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uBlock Origin is what makes Firefox even greater and definitely one big reason I use Firefox over Chrome etc. It make the Internet browsable.

jajko 2y ago
I moved many years ago to this combo, and never saw a single reason to switch away. Same for android phone, the only usable mobile web experience I've seen. Those few sites over a decade that had some display issues had issues also under chrome. Plus I personally consider ads a cancer of modern society. White and not so white lies, manipulation... nothing respectable regardless (or because ) of tremendous money circulating in it.
- beeflet 2y ago
  I mean there are appropriate applications for advertising (like classifieds in a newspaper), but there is no reason why advertising should be so pervasive that it requires a massive surveillance apparatus like it does today. Advertisements are the reason why everyone switched from TV to Netflix, and that's back when cable TV was a paid service. secushare[1] makes the case that this is because the internet lacks a secure micropayments layer, so the funding model for everything has to be advertising-based instead of patronage-based. Paypal and the like are exploited as cash cows because of their centralized nature. Cryptocurrencies were later tried but have technical limitations that broadly prohibit this use case (even with payment channels/LN). [0] https://secushare.org/broken-internet https://secushare.org/broken-internet
  - warkdarrior 2y ago
    Ugh, micropayments again! I have no desire to pay for content or software -- torrents and OSS are all anyone needs.
    - beeflet 2y ago
      It's mostly about paying for the bandwidth, not the information itself. In the client-server model, the the server owner has to pay for bandwidth and operation costs, which is the justification for advertisements and such. Even in torrents you have private trackers and all of these annoying incentive systems for people to host content. If you had a good reward system on top of bittorrent/IPFS I think that idea could take over the world, but it is not efficient or decentralized to do so.
- xelamonster 2y ago
  I really wish I could agree but sadly this has not been my experience with Firefox, and I have so many issues I've started to switch away recently. Wasting way too much time fighting with websites that turn out to work perfectly fine on Chrome, and the captchas I get on Firefox are becoming genuinely impossible for me to solve. I'm with you on the ads though, and glad it's working out for someone at least!
  - OkayPhysicist 2y ago
    Try Firefox serving Chrome's UserAgent. You'll be shocked how many issues disappear.
    - EasyMark 2y ago
      Can you recommend an extension for that? I use “User agent switcher and manager” but it seems overly complicated and aimed at web devs. I just want a simple interface and easy switching between OS and browser combinations
  - jholman 2y ago
    I have very few issues with Firefox. The two that I suspect are: 1) Google-owned sites seem to just chew CPU on Firefox. In particular I'm thinking of GMail and Youtube, both of which I'm a heavy user of, and also Maps. But no non-google sites seem to have this problem. 2) I'm constantly getting websites saying "This is your first time using this device, are you sure you're you?", and I haven't tried whether it's better on Chrome, but it's pretty crazy because I've literally never used your stupid site with any other device, and I used it with THIS device just last month you idiots. I'm just blind guessing that this is some kind of problem as a result of Firefox privacy choices, like maybe the site doesn't know how to use cookies in a way that doesn't trigger anti-tracking. For example banks. But Firefox can keep thousands of tabs open at once (thousands. plural. not kidding, not exaggerating.), it has working uBO, and the frequency of "just because we wanted to" UX changes is much lower. It's just a better choice all around.
ants_everywhere 2y ago
That may change since Mozilla is becoming an ad company
- EasyMark 2y ago
  They are not, but they are adding in support for more anonymous ads as they see it as a “compromise”, I don’t but I also don’t think they are as malevolent as a lot of people on HN and Reddit like to make them out to be.
  - remram 2y ago
    A "compromise" between a usable non-ad-company product and what?
EasyMark 2y ago
Honestly I’ve used brave and Firefox and don’t see a huge difference. I still prefer Firefox though because of its philosophy and status as coming from a nonprofit. Brave is a quality project too though, and is my back up, although sometimes I throw Vivaldi in the mix because of its windows splitting and much superior tab management.
- ImJamal 2y ago
  Firefox is developed by the for profit company not the nonprofit org.

