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Alert HN: Mozilla puts advertising into Firefox AGAIN
See: How to customize Firefox Suggest settings, https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-suggest
They have added a new option to Firefox privacy settings, enabled by default of course, to allow "suggestions from sponsors" to "occasional"ly appear in the navigation bar dropdown, as if they were bookmarks. I noticed this by seeing a link to Office Depot in the pulldown, wondering what Office Depot page I had bookmarked or in my history, and discovering that it was an in-browser "sponsored suggestion". It appears to work by sending all your navigation bar typeahead to Mozilla so it can match you with a sponsor (oops about that privacy, lol). I'm not sure how recent this "feature" is, but I think it is recent, and I only noticed it today (I'm on LTS Firefox but installed an update a few days ago). Maybe the less stable releases have had it for longer.
Turning the sponsored suggestions off is not that difficult (see the url above for instructions), but Mozilla's unceasing obsession with inveigling advertising into the browser is... disturbing. Another day in the enshittification of the web.
- smoldesu 3y ago> but Mozilla's unceasing obsession with inveigling advertising into the browser is... disturbing. Why? It's Open Source.
- activiation 3y agoYeah I guess the few people still using it can modify the source code and compile it...
- talonx 3y agoReminds of the days when any complaint about a missing video codec in Linux used to be met with "write and compile your own kernel".
- smoldesu 3y agoSo... bearing this in mind, did Linux fail?
- i_have_an_idea 3y agoit did, on the desktop
- smoldesu 3y agoAnd eggs crack when you drop them from waist height.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- aerio 3y agoThat's essentially what Librewolf is. https://librewolf.net/ https://librewolf.net/
- activiation 3y agoAre they good about staying up to date?
- zorrolovsky 3y agoBecause Mozilla misleads users with corporate-speak bs, telling them that they respect their privacy when in reality they have a history of doing anti-user nasty stuff. Today, the public is well aware that G, Meta, Amazon, Apple, etc... spy them and monetize their data to sell ads. So most people using products from those organizations know what to expect. What Mozilla does is worse than FAANG. They release anti-user and spyware features but they have the nerve to preach in their site, docs, UX, etc about how they "lead a revolution to save the web" and "deeply care for user's rights". Perverse and disgusting.
- joao_lopes 3y agoMozilla's tracking is not even in the same ballpark as Microsoft's and Google's. I agree that the hypocrisy is annoying but saying they're worse than FAANG is just wrong.
- zorrolovsky 3y agoI see your point but... not sure if I agree. Here's an example: Mozilla makes Google the default search engine in Firefox for all users. That's FAANG + misinformation + hypocrisy + perversity on my book. Misinformation because you can´t be serious about privacy if your default search engine is Google. Hypocrisy because they position themselves as a privacy-focused product but they still push Google, Pocket, ads and other nasty stuff. Perversity because they emotionally manipulate users to make them feel safe, while at the same time they make them vulnerable to tracking. Today I installed Firefox on my iPhone. When you launch the app, there's a child-like drawing of a smiling woman hugging the FF logo. A heading reads "Welcome to an independent internet". Subheading reads "Firefox puts people over profits and defends your privacy as you browse". Whatever you type on the URL bar connects you to Google. So... because of their defaults any user action will lead such user in exactly the opposite direction of what they were promised a second ago. That's perverse and disturbing. I'm done with Mozilla and Firefox, they need to be exposed and shamed like any other FAANG orgs. I've been wishing and hoping they get things right but this behavior has now been going on for over a decade.
- 3y ago
- dotcoma 3y agoLuckily, there’s a solution… https://librewolf.net/ https://librewolf.net/
- no_time 3y agoIt does indeed look superior. But getting the 2nd most important software on my PC from a group of randos with not even full names and God knows what level of opsec is just too scary even for me. I've been toying with the idea of setting up a build enviroment for LibreWolf myself but that would still require auditing the patches and their changes as they come in every day.
- solarkraft 3y agoDo you mean they keep patching stuff? What's the problem with tracking their patches a bit more slowly?
