where ‘absolutely not’ means ‘maybe later’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c40irxnC_qM&list=UU9rJrMVgcXTfa8xuMnbhAEA - video
https://pivottoai.libsyn.com/20251223-firefox-browser-falls-to-ai-what-do-we-do-now - podcast
time: 9 min 39 sec
if you’re here to recommend ladybird, tell us why you’re doing advocacy for that trash fire in spite of the well-sourced, ah, downsides pointed out in article and video linked from the OP.
same for brave. I don’t give a fuck if privacyguides told you it was the goodest browser.
if you’re here to advocate for ladybird or brave and haven’t read the article in the OP, fuck off. don’t come here pretending to discuss something you haven’t read.
important addendum: your reason for advocating for shit browsers owned by terrible people will be read out loud in the clown voice it deserves
Lemmy needs a feature where we can click a button on a comment and make everyone see that comment in Comic Sans.
On the subject of Brave:
https://www.reddit.com/r/browsers/comments/1j1pq7b/list_of_brave_browser_controversies/ it really has a little bit to many controversies. (And the list is downplaying some of it, the wikipedia clone added wasn’t just some random one, it is was the one created by the alt right, neo-nazi Vox Day. Addition of which by the CEO should be enough to not want to use the browser at all).
sadly, Floorp is going AI browser. I mean, “choice” to pick the bits of rat poop out browser.
Removed by mod
I used Firefox for largely political reasons (summarized as “Google needs a competitor”), but it was becoming harder and harder to justify. Eventually, I just switched to a Chromium-based browser. I will say that, as an almost-good-enough solution until I wake up from this nightmare to a functioning Servo (🙏🙏🙏) , DNS level ad blocking (using Mullvad’s DNS servers) + uBlock Origin Lite (filtering mode set to “complete”) has been sufficient for me. It even blocks Spotify ads. I think it blocks YouTube ads as well, although I barely watch YouTube on my browser.
Ungoogled Chromium supports MV2 extensions and seems like a good choice if Firefox becomes unusable or you get fed up. I use Trivalent, a security hardened Chromium-based browser, but it may be tough to install if you aren’t on Secureblue. Also it only supports MV3 extensions.
this shit is so fucking frustrating, just leave our browsers alone. we want security updates, not an unethically sourced bullshit-and-vulnerability-generator stapled onto the biggest attack surface on our fucking machine
Presumably, if Firefox version N breaks ad-blocking, someone can make a hard fork of version N-1. Security patches, upgrades to OS support and things like new CSS/HTML features can be cherry-picked or reimplemented to it, though Firefox updates in general will not be admitted, as it’s a hard fork (in the way that LibreOffice or MariaDB is). At worst, Firefox will actively make it hard to do this, closing their source or changing their licence to one which prohibits it, requiring any updates to be reimplemented clean-room style, which will slow things down, though if the alternative is actively enshittified, it’s the least-bad option.
The era of useful Silicon Valley Non-Profits seems to be fizzling out. I wonder how long Signal is going to hold out…
(Those are my 2 reference points, if I’m ignorant of some cool org let me know.)
Wikipedia is still doing good
Which is why there has been some push to undermine it lately. I have noticed ai bro calling it deprecated by chatgpt, or musk’s grokipedia
welcome to lemmy-mastodon interop! here’s your accordion
from the youtube browser comments, “Ladybird is our last hope” seems to be the new standard promotional cut’n’paste phrase
last hope for what, you might ask? well the true anti-woke browser, which is much more important than actually, say, working.
presumably brave is too SJW for these guys, as well as basically working insofar as it’s just a chrome reskin
they want the TRUE GLORIOVS FVTVRE that only a nonexistent thing that doesn’t fucking work, and won’t cos the lead bozo is vibe coding it, can offer.
in fashtech, promises of future glory always beat present day actually fucking working
Use LibreWolf or WaterFox and ironfox for android
you_were_the_chosen_one.gifI jumped ship to Librewolf a year and a half ago (after seeing Mozilla steal people’s data and sell it to advertisers), and I’m pretty fucking thankful for that. For anyone looking to leave Mozilla to rot, I highly recommend it.
how are the defaults for librewolf? I’m considering switching but I’m hearing mixed things about the defaults occasionally breaking sites. waterfox seems pretty good too, but I don’t see it packaged as frequently as librewolf.
i’ll go against the grain here: Librewolfs’s defaults are firmly “meh” for me. still an improvement over the “what the fuck” that’s happening in Firefox.
pros: nixs the annoying Pocket / AI / “suggested” nonsense by default. no annoying extras.
neutrals: Firefox Sync is off, but one click and a restart to turn back on. reasonable for a non-Mozilla project. no cookies saved by default might be annoying for some, but you can add exceptions right from the URL bar and i only have a dozen or so of those set for various sites. gods, cohost is still in that list…
cons: ResistFingerprinting is IMHO way overkill and breaks nice things like automatic dark modes just for preserving privacy in the 0.001% of cases where browser fingerprinting matters. same as WebGL being off by default – i just don’t need that kind of protection
i still recommend it. Disable ResistFingerprinting, enable WebGL, enable Firefox Sync, and decide for yourself if you want auto-clearing cookies or not. i also always enable vertical tabs because my horizontal space is a lot less constricted than my vertical. (it’s a FF feature!)
If you are on Linux I think you will find interest in Konform Browser, which started as a fork of LibreWolf addressing some of your pains. Am dev so please allow me to shill for a bit.
Specifically to your comment:
ResistFingerprinting is IMHO way overkill and breaks nice things like automatic dark modes just for preserving privacy in the 0.001% of cases where browser fingerprinting matters
Konform can respect user theming preferences and dark mode even under Private Mode / RFP.
Firefox Sync,
While Konform still keeps it off by default, it allows configuring endpoints for a self-hosted or third-party Sync server from the Preferences without having to dive into
about:config.Besides that, it goes even further than LW in disabling built-in remote connections, snoopware, and AI integrations.
I hope you might consider it <3
Librewolf or Waterfox.
Orion will also be getting a Linux version.
As for Orion: while I like the idea of having a browser that’s neither Chromium nor Gecko in the mix, Orion is made by Kagi which, at least in the past, self-described as an AI company, so I’m not sure how much I trust their stance to keep slop machines out of it (spoiler: I don’t). Also their CEO seems like a bit of a twat.
And it’s not really open source either apart from the WebKit parts as far as I know.
their absolute twat of a CEO is still running kagi as an AI company, and kagi fans get really weird when you bring it up
