "market share" or the author's idea of "irrelevance" that kills Firefox. Seamonkey is still alive, after all. The only thing that will kill either of them is lack of interest or ability on the part of developers to maintain it.
Yes, Mozilla gets a lot of money from Google- but Firefox can keep going without any money at all, or any "relevancy" for that matter.
I'm hopeful that development of Firefox will continue for a while yet, at least until something better comes along. I don't see anything better on the horizon. I would like for this development to continue independently of money from Google or from anyone else. Money is unreliable, and Google notoriously so.
Contra the article, and as mentioned by others here, it doesn't matter that much if web devs don't explicitly support FF as long as they follow well-known Web standards and best practices. Reading w3c standards is boring, but hey, that's why they pay them kids the big bucks, right?? Unfortunately, as we all learned back during the IE5 days, web devs can't be bothered to read, and will just paste any old code they find on MSDN.
Sorry, I'm a little bitter. TASTE ME.
posted by Rev. Irreverent Revenant at 1:30 PM on December 9, 2023 [8 favorites]
Unfortunately, as we all learned back during the IE5 days, web devs can't be bothered to read, and will just paste any old code they find on MSDN.
FWIW, kids these days paste any old code from stackoverflow.com, not MSDN.
posted by howbigisthistextfield at 1:36 PM on December 9, 2023 [10 favorites]
FWIW, kids these days paste any old code from stackoverflow.com, not MSDN.
posted by howbigisthistextfield at 1:36 PM on December 9, 2023 [10 favorites]
> Hey! There's a Unicode character that resembles the HAMBURGER MENU!
im really disappointed in you not posting 🍔 instead
(just kidding i love you JHarris)
posted by glonous keming at 1:54 PM on December 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
im really disappointed in you not posting 🍔 instead
(just kidding i love you JHarris)
posted by glonous keming at 1:54 PM on December 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
I have used FF as my browser of choice for many years, and use it on my low-class android without issue.
My experience has been that sites that don't render in FF should be avoided in any case--if you examine their code-base they're inevitably steaming piles of the lowest-bid crap code. (Citibank's web site is a prime example. It will not work in FF and there is no way I'm firing up chrome just to peek at my card balance, arseholes.)
I constantly have to remind myself that when I send people a link to a youtube video I like, they're not going to get the same experience I just had because they're gonna mostly be watching ads...which I haven't seen on YT since the time I made the ill-informed decision to see what my TVs built-in YT support looked like--yikes.
posted by maxwelton at 2:03 PM on December 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
My experience has been that sites that don't render in FF should be avoided in any case--if you examine their code-base they're inevitably steaming piles of the lowest-bid crap code. (Citibank's web site is a prime example. It will not work in FF and there is no way I'm firing up chrome just to peek at my card balance, arseholes.)
I constantly have to remind myself that when I send people a link to a youtube video I like, they're not going to get the same experience I just had because they're gonna mostly be watching ads...which I haven't seen on YT since the time I made the ill-informed decision to see what my TVs built-in YT support looked like--yikes.
posted by maxwelton at 2:03 PM on December 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
FWIW, kids these days paste any old code from stackoverflow.com, not MSDN.
I think they’re pasting any old code that ChatGPT generates for them now.
But I’m old so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
posted by jimw at 2:07 PM on December 9, 2023 [8 favorites]
I think they’re pasting any old code that ChatGPT generates for them now.
But I’m old so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
posted by jimw at 2:07 PM on December 9, 2023 [8 favorites]
As someone who worked at Mozilla and implemented a new feature where a big part of the work was coordinating with the standards body and my counterparts implementing the same feature on Chrome, I can say with certainty that for most things, it’s almost no effort to support all current browsers. Really, all rendering engines, since there are only 3. However that’s largely because of Mozilla’s consistent efforts within standards bodies. Even with a tiny market share, Mozilla wields outsized influence on what Chrome and Safari do. However, it’s an ongoing effort. Much of my work was about helping clarify the standards or finding where Firefox or Chrome weren’t interpreting it accurately. If Mozilla goes away, I imagine it will be a huge loss for this kind of interoperability.
posted by Cogito at 2:08 PM on December 9, 2023 [20 favorites]
posted by Cogito at 2:08 PM on December 9, 2023 [20 favorites]
I still hope Servo becomes the future, but yeah I choose FF+VPN or TorBrowser for almost anything which requires login.
posted by jeffburdges at 2:50 PM on December 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by jeffburdges at 2:50 PM on December 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
You should use more than one browser anyway. I use a heavily modified Firefox for Browsing with a bunch of privacy plug-ins. Honestly, Firefox could be smoother.
