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Screw you Mozilla
(lemmy.nz)
If this isn't a targetted advert in my browser, I don't know what is.
And here's where you turn it off:
Ah, dang. This is as real bummer. What do we do instead? Are we at the point of paying for this app?
I'm thinking about Signal too: software isn't free so where does the spend come from?
Signal is funded by donations. They got a few pretty big ones a while ago from some wealthy donors, so I don't know whether the donations by normal people by now are enough to cover their costs. I try to donate a bit though, at least enough to cover my costs and those of a few of my friends.
Check the box and forget the feature ever existed until you install the browser again from scratch. It's been there for 5 years, so it's not exactly a new or unsolved problem.
Okay, see you the next time this comes up.
It comes up every few months because someone forgets they ticked it off 5 years ago when the feature first released and then they reset their browser.
It's not a crowd setting; it's maintaining a product. We love this one because it matches our goal, but that goal requires our fellow persons' time.
Use Waterfox or Librewolf. Or Zen. Or some other fork.
I do daily Zen but this note moves the problem.
I have started regularly donating to foss projects, especially those who are clear on their limits of ai in code. Been donating to signal for years too.
https://servo.org/ would be the one to donate to for web independence specifically.
Why?
They're developing a new web engine, so an alternative to Blink/Chromium, Gecko, and WebKit.
The problem with Blink is that it's controlled by Google.
The problem with Gecko is that it's not portable at all - it can basically only be used in Firefox and Firefox forks. It's completely Mozilla and cannot be meaningfully detached.
WebKit is controlled by Apple, and GNOME Web is basically the only browser other than Safari using it.
Servo is modern and has some technical advantages I don't fully understand. It's made to integrate well in other projects, making it easy to integrate the web into all sorts of projects. Development was started by Mozilla, abandoned, and then taken over by the Linux foundation.
I don't trust Mozilla these days, and I never trust Google or Apple (though WebKit is cool). So I'm placing my bets on the Linux foundation.
(Web independence is of course many things, but I was thinking in terms of web browsers. Obviously a lot of open source projects contribute to the independent web in all kinds of ways.)
I would pay for Firefox if they kept updates like that off by default. Maybe they could have a screen that shows new options you can turn on which I'd happily ignore most of the time. It obviously takes tons of time to build a web browser so I expect it to get paid for somehow, but yeah, the on-by-default enshittification is no good.
as someone else suggested, a fork is the best way to go. if you are most concerned about privacy, Liberwolf is the way to go. if you want privacy, but aren't willing to go as far as Librewolf does, then Waterfox is a solid alternative that provides better privacy than Firefox.
Another vote for librewolf