- cross-posted to:
- firefox@lemmy.ml
- technology@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- firefox@lemmy.ml
- technology@beehaw.org
You must log in or register to comment.
Just use Firefox.
Firefox + uBlock Origin + arkenfox user.js gives you privacy, security and anti-tracking. The only way to fly IMO.
And a Pi Hole for good measure.
A dns blocker cannot do anything more than ublock. It is nice for other apps though.
A DNS blocker is great for other devices on your network!
It works very well on browser and outside the browser. So if your software/hardware is phoning home, it will pick it up.
Or Adguard Home, that I think is superior than Pi-Hole. It runs as a single instance and you can easily upgrade it from the web UI.
OpenWRT router with DNS over HTTPS for the whole network. Come for the easy adblock, stay for the updated router distribution and the best anti-buffer bloat features in any Router software.
Don’t forget DoH or DoT if you can
White list firewall. Because this is the real reason everyone has a right to ad block. Ads are hidden links to other websites. It’s like walking through a gauntlet of pick pockets bribing the credit card company just to make it to the checkout at your local grocery store, or some asshole you invite into your home that goes to the bathroom, opens a window, and lets a dozen random people in your home if they pay a dollar for the access. The entire system is based on stalking people. It is criminal.
Librewolf
No android version = no buy
Mull for android
What does Arkenfox do? I’ll definitely add it if it’s beneficial.
It changes many default Firefox preferences in
about:configto be as private as possible. The main selling point is resist fingerprinting (RFP). I highly suggest reading the wiki. It can break some websites, but you can configure it to fit your needs.Sounds interesting. I’ll definetely check it out. Thanks!
Why not add Snowflake while we’re at it?
What about Privacy Badger? Is uBlock better?
Is this applicable for Firefox mobile?
According to the GitHub page the user.js is for desktop only but ublock should still work.
I bounced between the two for years, i guess i am going back to Firefox full time.
The only reason I haven’t switched to Firefox from Chrome fully is because for some reason Firefox for Android still doesn’t have tabs for large screen devices. Mozilla says it’s not a priority. 🤷
Yes, it really sucks. I am in the same boat. Samsung Internet on my tablet; really wish I had FF on it.
Firefox for Android removing the ability to open local html files killed it for me. Currently on Vivaldi.
Why did they remove it though? I was surprised too when I found out I needed to run local webserver to access local html files
It was because of ‘security’, which was never explained. And it doesn’t make much sense when other browsers can and do alow it. I’ll see if I can dig up some historical links if I remember tomorrow.
Last time I checked,there was still no acknowledgement of it and appeared to be no intention of ever addressing it. The fact that they’re now telling people to run a webserver suggests that nothing has changed ☹️
If that’s your only gripe with it, you can still access them by using one of the simple web servers available running inside Termux, that will also allow you to avoid CORS related problems, in fact it is the currently suggested method on MDN
Yeah, nah. I’ve already got enough unnecessary apps and services with Android.
Thanks for the workaround, though.
So use edge
Its chrome-based… but at least its not brave, and the adblocker(which is off by default…) is decent enough
If you think the things brave has done are bad, go read through the list of things microsoft has done. You really don’t want them to ever have a browser again, and certainly don’t want to personally use it.
I used Brave for a few years but recently switched to LibreFox. I really enjoyed Brave as a browser but couldn’t handle all the sketchy shit that seems to keep coming up
I really enjoy the chromium grouping of tabs. So much so that’s it’s almost a deciding factor for which browser I choose. I hope Firefox adds that feature soon, so the switch back feels easier
Try the Simple Tab Groups addon for Firefox. I’ve been using it for years and prefer it to any other tab grouping now.
Will do, thanks! But in the meantime I switched to Vivaldi and I quite like it!
I really enjoy the chromium grouping of tabs. So much so that’s it’s almost a deciding factor for which browser I choose. I hope Firefox adds that feature soon, so the switch back feels easier
Same. I had no idea about brave and I started using it full time on all my devices like a month ago. Guess I’m going back to Firefox. Which was fine.
I’ve switched on Desktop a year ago. Also with Android. But Firefox on Android has an odd bug that I cannot get rid of. Pages are really slow to load on initial render. I’ve noticed it gets stuck on the SSL cert verification step, sometimes around 5 to 10 seconds before it starts painting the page.
