"No shady privacy policies or back doors for advertisers" proclaims the Firefox homepage, but that's no longer true in Firefox 128.
Less than a month after acquiring the AdTech company Anonym, Mozilla has added special software co-authored by Meta and built for the advertising industry directly to the latest release
Is there a list anywhere of this and other settings and features that could/should certainly be changed to better Firefox privacy?
Other than that I’m not sure I’m really going to jump ship. I think I’m getting too old for the “clunkiness” that comes with trying to use third party/self hosted alternatives to replace features that ultimately break the privacy angle, or to add them to barebones privacy focused browsers. Containers and profile/bookmark syncing, for example. But if there’s a list of switches I can flip to turn off the most egregious things, that would be good for today.
Just use LibreWolf; I’m not up to speed on this stuff but I more or less believe the hype that it will protect my privacy simply by taking Firefox and adding an ad blocker for me and disabling all the shit for me
For now, that’s possible. But for how long? When mv2 came out, we had a few hold off as long as they could, but now they’re all v2 or v3. New technology will always kill the old, whether or not it’s better. It’s only a matter of time. Going with a browser that has consistently made anticonsumer decisions because a different browser has made a few, doesn’t seem like the sensible choice here. Granted, we should have a browser that hadn’t made any such decisions, but we don’t yet have one that I’m aware (I hope I’m wrong).
Totally agree, unfortunately it’s a question of whether Chromium forks can’t keep up with cutting out Google stuff comes before or after Mozilla and/or their rendering engine falls apart.
Is there a list anywhere of this and other settings and features that could/should certainly be changed to better Firefox privacy?
Other than that I’m not sure I’m really going to jump ship. I think I’m getting too old for the “clunkiness” that comes with trying to use third party/self hosted alternatives to replace features that ultimately break the privacy angle, or to add them to barebones privacy focused browsers. Containers and profile/bookmark syncing, for example. But if there’s a list of switches I can flip to turn off the most egregious things, that would be good for today.
Just use LibreWolf; I’m not up to speed on this stuff but I more or less believe the hype that it will protect my privacy simply by taking Firefox and adding an ad blocker for me and disabling all the shit for me
A custom user.js might be a good base to work off of. For example https://github.com/yokoffing/Betterfox
But jumping ship might be your best bet. Forks like Librewolf are good or otherwise a privacy respecting Chromium browser can work well too.
With manifest v3 and this thing active on chromium browsers, privacy respecting chromium may not exist.
Some browsers have built in adblock (by reimplementing mv2 apis or otherwise) and cut out the hangouts plugin or let you disable it
Not all, but a couple
For now, that’s possible. But for how long? When mv2 came out, we had a few hold off as long as they could, but now they’re all v2 or v3. New technology will always kill the old, whether or not it’s better. It’s only a matter of time. Going with a browser that has consistently made anticonsumer decisions because a different browser has made a few, doesn’t seem like the sensible choice here. Granted, we should have a browser that hadn’t made any such decisions, but we don’t yet have one that I’m aware (I hope I’m wrong).
Totally agree, unfortunately it’s a question of whether Chromium forks can’t keep up with cutting out Google stuff comes before or after Mozilla and/or their rendering engine falls apart.
Fingers crossed for Ladybird + Servo
I’m still holding out for Mozilla. They’ve gone all “corporate” lately, but they weren’t always that way. Ladybird does look like a good project.