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  • Daniel GibsonDoomed_Daniel@mastodon.gamedev.place
    Dec 19, 2025, 5:07 PM

    I don't think I'll stop using Firefox anytime soon.
    Yes, their management are fucking idiots and it's annoying that I'll have to disable new AI features whenever they release them..

    But the alternative is to use something Chromium-based, which would make Google's domination of web technology absolute - and Google is 100x more evil than Mozilla ever could be.

    I hope this fucking bubble pops before Mozilla fucks up Firefox so badly that it becomes completely unusable

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Replies

  • Daniel GibsonDoomed_Daniel@mastodon.gamedev.place
    Dec 19, 2025, 5:09 PM

    (yes, there are also the soft-forks of Firefox, but I don't think I'd gain much from them - security updates probably arrive a bit later, and apparently AI features still reach their users before they get around to disabling them)

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  • théorie :verified:burgervege@mamot.fr
    Dec 20, 2025, 9:00 AM

    @Doomed_Daniel I feel "stop using it" is a pretty individual response to a broad collective problem. There's many way to deal with this without ditching Firefox.

    For instance, Firefox could be State funded by multiple States around the world, as a sovereign tool against Big Tech.

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  • théorie :verified:burgervege@mamot.fr
    Dec 20, 2025, 10:49 AM

    @wolf480pl @Doomed_Daniel Unfortunately, not everything is actionable by anyone, with a short term quick win. For an issue like this, you need mid- to long term lobbying.

    As unpleasant as it is to hear it, some systems are *built* so individual action won't affect them. Mozilla knows their core users are trapped with a them as lesser evil. That's why they only do the bare minimum for them.

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  • Wolf480plwolf480pl@mstdn.io
    Dec 20, 2025, 10:53 AM

    @burgervege
    Mutually Assured Destruction is a thing.

    I still think it'd be more realistic to organize a "no Firefox day" where people coordinate to not use any Gecko-based browser for a day, to signal to Mozilla than we can harm them even if we harm ourselves as well

    Than it would be to convince governments to fund a web browser.
    @Doomed_Daniel

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  • Wolf480plwolf480pl@mstdn.io
    Dec 20, 2025, 11:08 AM

    @burgervege
    But also, let's say we do want to go the lobbying path.

    Where do we start?

    Make a poll on fedi to judge how many people support the cause?

    Make a list of arguments how a govt would benefit from funding a browser / how Google is a threat?

    Make a 30min YouTube video about it?

    Tell people to call their MEPs?

    Raise money to hire a lobbyist?

    File an European Citizens' Initiative?

    @Doomed_Daniel

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  • théorie :verified:burgervege@mamot.fr
    Dec 20, 2025, 3:39 PM

    @wolf480pl @Doomed_Daniel We might do all of the above actually. But lobbying 101 is picturing what we want (e.g a sustainably funded Firefox that hupolds its values), then figuring how to make this happen.

    Some people expect way to much from Firefox, without acknowledging what would need to change in *their* behaviour for their perfect-Firefox to happen.

    This has been said before : FF users rant, but none of them want to pay actual money so FF is sustainably funded.

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  • théorie :verified:burgervege@mamot.fr
    Dec 20, 2025, 3:45 PM

    @wolf480pl @Doomed_Daniel And yes, it feels like catch 22. We don't want to pay Mozilla cause they're constantly doing shit. But they often do shit because nobody's paying.

    The AI stuff is Mozilla making deals so AI could be integrated to FF *for fucking money*. It's a response to users not being OK with paying.

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  • doragasudoragasu@mastodon.sdf.org
    Dec 20, 2025, 10:43 AM

    @Doomed_Daniel I switched to a Firefox fork (LibreWolf) after literally DECADES using FF as a way of protest. Maybe if enough people do something like this they could change route? Otherwise it will continue being one bad decision after another.

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  • Daniel GibsonDoomed_Daniel@mastodon.gamedev.place
    Dec 20, 2025, 3:09 PM

    @doragasu
    Do they even notice that you've switched?
    I've disabled all "Data collection" settings (and I'm not installing from their homepage) so Mozilla doesn't really know that I use their products

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  • Cassandrichdalias@hachyderm.io
    Dec 20, 2025, 1:48 PM

    @Doomed_Daniel If Mozilla gets worse, those will quickly get better. Until then your approach is completely reasonable.

    I would recommend tho making sure automatic updates are blocked so you have the chance to prepare for any new malicious functionality before it's turned on without your knowledge.

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  • Daniel GibsonDoomed_Daniel@mastodon.gamedev.place
    Dec 20, 2025, 2:44 PM

    @dalias
    yeah, I'm using package managers that respect my choices (i.e. on Ubuntu I've installed it with apt instead of snap, on my Arch Linux machine I didn't have to do anything)

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  • Cassandrichdalias@hachyderm.io
    Dec 20, 2025, 2:55 PM

    @Doomed_Daniel That's the best. If you're getting Firefox from a trusted Linux distro rather than as shipped by Mozilla, the threat from Mozilla is very low. ❤️ distros. They are so underappreciated.

