7 ms·

WebLibre: The Privacy-Focused Browser

115 points by mnmalst 1y ago

aniviacat 1y ago
There is a setting for Google Safe Browsing, but you can't turn it off. Tapping the toggle does nothing. Some settings are not self-explaining, for example "improve built-in query stripping". I suppose that's to be expected for an alpha. Not being able to add a custom search engine URL (at least as far as I can tell) is unfortunately what will make me not use this browser.
_rdvw 1y ago
Please note that their GitHub releases are not libre and contain proprietary Google Play Services libraries.
kosolam 1y ago
What we really need is to declare Chrome public utility and national security critical. Then have a steering committee and open transparent development that benefits users first. This goes in hand with Chrome being taken away from Google, as have been recently announced.
- smeej 1y ago
  Yes, because that's what adding government influence does--benefit users lol
- hulitu 1y ago
  > What we really need is to declare Chrome public utility and national security critical. Why stop here ? Microsoft, Meta and Apple products are also "public utility and national security critical". /s
danielcberman 1y ago
The personal local search engine concept is interesting. I wish this was packaged as a browser plugin for the wider browser ecosystem. https://docs.weblibre.eu/Personal-Local-Search-Engine https://docs.weblibre.eu/Personal-Local-Search-Engine
0xfedcafe 1y ago
What's the key difference between weblibre and Tor, Bromite, Cromite or Vanadium? Why should anyone use it?
chistev 1y ago
Would this browser prevent Reddit from banning me each time I create a new account even with different devices? If yes, I'll try it out.
- dlcarrier 1y ago
  To the contrary, the better a browser is at avoiding tracking, the more likely you are to be banned from the get go. I primarily use Pale Moon, and CloudFlare blocks me from a bunch of websites, because I don't provide enough tracking data to convince them I'm not a bot.
  - chistev 1y ago
    Interesting
NoSalt 1y ago
So ... this makes how many "privacy focused" web browsers out there now???
- mock-possum 1y ago
  Yeah that was my first thought as well - what browser doesn’t bill itself as protecting your privacy these days?
mdaniel 1y ago
https://github.com/FaFre/WebLibre/tree/v0.9.21/packages/flutter_mozilla_components https://github.com/FaFre/WebLibre/tree/v0.9.21/packages/flut... well, I didn't see that combination of words coming Anyway, I wish the headline had specified "... for Android"
h0chim 1y ago
[dead]
selinkocalar 1y ago
Another privacy browser enters the market. The challenge isn't building a privacy-focused browser - it's getting people to actually switch from Chrome. Most users say they care about privacy but aren't willing to deal with the friction of changing browsers, syncing bookmarks, re-entering passwords, etc. The browsers that succeed are the ones that make the migration process effortless. Privacy is important, but convenience usually wins.
elashri 1y ago
I think this should be specified that it is only "Android" Firefox fork. It is added to the growing list of Firefox forks on Android - Iceraven - Fennec - Waterfox - Tor - IronFox - Firefox Focus (By Mozilla itself) Any others?
- diggety 1y ago
  [dead]
- Semaphor 1y ago
  Is it? They say it’s using Gecko + Mozilla Android Components. Which would probably make it similar to FF in many ways, but not a fork. I didn’t look further into it though (as I want FF, especially Mozilla sync)
- yupyupyups 1y ago
  >IronFox Judging by the commit logs, the main two maintainers are one anonymous guy (nothing linking his profile to a real person) and some Chinese guy (is he a Chinese national or not?) Although these may be perfectly well-meaning people, we can't just trust them to maintain something so critical as a web browser. I fully respect peoples' right to anonymity, but such projects need at least one core maintainer to be an identifiable person, imo. Just to establish trust and accountability in case anything does happen. I hope this is not taken the wrong way and that you understand what I'm getting at here.
  - komali2 1y ago
    I don't necessarily disagree but I was quite easily able to find more information about one of the devs: https://celenity.dev/about/ https://celenity.dev/about/ Yes it's not a name and face, but I can understand wanting to maintain separation between government identity and online identity Here's another Ironfox dev: https://www.linkedin.com/in/itsaky/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/itsaky/ I didn't see any others. I'm not quite clear where you're getting this idea that either of these people are PRC nationals either, or why that would really matter. The PRC is huge in the FOSS space, and it's not like I'm a huge fan of the country (I live in Taiwan) but credit where it's due.
maelito 1y ago
Interesting. Just one hour ago, I was removing the Amazon & co links that Firefox imposes to users on the home page. I was recommending Firefox to my friend to avoid a weather app's ads. Turns out he got ads on Firefox too. Removing them is easy in the settings but not for the general public. The question though is : where will the funds of WebLibre come ? Implementing a browser is hard. If Firefox continues to drift, who will pay for the development of the engine ? The .eu in the domain lets me think this is a european project, but I wasn't able to find a "about us" page.
- aspect0545 1y ago
  It’s a German company behind it, probably a one man show: https://docs.weblibre.eu/Legal/Imprint https://docs.weblibre.eu/Legal/Imprint
  - immibis 1y ago
    Note that UG (haftungsbeschränkt) is a mandatorily for-profit type of company. It is required to retain one quarter of earnings until it reaches 25000€ - the minimum capitalization for a GmbH - and then it may apply to convert to a GmbH.
- 3RTB297 1y ago
