https://reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/1dofyj1/how_did_mozilla_firefox_go_from_being_the_best/
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Seriously, every post I read that’s upvoted is smack talking Mozilla in every way possible and it just so happens to take place exactly when Google quietly announces Manifest V3. Mozilla is not our enemy, Google is. Don’t let all these bot upvoted comments and posts let you forget that. Has Mozilla made some questionable moves lately? Yeah… the biggest being the purchase of Anonym. https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/mozilla-anonym-raising-the-bar-for-privacy-preserving-digital-advertising/
We’ll just have to wait and see how that turns out. But I found it amusing when I saw this post and it got so many upvotes immediately after Mozilla announced the purchase. https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/1dkujuh/mozilla_anonym_is_a_datahoovering_monster/
Then Mozilla allegedly fired someone because he has cancer. https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/other/mozilla-is-trying-to-push-me-out-because-i-have-cancer-cpo-says-in-bombshell-lawsuit/ar-BB1oOjOZ
Then I was reading Mozilla android browser is suddenly the worst and least secure android browser.
It’s never ending… Honestly I think I am just going to take some time away from Reddit because it’s becoming such a corporate shill and bot upvoted cesspool. I’m sure this will get heavily down-voted but I just wanted to give my two cents. Mozilla will always be my preferred choice for privacy and security and unless I see some actual changes within the browsers no one will ever convince me otherwise.
I know that the context here is that you’re staying that he’s presumably supposed to have familiarity with the browser, but…honestly, I’m not sure that encouraging people who don’t have some level of technical familiarity with their browser to use ad-blockers is a fantastic idea.
As obnoxious as ads can be, it’s also true that I’ve seen various ad-blocker and tracker-blocker (and now auto-EU-cookie-agreement-accept) periodically break websites over the years. If people are able and willing to troubleshoot the browser when things break, then sure, but I know a bunch of people who I don’t think would likely be able to do that, and the irritation of ads may be less-serious than the inability to access a website, even if the ads are a lot more frequent than the website breaking.
There are also websites that will intentionally detect ad-blockers and block access to the website. Those do generally provide instructions to turn off ad-blockers – like, they want to have people viewing the ads, not just avoiding the website – but I dunno if it’s a great idea to get people in the pattern of happily following instructions to extend sites that tell them to do so additional browser permissions.
There’s an additional problem – that some widely-installed extensions have been purchased by other companies. I don’t do a great job of following who-acquired-what-addon on the system that I use. I suspect that most people don’t. If you’re giving a browser addon access to see and twiddle all sorts of data across all sorts of websites – banks, whatever – you’re extending a lot of trust to whoever can push updates to that addon.
I think that what Firefox might benefit from is a “troubleshoot webpage” feature that – among other things – tries doing a binary search, disabling addons, to see if some active addon is causing breakage. That won’t solve the “some company bought a browser extension and is now maybe doing less-than-salubrious-things” problem, but it’d make me more comfortable recommending that not-super-technically-savvy users use ad-blockers in terms of website breakage.
Might also do some things like check Internet connectivity (like, is some Javascript-heavy page breaking because the Javascript is trying to fetch things and silently failing), check for VPNs being active or inactive, etc. I have a Bluetooth adapter that occasionally wedges after being woken up from sleep, and it’s not always obvious to me that that’s the cause. I know a lot of people who would spend a lot of time frustrated with that.
I would note that ads are a source of poor performance, and vectors for infection and compromise of a system through realistic misleading dialogs and outright exploitation of vulnerabilities.
I have had my parents fall victim to viruses and get scammed out of money due to advertisements on purportedly legitimate websites.
If a website doesn’t work due to an ad blocker, my parents don’t need to visit it.
Ah, how the turn tables.
At home, I use PiHole and AdGuard to block ads. I also use Firefox on my desktop with ublock origin plugin. Sites do break sometimes. But here’s my thinking. If a site is using or forcing an ad in such a way that the site is broken for me, I go to another site. That one didn’t deserve my time or business. My bank website works just fine. So does the power company, gas, etc. The important stuff is fine. The rest has competition.
I will note that my auto insurance website broke between an email link, the trackers in said link and the website. I messaged their IT dept in a complaint form and they said they would change how the email system tracker works to prevent that in the future.