Goddamnit
this post was submitted on 28 Feb 2025
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Privacy
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On a Lemmy I'm always the person who thinks people are overreacting or exaggerating. But this really does seem like the end of firefox as a privacy champion (which, apart from being nonprofit, was my only real reason for using it). I think I will make a donation to ladybird.
Another thing: their acceptable use policy straight up forbids viewing pornography or graphic violence. No nuance or exceptions.
Time & time again people can't comprehend that companies need revenue to survive, especially for Mozilla's sake, their > transparency has only harmed them by letting ignorant people see things like this & blindly make assumptions.
The team behind Mozilla is insanely under paid & under appreciated, please keep up the amazing work. ❤
I agree with this. Developers need to eat and pay rent too.
Reading shit like "fuck Mozilla" and "Mozilla is dead" pisses me off extremely. That is just ignorant.
While the point is valid that the devs need to eat and sleep and need to get paid, Mozilla is investing money into stupid shit like AI and starting to sell the userdata after they said that they would never do is the main issue here. I guess you would be pissed if your Wife cheats on you after she told you at the altar she wouldn't?
Isn't there some legal precedent for them having used the word "never"?
Legally if you stay on a version prior to the license change they can’t sell your data
That makes sense, thanks.
We need an eu browser. The governent for example should only use software that is verifiably secure.
You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villian.
So if you don’t want to use a chromium based browser but also care about privacy, you’re now fucked?
If you don't want to use Gecko nor Chromium, I am aware of the following alternatives:
WebKit
Though associated with Apple and Safari, WebKit (@[email protected]) has its origins in KDE and its Konqueror browser. KDE developed its own web engine called KHTML, which was forked into WebKit. It's therefore fully open source, despite the Apple connection.
On Linux you can use WebKit in GNOME Web (formerly Epiphany) or Konqueror. If you're on Mac, Safari is probably your best bet. Windows users appear to be out of luck.
Servo
Servo (@[email protected]) is a brand new Rust-based engine which was originally developed by Mozilla, but which was abandoned by them like good things often are. Thankfully the Linux foundation took over developments. It's still in development, but from their download page you can take it for a spin within seconds on all three major operating systems. It's looking pretty good.
They maintain a list of things made with Servo. The most promising project so far appears to be a browser named Verso.
Ladybird
Ladybird is another development to follow. Unlike WebKit and Servo, Ladybird is being developed as a web browser in its own right, but this browser will come with a completely original rendering engine. It aims to have an alpha released next year, and is largely written in C++.
Funnily enough WebKit was Chromium's original engine.
They maintain a list of things made with Servo
As someone who has been closely following the development of Servo, today I still learned that Verso and Servoshell are not the only things using Servo.
Firefox is open-source. Certainly, you're out of options in terms of "name-brand" browsers, but there's a number of Firefox forks. On desktop, LibreWolf is the closest thing to mainline and on Android, IronFox is the equivalent.
If you want something more than just "Firefox minus the branding and tracking", some of the deeper forks are Zen Browser and Floorp.
What happened to Fennec and PaleMoon? Are they no bueno these days?
I can't speak to PaleMoon, but I use Fennec on my phone. My understanding is that they try to track as closely as they can to Firefox main, but with enough changes to be a separate thing.
I've heard nothing negative about PaleMoon either, as far as privacy. I do think it's a bit tougher to recommend to the average user due to its single-process architecture.
The memory footprint is great, but everybody is kind of used to the performance and stability gains from multi-process browsers. I would feel weird recommending somebody coming off Firefox jump to PaleMoon.
I feel weird recommending any Firefox fork other than Iceweasel/Fennec (name change only, pretty much) or Tor/Mullvad Browser. Everything else runs a risk of poor maintenance, which could lead to security vulnerabilities.
Librewolf
I just wish it worked on Apple Silicon.
I ran it recently on the latest iMac with no issues.
I've seen a lot of advocating for Waterfox that I believe is a fork of FF without corporate shenanigans.
Don't they have a bunch of security issues gone untouched for over a decade now?
I can't find any source on this (although I didn't look to hard, on mobile)
Does Waterfox (or any of the other forks people are proposing) have apps for iPad OS and Android, and account syncing to enable bookmarks, extensions, and tabs to transfer between devices?
Firefox for iOS ist based on WebKit like Safari. Mozilla stopped porting Gecko over to iOS years ago as Apple's policy doesn't allow anything other that WebKit browsers. Even Google Chrome on iOS uses WebKit.
I don't actually care what backend engine is used (in fact, I have long argued that Mozilla would be better off maintaining a fork of Chromium, and concentrating their effort on keeping good security and privacy features, rather than duplicating work rendering components and implementing JavaScript methods). I care about how my data is used and about the convenience of the experience with features like syncing. If I use Firefox/Waterfox only on my computers, but Chrome on Android and Safari on iPadOS, I don't get synced tabs and bookmarks.
Independent browser engine developers have a say in how web standards evolve. their influence is limited of course, but they use it to keep web open. Google have long been trying to integrate more "advanced" advertisement and data collection technologies directly in web browsers (including imposing it on non-Chromium browser through "open" web standards).
The moment Google has full control of technologies involved they will do everything in their power to make ad blockers technically impossible (or at least extremely complicated and inefficient) and data collection mandatory, integrated directly in Chromium. And they will do so in such a way that most websites will simply not work on Chromium forks with these "features" disabled, so everyone will be forced to comply.
Waterfox and IronFox are both on Android. I'm not aware of any Firefox forks for iOS, but I've never really looked into it, either. All Firefox forks that I'm aware of are compatible with Firefox Sync. If you don't trust Mozilla's Firefox Sync service (and personally, I think it's fine: being end-to-end encrypted, Mozilla can't see what you have in Sync regardless), you can also self-host your own Firefox Sync server.
All Firefox forks that I’m aware of are compatible with Firefox Sync. If you don’t trust Mozilla’s Firefox Sync service (and personally, I think it’s fine: being end-to-end encrypted, Mozilla can’t see what you have in Sync regardless)
Ah thanks for this. That's really good to know. I was a little concerned that syncing your tabs in Firefox might be precisely one of those things that they're talking about with this new update.
you can also self-host your own Firefox Sync server
Oh, that's really cool! Do they have a Docker image for that? (Or even better, a Synology package?)
I don't know but I doubt it, considering they are privacy oriented and it would be counterproductive to have your data shared to some other third party.
Giving this a try now.
There is always Dillo...
Labybird is currently in development and it's separate from both Chromium and Firefox
Right but it’s not even something one can use or download right now or in the short term so it’s kind of not even worth considering at the moment.
Any alternatives to Firefox?
Waterfox. It's no longer owned by the marketing company that acquired it before
What about Thunderbird?
Didn't they spin off or something from mozzilla recently?
I've been looking for a good alternative as a precaution. Evolution Email seems the next most popular but it keeps logging me out of my accounts every few hours. I might try Betterbird or Claws Mail.
For Android I'm using FairEmail as mozilla bought k9 Mail.
Mozilla FakeSpot promises that the following "is Sold and/or Shared [with] Advertising partners":
- "browsing history, search history"
- "Geolocation data"
- "a profile about a consumer"
Instead of aligning FakeSpot (which they bought in 2023) with their pro-privacy stance, it seems they are realigning their stance with their actual activity.
Brownie points for being honest, I guess.