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The amount of stuff you need to disable on a fresh Firefox install now is getting ridiculous. In settings you need to uncheck: 1. Recommend extensions as you b

by WD-42 2y ago

The amount of stuff you need to disable on a fresh Firefox install now is getting ridiculous. In settings you need to uncheck: 1. Recommend extensions as you browse 2. Recommend features as you browse 3. Sponsored Shortcuts 4. Recommended stories/Sponsored stories 5. Show trending search suggestions 6. Suggestions from Firefox 7. Suggestions from sponsors 8. Allow Firefox to install and run studies 9. Allow websites to perform privacy-preserving ad measurement 10. Everything AI related in Firefox Labs

Rinzler89 2y ago
It's one of the reasons I gave up on Firefox. Mozilla have no incentive to improve Firefox and can afford to keep running it into the ground knowing Google has to foot the bill for them to not get hit with the monopoly hammer by the US and EU governments.
- nicman23 2y ago
  what did you choose to move to
  - unicornporn 2y ago
    Let me guess... Another Blink engine browser?
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
  - Rinzler89 2y ago
    Here's my aproximate browser history since I started using the internet. IE(2002) -> Firefox(2004) -> Opera(2008) -> Firefox(2011) -> Chrome(2015-present) -> Brave (probably in the near future)
    - nicman23 2y ago
      [flagged]
- unicornporn 2y ago
  I agree that it sucks. But does it really suck more than the alternative (Blink monopoly and terrible vertical tabs implementations)?. No way. I made most of these changes years ago and have just migrated my Firefox profiles directory since.
  - eesmith 2y ago
    An alternative you might consider is LibreWolf, a privacy-preserving fork of Firefox.
matheusmoreira 2y ago
Is there a way to automate this and commit it to a dotfiles repository so that it always gets applied?
- kmarc 2y ago
  https://github.com/yokoffing/BetterFox https://github.com/yokoffing/BetterFox I set this up once, sometimes do a git pull, and honestly, I can't see "annoyances" others always complain about. Maybe I look at the wrong places / learned to ignore them. Or maybe it's BetterFox removing them. Worth a try. Edit: https://github.com/yokoffing/Betterfox/wiki/Common-Overrides#weather-widget https://github.com/yokoffing/Betterfox/wiki/Common-Overrides... They already included instructions on how to disable it. However, since the defaults also disable most of the new tab clutter, it wasn't shown to me in the first place.
- Arnavion 2y ago
  You can disable most of these things in user.js. See https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js (née ghacks.net user.js) for an example. The next problem is FF generates random profile names by default ( ~/.mozilla/firefox/<random>/user.js ) which makes it hard to deploy a user.js via automation. But you can also drop in a ~/.mozilla/firefox/profiles.ini with a fixed profile name of your choice, so then you can use dotfiles or any other mechanism to deploy those two files. That said, as the original tweet says, they did this particular one by adding new user.js options, so you wouldn't be *automatically* protected from them. You could try to find someone who publishes the exact user.js you want to use to some git repo / URL and set up automation to sync that file to your devices periodically. Unfortunately most user.js have some common elements but also some personal unique elements (because you may want to not change some settings because they break websites you care about), so you may not find such a person.
unicornporn 2y ago
10. Disable Pocket with "extensions.pocket.enabled = false" 11. Disable Privacy Preserving Attribution using "dom.private-attribution.submission.enabled = false"
- Abishek_Muthian 2y ago
