Why did we stop using Firefox?
Can someone remind me why we stopped using Firefox a while back? There was some piece of news that broke everyone's trust, but I can't remember what Mozilla did. Was it a change in their user agreement?
Who is this "we" you talk of?
Who is this "we"? I still use it, never stopped.
Can't come back to Firefox if you never leave in the first place
I come back to it every morning wait no, I don't close my 1000+ tabs or shut down my Windows. Never mind.
The thing is, I never have. Chrome is absolute hot garbage and spyware, all the Chromium forks are all flawed and bugged and still feed into Google's dominance because of engine and stupid Manifest bullshit. Firefox, despite all the stupid things Mozilla did and still does just works the best and is not Chromium.
Can you elaborate on the manifest bullshit thing?
New Chromium framework for browser extensions that severely limits their functionality. It neuters adlockers.
Here, this should help. tl;dr: Google updated how Chrome security works and it broke apps like every adblocker at the time.
Google sells it as an updated extension framework to improve security, privacy, and performance of extensions... But it also nerfs adblockers ability to block all ads.
There are some forks from chrome that haven't implemented the new manifest thing. So if you really need to, look for those.
Honestly, as a "non-power" Firefox user, the only issues I'm experiencing is when Google purposely slows down or messes with me simply because I use Firefox (e.g., YouTube).
Dunno, Youtube works fine for me, watching without account. I don't use anything else from Google, so can't say if anything else is shit.
When? There have been a few times people stopped using Firefox in large numbers.
One of them was when Chrome first came out. Firefox (and every other browser) at the time ran every site in one process. As sites became more reliant on Javascript, which was usually poorly written, that meant any one tab having a problem made other sites and even the browser's own UI unresponsive, or sometimes crashed the whole browser. Chrome's multiprocess model was a revelation. Firefox didn't get its own implementation until 2016.
Recently, there's been some movement away from Firefox due to Mozilla making decisions people don't feel align with open source, the open web, and privacy. The one that has me looking at forks is the planned addition of terms of use to the browser. Terms of use are for an ongoing relationship between a service operator and a user; Firefox is local software I'm operating myself on a computer I own. Its fine for optional online services like Sync to have terms of use, but the browser should work without those.
That's what I was remembering, the terms of use.
I asked ChatGPT is similar question earlier this week. This was the answer.
While Mozilla has not been found to sell user tracking data in the conventional sense, the introduction of features like PPA (Privacy-Preserving Attribution) and changes in privacy policy language have understandably caused concern among users. These developments suggest a shift towards balancing user privacy with the need to support advertising models. Users prioritizing privacy should stay informed about these changes and adjust their browser settings accordingly.
We did?
I never fully did, but I did end up using Chromium more than I wanted to:
A good while back, Chrom(ium) was just flat-out faster
Performance was huge.
I was willing to put up with a little jank from my browser because I wanted a diverse browser ecosystem, but Chrome felt much, much now performant. After I switched to Chrome, browsing felt noticably better.
#2 for me. The PWAs for Firefox extension broke one too many times so I gave up.
Good news - Firefox is actively developing built-in PWA functionality right now. There's a discussion thread I'll link you to when I find it.
EDIT - here you go, this also has links to further discussions: https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/how-can-firefox-create-the-best-support-for-web-apps-on-the/m-p/60561#U60561
There's already a VERY early version in FF Nightly, but tbh it doesn't yet really do anything you'd expect of a PWA.
Info on that: https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/how-can-firefox-create-the-best-support-for-web-apps-on-the/m-p/60561#U60561
I believe you're thinking of a ToS change where the wording was incredibly vague, leading to some outlets to claim they were selling browsing data to 3rd parties and AI modelers. They changed it right after to specify that the data they were using wasn't browsing data, and the data they did gather wouldn't be used for AI. They are not as invasive as google, but you're subject to Google on Firefox because of the ubiquity of their telemetry and search optimizations across websites. Firefox with an add-on such as noscript is much better than Chrome still, in my opinion. At the very least, it's nice to have a browser that doesn't work to undermine its own add-on functionalities.
