This is not a good look for firefox
Almost all the links in my front homepage are sponsored now. What's next, a few ads in the bookmark bar? How about when I enter a URL, I then have to type "McDonald's" before I can actually navigate there?
I say let them cook a little, they arent drowning in donations and still do a tone of things for foss communities.
Let's remember that the de fuckto market (ie pleb) alternative is overwhelmingly Chrome.
We dont need such projects just so we as individuals can have privacy focused experiences but also for how that influences markets and society. And to have any influence you need certain power of masses.
Personaly those shortcuts are a feature I literally never use so much so I don't even register their existence anymore.
The browser itself is free, and they have to make money somehow to keep the company running (if the CEO didn't keep most of it for themself). If you don't like it, you can turn it off or download an ad-free fork.
Can't you remove those?
Yup, you can turn it off.
It's not overly difficult to get to the setting either.
There's literally a settings button on that new tab page to take you right to the correct setting.
If we want software to be FOSS we have to stop bitching so much about developers trying to make the math work.
One could posit an ideal public sector development studio that takes grants from the state/federal government to produce useful Open Source software. Think public radio or public broadcasting, but for apps.
Hell, it isn't even wild in the current moment. Modern day AWS and Azure subsidize much of its small/new user client base with the massive public sector clientele. OpenAI and DeepSeek are both the product of giant state-sponsored initiatives to develop AI that is free at point of service. Plenty of the original internet architecture was the product of public investment and grants, as was the university-centric ARPNET that would eventually be commoditizated into the commercial World Wide Web.
Look up the history of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications and the pioneering of Mosaic, the first widely available GUI-based web browser. It was the foundation for both Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator, which licensed the original design for the tiniest fraction of what it would ultimately generate in future revenues.
Yeah but you can literally just turn this off with no fuss.
1.Firefox for Android.
2.Tap the menu button.
3.Tap. Settings.
4.Tap Homepage.
5.Deselect Sponsored shortcuts under Shortcuts.
There are some more privacy friendly forks of "Firefox for Android", which have sponsored shortcuts disabled or minimized by default. For example:
Feel free to give them a try :)
+1 for fennec
I use Fennec for my phone, but I'm rediscovering Floorp on desktop right now and I'm seriously impressed. Smoothest Fox Fork I've used in a long time.
And looks like it's been fixed :)
@UltraGiGaGigantic Sorry about that, not quite what is expected to happen. I understand that it has been looked into and has now been resolved.
Then turn it off?
Also, I rarely use Firefox on my phone and my links are still all from websites I've visited.
So how exactly were you planning on them making money if they don’t take money from Google to be the default search engine and they don’t take money to place advertisements on the default home page?
If they make some money from harmless icons, I mean, I can live with it
I was fine with 2. Having all but one icon in the tray be an ad is too much.
This is why I torrent firefox pro using Limewire.
The best thing about this is that you can turn it off
These can be turned off. Not great that they’re on by default, but you gotta pay the bills somehow right?
Yeah, this is basically the least offensive thing possible that ensures the lights stay on.
Remember when most sites had simple banner ads, and there was no widespread outcry about how much they sucked and we needed ad blocking software? Then they started flashing, then the popups and pop-unders came, then vids started autoplaying, and now here we are.
If advertisers hadn't gotten greedier than banners on the sides of sites, maybe no one would've gotten around to blocking all their shit.
The only thing really offensive about it, judging from the post, is that they're positioned before the user's pins, not after.
People keep giving Mozilla shit for taking money from Google, yet they see an ad for a different company and lose their shit.
Better than the unlabeled sponsorship behind the default search engine.
This has been the case for several years. Super easy to turn them off
Cool. Willing to say how or is that a secret?
No problem!
Firefox Desktop: Settings - Home panel - uncheck "Sponsored shortcuts" box.
Firefox Mobile: Settings - Homepage - uncheck "Sponsored shortcuts" box.
There is a settings gear icon on that literal page that says customize next to it iirc
See ads, "how dare they" Sees paid version, "how dare they" Development costs time and money, pick your poison.
I was okay with the sponsored links, but now this is affecting the functionality of the app. My phone is shit and I have a hard time sliding to the next page.
but now this is affecting the functionality of the app
This shit irks me so much, because it keeps happening!
There's this feature that makes your address bar randomly auto complete sponsored URLs instead of your actual history. Pretty fucking annoying to type n and have Netflix pop up, even though I don't use it.
When you disable this "feature", it still breaks your autocomplete! Now instead of suggesting Netflix, it just sometimes doesn't suggest anything before I continue typing.
If you must add these anti-features to pay for your CEO, at least don't break the app when it's disabled!
@UltraGiGaGigantic @lemmylurkaround Actually, I would gladly pay for a browser that is just doing its job.
I need one for macOS and iOS, preferrably one solution for both.
Could you point me in the right direction, please?
someone on lemmy has a bit of a hateboner for mozilla.
I think the downvoters can’t hold these two thoughts in their mind at the same time:
No it's the complaint about one of the few transparent revenue flows Mozilla managed to pull off.