jajko 2y ago

I moved many years ago to this combo, and never saw a single reason to switch away. Same for android phone, the only usable mobile web experience I've seen. Those few sites over a decade that had some display issues had issues also under chrome. Plus I personally consider ads a cancer of modern society. White and not so white lies, manipulation... nothing respectable regardless (or because ) of tremendous money circulating in it.

beeflet 2y ago
I mean there are appropriate applications for advertising (like classifieds in a newspaper), but there is no reason why advertising should be so pervasive that it requires a massive surveillance apparatus like it does today. Advertisements are the reason why everyone switched from TV to Netflix, and that's back when cable TV was a paid service. secushare[1] makes the case that this is because the internet lacks a secure micropayments layer, so the funding model for everything has to be advertising-based instead of patronage-based. Paypal and the like are exploited as cash cows because of their centralized nature. Cryptocurrencies were later tried but have technical limitations that broadly prohibit this use case (even with payment channels/LN). [0] https://secushare.org/broken-internet https://secushare.org/broken-internet
- warkdarrior 2y ago
  Ugh, micropayments again! I have no desire to pay for content or software -- torrents and OSS are all anyone needs.
  - beeflet 2y ago
    It's mostly about paying for the bandwidth, not the information itself. In the client-server model, the the server owner has to pay for bandwidth and operation costs, which is the justification for advertisements and such. Even in torrents you have private trackers and all of these annoying incentive systems for people to host content. If you had a good reward system on top of bittorrent/IPFS I think that idea could take over the world, but it is not efficient or decentralized to do so.
xelamonster 2y ago
I really wish I could agree but sadly this has not been my experience with Firefox, and I have so many issues I've started to switch away recently. Wasting way too much time fighting with websites that turn out to work perfectly fine on Chrome, and the captchas I get on Firefox are becoming genuinely impossible for me to solve. I'm with you on the ads though, and glad it's working out for someone at least!
- OkayPhysicist 2y ago
  Try Firefox serving Chrome's UserAgent. You'll be shocked how many issues disappear.
  - EasyMark 2y ago
    Can you recommend an extension for that? I use “User agent switcher and manager” but it seems overly complicated and aimed at web devs. I just want a simple interface and easy switching between OS and browser combinations
- jholman 2y ago
  I have very few issues with Firefox. The two that I suspect are: 1) Google-owned sites seem to just chew CPU on Firefox. In particular I'm thinking of GMail and Youtube, both of which I'm a heavy user of, and also Maps. But no non-google sites seem to have this problem. 2) I'm constantly getting websites saying "This is your first time using this device, are you sure you're you?", and I haven't tried whether it's better on Chrome, but it's pretty crazy because I've literally never used your stupid site with any other device, and I used it with THIS device just last month you idiots. I'm just blind guessing that this is some kind of problem as a result of Firefox privacy choices, like maybe the site doesn't know how to use cookies in a way that doesn't trigger anti-tracking. For example banks. But Firefox can keep thousands of tabs open at once (thousands. plural. not kidding, not exaggerating.), it has working uBO, and the frequency of "just because we wanted to" UX changes is much lower. It's just a better choice all around.

ants_everywhere 2y ago

That may change since Mozilla is becoming an ad company

EasyMark 2y ago
They are not, but they are adding in support for more anonymous ads as they see it as a “compromise”, I don’t but I also don’t think they are as malevolent as a lot of people on HN and Reddit like to make them out to be.
- remram 2y ago
  A "compromise" between a usable non-ad-company product and what?

EasyMark 2y ago

Honestly I’ve used brave and Firefox and don’t see a huge difference. I still prefer Firefox though because of its philosophy and status as coming from a nonprofit. Brave is a quality project too though, and is my back up, although sometimes I throw Vivaldi in the mix because of its windows splitting and much superior tab management.

ImJamal 2y ago
Firefox is developed by the for profit company not the nonprofit org.