You need a second browser for other stuff, e.g. banking. Don't use a browser with add-ons for banking and don't use a minor browser for banking (opera, vivaldi etc.).
" FF+VPN or TorBrowser"
I have made bad experiences with this. Many websites won't work. A VPN is very tricky. My old expensive VPN worked very good (Astrill). My new one is blocked by many sites.
posted by maloqueiro at 3:44 PM on December 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
You need a second browser for other stuff, e.g. banking. Don't use a browser with add-ons for banking and don't use a minor browser for banking (opera, vivaldi etc.).
" FF+VPN or TorBrowser"
I have made bad experiences with this. Many websites won't work. A VPN is very tricky. My old expensive VPN worked very good (Astrill). My new one is blocked by many sites.
posted by maloqueiro at 3:44 PM on December 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
But Sponsorblock is full of awesome as GOOG aggressively monetizes Youtube (because GOOG isn't nearly profitable enough.)
This is murky territory though -- none of the stuff Sponsorblock blocks involves advertisers paying money to Google. "This video sponsored by" clips comes directly from the creator negotiating with a specific advertiser, who are basically cutting the middleman (Google) out of the deal. The only way I see Google profiting here is that you, the video creator, and advertiser all agreed to use YouTube for this, and thus their user base grows.
Ideally, I would be able to pay YouTube money, their creators would annotate sponsor segments, and I would automatically skip them. That's not happening, even though I am a YouTube Premium subscriber. Instead what seems to be happening is YouTube helpfully annotates which parts on a video are most watched and sharp transitions in that signal indicate "the ad ends here." I also have doubts that it would function well on the rarely viewed videos in my feed. I'm considering installing sponsorblock anyways, but it's not a clearcut Megacorp gets more mega situation.
posted by pwnguin at 3:48 PM on December 9, 2023 [6 favorites]
This is murky territory though -- none of the stuff Sponsorblock blocks involves advertisers paying money to Google. "This video sponsored by" clips comes directly from the creator negotiating with a specific advertiser, who are basically cutting the middleman (Google) out of the deal. The only way I see Google profiting here is that you, the video creator, and advertiser all agreed to use YouTube for this, and thus their user base grows.
Ideally, I would be able to pay YouTube money, their creators would annotate sponsor segments, and I would automatically skip them. That's not happening, even though I am a YouTube Premium subscriber. Instead what seems to be happening is YouTube helpfully annotates which parts on a video are most watched and sharp transitions in that signal indicate "the ad ends here." I also have doubts that it would function well on the rarely viewed videos in my feed. I'm considering installing sponsorblock anyways, but it's not a clearcut Megacorp gets more mega situation.
posted by pwnguin at 3:48 PM on December 9, 2023 [6 favorites]
It can't help Firefox that they are using Google as their search engine.
posted by SemiSalt at 3:59 PM on December 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by SemiSalt at 3:59 PM on December 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
Everyone here knows that you can change your default FireFox search engine to DuckDuckGo, right? It's not even difficult.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 4:14 PM on December 9, 2023 [7 favorites]
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 4:14 PM on December 9, 2023 [7 favorites]
That does remind me that Firefox made my Google Pixel 6a constantly restart.
So I returned my 6a :-). But it's probably fixed now.
posted by sourcejedi at 4:20 PM on December 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
So I returned my 6a :-). But it's probably fixed now.
posted by sourcejedi at 4:20 PM on December 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
I use Firefox and Thunderbird a Lot, and I'm awaiting the time I can have Tbird on my phone instead of two different email apps (Gmail & Outlook). I also use a Pixel phone, and it was easy-peasy to set FF as default. Now if Pinterest would use FF as its browser on mobile (I like to open up recipe pins to bookmark and OMG SO MANY ads and popups, it was a mess.)