This. It has been everywhere here around, if someone denies it, is lying! It was nothing in the end but in the meantime I tried Zen (based on FF) and it's aesthetically more pleasing to me
Still using it here
That was the final straw for me, I switched over to waterfox for nominally more privacy.
Changing to opt-out telemetry from opt-in is the one I remember people fussing over
That was overblown drama. They didn't change anything in practice. They clarified things by writing it down. You disable some defaults and have no issue. Even if you don't, it's not nearly as bad as other popular platforms.
I never stopped using Firefox.
If you want I can look for a comment I made quoting the relevant terms a while back. Or you can look for it yourself.
Simple forks still depend on upstream. I'd rather support Mozilla than not, given no better sustainable alternative. They do some good stuff like Firefox, Thunderbird, and mdn.
Small suggestion: if you’re over 21 stop blindly doing what others do. Start questioning things and do what you think is best.
Because Librewolf exists and Mozilla became an adware vendor.
Firefox used to have a "we're a browser that won't sell user data" promise. Then they changed their TOS and removed the promise, adding:
When you upload or input information through Firefox, you hereby grant us a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license to use that information to help you navigate, experience, and interact with online content as you indicate with your use of Firefox."
When people reacted to their TOS they said it was an accident, it's just boilerplate, don't take it seriously.
Or in other words: an entity with a team of lawyers claimed ownership of all your data, and then downplayed it, and then has acted good since.
Personally I stick my head way into the alligators mouth and still use Firefox.
I use IronFox because firefox decided to support bad practices. Kinda like google removing "don't be evil".
Firefox is better than most but still smugly makes anti-user changes which are complete dog shit.
Remember when they turned off your ability to choose to load extensions that weren’t signed, because fuck you?
Fuck Pepperidge farm, I remember that shit.
Or how about DNS over https, because fuck you, user, why should you have any say over name resolution when you might use that power to block ads and malware?
DNS over https
Wait, can you explain that? I think I have it toggled on.
The world in general switched from Firefox to Chrome several years ago because at that time (when just released) Chrome was new, shiny, and fast (much faster than Firefox). And at that time everyone loved Google (they still had their infamous "be no evil" motto). And Google also promoted their browser, and, given their web resources are immensely popular, that helped tremendously.
That switch had nothing to do with recent concerns about privacy in Mozilla products.
I stopped using Firefox for four core reasons:
Their investment into AI How they submit and work with their Google overlords to some degree Their browser putting in more and more unnecessary and unasked features (like Firefox account for one) Their Terms of Service
CEO compensation too
Misinformation
There was some uproar when they essentially de-committed to supporting MDN/developer tools in 2020
...we are reducing investment in some areas such as developer tools, internal tooling, and platform feature development, and transitioning adjacent security/privacy products to our New Products and Operations team...
You guys stopped? :: looks around nervously::
Firefox is essential for its various forks even if you have gripes with it
I never stopped using it. There are privacy issues with all browsers. I like how Firefox works, but I regularly end up using Firefox, chrome, and edge all at the same time. I use them for some compartmentalization of my tasks and work lol
What's your privacy issues with Firefox? How do they compare to those of the other browsers?
A: Not all of us did.
2: It sucked for a while, performance went down the toilet till they rewrote the engine in quantum.
Honestly threading was horrible for a decade there, while chrome had multi-processes running solid, even extensions didn't kill it, even if it burned 500gb ram to browse bash.org.
Experiments were bad too, but you could shut those off.
Yeah, it's amazing how few people remember just how terrible its performance tanked. The memory leaks were truly unbearable.
Probably
I didn't though, because the alternative would either be very small browsers with no or very limited addon support, or FF forks. And until now, everything Mozilla added was either opt-in or very easy opt-out. So hopping wouldn't change much for me, except that there's no LibreWolf nightly, and I doubt that self-compiled addons work there consistently.
I don't even remember many times Firefox/Mozilla has changed its extension API and broken everyone's add-ons. It gets tiresome.
Mainly once, if you dont count prehistoric versions
wait people stopped using Firefox? I've been rocking it since like 2006/2007
What follows is a list of missteps Mozilla made since its inception. LibreWolf ftw. I hope Google has to divest of Chrome and forced to stop signing search deals to make them the default search engine on a browser. Can't happen soon enough.