  There's maybe a couple dozen forks of FireFox or other Chromium-based browsers out there. Probably more, but certainly enough that this headline made me give a slight eyeroll, thinking "another one, huh? OK, so what's actually different here?" Who pays for it? Many are FOSS projects, specially where privacy is concerned. Plain old FireFox still tracks telemetry, which is more than some people like. People hate being tracked and having their every thought examined for its advertising potential to the point that people build privacy-focused browsers for free as a public good. Sometimes donations work as well, like how the Tor project works. But Tor is running servers, so their financial needs are much heavier.
poolnoodle 1y ago
Not really sure what the point of this is. As others have said, there is already an abundance of privacy focused Firefox forks on Android. I think Ladybird is where the future of user respecting web browsing is at.
IlikeKitties 1y ago
I'm gonna leave this here: https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/firefox-chromium.html https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/firefox-chromium.ht...
- aniviacat 1y ago
  The Tor Browser still being based on Firefox makes me feel a lot better about it.
- n0n0n4t0r 1y ago
  Exactly what I was thinking: a modern privacy first proposal may be better suited with starting from chromium, even if it hurts feelings
- 0l 1y ago
  Also: https://grapheneos.org/usage#web-browsing https://grapheneos.org/usage#web-browsing
- benob 1y ago
  Even if it's not on topic, that post is quite interesting.
- ForHackernews 1y ago
  Maybe all of this is true, but it's a different threat model than I'm concerned with. I'm not that worried about malware exploits, I'm far more worried about software behaving "correctly" in a user-hostile manner.
- jraph 1y ago
  How current is this still? Asking as a complete noob. I don't expect Firefox's architecture to have changed much, but it's been 3 years, so it could have improved a lot since this was written, and there are things I know about that are outdated in this document. For instance, the two mentioned Linux sandbox escapes [1] involve two things that have disappeared in many setups: X11 and pulseaudio. We now have Wayland and pipewire, which should both be better in this aspect IIUC. The mentioned bug related to X11 was also closed 3 years ago. [1] https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/firefox-chromium.html#linux-sandbox-escapes https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/firefox-chromium.ht... [2] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1129492 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1129492
adithyassekhar 1y ago
I can't set Google as my auto complete provider. It's not on the list. I was able to set Google as default search engine but had to go to a separate blank search page and type it out. It would've been nice if Google was in the main list. Runs a local AI model for suggesting tab and container names. It supports tab containers. Suggests you to install ublock origin on first step itself. There's tor, tree view tabs and duck duck go styled bangs synced from a number of repos.
- dubious2 1y ago
  https://searchengine.party/ https://searchengine.party/ might save you some time in the future
- thedevilslawyer 1y ago
  You may be missing the point of this browser.
  - adithyassekhar 1y ago
    I admit that was definitely tongue in cheek. But brave is on the front page. Maybe they're better. I would like to keep my data from bad actors with illegal ops or malware, but willing to sacrifice some to a legitimate corporation with data protection rules set up for a better personalized experience. I guess chrome with ublock origin lite is all I need. Is this browser exclusively for the .1% that will not even load a google web page?
    - pcthrowaway 1y ago
      I doubt even 0.1% manage to avoid loading a google page or script while browsing the web, but there is a lot of momentum behind the (apparently herculean) effort to reduce the presence of google in one's life to the greatest practical degree.
      - adithyassekhar 1y ago
        Future generations will look us in disbelief. Google made incredibly good products, search, gmail, maps, youtube, a mobile os platform. I won't fault them one bit. It's we the people who took a private company's product as public infrastructure, integrated into our lives, replaced any processes we can with a Google one. Entire economies, businesses, governments depend on gmail and google sheets.
attogram 1y ago
So is trying to compete with Brave browser?
whywhywhywhy 1y ago
Can’t help feeling the “-Libre” “Libre-“ branding on projects is cursed. Naming things matters and if FireFox had been called WebLibre or LibreBrowser it would have been far less appealing. There’s just something lame about it and it’s too many syllables, same deal with XLibre.
- klabb3 1y ago
  Fun fact: libre is an ancient Latin term for "any UX or design concerns will be ignored".
  - giancarlostoro 1y ago
    In Spanish it just means "free" but like the GNU catchphrase, it doesn't mean free beer, its associated more so with the word liberty.
  - dlcarrier 1y ago
    In that case, sign me up. It's one of those fields where the more work that goes into it, the worse it gets.
    - whywhywhywhy 1y ago
      Blender is testament against that and the only free software that has made huge inroads into creative work and it only happened after serious UI/UX work
    - staplers 1y ago
      All of computation is evidence against this. Are you getting raw gps coordinates for directions in your car?
      - dlcarrier 1y ago
        I guess that would be preferable to Google Map's current interface of showing a blue line, for the path I should follow, as opposed to a different blue line, for the other roads that I shouldn't follow. I've given up on it, and just use a list of turns and distances, because that way I miss the turns far less often.
mightysashiman 1y ago
I'm curious what kind of reasoning with coming up with such a project, when there are already so many alternatives

