More Proof Firefox is Bad

[carlosgonz]

@weirdnerd

not technology built to abuse and exploit us.

That’s what Opensource does like Abuse… I hate Opensource.

[Privacy2]

If I was paying 80% of the expenses for a project, I would feel justified calling it “a weirdnerd project”.

Suppose your employer is the XYZ corporation and you had a private project called CoolProject, would we be justified in calling CoolProject an XYZ project? Just as you are not the same thing as your employer, Mozilla is not the same thing as Google.

Another example. Flatpak was a project done by Alex. Was Flatpak a Red Hat project? No.

If I was paying 80% of the expenses for a project, …

But that’s just not the case. Google is not paying for the project. Google is paying to have their search be the default search in Mozilla’s project. Do you really not understand the difference here???

[Privacy2]

@weirdnerd

@Privacy2

But given that it is, the browser is really the owner of what to do with what is typed there

While using an “open source” browser on my own computer?

Yeah – it’s the URL and/or search box in the Firefox browser, so they get to decide what happens before they hand it off to your search choice. If you don’t like it, you can bring up https://search.brave.com/ and use the brave search box … at which point Brave is making the decisions.

@weirdnerd

That is a terrible principle to accept, in my opinion.

Disagree. If you don’t like it, you can change the code or go to the search engine of your choice instead of having firefox pass of the search to your search engine.

[Privacy2]

@carlosgonz

@weirdnerd

not technology built to abuse and exploit us.

That’s what Opensource does like Abuse… I hate Opensource.

Firefox is under a Free license. Technically it is a Free license and a weak copyleft license. The MPL is not really too different from the GPLv2.

[weirdnerd]

@Privacy2

Do you really not understand the difference here???

Despite your insulting tone, your arguments remain unconvincing. A human employee does not equal an organization.

[irvinewade]

@weirdnerd

If I was paying 80% of the expenses for a project, I would feel justified calling it “a weirdnerd project”.

Or as they say: he who pays the piper calls the tune.

@amarok

I can’t duplicate that in FF or FF-ESR. Maybe it’s because […]

Plus also this topic: Firefox search by default

There are so many different settings it is no wonder that we see different behaviour.

[Privacy2]

@weirdnerd

Sure, for now, Firefox provides a convenient option on the preferences page to turn this off, similar to how they used to provide a convenient option on the preferences page to turn off javascript, but they no longer do. That fact does not make this behavior acceptable.

But you can still easily turn it off. For example, and again showing why firefox “owns” the URL bar … if you type “about:config” in the URL bar … you can edit/change just about any parameter. e.g. search on javascript and set javascript.enable to false. And if that’s too hard, you can run an extension like “noscript”. Your complaint, to me, sounds like something from an entitled user.

It’s not that hard.

@weirdnerd

These ads are an anti-feature, and Mozilla’s (Google’s) inclusion of them in a supposedly free software is deplorable.

It’s not Google, no matter how many times you insist. That’s a fact. I view your repetition of this as simple disinformation.

[pajuky]

This is the conundrum we live in though. No end-user will pay for a browser (yes SOME will but they’re a drop in the bucket). Aside from valiant efforts like Ladybird , it takes resources to develop and maintain a web browser (which is an operating system running on top of your OS, at this point).

Nevermind all the commercial shenanigans that unfortunately are part of the “browsing experience” – the regular end user will want to watch Netflix or Disney+ or whatever. Mozilla needs to negotiate or maintain this DRM ability (as unfortunate as that is).

So, they take money. Who’s paying right now? Google. The end users won’t pay enough. Nearly every attempt Mozilla has tried to make some money has fallen flat (and for good reasons!), so they are still stuck on the Google life support tether.

So what’s next? Who knows. I hope they (and we, collectively), figure it out…

This is not an excuse or endorsement of what is going on, btw. They are some observations about the state of the browser and the world. Things that have to be dealt with one way or another.

[veleno]

On my L5 (not daily driver) and on my PC with Debian, I’m using with success gnome web

[irvinewade]

@Privacy2

firefox “owns” the URL bar

If only it had remained the “URL” bar, the address bar. Who ever thought that it was a good idea to combine entering a URL with entering a search? I guess it could make sense on space-constrained UIs e.g. small screen. On a desktop / laptop not so much.

Of course, when you write the code, you own every single bar, button, …, widget.

@Privacy2

you can still easily turn it off

For some definition of “easy”. Finding the right config parameter is not always easy. Finding documentation about what a relevant config parameter actually does is not always easy. Sometimes you can guess. Sometimes you make a mess.

@Privacy2

It’s not Google

I don’t think it has been established how much influence Google buys with its 80% share of the funding. What transparency is there on this question?

