cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/26244492
The answer to “what is Firefox?” on Mozilla’s FAQ page about its browser used to read:
The Firefox Browser is the only major browser backed by a not-for-profit that doesn’t sell your personal data to advertisers while helping you protect your personal information.
Now it just says:
The Firefox Browser, the only major browser backed by a not-for-profit, helps you protect your personal information.
In other words, Mozilla is no longer willing to commit to not selling your personal data to advertisers.
A related change was also highlighted by mozilla.org commenter jkaelin, who linked direct to the source code for that FAQ page. To answer the question, “is Firefox free?” Moz used to say:
Yep! The Firefox Browser is free. Super free, actually. No hidden costs or anything. You don’t pay anything to use it, and we don’t sell your personal data.
Now it simply reads:
Yep! The Firefox Browser is free. Super free, actually. No hidden costs or anything. You don’t pay anything to use it.
Again, a pledge to not sell people’s data has disappeared. Varma insisted this is the result of the fluid definition of “sell” in the context of data sharing and privacy.
Very, very long-time Firefox user here, now open to suggestions for a replacement. Windows, desktop, and it absolutely must have adblocker capabilities.
LibreWolf for desktop and IronFox for Android.
Anything for iOS? Or do I need to go back to Graphene?
Everything on iOS will be based on WebKit. Apple doesn’t allow third-party browser engines on iOS. Even the official Google Chrome app is running WebKit under the hood instead of Chromium.
That’s why browser extensions never get supported on iOS; They’re literally made for the wrong browser engine. If you want extensions, you’re forced to use the default Safari app, because that’s the only browser that natively supports extension apps.
This isn’t true anymore, as vendors have the ability to provide other engines within the EU.
I’m using Orion. It stores nothing. It’s WebKit based, I think.
Everything on iOS is WebKit based. Apple doesn’t allow third-party browser engines on iOS. Even the official Chrome and Firefox apps are just reskins of the WebKit engine that iOS’ default Safari uses.
It’s why things like Firefox extensions never got ported to iOS; They’re made for Gecko, not WebKit. If you want extensions, you have to use the default Safari browser.
Oh wow, I didn’t know that.
Not in the EU, at least. Time will tell if any major vendor bothers to provide a custom engine (read: their own). But important to note that this isn’t the limitation it was.
Nothing that I know of, sorry. I have never used iOS before and don’t know anyone who has.
That does look intriguing, especially if being a Firefox fork means I can bring my familiar add-ons along. Thank you!
Just be aware that there is a slight chance of sites not working as expected due to all of the privacy tweaks. It’s mostly fine though.
Good luck!
I have used Firefox for literally its entire existence – it was still called “Phoenix” when I started using it! – and even I am on the brink of switching. That’s how abjectly fucked up Mozilla has gotten.
Hello, old timer! Pretty sure it was just plain Netscape when I installed it (not yet called Navigator), but I’d never heard of it as Phoenix. It has served me well for 30 years across a dozen computers, but now it might be time to move on.
Netscape Navigator was different software. It became the browser component of Netscape Communicator, then Mozilla Application Suite, then Mozilla Seamonkey, and has now been spun off from Mozilla and is just called Seamonkey.
Mozilla Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox was a from-scratch rewrite to make a minimalist standalone browser without the bloat of Mozilla Application Suite, where nonessential features could be added as extensions. (That’s why it was initially named “Phoenix”: because it was rising from the ashes of Navigator.)
(For the record, I am not so old as to have used Netscape 1.0.)
(: Man, the things I learn from smart folks on Lemmy…