I have Vivaldi for anything that requires Chrome now, both on my phone and the computers I use (my laptop, and the kitchen desktop).
posted by tlwright at 4:33 PM on December 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
I have Vivaldi for anything that requires Chrome now, both on my phone and the computers I use (my laptop, and the kitchen desktop).
posted by tlwright at 4:33 PM on December 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
That does remind me that Firefox made my Google Pixel 6a constantly restart.
I am writing this comment in Firefox on a Pixel 6a. The issue has been fixed.
posted by hoyland at 5:04 PM on December 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
I am writing this comment in Firefox on a Pixel 6a. The issue has been fixed.
posted by hoyland at 5:04 PM on December 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
This should be a part of the Google anti-trust case, but I bet it isn't. With Chrome and Edge both being based on the Google codebase, that seems deeply anti-competitive. I'm going to contact my House representative and bring this to their attention. Software mono-culture creates lock-in and makes the software ecosystem less secure.
posted by Metacircular at 5:05 PM on December 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by Metacircular at 5:05 PM on December 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
Most people see computers as tools that let them do other things, which means they don't care much about them if they already do what they want it to do. Hence the power of defaults: 95% of people just use whatever is on their computer, because it's good enough. It's really hard to get people to take a political stand against threats when the threats are so hypothetical and abstract (how scary is "Google controlling the web" to someone who uses Google search all the time anyway?)
I've been using Firefox since its inception for a mix of ideological and practical reasons -- I wanted to get away from MS/Google, and it's always supported plugins I've seen as essential: tabs, Scrapbook+, uBlock, etc. The current plugins that I would have a really hard time giving up are Tree-Style Tabs and Multi-Account Containers + Temporary Containers. Temporary Containers in particular is the kind of thing that it's hard to imagine isn't the default way we browse.
posted by ropeladder at 5:14 PM on December 9, 2023 [5 favorites]
I've been using Firefox since its inception for a mix of ideological and practical reasons -- I wanted to get away from MS/Google, and it's always supported plugins I've seen as essential: tabs, Scrapbook+, uBlock, etc. The current plugins that I would have a really hard time giving up are Tree-Style Tabs and Multi-Account Containers + Temporary Containers. Temporary Containers in particular is the kind of thing that it's hard to imagine isn't the default way we browse.
posted by ropeladder at 5:14 PM on December 9, 2023 [5 favorites]
Does Apple no longer require browsers on iOS to use WebKit (Safari’s engine)? Last I checked iOS Firefox was not actually a full-fledged Firefox.
That rule is still in effect. All iOS and iPadOS browsers in the App Store are just reskinned Safari browsers. Any App that has its own browsing engine will be rejected.
posted by jmauro at 5:16 PM on December 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
That rule is still in effect. All iOS and iPadOS browsers in the App Store are just reskinned Safari browsers. Any App that has its own browsing engine will be rejected.
posted by jmauro at 5:16 PM on December 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
Now if Pinterest would use FF as its browser on mobile (I like to open up recipe pins to bookmark and OMG SO MANY ads and popups, it was a mess.)
A lot of apps use a browser control to view websites, and I think on Android that almost always ends up being Chrome these days.
I've said this before, repeatedly, for I'm surprised others aren't saying it at least as much: the fact that it's Google doing this, which for a long long time was held forth, not the least by themselves, as the adults in the room, the responsible stewards, the people who eschewed lock-in because they said it made software, even their own, worse, the ones who took great pains to make sure their sponsored links didn't look like real search results, the ones who held a funky kind of IPO supposedly to insulate themselves form stockholder pressure, should be seen as a sign of the fundamental unsoundness of capitalism. The reason corporations rule so many things online now instead of the public services of the early internet, that's largely because of Google's lead.