115 points by mnmalst 1y ago

There is a setting for Google Safe Browsing, but you can't turn it off. Tapping the toggle does nothing. Some settings are not self-explaining, for example "improve built-in query stripping". I suppose that's to be expected for an alpha. Not being able to add a custom search engine URL (at least as far as I can tell) is unfortunately what will make me not use this browser.

_rdvw 1y ago

Please note that their GitHub releases are not libre and contain proprietary Google Play Services libraries.

kosolam 1y ago

What we really need is to declare Chrome public utility and national security critical. Then have a steering committee and open transparent development that benefits users first. This goes in hand with Chrome being taken away from Google, as have been recently announced.

smeej 1y ago
Yes, because that's what adding government influence does--benefit users lol
hulitu 1y ago
> What we really need is to declare Chrome public utility and national security critical. Why stop here ? Microsoft, Meta and Apple products are also "public utility and national security critical". /s

danielcberman 1y ago

The personal local search engine concept is interesting. I wish this was packaged as a browser plugin for the wider browser ecosystem. https://docs.weblibre.eu/Personal-Local-Search-Engine https://docs.weblibre.eu/Personal-Local-Search-Engine

0xfedcafe 1y ago

What's the key difference between weblibre and Tor, Bromite, Cromite or Vanadium? Why should anyone use it?

chistev 1y ago

Would this browser prevent Reddit from banning me each time I create a new account even with different devices? If yes, I'll try it out.

dlcarrier 1y ago
To the contrary, the better a browser is at avoiding tracking, the more likely you are to be banned from the get go. I primarily use Pale Moon, and CloudFlare blocks me from a bunch of websites, because I don't provide enough tracking data to convince them I'm not a bot.
- chistev 1y ago
  Interesting

NoSalt 1y ago

So ... this makes how many "privacy focused" web browsers out there now???

mock-possum 1y ago
Yeah that was my first thought as well - what browser doesn’t bill itself as protecting your privacy these days?