I’m wondering though … which value for this setting is the default?

Search suggestions are “off” for me and I don’t have a record that I turned them off but that could be procedural fail on my part. (I think the latter.)

As everyone here knows, one of Purism’s messages is about “the power of defaults”. As difficult or as easy as it may be to turn something off, a certain percentage of users will never make a change, for example because they don’t even know bad stuff is happening or don’t even know that bad stuff can be turned off - so they don’t reach the threshold of trying to find out how.

The default matters.

[FranklyFlawless]

@irvinewade

The default matters.

Yes, related:

Move Globally Installed Extensions from Firefox ESR to Profile Directory on Crimson

Currently, uBlock Origin and Privacy Badger are automatically installed with Firefox ESR on Crimson (AMD64) as globally installed extensions and cannot be easily removed by the user. I suggest placing them in the extensions folder in the Profile Directory instead so users regain the ability to easily remove them.

[Ick]

@weirdnerd

It amazes me how people can look at the same facts and draw completely different conclusions. You say that Mozilla is 80% funded by Google, apparently in support of your assertion that Mozilla is not a Google project.

It amazes me, too. Follow the money and you know what interests are followed is not the whole story. If Mozilla would be “Mozilla(Google)”, why there are features like WebHID not available on Firefox? Chrome has it implemented and also advertised it on Firefox Git for this - they even wanted to “work together on this”. Firefox said “no, it’s a stupid thing that decreases the security of your periphery”. Seams like 80% of money is not enough to entirely control the project.

Money tells stories, but they also can be misinterpreted. It’s already a win situation for Google to pay money, even without further actions than the default search engine.

1. This search engine brings data and money back to Google.
2. Firefox is open source. Big tech benefits from open source.
3. Maybe the most important reason: it protects against antitrust law.

And I also think, especially last point could be an issue, if they influence too much into Firefox approach. So saying “Mozilla(Google)” does ignore this point entirely.

[irvinewade]

@Ick

even without further actions than the default search engine

… and with the address bar being a de facto search bar, being the default search engine means being involved in potentially every navigation via the address bar.

[Privacy2]

@irvinewade

If only it had remained the “URL” bar, the address bar. Who ever thought that it was a good idea to combine entering a URL with entering a search?

Completely agree. I pointed this out with my first post in this thread ( More Proof Firefox is Bad - #2 by Privacy2 ) … when I said “I don’t like the fact that the URL line is confused with the Search line. But given that it is, …”.

@irvinewade

For some definition of “easy”. Finding the right config parameter is not always easy. Finding documentation about what a relevant config parameter actually does is not always easy. Sometimes you can guess. Sometimes you make a mess.

It’s not a complaint I would have thought I would hear from a Librem 5 owner! . Fortunately, one can always revert to default settings ( Configuration Editor for Firefox | Firefox Help ). Or, as I explained, one can always use an extension like noscript (it seems that half the time, extensions are there mainly to manage configuration settings). In replying, I did wonder whether the complaint was serious or was for some other reason.

@irvinewade

I don’t think it has been established how much influence Google buys with its 80% share of the funding. What transparency is there on this question?

It’s a good question. I will say that I feel more comfortable with the transparency from a non-profit like the Mozilla Foundation (here are their Board Meeting slides Board - MozillaWiki ) than I get from a for-profit company like Purism (they are far from transparent IMO).

@irvinewade

I’m wondering though … which value for this setting is the default?

Search suggestions are “off” for me and I don’t have a record that I turned them off but that could be procedural fail on my part. (I think the latter.)

This article address that. Firefox Suggest for Mobile | Mozilla Support . Note that, at least on roll-out, the default is on for firefox-mobile in the US. Look at “What Settings are On By Default”.

@irvinewade

As everyone here knows, one of Purism’s messages is about “the power of defaults”. As difficult or as easy as it may be to turn something off, a certain percentage of users will never make a change, for example because they don’t even know bad stuff is happening or don’t even know that bad stuff can be turned off - so they don’t reach the threshold of trying to find out how.

The default matters.

I don’t disagree that “defaults matter” and that more broadly it’s known as “Nudge Theory”. Nudge theory - Wikipedia . The point of FOSS is that in regard to Firefox on PureOS, the blame for defaults is not Mozilla … and certainly not Google. Heck, with this default setting, I even see this as an attempt to diversify their revenue away from Google.

[Privacy2]

@irvinewade

… and with the address bar being a de facto search bar, being the default search engine means being involved in potentially every navigation via the address bar.

Yes. This is important. It’s why I don’t usually use the URL+search bar for anything except URL’s. If I’m going to search, I bring up the URL of my preferred search engine (e.g. duckduckgo.com, google.com, bing.com, search.brave.com, …).