"We" didn't stop using Firefox. Open source boycotts are complicated because the software is separate from the developers. You can keep using the software even if you disagree with the development organisation.
Mozilla organisation is getting problematic for a whole lot of reasons. My issue with them is that they seem to be in the "more money than they know what to do with it" phase. They're flush with cash, but it's not reflecting to the product. If they buy an ad company and plan AI stuff, maybe things aren't going well.
Problem is, there's no viable competing organisation. Protest forks of software don't really work that well unless you can actually guarantee the development support. Compare this to what happened when OpenOfficeOrg successfully moved to LibreOffice - developers saw the old organisation didn't work, so they made a new one that did.
I have a silly reason! I got a windows phone and loved it, so was happy to use Edge (when it was still its own thing and not effectively Chrome).
Edge's PDF viewer was great, and in general things were speedy, got out the way, and best of all it synced bookmarks to my phone. :) I also liked the rewards system for using bing, and between microsoft and google, I regarded google as worse ethically. (Obviously... yeah not a solid argument)
I think I switched back to firefox and variants mainly because I started caring about my data, open-source, and also those advantages Edge had were eroding in real-time, with adverts, nagging, and Windows things creeping in - the rewards ended, the chrome thing, it started feeling like the IE days again.
One of my coworkers uses it still, and it pains me to see what new AI gimmick is being shoehorned in.
If I stopped for dumb reasons, I like to think I came back wiser for it. :)
I just use Librewolf
I never switched, I installed Chrome, started it, saw the UI, hated it, uninstalled it.
No, chrome came out and was that much better than every other browser at first.
Is it though?
It was. It was crazy fast and lightweight at the time.
It gained massive market share.
It became the default development target for websites.
Other browsers started getting left behind.
Each step syphons users from other browsers, compounding issues.
Was
Operative word.
When Chrome initially came out? Not even close. Firefox was a bloated piece of crap, Chrome was slim and didn't have all the bullshit that every other browser had.
Obviously, things have changed a little...
I think OP is mostly focusing on why people switched off of FF. Present behaviour isn't super relevant to the conversation.
I've been back to Firefox for about a year now. Left chrome for it.
I recently tried to migrate to Firefox after the v2 extension changes in Chrome. I worked, but there were a few things that bothered me.
Chrome and chromium browsers will automatically use the window last used in the MacOS workspace you are in, and this usually works nicely when you have a work workspace and a personal workspace. It keeps things nicely separated when you click on links. Firefox doesn’t do that. It uses whatever window you last accessed. Not the end of the world.
The real problem I had is that the performance when using web tools like grafana in Firefox is so much worse compared to chromium based browsers. It was unbearable. I haven’t tried WebKit yet to see the same services in safari, for example.
I am lazy and have yet to switch to a new fork.
Don't you mean Netscape Navigator?
It was too noisy. My wife and I used to live in a small apartment. I'd leave my Linux box on all the time. Running Firefox, it'd periodically spin up the fan, which was loud enough to annoy my wife at night, and me during the day. Chrome didn't spin up the fan. I switched and we stopped hearing my noisy computer.
This was a while ago. I can't remember if it was Firefox or Mozilla at that point.
Back in the early days Mozilla redesigned Firefox interface. It was so incomprehensively moronic that I moved to Chrome.
Firefox was late to use multiple threads for the UI so it was horribly slow and hanging every time a page was loading. I think It took them around 2 years to get this done while Chrome was running great.
Even I being a hardcore Firefox user, I went to Chrome for 1 year or so as it was intolerable.
I stopped using it and went to chrome bc my adblock stopped working and i waited for a fix but it didn't come. It worked fine on chrome.
I went back to firefox bc my adblock stopped working but it worked fine on firefox.
these two events are several years apart if that wasn't clear
i think when they killed weave. such a dick move. one of many. may the CEO get most out of the bribe they get from google for selling out its users. i muria even the free and open things are shit.
Because I use only android or Samsung dex. It doesn't work on dex & android seems forgotten. I use per site zoom to much.
I still recommend floorp, I love the sidebar.
Um Sir, this is a Lemmy