Even now there are signs that there are people inside of Google who still have a utopian view. There's still Google Takeout, for instance, to get your data out, at least while it lasts.
posted by JHarris at 5:35 PM on December 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
A lot of apps use a browser control to view websites, and I think on Android that almost always ends up being Chrome these days.
I've said this before, repeatedly, for I'm surprised others aren't saying it at least as much: the fact that it's Google doing this, which for a long long time was held forth, not the least by themselves, as the adults in the room, the responsible stewards, the people who eschewed lock-in because they said it made software, even their own, worse, the ones who took great pains to make sure their sponsored links didn't look like real search results, the ones who held a funky kind of IPO supposedly to insulate themselves form stockholder pressure, should be seen as a sign of the fundamental unsoundness of capitalism. The reason corporations rule so many things online now instead of the public services of the early internet, that's largely because of Google's lead.
Even now there are signs that there are people inside of Google who still have a utopian view. There's still Google Takeout, for instance, to get your data out, at least while it lasts.
posted by JHarris at 5:35 PM on December 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
This all may change once the EU requirements that companies respect user choice for browsers is implemented. Both Microsoft and Android force their company's respective browsers on users if the use certain very prominent UI elements. The EU is about to force Windows to respect user default browser choice.
Currently it looks like these changes will only be implemented on a regional basis for Europe because the US refuses to protect consumers due to near complete political and regulatory capture.
posted by srboisvert at 6:13 PM on December 9, 2023 [8 favorites]
Currently it looks like these changes will only be implemented on a regional basis for Europe because the US refuses to protect consumers due to near complete political and regulatory capture.
posted by srboisvert at 6:13 PM on December 9, 2023 [8 favorites]
There's still Google Takeout, for instance, to get your data out
I assumed/hoped "take out" meant "remove" all the data Google has on you, but apparently it just means exporting a copy of that data. For which I can conceive of no useful purpose other than getting depressed when you realize how much info Google has about you.
posted by Greg_Ace at 6:35 PM on December 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
I assumed/hoped "take out" meant "remove" all the data Google has on you, but apparently it just means exporting a copy of that data. For which I can conceive of no useful purpose other than getting depressed when you realize how much info Google has about you.
posted by Greg_Ace at 6:35 PM on December 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
Google Takeout is incredibly useful, I've built products that use the data exports. Being able to download your data from cloud services is remarkably valuable. For instance Goodreads lost my entire account, I was very glad to have my own (out of date) copy. Also in theory the exports can be used to move to a new service provide although in practice that doesn't work great. (StoryGraph can import a GoodReads export though!)
To the political question, Google Takeout was the product of the Google Data Liberation Front which had its heydey 10-15 years ago. It was very much an employee activist effort to build what they felt was the right thing, to give people access to their data. The Takeout product has survived and done quite well, I think Google sees it as a useful fig leaf of protection against anti-trust complaints. That and some folks at the company still do believe in good stuff, although less and less in leadership to my eye.
I really wonder how the Youtube anti-ad-blocker stuff has played internally. Most Google employees are using ad blockers themselves, certainly on their home computers and probably at work.
posted by Nelson at 7:09 PM on December 9, 2023 [7 favorites]
To the political question, Google Takeout was the product of the Google Data Liberation Front which had its heydey 10-15 years ago. It was very much an employee activist effort to build what they felt was the right thing, to give people access to their data. The Takeout product has survived and done quite well, I think Google sees it as a useful fig leaf of protection against anti-trust complaints. That and some folks at the company still do believe in good stuff, although less and less in leadership to my eye.
I really wonder how the Youtube anti-ad-blocker stuff has played internally. Most Google employees are using ad blockers themselves, certainly on their home computers and probably at work.
posted by Nelson at 7:09 PM on December 9, 2023 [7 favorites]
Google Takeout is incredibly useful
I won't challenge your point, Nelson, other than to say we appear to live in very different worlds.
posted by Greg_Ace at 7:32 PM on December 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
I won't challenge your point, Nelson, other than to say we appear to live in very different worlds.