I’ve tried disabling all add-ons, logging out of Firefox sync, disabling the built in HTTPS everywhere, and literally any custom settings I’ve added. But I can’t get past this issue and seemingly no one else has it.
Chrome doesn’t present this issue.
I’ve never encountered this, which makes me realise I’ve been running Firefox beta for ages (with zero issues). Perhaps try that just in case it helps?
Yup got the same thing. Annoying as hell. The loading bar always goes to like quarter of the way and stays there for a couple of seconds and the continues. After that it’s fine, but it is always the first page you load after closing Firefox.
Same issue here! I thought I was alone. It annoys me to no end and weirder still, issue doesn’t present itself with Firefox for Windows running behind the same IP.
Firefox Focus also doesn’t seem to present the issue. Just the primary Firefox browser for Android. And honestly, often enough that it’s nearly unusable.
If you ever figure it out, please let me know.
I don’t have that issue on Mull, so maybe try that?
You’re not alone, I’ve been using Firefox on Android for two years now, and I’ve had this problem from the beginning. The first time I launch Firefox and load a page it stops a quarter of the progression bar for ten seconds, and then loads fine. Once pas that everything works perfectly. It’s very annoying and I don’t know why this happens.
I use chrome on my mobile device… Is that bad?
Might as well take shits with the door unlocked; same level of exposing yourself.
And ads. Ads everywhere.
Ooh tell me more
About Chrome, or the shitting?
The shitting with the door open. That’s why you can’t get married, dad. ( Sorry for the shotty Stepbrothers reference)
In a way yes. You’re giving Google (via an increased browser market share) the power to decide the direction of the web. Their interests as a corporate organization are not aligned with yours, so they will make decisions to your detriment if they have to.
Just use Firefox. Mozilla isn’t good but it’s not evil
I don’t know how people browse the web on mobile with ads taking half of the screen.
It’s not really bad per se, it’s the default on most Android devices these days. The problem is that almost all modern browsers are Chromium-based which give Google a lot of power to implement changes (see manifest v3 & web DRM). Personally, I’m trying to slowly reduce my usage of Google products. I’m using Firefox on desktop and a mix of DDG+Fennec on my phone.
Thank You! I’ll look into DDG n Fennec.
Unrelated, but why is it that so many kbin users seem to keep a dedicated reducing account? Relatively frequently, an account that reduces a post or comment has no recent posts or comments but heavy initial usage a ~month ago as jpgr above. It’s weird.
I think those existed on Reddit too. It’s just that you could never actually confirm they existed.
Which was why they existed, as alts to upvote a user’s own posts and downvote opposing ones.
Except now we’re on kbin, we can see them.
I downvoted because it was a lazy comment not providing further elaboration. If anything, the fact that such a comment is highly upvoted shows that this community is not mature yet.
That I’m not engaging in online discussion doesn’t automatically mean this is a bot or “dedicated reducing” account. Please restrain yourself from judging strangers on the internet.
In a space dominated by people endlessly sharing opinions and articles and memes, it’s just extremely peculiar to find accounts like yours so frequently downvoting while absent other activities even if it’s relatively mundane. Take, for instance, the upvotes on nothingwise’s comment where 1/5 are blank accounts. The novelty of the information sets off alarm bells, so I apologize if I was mistaken. I’m not trying to start a witch-hunt or JAQ off so I’ll leave it at that.
On mac? Love safari? But also want good adblock? Use Orion! It’s safari, but with support for chrome and Firefox extensions! Fuck yeah!
I always loved safari, and always got weird looks for it as a web developer (but after a month or two they love me for it because I always find non-chrome bugs because those peasants only use chrome), but that browser is so damn good guys… on mac, that is. Not sure if it even exists yet for linux/win.
Orion
Thanks for the tip! Do you know any similar solution like this for iOS? I’m struggling to find a fully featured browser with decent ad-blocking capacity.
Orion is available for iOS and iPadOS too.
Just moved from Brave to Firefox when that “AI training” story came out. I think it’s faster than brave now
deleted by creator
I am using Brave on iOS mainly because of its superb YouTube support - It has a built in ad block, can download videos offline and play minimized. Is there any way I can achieve this with any other browser? I would switch immediately.
Doesn’t Firefox do telemetry and other shady shit out of the box? Ofc you can turn it off but I don’t get the fanaticism over this browser.