It's disabled one step deep on the settings
There is a shitload of stuff going wrong with the Mozilla foundation and this doesn't even make the top 10.
That's the reason for my down vote: it's nothing I want this community to focus on. It's basically engagement bait with the topic "ads bad".
Firefox is the best browser
It's only real competitors, in my eyes, are Firefox forks.
Agreed. I love Firefox and don't really like Mozilla.
Let the people downvote. These points don't matter. I turned off the visibility of points. I am immune, my morale is unbreakable. The downvoters have no power here!
Seems fine to me, they need to make money somehow.
Ads are one thing, but this seems excessive and probably unintentional. Looks like someone just filed this bug, which is another sign that it might be an unintentional problem: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1944704
Skill issue
Honestly, I don't care. I don't even look at that stuff, I just type in the bar thing what I want. Mozilla has to fund the project somehow.
Why is this an issue ??
Meanwhile Let's discuss on how we can make Mozilla Great again (as in independent)
Just turn it off. If they don't have income they don't exist.
Mozilla already has Scrooge McDuck amounts of money. It doesn’t need any more to maintain a browser and an email client.
From jwz, who founded Mozilla & Firefox:
Mozilla had a duty to preserve the open web.
Instead they cosplayed as a startup, chasing product dreams of "growth hacking", with Google's ad money as their stand-in for a VC-funding firehose, with absolutely predictable and tragic results.
And those dreams of growth and market penetration failed catastrophically anyway.
(Except for the C-suite, who made out quite well. And Google, who got exactly what they paid for: a decade of antitrust-prosecution insurance. It was never about ad revenue. The on-paper existence of Firefox as a hypothetical competitor kept the Federal wolves at bay, and that's all Google cared about.)
Now hear me out, but What If...? browser development was in the hands of some kind of nonprofit organization?
As I have said many times:
In my humble but correct opinion, Mozilla should be doing two things and two things only:
- Building THE reference implementation web browser, and
- Being a jugular-snapping attack dog on standards committees.
- There is no 3.
Mozilla already has Scrooge McDuck amounts of money
no. they don't.
the google money that they rely too heavily on, may not always be there. they need more diverse funding. these paid placements, which can be turned off, are one way to do that.
turn off and delete the sponsored stuff at install, never see 'em again. it's not like they're microsoft or something, constantly turning that kind of shit back on with every-other-update.
https://www.jwz.org/blog/2024/06/mozilla-is-an-advertising-company-now/#comment-249969
Preemptive subtwit.
Let's say you run a nonprofit animal shelter. And for some reason, some people feel you should be seeing hockey-stick growth, but the donations aren't covering it.
So you decide to start up a side-line of selling kittens for meat.
Then you will inevitably have someone stroking their chin and saying, 'Yes, yes, but how could they afford to stay open if they weren't selling kitten deli slices?"
Some might say -- maybe you aren't an animal shelter any more. Some might say.
While this analysis is somewhat convincing, let's not forget that for now Firefox is all we have. Important not to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
In my ideal scenario, Mozilla becomes like the Wikimedia Foundation. Which has somehow also accumulated "Scrooge McDuck amounts" of cash but seems to be on a firmer footing and better managed.
Breaking news: Businesses need to make money, more at 11
Almost all the links in my front homepage are sponsored now. What’s next, a few ads in the bookmark bar? How about when I enter a URL, I then have to type “McDonald’s” before I can actually navigate there?
Don't give them new ideas, Sony might jump in and patent that too.
You should see brave lol
Or, ya know, literally any other browser that's not a fork of Firefox.
And Brave has significantly lower costs, given they don't develop an own engine, but rather just put lipstick onto Chromium.
I bailed on brave when I learned more about the shenanigans that one dude pulled.
Either that or they go bankrupt. Design your own browser and give it out for free if you don't like it
Don't give them any ideas
I thought you said "What's next, a few ads in the URL bar?" ...because Mozilla has put a few ads in the URL bar.
Was trying to reference this
Maybe I should have added a paragraph somewhere in there. I was typing fast because I only get so much time on my break at work.
Your writing is better than serviceable, I just had a brain fart while reading it
And even if you disable this, your address bar still randomly breaks, but instead of suggesting an ad it just doesn't suggest anything.
Fuck you, Mozilla.
How do you get this? My home page just has some recent links
Depending on where you got Firefox from, default settings are different. Maybe your distro ships with these deactivated.
Yep. I get it from Librewolf. 😁
Also, not being able to set the home button to a custom URL is fucking crazy. I want the home button to take me to my selfhosted dashboard that has all my services and links on it. I don't want the home button to take me to the dumbass firefox page and have to click another link to get to it.
Been using Kiwi instead for this sole reason but now Kiwi is dead. I'm not willing to concede this workflow and make an extra click because Mozilla is braindead and can't implement a functional home button like every single browser since the beginning of time.
???
I think they mean on mobile as opposed to PC. I can't find any option besides the dashboard-style homepage offered by default. I can customize it, but I can't make it a specific URL.
You can set it to custom and to my knowledge that's always been true.