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This sketchiness began a lot earlier. For example on mobile Firefox, the new tab screen has had suggestions from Pocket for a long time. It always felt weird to

This sketchiness began a lot earlier. For example on mobile Firefox, the new tab screen has had suggestions from Pocket for a long time. It always felt weird to me that the browser wasn’t just strictly utilitarian. Then there’s all the actions that show Mozilla is injecting politics into their products and services. For example creating an official extension that censors disagreeable speech (https://reclaimthenet.org/firefox-introduces-extension-that-automatically-censors-hate-speech/ https://reclaimthenet.org/firefox-introduces-extension-that-...) while banning one that enables free speech (https://reclaimthenet.org/firefox-rejects-free-speech-bans-free-speech-commenting-plugin-dissenter-from-its-extensions-gallery/ https://reclaimthenet.org/firefox-rejects-free-speech-bans-f...). Or calling for “more than deplatforming”, which is disturbing and feels like early warning of a future where your browser manufacturer may decide what websites you can and can’t visit (https://reclaimthenet.org/firefox-maker-mozilla-calls-for-more-than-deplatforming/ https://reclaimthenet.org/firefox-maker-mozilla-calls-for-mo...). Unsurprisingly they’re also against decentralized tech for predictable reasons (https://reclaimthenet.org/mozilla-turns-its-attention-to-censoring-decentralized-tech/ https://reclaimthenet.org/mozilla-turns-its-attention-to-cen...). We already have powerful masters in Apple and Google. If Mozilla is trying to be more of the same then I might as well use Safari and Chrome. There’s no differentiating advantage to using Mozilla’s products as they stray from their original mission. If anyone has better suggestions for a browser I would love to hear them.

lillesvin 5y ago
Depending on your preferences you might enjoy Vivaldi, Qutebrowser or Chromium. That's just off the top of my head. There are obviously many other good browsers out there.
- throwawaysea 5y ago
  I've tried Vivaldi and it's great. My understanding is that it shares the same components as Chrome. Are there other 'fully independent' browsers? Does that even matter?
  - soundnote 5y ago
    Vivaldi's built on top of Chromium, but they've written an inhouse UI layer, built-in ad blocker and tracking protection and run their own sync services. (Some other Chromium derivatives do, too: Brave and Edge being the most prominent ones) Brave and Vivaldi default to privacy friendly search engines, try their damndest not to track you, have built-in adblockers and run their own sync services. Easily the best options for Chromium-based browsers. Edge is also excellent if you don't care about privacy, but their sync service doesn't even include end to end encryption for all classes of synced data.
    - SahAssar 5y ago
      > try their damndest not to track you This is questionable. Brave has injected referral codes into typed domains and other really suspect things. I haven't heard too much controversy around vivaldi, but until 2020-ish they did assign a unique ID to each install and track that.
    - postalrat 5y ago
      How does Vivaldi fund development?
      - soundnote 5y ago
        By search engine deals with not-Google companies (privacy friendly engines, Bing, etc.) and from their founder. I don't remember how many users they needed to be at break even, but they're not there as far as I know.
  - SahAssar 5y ago
    If we are talking at least somewhat independent (not a rebasing fork) and somewhat maintained (at least getting security updates) I think it is as follows: The only modern browser engines are webkit, chromium and gecko. The next step down would be EdgeHTML (no longer shipped by default in any major browser, but maintained for security patches) and Sciter (only geared towards building application UIs, not general browsing. Not free as in both beer and speech). The next step after that is Trident (the old IE engine, somewhat maintained for security patches). The next step after that is probably things like netsurf, lynx and other browsers that do not and do not aim to support normal browsing.

lillesvin 5y ago

Depending on your preferences you might enjoy Vivaldi, Qutebrowser or Chromium. That's just off the top of my head. There are obviously many other good browsers out there.

throwawaysea 5y ago
I've tried Vivaldi and it's great. My understanding is that it shares the same components as Chrome. Are there other 'fully independent' browsers? Does that even matter?
- soundnote 5y ago
  Vivaldi's built on top of Chromium, but they've written an inhouse UI layer, built-in ad blocker and tracking protection and run their own sync services. (Some other Chromium derivatives do, too: Brave and Edge being the most prominent ones) Brave and Vivaldi default to privacy friendly search engines, try their damndest not to track you, have built-in adblockers and run their own sync services. Easily the best options for Chromium-based browsers. Edge is also excellent if you don't care about privacy, but their sync service doesn't even include end to end encryption for all classes of synced data.
  - SahAssar 5y ago
    > try their damndest not to track you This is questionable. Brave has injected referral codes into typed domains and other really suspect things. I haven't heard too much controversy around vivaldi, but until 2020-ish they did assign a unique ID to each install and track that.
  - postalrat 5y ago
    How does Vivaldi fund development?
    - soundnote 5y ago
      By search engine deals with not-Google companies (privacy friendly engines, Bing, etc.) and from their founder. I don't remember how many users they needed to be at break even, but they're not there as far as I know.
- SahAssar 5y ago
  If we are talking at least somewhat independent (not a rebasing fork) and somewhat maintained (at least getting security updates) I think it is as follows: The only modern browser engines are webkit, chromium and gecko. The next step down would be EdgeHTML (no longer shipped by default in any major browser, but maintained for security patches) and Sciter (only geared towards building application UIs, not general browsing. Not free as in both beer and speech). The next step after that is Trident (the old IE engine, somewhat maintained for security patches). The next step after that is probably things like netsurf, lynx and other browsers that do not and do not aim to support normal browsing.