mdaniel 1y ago

https://github.com/FaFre/WebLibre/tree/v0.9.21/packages/flutter_mozilla_components https://github.com/FaFre/WebLibre/tree/v0.9.21/packages/flut... well, I didn't see that combination of words coming Anyway, I wish the headline had specified "... for Android"

h0chim 1y ago

[dead]

selinkocalar 1y ago

Another privacy browser enters the market. The challenge isn't building a privacy-focused browser - it's getting people to actually switch from Chrome. Most users say they care about privacy but aren't willing to deal with the friction of changing browsers, syncing bookmarks, re-entering passwords, etc. The browsers that succeed are the ones that make the migration process effortless. Privacy is important, but convenience usually wins.

elashri 1y ago

I think this should be specified that it is only "Android" Firefox fork. It is added to the growing list of Firefox forks on Android - Iceraven - Fennec - Waterfox - Tor - IronFox - Firefox Focus (By Mozilla itself) Any others?

diggety 1y ago
[dead]
Semaphor 1y ago
Is it? They say it’s using Gecko + Mozilla Android Components. Which would probably make it similar to FF in many ways, but not a fork. I didn’t look further into it though (as I want FF, especially Mozilla sync)
yupyupyups 1y ago
>IronFox Judging by the commit logs, the main two maintainers are one anonymous guy (nothing linking his profile to a real person) and some Chinese guy (is he a Chinese national or not?) Although these may be perfectly well-meaning people, we can't just trust them to maintain something so critical as a web browser. I fully respect peoples' right to anonymity, but such projects need at least one core maintainer to be an identifiable person, imo. Just to establish trust and accountability in case anything does happen. I hope this is not taken the wrong way and that you understand what I'm getting at here.
- komali2 1y ago
  I don't necessarily disagree but I was quite easily able to find more information about one of the devs: https://celenity.dev/about/ https://celenity.dev/about/ Yes it's not a name and face, but I can understand wanting to maintain separation between government identity and online identity Here's another Ironfox dev: https://www.linkedin.com/in/itsaky/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/itsaky/ I didn't see any others. I'm not quite clear where you're getting this idea that either of these people are PRC nationals either, or why that would really matter. The PRC is huge in the FOSS space, and it's not like I'm a huge fan of the country (I live in Taiwan) but credit where it's due.

maelito 1y ago

Interesting. Just one hour ago, I was removing the Amazon & co links that Firefox imposes to users on the home page. I was recommending Firefox to my friend to avoid a weather app's ads. Turns out he got ads on Firefox too. Removing them is easy in the settings but not for the general public. The question though is : where will the funds of WebLibre come ? Implementing a browser is hard. If Firefox continues to drift, who will pay for the development of the engine ? The .eu in the domain lets me think this is a european project, but I wasn't able to find a "about us" page.

aspect0545 1y ago
It’s a German company behind it, probably a one man show: https://docs.weblibre.eu/Legal/Imprint https://docs.weblibre.eu/Legal/Imprint
- immibis 1y ago
  Note that UG (haftungsbeschränkt) is a mandatorily for-profit type of company. It is required to retain one quarter of earnings until it reaches 25000€ - the minimum capitalization for a GmbH - and then it may apply to convert to a GmbH.
3RTB297 1y ago
There's maybe a couple dozen forks of FireFox or other Chromium-based browsers out there. Probably more, but certainly enough that this headline made me give a slight eyeroll, thinking "another one, huh? OK, so what's actually different here?" Who pays for it? Many are FOSS projects, specially where privacy is concerned. Plain old FireFox still tracks telemetry, which is more than some people like. People hate being tracked and having their every thought examined for its advertising potential to the point that people build privacy-focused browsers for free as a public good. Sometimes donations work as well, like how the Tor project works. But Tor is running servers, so their financial needs are much heavier.

poolnoodle 1y ago

Not really sure what the point of this is. As others have said, there is already an abundance of privacy focused Firefox forks on Android. I think Ladybird is where the future of user respecting web browsing is at.