Every now and then, you’ll see some journalist uncovering the great revelation that Mozilla is doing unthinkable things, but I have never these stories actually being relevant, if you do more research on the topic.
Some examples:
- Mozilla use Google Analytics! → Yes, but they have a special contract with Google to protect user data: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=697436#c14
- Mozilla uses Google Safebrowsing! → Yes, but they have technical measures in place to limit user identification (on top of Google stating that they do not use Google Safebrowsing data for tracking): https://feeding.cloud.geek.nz/posts/how-safe-browsing-works-in-firefox/
- Mozilla has privacy-invading ads on the new-tab-page! → Again, they have technical measures in place to avoid privacy issues: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/sponsor-privacy#w_what-data-is-shared
And telemetry by itself is not evil either. It depends entirely on what data is actually being sent. You can look at what Mozilla sends by typing “about:telemetry” into the URL bar. In my opinion, that is perfectly fine.
Ultimately, though, they enjoy so much trust, because they have no profit motive. The Mozilla Foundation is legally a non-profit and the Mozilla Corporation is a 100% subsidiary of the Foundation, so cannot pay out profits to anyone either.
Any ‘evil’ shit they do to make money, they do it to pay wages and to invest further into Firefox & their other projects.
You can criticize that the CEO takes a salary she can’t possibly spend (yet is below industry-standard, to my knowledge). And you can argue whether they should be taking so much money from Google rather than other sources.
But all in all, that still leaves them far above companies who need to exploit users as much as justifiable, to make the maximum amount of profit.
The fact that they have (at least for now) foregone implementing Manifest v3 should be reason enough to use Firefox. Turn their telemetry off and use ublock origin, call it a day well spent.
If you’re inclined to, use Librewolf with ublock, NoScript, decentraleyes, and chameleon.
Copy the bypasspaywalls sites into ublock, add a redirect extension to avoid all the idiot megacorps, and use duckduckgo lite and learn to use shebangs for very fast web searching.
Yeah it’s not perfect out of the box but after turning off telemetry and adding some add-ons like ublock origin and such it’s one of the best short of going full on tor/mullvad. And still less fanaticism than brave lol
Firefox and mozilla aren’t your friend.
They like to play the “user and privacy friendly” company. Meanwhile they are hemoraging users, and laying off staff needed to actually build a great browser.
Mozilla ceo pay increase + layoffs in 2020:
In 2018 she received a total of $2,458,350 in compensation from Mozilla, which represents a 400% payrise since 2008. On the same period, Firefox marketshare was down 85%. When asked about her salary she stated “I learned that my pay was about an 80% discount to market. Meaning that competitive roles elsewhere were paying about 5 times as much. That’s too big a discount to ask people and their families to commit to.”
In 2020, after returning to the position of CEO, her salary had risen to over $3 million. In the same year the Mozilla Corporation laid off approximately 250 employees due to shrinking revenues. Baker blamed this on the Coronavirus pandemic.
They don’t need to be my friend to be better than the chromium browsers though, so I don’t know what this has to do with anything
What’s the alternative though, we have Chrome and Firefox as choices. Chrome is far worse than some issues with Firefox around CEO pay.
With brave I never see any pc or YouTube ads. With Firefox even with ublock origin I can’t get rid of those damn ads. That’s what keeps me on brave
Which websites exactly do you still see ads on with ublock and not with Brave? Because I’ve not seen any ads in years with ublock.
I don’t know why you’re getting ads… I run Firefox + uBlock just fine.
But I also run NoScript and AdBlockPlus. Maybe try those?
(Yes I know NoScript with uBlock is pretty redundant. Doesn’t really bother me to allow scripts on both to unbreak things. I like the double lock.)
You should not run multiple ad blockers. uBO won’t be able to defuse anti-adblocker scripts if it has another ad blocker interfering.
OTOH NoScript should be fine
No ads on YT with Firefox + uBlock, not sure why your setup isn’t working.
The ceo is a bigoted asshole, Brave is chromium, it was initially funded by Peter Thiel and they’re literally just trying to make their own adsense network.
The self-proclaimed privacy focused browser is tracking your browsing and want to serve you personalized ads, and I think they want to use that tracking data for AI training as well, meaning other people can potentially access it.
