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Firefox updates vs me
(lemmy.nz)
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this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2025
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Browsers have important security updates so it's always a good idea to keep them up to date.
No. That's the brainwashing talking. By keeping you scared about your security, all browser developers keep you under their complete control. And with that they impose their views on what your browser should look like/behave like. But most of the time they simply remove or change options - some are visibly removed/changed, others are either hidden or in about:config and are locked, so that you can't use them or are just rendered inoperable. Security updates are just the excuse to impose their will on you. I had it enough of Mozilla's constant chopping the browser off, so I moved to Waterfox which brings back all options Mozilla ever removed and then some. But by the time you remember that the browser is supposed to serve you, not the other way around, it will be too late.
Browsers are one of the most important things to update on your computer.
We can talk about whether browsers should be as complicated as they are, but implying security updates are a intended as a vector of control is conspiricist thinking.
The reason you don't get security updates backported to your older release of choice is simple: it is so much work.
Waterfox seems like a good choice, just don't go around thinking that companies are making security updates in order to sneak in unwanted, they make security updates because they are terrified of being responsible for a major incident.
Thank you for writing this for me.
Firefox is open source. Outdated open source is dangerous (even more than outadred closed source IMO) because people can literally look at the code and find every single bug. Even if they use security updates to roll out features or antifeatures, there are also security patches. And once those are out, now the entire world knows about the bug (because they can see the source changes). If you stay out of date, you are exposed. That simple
Also, updates to open source projects document the exploit being fixed and may even have automated tests written for it. You could literally just piece the tests together into an exploit.