After I noticed Firefox has removed the Pocket branding but kept the Pocket stories, I also noticed the settings screen on the homepage no longer lets you disable sponsored stories or links.
Firefox 115:
Firefox 139:
You can still remove these advertisements, but you have to leave the homepage and dig through the settings to find that option.
You use the firefox homepage? Pfft.
Blank Page gang where you at
👋
Welp, why is Mozilla gradually turning into a shit-show? They’re still better than Google and Microsoft and Brave but :(.
Once upon a time, people at Mozilla were really good at highlighting how browsers are also known as “user agents”. They do what users want them to do. Or at least they used to do that.
I can somewhat understand why they do it though — they are extremely worried about the Google search-box deal not renewing or even expiring prematurely.
U should really switch to a firefox fork. The official version is fucked.
Is it really fucked? Like, it works great IMO… What’s wrong with it?
i love how you comment under a post showing you an example
This post shows me how it’s fucked?
- Removing bullshit from the home page is great. Reduce clutter.
- You can still disable it in the settings (where settings belong).
🤷♂️ I don’t see it.
Personally, I think it’s fucked that Mozilla slowly transformed Pocket from a standalone article collecting extension, to a mandatory chunk of code built into the browser, to a feed of Mozilla-selected stories and ads with the label filed off.
Meanwhile, the browser isn’t losing the one piece of bloat that (AFAIK) the original Pocket users never wanted anyway.
You’ll be happy to hear that they’re killing off Pocket
Not really, because the service is dead but Sponsored Stories (now going by a generic name) remain
The problem is that you don’t get as much attention without hyperbole
Which one do you recommend and why?
Librewolf and Waterfox are good.
Librewolf is the best IMO. If u want persistent logins u gotta go change the sheetings not to wipe everything tho.
Note that for me Librewolf breaks several sites, sadly
I’ve found u they aren’t broken if u spoof a chromium user agent
Thanks, will try that
Swap for mullvad in those cases
I like floorp, it’s very customisable!
Waterfox isn’t bad. https://www.waterfox.net/
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I’m enjoying Zen, really gets out of your way nicely. Does a bunch of things I used to hack in userChrome.css better, still reasonably secure as best I can tell, it’s not librewolf but it’s still firefox so I add back the normal privacy add-ons, about:settings etc, but the UX uplift is worth it.
That said, without the firefox base we’re all fucked, so this, and their general culture, is really quite disturbing.
What are you going to do when the paid Firefox dev team stops developing it?
Donate to the hopefully less greed driven and user data hungry people that will take up the development.
I don’t think you understand, the majority of the heavy lifting browser development is done by the paid devs at Mozilla. If they stop updating the browser none of the down stream forks are going to be able to replace the work they’re doing.
Why wouldnt they? The majority of money at Mozilla has been going to worthless management people and side projects nobody wants. Only a tiny fraction of the money Mozilla spends would be required to pay the devs that actually develop Firefox. Im saying Firefox needs to be hard forked and Mozilla can go to shit for all i care. As long as Mozilla exists, nobody will do it so maybe its even necessary for Mozilla to die.
Would you have a source that details how Mozilla spends money on the software development of Firefox vs other projects? I couldn’t find it in the financial report, so I guess you have another source.
We have demonstrable evidence of Mozilla opening a public forum to solicit user requests in 2022, then ignoring them for about 2 years, then hating the forum to announce Shopping Assistant and Orbit and other now-dead things
But how much of their resources did that represent? 1%, 10%, 50%? This being a problem really depends on that number.
They are trying to find ways to earn money independent of Google royalties so they can keep making massive FOSS projects, that compete with FAANG technology, independently. For me all the community troubles and failed projects mostly show how hard this is.
No, i made it the fuck up. But if you look at how many actual code changes happen on each release and then substract all the shit that nobody wants, there is little left. Firefox is basically in maintainance mode the way i see it. If you then look at all the other stuff mozilla is doing (ad tech, AI garbage, useless cloud features, marketing) you get a picture of where the management is placing priority. Things that lead to monetization. There are a few cool things like Thunderbird and Mozilla Location Service, but the latter has already been killed off sadly.
Why wouldnt they? The majority of money at Mozilla has been going to worthless management people and side projects nobody wants.
While true, its unlikely the fork devs will fund raise enough.
Paid by who
Mozilla Corporation, who gets more than 80% of its funds from Google, around $500 millions, who does that to ensure Google search remains the default and to avoid antitrust issue if Chrome because even more dominant.
Firefox forks will likely not be able to secure such funding and pay the engineers required to further develop a web browser fully independent of Chromium.
I was listening to MKBHD’S waveform podcast last week where they interviewed the CEO of The Browser Company, they make Arc and Dia, a newer AI browser. Never heard of them prior but I feel like Firefox has gotten more clunky slow and loaded up with features I don’t want, this post reminded me that I need to investigate a replacement.
Wow. I’m not blaming you for not knowing, but you got BSed.
TBC announced the killing-off of their Arc browser on May 26.
Marques Brownlee brought the CEO on for a podcast released on June 2, where the CEO claims they (still) make Arc.
This is disinfo. It’s getting peddled by either Marques or the CEO of The Browser Company, or both — and either way, somebody should feel ashamed of it.
what, they’re killing arc already? holy shit
edit: oh my god that article is painful. “i wish I went all in on ai because i enjoyed playing with chatgpt”?
Webpages won’t be the primary interface anymore. Traditional browsers were built to load webpages. But increasingly, webpages — apps, articles, and files — will become tool calls with AI chat interfaces.
WHAT THE FUCK LOL this is straight up brain damage from using too much chatgpt
I love the em dashes, the weird similes, and the insistence that anybody can just sit down at and play a piano. As you do.
First, simplicity over novelty. Early on, Scott Forstall told us Arc felt like a saxophone — powerful but hard to learn. Then he challenged us: make it a piano. Something anyone can sit down at and play. This is now the idea behind Dia: hide complexity behind familiar interfaces.
I agree theyre putting effort into their AI branded browser now over Arc, but he did reiterate that Arc would remain in maintenance mode. Security patches, fixes would still get implemented but it’s being facilitated by 2-3 engineers only and no new features will be developed for it. Has no bright future, but I wouldn’t call that dead. He equated it to Safari, essentially.
Based on the language of the post, it sure sounds like the CEO regrets putting resources into Arc and talks about pulling the plug sooner. Maybe they’ll keep throwing resources at it, but this sounds like continuing to do so would simply be more of a regrettable decision:
First, I would’ve stopped working on Arc a year earlier… We just didn’t want to admit it. We knew. We were just in denial.
I also don’t know how sustainable the company is, or how novel their new browser (which is basically Google Chrome with a chatbot built in) will be to people who already have Google Chrome as an option. Did the CEO mention how many employees they have? I’d encourage you to venture, I guess, if not, and then imagine how many salaries that cost per year…
Good info to know, thanks.
arc is dead.
if you use an AI powered anything, privacy is not a concern of yours.
I dont get it. Your screenshots show an option to remove stories. What’s the issue here?
Not possible to hide sponsored stories or sponsored shortcuts
Doesnt the bottom screenshot show a toggle to hide sponsored stories?
The bottom one is literally missing the toggle. You can tell because the word “sponsored” is not there
Oh i thought that Recommended ment sponsored.