And lets not forget about their crypto currency that you can earn by turning on special ads. Which they seemingly unironically called it “Basic Attent Tokens”…
TL;DR: The company is basically a sham company trying to usher in a dystopia. Where you’ll get paid for staring at ads, while having all your data stolen and sold back to you.
I see no reason to use any other browser than Firefox and maybe Librewolf.
So Mull browser, right?
Firefox on desktop is awesome. Firefox on mobile is painful.
Android firefox is ok now. Moreover now it supports add ons too and there are some good add ons there.
It’s a very small number of add-ons, but one of them is uBlock Origin, and that’s all I really want.
You can just change the list of supported add-ons to whatever you like.
Only if you tie your browser with an account at Mozilla. No way to do it without an account.
Only if you need your list. Otherwise you can just switch the list I’d to one including your extensions
Where can I change this list?
In the settings under “custom add-on list”. You might need to enter dev mode, which you do by tapping the Firefox logo in the about menu 5 times (you get a toast with your progress).
After that you enter the userID ND the collection name in the popup and confirm.
Details:
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/extended-add-support
And a reddit comment with a list you can use:
https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/j1ta1s/comment/g720d72/
deleted by creator
If firefox gets more popular then maybe more add ons can appear…
at least they support add ons like CHROME
deleted by creator
What’s wrong with Firefox on iOS? I realise it’s WebKit with a Firefox skin, but it seems to work well enough.
User interface is poor. Cannot customise the gui at all so I feel like it’s a downgrade over Samsung browser that also supports ad blocks.
It works pretty well for me, but I use Firefox nightly.
I am using Brave on iOS mainly because of its superb YouTube support - It has a built in ad block, can download videos offline and play minimized. Is there any way I can achieve this with any other browser? I would switch immediately.
Removed by mod
I am forced to use Chromium on my work laptop because MS Teams doesn’t work (all the features) on Firefox.
Edit: I should elaborate this a bit. There are 2 reasons why I use Chromium on my machine.
- If I face a problem, company tech team only knows Chrome and they start crying when I open Firefox.
- On Linux, the official way to use Teams is through a web-app and Firefox doesn’t support PWAs.
All other MS services function fine on Firefox.
Which features I’ve never had an issue
Same. I use furefox for everything* at work, despite everything being heavily integrated with teams, sharepoint, et.al.
*: The only thing that doesn’t work with firefox is this inhouse web service that hasn’t been updated since 2017. It’s about to be replaced anyway, so nobody bothered to fix/update it.
The custom background effects don’t work on Firefox
Simple one-to-one calling is disabled saying it’s only available on Chrome. I’m pretty sure it’s recent since I had calls a few months back on Firefox. I’m also sure that it’s not some group policy since I’m on Ubuntu without any sort of ActiveDirectory so it’s a pure browser issue. Also, they force the old UI in Firefox due to some reason. Typical BS from Microsoft.
Does changing user agent mitigate some of those issues?
In a just world, the fact of changing the user agent fixing the issues would make for a slam-dunk anti-trust case.
It really should, no doubt, but this is not a perfect world
If you confront Microsoft with this, then they will say they don’t have enough resources to test “thousands” of browsers which is why they have restricted their efforts to Chromium only, while making billions of dollars in profits each year.
I’ve tried it today and yeah, 1-to-1 calls magically/unsurprisingly start working. In fact, the whole UI gets a facelift and lots of new features.
If I had to guess, I’d say Microsoft keeps around a version of their UI, which hasn’t been maintained in over a year, and serves that to anyone initiating communication with a user-agent string they don’t like.
If that’s true, that’s a massive security vulnerability. Admittedly, also unsurprising for Microsoft. @xavier666@lemm.ee
Wow, that’s egregious on so many levels!
This kind of browser apartheid should be illegalThanks a lot for this…time to get an extension.
I use Firefox as my primary browser and run the teams app.
they start crying when I open Firefox.
Good. Use it anyway, and bathe in their tears!
The fact that their founder wants to ban gay marriage is enough reason for me to avoid it like the plague.
I have absolutely no idea how Brave got the reputation it has. It’s business model is disgusting and extortionate, it’s like paying for warez. Been clear as day since day one.