posted by Greg_Ace at 7:32 PM on December 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
Thanks for that view Nelson! At this point I don't know whether to cheer on the Google-good-stuff-doers or hope they give it up soon and go off to do other good things, and in so doing lessen the damage when their efforts finally do fail. It seems beyond hope at this point that Google could course correct. Maybe if enough people abandon Chrome over this ad blocking fiasco.
posted by JHarris at 7:53 PM on December 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by JHarris at 7:53 PM on December 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
Up until I bought my M1 MacBook Pro last February, I had been using Chrome for work and FF for personal stuff, just to keep Google out of my personal life, but upon installing Chrome on the MBP I was having some performance issues, and I looked into it and located this some what obscure Chrome Is Bad webpage which documents all the crap that Chrome installs, how much CPU it devours, and how to uninstall it all. It made a difference and I was much happier about the performance of my machine overall when I looked at it again post-uninstall.
My work solution, while a little clunky, was to make a completely different user account that walls of my work gsuite stuff from my personal account.
I run both on Firefox and it has been mostly fine, but I’m beginning to see cracks. Once or twice a month, something simply doesn’t work and I have to copy/paste the URL into Safari. I’m not looking forward to the monumental bookmark management task I will face if I have to integrate my Firefox bookmarks with Safari and get that synced to my mobile devices, but I’m beginning to resign myself to the idea.
I will never install Chrome again. Though.
posted by Devils Rancher at 4:41 AM on December 10, 2023 [6 favorites]
My work solution, while a little clunky, was to make a completely different user account that walls of my work gsuite stuff from my personal account.
I run both on Firefox and it has been mostly fine, but I’m beginning to see cracks. Once or twice a month, something simply doesn’t work and I have to copy/paste the URL into Safari. I’m not looking forward to the monumental bookmark management task I will face if I have to integrate my Firefox bookmarks with Safari and get that synced to my mobile devices, but I’m beginning to resign myself to the idea.
I will never install Chrome again. Though.
posted by Devils Rancher at 4:41 AM on December 10, 2023 [6 favorites]
I honestly don't understand how people use anything but Firefox both on desktop and mobile.
Mainly because the iOS version of FF is a miserable piece of software with no extension support whatsoever and anemic adblocking support. iOS Safari is so much stronger in this area it isn't even a competition.
On the full-blown desktop OS side, FF is the strongest browser available on Linux by far, and it's the only browser I have installed on any of my Debian boxes or on my Steam Deck. But the majority of my day-to-day time is spent in front of OSX machines, where Firefox is just a terrible piece of software because Mozilla hates the platform with a passion. The OSX port of FF is terribly flawed software that doesn't support native WebAuthn, refuses to integrate to the keychain (requiring all kinds of obnoxious workarounds for device certificates), has jank out the ass with native UI controls, hell, it even has its own fuckin' CA trust store just to be that much more of an annoying, un-integrated island.
It's super, super clear that OSX Firefox is some kind of wonky port that has zero respect for the platform. The Linux and Windows ports are good pieces of software—barring some of the sketchy directions Mozilla is taking things overall, like Manifest v3—but that OSX port is just too wonky to live with day to day.
I should know, it's my browser of choice at work, where the other option is OSX Chrome. It has been for a decade. For personal use? Won't touch the thing any more.
posted by majick at 12:35 PM on December 10, 2023 [2 favorites]
Mainly because the iOS version of FF is a miserable piece of software with no extension support whatsoever and anemic adblocking support. iOS Safari is so much stronger in this area it isn't even a competition.
On the full-blown desktop OS side, FF is the strongest browser available on Linux by far, and it's the only browser I have installed on any of my Debian boxes or on my Steam Deck. But the majority of my day-to-day time is spent in front of OSX machines, where Firefox is just a terrible piece of software because Mozilla hates the platform with a passion. The OSX port of FF is terribly flawed software that doesn't support native WebAuthn, refuses to integrate to the keychain (requiring all kinds of obnoxious workarounds for device certificates), has jank out the ass with native UI controls, hell, it even has its own fuckin' CA trust store just to be that much more of an annoying, un-integrated island.