  I like the stories suggested by Pocket, they seems to be from trusted sources and the personalization seems to happen locally[1]. >Are these stories in the new tab personalized to me? > For the most part, no. Most recommendations on your new tab come from a general list of the best stories on the web. But Pocket is actively exploring ways to deliver personalized recommendations in a way that vigorously protects users’ privacy. Importantly, neither Mozilla nor Pocket ever receives a copy of your browser history. When personalization does occur, recommendations rely on a process of story sorting and filtering that happens locally in your personal copy of Firefox. [1] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/pocket-recommendations-firefox-new-tab https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/pocket-recommendations-...
  - solarkraft 2y ago
    I like the stories too! Still doesn’t mean Pocket has any business being forcibly built into my browser, though.
- brador 2y ago
  Disable harmful website checking too (url leak).
  - JimDabell 2y ago
    What URL leak? There is a database of malicious URLs that is downloaded by Firefox periodically. It doesn’t use a remote database lookup on demand.
DidYaWipe 2y ago
And you can't set new tabs to default to your home page, allegedly because of "security issues." Yet every other browser can handle it. And then there's the idiotic burying of bookmarks three levels deep on the mobile version. Oh, and the storage of log-in credentials blows. When you pick a saved log-in ID on a site, Firefox is too dumb to find the matching password. It shows you every password for every ID you've used on the site, and you have to scroll through them. I really wanted to support Firefox so I switched back to it from Safari recently. But it sucks ass.
- elashri 2y ago
  Firefox stopped using 'browser.newtab.url' long time ago as it was a preferred attack surface for male are trying to redirect people to scam pages. I understand that you are annoyed but you can still use an addon to do that which gives you more control. I don't know about other browsers and how they handle the abuse of this situation or if they care at all. But it is not like there did it just to annoy people.
  - yencabulator 2y ago
    How would a scammer change my browser.newtab.url? How would a scammer be able to change my browser.newtab.url without an attacker also being able to change my network.proxy.http?
  - DidYaWipe 2y ago
    "Firefox stopped using 'browser.newtab.url' long time ago" That doesn't really mean anything to the end user (including me). If the implementation was flawed, the answer isn't just to abolish the entire feature.
t0bia_s 2y ago
Just use fork of FF. LibreWolf. https://librewolf.net/ https://librewolf.net/
- hnarn 2y ago
  I had no idea LibreWolf supports Firefox Sync, that's pretty much the only reason I'm using Firefox so I'll definitely try it out.
  - anal_reactor 2y ago
    Eh, every time there's a bigger change in Firefox someone forks it, and then the project dies after some time.
    - t0bia_s 2y ago
      LibreWolf is a live since March 2020, still updated regularly.
- solarkraft 2y ago
  From what I know it’s one of those forks that disable so much that a lot of web apps become unusable.
  - t0bia_s 2y ago
    Such as?
1vuio0pswjnm7 2y ago
One of the most ridiculous hassles is having to connect to the internet to disable an add-on. Mozilla apparently needs to be notified every time a Firefox user disables or enables uBlock Origin.
- JTyQZSnP3cQGa8B 2y ago
  I didn’t knew this and it’s completely unacceptable. In a real project it would be classified as a bug, and a quick fix would be done for that.
leotravis10 2y ago
And much much more: https://unixdigest.com/articles/choose-your-browser-carefully.html#tweaking-firefox https://unixdigest.com/articles/choose-your-browser-carefull... Keep in mind that this isn't for everyone.