- no_time 3y agoEh. It might be fine until it isn't. One build system breakage and you are looking at an afternoon of fiddling if you are like me. (not much experience in C++ and it's tooling)
- kuroguro 3y ago> from a group of randos with not even full names Somehow I'd trust a group of randos more than most corporations
- no_time 3y agoFor most things, me too. I have no qualms about running a keygen for example. It doesn't get updated, doesn't reach out to the internet, and has a tiny set of functionality. But a browser is none of these. If one of the devs gets their machine hacked, a trojanized build can reach you in mere seconds if you are unlucky enough to start your browser shortly after the build pipeline gets infected.
- 3y ago
- aswerty 3y agoLooks to be only in the US the advertising is being run (for now) according to the link you shared. > Note: Firefox Suggest is currently available in the United States. For users outside of the US, only local results (browsing history, bookmarks and open tab suggestions) are provided.
- MaxikCZ 3y agoMy homepage showing most visited sites got started showing ads, masking themselves as sites I visit the most (needles to say I never visited them before) just 2 days after I arrived in Dominican Republic from Europe. As soon as I noticed the ads I just uninstalled the browser, which is basically the strongest signal I can send.
- gary_0 3y agoI stopped updating Firefox on version 89.0 because I got tired of having to unfuck it after every update.
- drakz 3y agoAnd here we go again, Mozilla pissing its users, just few weeks ago after they pushed their VPN ads into Firefox.
- Rastonbury 3y agoThey will always let you turn it off, the way I see it is necessary evil for the greater good. The less reliance on daddy Google the better
- wkat4242 3y agoJust let us pay for it directly then. Instead of this roundabout thing with the "Mozilla Foundation". I donate monthly to KDE and yearly to FreeBSD and I would pay for Firefox too if I could, but I want to pay for Firefox and not for all the other stuff they do. Amd when I pay I want none of that ad stuff in it of course. Time for a Firefox Premium paid version.
- its-summertime 3y ago> We are in the process of rolling out a new offering to improve the Firefox Suggest experience. This feature requires access to new data and is only available to a small number of users via an *opt-in* prompt. Mozilla collects the following information to power Firefox Suggest when users have opted in to the improved experience. I would assume anything outside of that is inferred from local data, much like firefox's new tab page does
- pawelduda 3y agoI missed tree tab extension in Firefox the most, now I'm using Brave and they just added vertical tab bar, which does the job for me. Strongly recommend it. Also they don't revamp the top bar every update with cool new color themes.
- ShamelessC 3y agoYou "missed" it? Tree Style Tab in Firefox still exists and works better than ever for me.
- pawelduda 3y agoSorry, I missed it since I stopped using Firefox
- solarkraft 3y agoI've been thinking about starting an "un-Mozillaed" distribution of Firefox for a long time. Maybe the IceWeasel brand is now free?
- JHonaker 3y agoIt’s called IceCat, and it already exists.
- archerx 3y agoIronically Firefox was the "un-Mozillaed" version of the Mozilla browser back in the day and Firefox was released as the lean, unbloated, very fast version of the Mozilla browser and now we have come full circle. I have stopped using Firefox after using it daily for years because I was just so sick of their updates making things progressively worse.
- doubled112 3y agoIs the SeaMonkey project “active enough” for daily use? Could I go somewhat full circle? They update the engine from Firefox periodically, but the browser is a rather important part of security.
- hulitu 3y agoAs a firefox and chrome replacement, no. It has difficulties with the new web standards and JS bloat. But for the rest of the internet is ok.
- xyzal 3y agoDon't put ads in -- show a "support Firefox development" button instead
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- MaxikCZ 3y agoI got ads in my "Most visited sites" picker homepage to amazon and adidas. Uninstalled the browser right that minute.
- lock-the-spock 3y agoBut every other browser is worse...
- PurpleRamen 3y agoSeems to be there since October 2021[1], and US-only. As so far there was no big rage in the last 2 years about this, I would think this is not such a big deal for most remaining users. [1] https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/firefox-now-shows-ads-as-sponsored-address-bar-suggestions/ https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/firefox-now-s...
- ChrisLTD 3y agoI think we may be using the term “enshittification” a bit too freely. But I suppose there’s no stopping it.
- KingLancelot 3y ago[dead]