It's super, super clear that OSX Firefox is some kind of wonky port that has zero respect for the platform. The Linux and Windows ports are good pieces of software—barring some of the sketchy directions Mozilla is taking things overall, like Manifest v3—but that OSX port is just too wonky to live with day to day.
I should know, it's my browser of choice at work, where the other option is OSX Chrome. It has been for a decade. For personal use? Won't touch the thing any more.
posted by majick at 12:35 PM on December 10, 2023 [2 favorites]
It can't help Firefox that they are using Google as their search engine
On the contrary. I’m quite confident that Mozilla finds that several hundred million dollars every year quite helpful.
Does it help them take market share from Chrome? Who knows, but I don’t see a switch to Bing (the only realistic option) improving things.
posted by Cogito at 12:53 PM on December 10, 2023
On the contrary. I’m quite confident that Mozilla finds that several hundred million dollars every year quite helpful.
Does it help them take market share from Chrome? Who knows, but I don’t see a switch to Bing (the only realistic option) improving things.
posted by Cogito at 12:53 PM on December 10, 2023
Firefox has tested Bing as a default as recently as two years ago. Back in 2014 US Firefox made Yahoo the default search (which I think at that time was using Bing) but that reportedly did not go well. Firefox switched back to Google in 2017. Lots more detail on Wikipedia. The current Google / Firefox deal was extended in 2020 until 2023: I can't find what the current status is. Presumably being negotiated and from a position of dwindling market share. At this point Firefox is much more important to Google as an anti-trust fig leaf than it is a major source of ad traffic.
Historically, the main reason Google was so aggressive about signing all these search deals was not just for the extra ad revenue. But more importantly to deprive competing ad companies of that revenue. There was an era where if another ad network had a browser deal as big as even 10% market share it could have been real competition for AdWords. These days Apple and Safari are the important partner, not Firefox.
Anti-trust should be an important part of the discussion here.
posted by Nelson at 1:25 PM on December 10, 2023 [4 favorites]
Historically, the main reason Google was so aggressive about signing all these search deals was not just for the extra ad revenue. But more importantly to deprive competing ad companies of that revenue. There was an era where if another ad network had a browser deal as big as even 10% market share it could have been real competition for AdWords. These days Apple and Safari are the important partner, not Firefox.
Anti-trust should be an important part of the discussion here.
posted by Nelson at 1:25 PM on December 10, 2023 [4 favorites]
I use Firefox on desktop and mobile. Cold dead hands etc
posted by GallonOfAlan at 1:03 AM on December 11, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by GallonOfAlan at 1:03 AM on December 11, 2023 [4 favorites]
It looks like Mozilla has some big announcements in store which they hope will help:
posted by CrystalDave at 10:46 AM on December 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
The era of AI is here — and the need to develop products that are responsible, ethical and put humans first is key to our future. 🌐I'll be interested to see how this is received. I somehow get the sense that the set of "people keen on Firefox for privacy/principal reasons" and "people keen on the inevitability of genAI, but who want it to be done right" may not be as united as they would hope.
All week long we'll be giving you a sneak peek at innovation projects and ways that Mozilla is experimenting in the AI space. Be sure to follow along here! https://future.mozilla.org/innovation-week
posted by CrystalDave at 10:46 AM on December 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
I finally got off my duff and changed back to FF.
Now if I could figure out how to make it do a couple things that Chrome does. If not, well, I'll get used to it.
posted by kathrynm at 11:21 AM on December 11, 2023
Now if I could figure out how to make it do a couple things that Chrome does. If not, well, I'll get used to it.
posted by kathrynm at 11:21 AM on December 11, 2023
i've been using firefox since the single digit versions way back when. here's hoping it doesn't go away any time soon.
posted by misanthropicsarah at 2:09 PM on December 11, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by misanthropicsarah at 2:09 PM on December 11, 2023 [2 favorites]
You young'uns...