by WD-42 2y ago

Rinzler89 2y ago

It's one of the reasons I gave up on Firefox. Mozilla have no incentive to improve Firefox and can afford to keep running it into the ground knowing Google has to foot the bill for them to not get hit with the monopoly hammer by the US and EU governments.

nicman23 2y ago
what did you choose to move to
- unicornporn 2y ago
  Let me guess... Another Blink engine browser?
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- Rinzler89 2y ago
  Here's my aproximate browser history since I started using the internet. IE(2002) -> Firefox(2004) -> Opera(2008) -> Firefox(2011) -> Chrome(2015-present) -> Brave (probably in the near future)
  - nicman23 2y ago
    [flagged]
unicornporn 2y ago
I agree that it sucks. But does it really suck more than the alternative (Blink monopoly and terrible vertical tabs implementations)?. No way. I made most of these changes years ago and have just migrated my Firefox profiles directory since.
- eesmith 2y ago
  An alternative you might consider is LibreWolf, a privacy-preserving fork of Firefox.

matheusmoreira 2y ago

Is there a way to automate this and commit it to a dotfiles repository so that it always gets applied?

kmarc 2y ago
https://github.com/yokoffing/BetterFox https://github.com/yokoffing/BetterFox I set this up once, sometimes do a git pull, and honestly, I can't see "annoyances" others always complain about. Maybe I look at the wrong places / learned to ignore them. Or maybe it's BetterFox removing them. Worth a try. Edit: https://github.com/yokoffing/Betterfox/wiki/Common-Overrides#weather-widget https://github.com/yokoffing/Betterfox/wiki/Common-Overrides... They already included instructions on how to disable it. However, since the defaults also disable most of the new tab clutter, it wasn't shown to me in the first place.
Arnavion 2y ago
You can disable most of these things in user.js. See https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js (née ghacks.net user.js) for an example. The next problem is FF generates random profile names by default ( ~/.mozilla/firefox/<random>/user.js ) which makes it hard to deploy a user.js via automation. But you can also drop in a ~/.mozilla/firefox/profiles.ini with a fixed profile name of your choice, so then you can use dotfiles or any other mechanism to deploy those two files. That said, as the original tweet says, they did this particular one by adding new user.js options, so you wouldn't be *automatically* protected from them. You could try to find someone who publishes the exact user.js you want to use to some git repo / URL and set up automation to sync that file to your devices periodically. Unfortunately most user.js have some common elements but also some personal unique elements (because you may want to not change some settings because they break websites you care about), so you may not find such a person.

unicornporn 2y ago

10. Disable Pocket with "extensions.pocket.enabled = false" 11. Disable Privacy Preserving Attribution using "dom.private-attribution.submission.enabled = false"

Abishek_Muthian 2y ago
I like the stories suggested by Pocket, they seems to be from trusted sources and the personalization seems to happen locally[1]. >Are these stories in the new tab personalized to me? > For the most part, no. Most recommendations on your new tab come from a general list of the best stories on the web. But Pocket is actively exploring ways to deliver personalized recommendations in a way that vigorously protects users’ privacy. Importantly, neither Mozilla nor Pocket ever receives a copy of your browser history. When personalization does occur, recommendations rely on a process of story sorting and filtering that happens locally in your personal copy of Firefox. [1] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/pocket-recommendations-firefox-new-tab https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/pocket-recommendations-...
- solarkraft 2y ago
  I like the stories too! Still doesn’t mean Pocket has any business being forcibly built into my browser, though.
brador 2y ago
Disable harmful website checking too (url leak).
- JimDabell 2y ago
  What URL leak? There is a database of malicious URLs that is downloaded by Firefox periodically. It doesn’t use a remote database lookup on demand.

DidYaWipe 2y ago

And you can't set new tabs to default to your home page, allegedly because of "security issues." Yet every other browser can handle it. And then there's the idiotic burying of bookmarks three levels deep on the mobile version. Oh, and the storage of log-in credentials blows. When you pick a saved log-in ID on a site, Firefox is too dumb to find the matching password. It shows you every password for every ID you've used on the site, and you have to scroll through them. I really wanted to support Firefox so I switched back to it from Safari recently. But it sucks ass.

elashri 2y ago
Firefox stopped using 'browser.newtab.url' long time ago as it was a preferred attack surface for male are trying to redirect people to scam pages. I understand that you are annoyed but you can still use an addon to do that which gives you more control. I don't know about other browsers and how they handle the abuse of this situation or if they care at all. But it is not like there did it just to annoy people.
- yencabulator 2y ago
  How would a scammer change my browser.newtab.url? How would a scammer be able to change my browser.newtab.url without an attacker also being able to change my network.proxy.http?
- DidYaWipe 2y ago
  "Firefox stopped using 'browser.newtab.url' long time ago" That doesn't really mean anything to the end user (including me). If the implementation was flawed, the answer isn't just to abolish the entire feature.

t0bia_s 2y ago

Just use fork of FF. LibreWolf. https://librewolf.net/ https://librewolf.net/

hnarn 2y ago
I had no idea LibreWolf supports Firefox Sync, that's pretty much the only reason I'm using Firefox so I'll definitely try it out.
- anal_reactor 2y ago
  Eh, every time there's a bigger change in Firefox someone forks it, and then the project dies after some time.
  - t0bia_s 2y ago
    LibreWolf is a live since March 2020, still updated regularly.
solarkraft 2y ago
From what I know it’s one of those forks that disable so much that a lot of web apps become unusable.
- t0bia_s 2y ago
  Such as?

1vuio0pswjnm7 2y ago

One of the most ridiculous hassles is having to connect to the internet to disable an add-on. Mozilla apparently needs to be notified every time a Firefox user disables or enables uBlock Origin.

JTyQZSnP3cQGa8B 2y ago
I didn’t knew this and it’s completely unacceptable. In a real project it would be classified as a bug, and a quick fix would be done for that.

leotravis10 2y ago

And much much more: https://unixdigest.com/articles/choose-your-browser-carefully.html#tweaking-firefox https://unixdigest.com/articles/choose-your-browser-carefull... Keep in mind that this isn't for everyone.