Brave is a marching band of red flags. It claims privacy while injecting ads, affiliate codes and crypto into the browser. It’s kind of sad to see someone like Brendan Eich who should know better turn to the dark side and pretend this is all fine. It isn’t.
Best advice I could give for anyone who wants privacy is use Firefox or a branch of it. Firefox is out of the box the most privacy conscious mainstream browser and add-ons make it more so. If you want absolute privacy you could even use a derivative like Tor Browser.
At one point they were scummy enough to automatically add their referral codes to any Amazon link you see. Lots of people today still mindlessly recommend Brave, and that’s what’s wrong in general with the “but the UX is so nice” mentality.
Lots of people today still mindlessly recommend Brave
It starts to feel astroturfed at a certain point. The last week or so has been crazy.
I would bet my left nut they astroturf
They’re cryptocurrency scammers; do you expect them not to hustle?
At one point they were scummy enough to automatically add their referral codes to any Amazon link you see.
To be clear, that means Brave is ① invading their users’ privacy, and ② stealing money from web publishers.
The point of referral codes is to reward web publishers for referring users to a product; leading to the user buying a product that they otherwise wouldn’t.
Your browser isn’t introducing you to a product. For it to insert referral codes for the browser vendor’s benefit is stealing money.
Its almost like UX is one of the most important things for a user of any given program. 🥴
If you really dig into the whole ordeal it was a software error, not some malicious idea to steal links from creators.
How exactly does one accidentally insert affiliate data on links? At some point someone wrote that code, which is malicious in itself, even if the activation was accidental.
It’s also strange that it happened twice, first with amazon links, then they started injecting affiliate data for crypto platforms instead.
What’s so bad about that?
It’s without your consent.
Most of the stuff that happens on the backend of any software goes on “without your consent”.
You clicked on a webpage.
You were brought to that webpage.
You weren’t tracked, logged, or had your data exploited or anything. All that happened was Brave got an affiliate bonus.
Now if the companies in question were angry at Brave for doing that, I could understand. But why should we, the users, give a shit?
You weren’t tracked, logged, or had your data exploited or anything. All that happened was Brave got an affiliate bonus.
You seem to not know how affiliate links work. The products shopped are tracked & logged per user, and can be analyzed by the affiliate partner as to what their users were buying, i.e. data can be exploited.
I don’t know a lot, so maybe you know more than me. The tracking and logging is via cookies, right?
The same cookies that brave automatically blocks?
Again, maybe they do some tracking via some other method that I don’t know about; I’m not an expert. But it seems to me that Brave was essentially scamming those companies by using their referral codes but denying them any useful data. Great for brave, sucks for the companies, shouldn’t matter to us.
Not necessarily via cookies. The referral links can be unique to a specific user.
Why the fuck should your browser get a share from your amazon shopping? It’s doubly galling since they pretend to care about user privacy.
Yeah, fuck this guy.
First, I have been online for almost 30 years. I’ve led an open source project for 14 years. I speak regularly at conferences around the world, and socialize with members of the Mozilla, JavaScript, and other web developer communities. I challenge anyone to cite an incident where I displayed hatred, or ever treated someone less than respectfully because of group affinity or individual identity.
So I hid my hatred from everyone for 30 years successfully. Now that everyone finds out that I donated to a cause to strip them of rights everyone wants to say I’m hateful? Give me one example where I displayed hatred…how about the time you donated to strip people of their rights? That might be a big one for me.
The fact that its main 2 gimmicks are a shitty ad blocker and integrated cryptocurrency should be enough of a red flag, honestly. Just use Firefox, people!
Firefox is king 👑
So the CEO is a raging alt-righter. Glad I never used his product then.
Today I learned that people take it VERY PERSONALLY when you criticize their chosen browser. 😂
Long time Brave user here. This made me uninstall Brave and move to Firefox. Thank you !
I can’t think of a reason why anyone would use a browser other than Firefox and it’s forks.
This article is useless trash. There is no real technical argument here except “founder bad”.
I do have reasons for not using Brave, but it’s to do with the annoying defaults and the crypto integration. They default whitelist Google, LinkedIn, and Facebook garbage that I have to go and toggle off.
Given the level of effort and extensions like Facebook container on Firefox, I just prefer the better experience for me. This bullshit about getting on identity politics agendas I find abhorrent and repulsive. This author’s a stupid fuckhead.
I just use Firefox and DuckDuckGo