Back when I got on the internet, Firefox was Netscape. Get off my lawn!!!
posted by Windopaene at 5:55 PM on December 11, 2023 [4 favorites]
Back when I got on the internet, Firefox was Netscape. Get off my lawn!!!
posted by Windopaene at 5:55 PM on December 11, 2023 [4 favorites]
something something Mosaic....
posted by JHarris at 7:00 PM on December 11, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by JHarris at 7:00 PM on December 11, 2023 [3 favorites]
That's what a lazy search will get you. Pretty sure I meant Mosaic. I'm old, give me a break!
posted by Windopaene at 7:44 PM on December 11, 2023
posted by Windopaene at 7:44 PM on December 11, 2023
Hah! I was just refering to that I remember Mosaic, which predates Netscape Navigator. MOzilla gets its name from MOsaic, of course. And IE for many year carried a copyright notice on it from Spyglass Moasic, from which it was derived in the early days.
I hope, when the next new browser engine arises up from the primordial cheese, that it's name is based off of Mosaic too.
posted by JHarris at 8:02 PM on December 11, 2023
I hope, when the next new browser engine arises up from the primordial cheese, that it's name is based off of Mosaic too.
posted by JHarris at 8:02 PM on December 11, 2023
Looking forward to the struggle between Mozilla and newcomer Mokong...
posted by Greg_Ace at 8:23 PM on December 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Greg_Ace at 8:23 PM on December 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
Also: MOdan, MOmera, MOrugon, MOgagon, and... MOthra!
posted by JHarris at 1:47 AM on December 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by JHarris at 1:47 AM on December 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
(And if you did the MO thing to Donkey Kong, you get MOnkey Kong, which is possibly a better name for that character.)
posted by JHarris at 1:49 AM on December 12, 2023
posted by JHarris at 1:49 AM on December 12, 2023
> It's super, super clear that OSX Firefox is some kind of wonky port that has zero respect for the platform. The Linux and Windows ports are good pieces of software—barring some of the sketchy directions Mozilla is taking things overall, like Manifest v3—but that OSX port is just too wonky to live with day to day.
I switched away from Mozilla (not even Firefox) about 20 years ago when I started using Macs. I used Camino since it was the mac-native Gecko-based browser, before going to Safari. I would have said similar things about Firefox, but I went back to Firefox a couple years ago and it's so much better at being a mac program than it used to be. They even eventually fixed my niche bug about input selection in the address field.
Of course, Chrome doesn't try very much and Apple treats Safari as their playground for trying out wacky new GUIs, so there's not really what you'd call a Mac-ass Mac app in the browser space right now.
posted by vibratory manner of working at 9:29 PM on December 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
I switched away from Mozilla (not even Firefox) about 20 years ago when I started using Macs. I used Camino since it was the mac-native Gecko-based browser, before going to Safari. I would have said similar things about Firefox, but I went back to Firefox a couple years ago and it's so much better at being a mac program than it used to be. They even eventually fixed my niche bug about input selection in the address field.
Of course, Chrome doesn't try very much and Apple treats Safari as their playground for trying out wacky new GUIs, so there's not really what you'd call a Mac-ass Mac app in the browser space right now.
posted by vibratory manner of working at 9:29 PM on December 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
OSX Firefox is some kind of wonky port that has zero respect for the platform
That's strange I think it runs better on Mac than Windows, though I am running a non standard theme because the default is just a little too dull.
posted by Lanark at 4:52 AM on December 13, 2023 [2 favorites]
That's strange I think it runs better on Mac than Windows, though I am running a non standard theme because the default is just a little too dull.
posted by Lanark at 4:52 AM on December 13, 2023 [2 favorites]
Mozilla expands extension support for Firefox for Android.
Mozilla post
HackerNews post
posted by urbanwhaleshark at 2:55 PM on December 14, 2023 [2 favorites]
Mozilla post
HackerNews post
posted by urbanwhaleshark at 2:55 PM on December 14, 2023 [2 favorites]
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This is interesting, since anecdatally speaking, everyone I know, more or less, has recently switched over to Firefox after Chrome's developers announced they're going ahead with the updates designed to kill off support to ad blocker extensions. I wonder if there will be a more significant move next June when the changes are rolled out and everyone is forced to sit through mountains of ads on every site.
posted by fight or flight at 3:03 AM on December 9, 2023 [48 favorites]