…and? Are you going to stop using the transistor?

Firefox is great. Mozilla, however, is making some weird moves every now and then. A lot of people don’t quite trust Mozilla to have their interests at heart anymore.

The obvious solution is to use a Firefox fork. I have no idea whether there’s a meaningful difference between the various Firefox forks, and would welcome a summary.

Do people realize that if Firefox dies (in the many ways that could be interpreted), all of these downstream forks will also die right?

Like, the work to in essence remove unwanted parts of a code base is admirable but its an utterly miniscule fraction of the work that goes into maintaining a modern browser, keeping up with standards, sending people to be voices at conventions, etc.

Waterfox is an option too

Literally Firefox.

I feel like the reasons are obvious and I am constantly amazed at people who choose offshoots that end up having problems jsut as bad or worse than Chrome.

• Firefox actually uses an engine independent of Chromium

• Firefox keeps developer documentation for the actual open web in a a clear fashion better than anyone else with MDN.

• Firefox is responsible for all of the heavy lifting for any of the browsers downstream of it that people seem to want to switch to so that Mozilla is less supported and the browsers they are on also break (which is bizzare footgun behaviour in my opinion, and exactly why the people who are idealists inherently can’t win. They shoot themselves in the foot with idealism so hard that companeis don’t even have to care about their opinions).

• Firefox has more resistant than the engine makers of any other browser to anti autonomy web changes like Chromes manifest 3, tvarious new tracking mechanisms and more.

Excuse a little bit of snark at hypothetical responses below, but Im just so frustrated Ill let off a little steam here:

bUt Ai.

So they have a few AI features you have to purposefully find or stumble into, and that means you are going to do everything in your power to make sure your last actual chance to avoid completely Google domination dies too?

You are basically begging for the even more intense enshitification that will come if Firefox actually dies.

bUt SoMeOnE eLsE cAn CoNtInUe DeVeLoPmEnT

Oh yeah? Someone else is going to take on this project with a massive amount of legacy code, inside knowledge and hundreds of people working on it constantly to keep it completely up to date??

You must have been confused when I mentioned above Mozilla does the heavy lifting for the browsers down stream. Just because someone makes a fork that removes features doesnt mean they are equipped to handle the level of work done in the code they are downstream of.

Anyways, the bottom line is, for now, if you actually value open source, the answer is Firefox.

The problem with the internet is not the internet itself, but the big tech platforms.

By using sites like Mastodon and Lemmy, using a browser with uBlock Origin installed, and disabling Web & App activity, personalised ads, etc on your phone, you are taking a stand, and routing around the bad stuff exactly as intended.

Technically, there’s Gemini (protocol) and Gopher as alternatives to the usual web stack, but they’re still pretty niche in usage.

If you want to experience the old internet: https://kagi.com/smallweb

A curated list of sites with specific criteria, I’ve found a bunch of good stuff from there

I’d say we don’t need go go so far as to stop using the internet (there are open and free services we can use), but I’d agree that we need to reduce our overall internet usage as way to fight aginst the system. Many times, there aren’t alternatives to things, and the alternative can be doing something else! Doing something with out life time that the corporations have been stealing.

And the tech industry have become the main players int he economy and in many destructive and unethical practices in the world, that by reducing our internet usage, we are working against them.

We can still build small, text-based websites for free.

I have built fileshare and chat before switching to OSS solutions, which I can selfhost.

No adblocker needed, I can enjoy my part of the internet with people I care about.

Also Wikipedia.

Good to know your fascism gets expressed as a web browser choice, I guess.

I recommend looking at Helium and Cromite as alternatives.

As for Firefox, I don’t like it too, and I’ve wrote a similar post about it on this sub but it got downvoted by -66 points.

For Android, Vanadium in GOS is a better option than Brave.

For computers, I have to say that this comment has some foundation. Why?

For general navigation (things that don’t require login): Use Mullvad Browser

For logins (things that don’t require total privacy and require better security: email, bank account, etc): For now use Brave (or Trivalent if you are using SecureBlue, or Ungoogled Chromium if you are techy savvy enough to keep the uBO extension working reliably)

With this premise, of privacy and security in PC, is difficult to outcome Brave for the later in terms of convenience.

Brave is open source, if you have a problem with something on it please bring it to us. The bloatware can be managed via settings (although very annoying and not sure when enshifitication will become unbearable).

For those recommending Vivaldi, Vivaldi is not completely open source. So, no, I can’t trust it.

Give vivaldi a try, not because brave is bad, but because vivaldi is better in every way.