If this isn’t a targetted advert in my browser, I don’t know what is.
And here’s where you turn it off:
The fact that you can turn it off is a good thing and is why Firefox is a good option.
I am guessing the build in flathub ships with this turned off, I dont even have firefox suggest as a settings area. Nor is it in the build that ships with Fedora
Waterfox as well
I tell people Waterfox if you just want Firefox without the bullshit.
LibreWolf if you’re more hardcore about privacy and are willing to deal with the occasional site not working.
I have both installed but mainly use LibreWolf. I have Waterfox for “irl stuff” like banking/shopping, etc stuff that doesn’t approve of VPN use and I have to enter my real details into anyway.
*privacy
Nicely spotted lmao.
Fixed now :)
Yup, waterfox on phone, librewolf on pc 🤘
You mean ironfox on phone, librewolf on PC?
What’s the difference between waterfox and ironfox?
Ironfox is a fork of mull. It’s like the difference between waterfox and librewolf afaik
- waves from lonely ios island
i just started using Ironfox on my phone! It’s great
Waterfox is life!
If this isn’t a targetted advert in my browser, I don’t know what is.
Somewhere, a dastardly Mozilla engineer is cursing you out for figuring it out, even though they specifically labeled it ‘Sponsored’ as a double-bluff.
It’s crazy that you think this was the engineers’ idea and not someone like the marketing director using their corporate capital to force the dev team to implement it… like pretty much every other company
Also, haven’t they been doing this for a long time?
Thanks for making me aware that there was yet another bullshit “feature” I needed to disable.
Yeah, i gave up self managing the adware and went to the Firefox fork, LibreWolf
anyone know the about:config value key?
edit: found it. Set
browser.urlbar.suggest.quicksuggest.allto false. For anyone not using user.js, I highly recommend it. It means you only ever have to find these settings once. I keep mine in a git repo so it’s easy to transport between machines.Can you expand on user.js.
Is that the arkenfox user profile? How do you upload it? How often is it updated?
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You can, that’s easily found and the point of the post. I don’t want to do that on four machines every time I end up needing to reset Firefox
I mean they have to make money somehow
They make most of it (a boatload already) from their google deal, how about using it better
The Google deal is a problematic dependency and a single point of failure. I don’t like putting ads in the browser as an alternative, but I’m unsure what would be a good funding model for the project.
Mozilla should definitely focus its resources on improving the browser rather than side quests.
Even more problematic because the LLM are destroying search.
Wait till people freak the fuck out when it becomes the Gemini bar.
I think they have plenty of resources already, some of their uses are questionable. Mail/VPN (i think they already rolled out their own vpn service for some countries) could be a sidequest not for the sake of a sidequest, doubt it’s gonna match 500M per year though
Mozilla is simultaneously both a genius Google-sponsored company that you can’t criticize their decisions because you don’t fund them, and a money-starved company that needs to make a profit and you’re a monster for denying them the revenue
Mozilla is simultaneously a vassal of Google because it’s 85% funded by its search revenue, and an over-resourced company that is a monster for trying to bring in even more revenue.
because you don’t fund them
Also you cannot fund them. All the money you give goes to Mozilla and its CEO which needs $millions to take those stupid decisions.
If we donate enough we can match their 7 ish million salary! (iirc)
Benefits of their Corp/Foundation structure I guess. Though if I was funding them I’d criticize them harder lol
Diversification is a good thing. If people don’t donate at scale then we have Chrome, and FF so long as Google allows it to exist unless they find other streams.
That “somehow” is doing some heavy lifting.
And here’s where you turn it off:
Yeah. That’s why none of us ever see that crap. It’s easy.
You know the reason why I see it? Because it’s a new feature. I already had all of the other rubbish turned off - but guess what - they turn it on for you by default.
Because it’s a new feature.
the ads in your address bar were added back in October of '21.
Never been a problem on my browser.
Ah, dang. This is as real bummer. What do we do instead? Are we at the point of paying for this app?
I’m thinking about Signal too: software isn’t free so where does the spend come from?
Check the box and forget the feature ever existed until you install the browser again from scratch. It’s been there for 5 years, so it’s not exactly a new or unsolved problem.
Okay, see you the next time this comes up.
It comes up every few months because someone forgets they ticked it off 5 years ago when the feature first released and then they reset their browser.
It’s not a crowd setting; it’s maintaining a product. We love this one because it matches our goal, but that goal requires our fellow persons’ time.
Use Waterfox or Librewolf. Or Zen. Or some other fork.
I do daily Zen but this note moves the problem.
I have started regularly donating to foss projects, especially those who are clear on their limits of ai in code. Been donating to signal for years too.
https://servo.org/ would be the one to donate to for web independence specifically.
I would pay for Firefox if they kept updates like that off by default. Maybe they could have a screen that shows new options you can turn on which I’d happily ignore most of the time. It obviously takes tons of time to build a web browser so I expect it to get paid for somehow, but yeah, the on-by-default enshittification is no good.
as someone else suggested, a fork is the best way to go. if you are most concerned about privacy, Liberwolf is the way to go. if you want privacy, but aren’t willing to go as far as Librewolf does, then Waterfox is a solid alternative that provides better privacy than Firefox.
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