IlikeKitties 1y ago

I'm gonna leave this here: https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/firefox-chromium.html https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/firefox-chromium.ht...

aniviacat 1y ago
The Tor Browser still being based on Firefox makes me feel a lot better about it.
n0n0n4t0r 1y ago
Exactly what I was thinking: a modern privacy first proposal may be better suited with starting from chromium, even if it hurts feelings
0l 1y ago
Also: https://grapheneos.org/usage#web-browsing https://grapheneos.org/usage#web-browsing
benob 1y ago
Even if it's not on topic, that post is quite interesting.
ForHackernews 1y ago
Maybe all of this is true, but it's a different threat model than I'm concerned with. I'm not that worried about malware exploits, I'm far more worried about software behaving "correctly" in a user-hostile manner.
jraph 1y ago
How current is this still? Asking as a complete noob. I don't expect Firefox's architecture to have changed much, but it's been 3 years, so it could have improved a lot since this was written, and there are things I know about that are outdated in this document. For instance, the two mentioned Linux sandbox escapes [1] involve two things that have disappeared in many setups: X11 and pulseaudio. We now have Wayland and pipewire, which should both be better in this aspect IIUC. The mentioned bug related to X11 was also closed 3 years ago. [1] https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/firefox-chromium.html#linux-sandbox-escapes https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/firefox-chromium.ht... [2] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1129492 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1129492

adithyassekhar 1y ago

I can't set Google as my auto complete provider. It's not on the list. I was able to set Google as default search engine but had to go to a separate blank search page and type it out. It would've been nice if Google was in the main list. Runs a local AI model for suggesting tab and container names. It supports tab containers. Suggests you to install ublock origin on first step itself. There's tor, tree view tabs and duck duck go styled bangs synced from a number of repos.

dubious2 1y ago
https://searchengine.party/ https://searchengine.party/ might save you some time in the future
thedevilslawyer 1y ago
You may be missing the point of this browser.
- adithyassekhar 1y ago
  I admit that was definitely tongue in cheek. But brave is on the front page. Maybe they're better. I would like to keep my data from bad actors with illegal ops or malware, but willing to sacrifice some to a legitimate corporation with data protection rules set up for a better personalized experience. I guess chrome with ublock origin lite is all I need. Is this browser exclusively for the .1% that will not even load a google web page?
  - pcthrowaway 1y ago
    I doubt even 0.1% manage to avoid loading a google page or script while browsing the web, but there is a lot of momentum behind the (apparently herculean) effort to reduce the presence of google in one's life to the greatest practical degree.
    - adithyassekhar 1y ago
      Future generations will look us in disbelief. Google made incredibly good products, search, gmail, maps, youtube, a mobile os platform. I won't fault them one bit. It's we the people who took a private company's product as public infrastructure, integrated into our lives, replaced any processes we can with a Google one. Entire economies, businesses, governments depend on gmail and google sheets.

attogram 1y ago

So is trying to compete with Brave browser?

whywhywhywhy 1y ago

Can’t help feeling the “-Libre” “Libre-“ branding on projects is cursed. Naming things matters and if FireFox had been called WebLibre or LibreBrowser it would have been far less appealing. There’s just something lame about it and it’s too many syllables, same deal with XLibre.

klabb3 1y ago
Fun fact: libre is an ancient Latin term for "any UX or design concerns will be ignored".
- giancarlostoro 1y ago
  In Spanish it just means "free" but like the GNU catchphrase, it doesn't mean free beer, its associated more so with the word liberty.
- dlcarrier 1y ago
  In that case, sign me up. It's one of those fields where the more work that goes into it, the worse it gets.
  - whywhywhywhy 1y ago
    Blender is testament against that and the only free software that has made huge inroads into creative work and it only happened after serious UI/UX work
  - staplers 1y ago
    All of computation is evidence against this. Are you getting raw gps coordinates for directions in your car?
    - dlcarrier 1y ago
      I guess that would be preferable to Google Map's current interface of showing a blue line, for the path I should follow, as opposed to a different blue line, for the other roads that I shouldn't follow. I've given up on it, and just use a list of turns and distances, because that way I miss the turns far less often.

mightysashiman 1y ago

I'm curious what kind of reasoning with coming up with such a project, when there are already so many alternatives