[Christal]

Hi weirdnerd,

firefox and other products of daily computer usage, need to be ideal for the mainstream. Firefox itself have the ability to be easy to adjust with privacy features. And because of this the tor browser is based on firefox instead of chrome. However Firefox itself uses parts of Chrome or other web-engines too. This is because a Browser is as complex as a Operating System to support all kind of Web-Pages.

I like the approach to grep some Web-Pages by curl, wget and try to build yourself a script, which extract your information from your target and do not deliver privacy information about using a phone, a web Browser or some Application of third Parties (like Apps on usual Smartphones).

For Video you can use some Video-Downloading tools or Podcast.

Back to Firefox: In Germany we have the Privacy Handbook, its only in German available i think and not translated yet. But the most switches via about:config listed there are easy to understand, or the english howto about the internet, what something do is well documented.

If you like to have privacy you should edit your Firefox on you Librem5.

https://www.privacy-handbuch.de/handbuch_21u.htm

Hope this will help you a little on your journey further.

I do not like third-parties to examine every keystroke i done in some url bar. So i use just the terminal and bookmarks (mostly).

[linmob]

Yes, Mozilla sucks. But giving in to a chromium-only world is even worse.

If only a mobile-config-firefox project that fixed a few bad defaults existed… oh, wait, it exists!

postmarketOS / mobile-config-firefox · GitLab

Quoting from the readme:

What this config does

• Adapt UI elements and “about:” pages to small screen sizes (when opened on small screen)
• Enable mobile gestures
• Privacy tweaks:
  • Disable search suggestions
  • Disable Firefox studies
  • Disable Telemetry
  • Set DuckDuckGo as default search engine, remove other search engines except for Wikipedia (only works in Firefox ESR, limitation of policies.json)
• Install uBlock origin by default (why?)
• Uncluttering:
  • Disable built-in advertisements (e.g. hardcoded links for certain social media sites on the start page)
  • Disable “User Messaging” about new features etc.

To easily install it, I recommend having git and make installed.
After that it’s just

git clone https://gitlab.com/postmarketOS/mobile-config-firefox.git
cd mobile-config-firefox
make
sudo make install

Enjoy!

Disclosure: I have contributed to mobile-config-firefox and aim to keep doing so

[FranklyFlawless]

@linmob

If only a mobile-config-firefox project that fixed a few bad defaults existed…

@Emma has a Codeberg repository for that:

mobile-config-firefox

Thread:

Mobile-Friendly Firefox Customizations for Librem 5

Introduction: I have been working with CSS (cascading style sheets) to make Firefox more mobile-friendly for the Librem 5, and I think that I finally have something really nice to show off here. There are several different options available, some are similar to the Firefox mobile apps for Android and iOS. Much of the code is conditional so that when the Librem 5 is rotated into landscape mode or connected to an external display, tv, or lapdock (like the NexDock) the mobile style reverts to the t…

[weirdnerd]

@linmob

Yes, Mozilla sucks. But giving in to a chromium-only world is even worse.

I am becoming less and less convinced of any meaningful ethical or competitive distinction between firefox and chromium… but I hope you’re right.

EDIT: thanks for the tip about building firefox-mobile-config from source. I believe that I am using that from PureOS, but I imagine it isn’t too recent.

[irvinewade]

@Privacy2

one can always revert to default settings

To get a “working” browser, yes, but I think we’ve already established that the default settings are unsatisfactory from a privacy point of view - which
a) would mean that reverting to default settings would only be one step along the way back to a working browser, and
b) is why I keep notes about what Firefox settings I change (for both the scenario of after having gone back to default settings / using a completely new profile and for the scenario of setting up a new computer).

@Privacy2

the blame for defaults is not Mozilla … and certainly not Google

We 100% know that the blame for what is the default search engine is on Google, and on Mozilla for agreeing to that (but I can see that Mozilla doesn’t really have an alternative). As for any other defaults … the more we find out, the more further suspicion falls on Google / Mozilla - and there really isn’t much transparency on how the defaults are chosen.

You may be implying that a distro is free to alter the defaults before distributing Firefox. However that comes with a cost, for a range of reasons.

(I’m not too worried about “noscript”. IMO that ship has sailed. Even some web sites that I have myself written use Javascript, although I try to keep that to inessential functionality so that the site degrades gracefully if all JS gets ignored.)

@Privacy2

If I’m going to search, I bring up the URL of my preferred search engine

Or: enable the search bar. That’s what I do. Address bar: only for addresses. Search bar: only for searches (using the search engine that I configure as the default - although the search bar does readily allow you to override the default search engine on a per-search basis). This approach works on a decent sized screen.