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  • ity [unit X-69] - VIOLENT FUCKity@estradiol.city
    Dec 20, 2025, 4:18 PM

    @dalias @Doomed_Daniel technically speaking packaging Firefox that way is against the Firefox license lol

    Mozilla tried to sue Debian over it ages ago, that's how we got Iceweasel, then they realized it's stupid and Iceweasel got abandoned, but the license was never changed and they can always do a stupid

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  • Daniel GibsonDoomed_Daniel@mastodon.gamedev.place
    Dec 20, 2025, 4:53 PM

    @ity @dalias
    I think their issue with debian's Firefox before Iceweasel was that debian patched it (too much?). Just packaging Firefox obviously is no problem, otherwise there wouldn't be packages in all distros.
    And I don't think mozilla can sue me for not updating my installation of the packages soon enough :-p

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  • Laurent Bercotska@treehouse.systems
    Dec 20, 2025, 4:45 PM

    @dalias Most of them abdicated their job of defining a unified policy as soon as systemd showed them that they could just follow what was pushed by upstream and turn off their critical thinking.

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  • SnoopJSnoopJ@hachyderm.io
    Dec 19, 2025, 5:12 PM

    @Doomed_Daniel yea, it hasn't gotten "stop using it" bad for me yet, even if it is well past "bitch about it constantly" bad

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  • higginshiggins@hachyderm.io
    Dec 20, 2025, 10:20 AM

    @Doomed_Daniel @SnoopJ Its balancing all the Evils and deciding which ones hurts the least. For me, closed source is acceptable in a browser because I trust Mozilla even less to not have crammed some data-spying AI crap in there.

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  • Daniël Franke :panheart:ainmosni@ainmosni.eu
    Dec 20, 2025, 11:56 AM

    @Doomed_Daniel @SnoopJ I went to vivaldi, and yeah, not ideal.

    And tbh, I'll probably switch to LibreWolf or something, because yeah contributing to the blink monoculture still feels meh. The open source bit also bugs me, although not half as much, considering the vivaldi company seems a lot less techbro-ish than mozilla is right now. I'd probably already be on LibreWolf if they only added a simple button to whitelist sites from the privacy protection stuff, because I want my QoL features on all the stuff I self host.

    The sad part is that Vivaldi is a really nice browser that makes the amount of resources Mozilla sinks in AI even worse, because there's no reason firefox could be at least this nice, but nope, need to chase the AI dragon.

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  • AlexTECPlayzalextecplayz@techhub.social
    Dec 20, 2025, 10:05 AM

    @FrankauLux @Doomed_Daniel And if Mozilla crashes and burns, what happens to those forks, I wonder?

    Zen is maintained by 9 people in the main team, 100 contributors listed on their about page's contributor graph from GH. 100 people is not enough, especially because they don't have the budget of a company.

    Zen has 1574 members on Patreon, 439 of which are paid members (doesn't disclose how much they earn) and 744 supporters on Ko-Fi, 17 members have an €8 membership, the rest are probably one-time donors or have hidden their contribution/membership level

    LibreWolf is maintained by 7 people (core contributors), 3 people on codeberg for librewolf/source repo had the most commits, additions and deletions in the range of hundreds of commits and thousands to tens of thousands of lines modified. The fourth committer's contributions are 28 commits, 99 additions and 54 removals.

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  • AlexTECPlayzalextecplayz@techhub.social
    Dec 20, 2025, 10:18 AM

    @FrankauLux @Doomed_Daniel LibreWolf doesn't accept any donations, so everyone involved is working for free. No one will work for free to maintain Gecko or Firefox, that's for sure.

    Without Mozilla to maintain Gecko and Firefox itself, these forks will lag behind in security and feature updates, and will ultimately shut down.

    It's the sad reality that browsers are massive undertakings that have to handle an overwhelming amount of backwards compatibility and stability, along with ensuring their JS engines are continuously updated and maintained, because new exploits show up frequently.

    Servo earns $6433/month (as per their latest blog post), and Open Collective estimates their annual budget to be $76,010.

    A non-profit org (techpolicy.press) estimates that Google spends at least $1-2B/year on Chrome, Chromium, and the web platform. Firefox in comparison spent at most $396M in 2022, with another $29M as the operational expenses for Mozilla Foundation.

    Browsers are horrifyingly expensive 🥲

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  • pierstovalpierstoval@mastodon.social
    Dec 31, 2025, 10:38 PM

    @alextecplayz @FrankauLux @Doomed_Daniel we should find a way to make the fsf's creed true one day: public software that's critical for everyone in the world should be made free and funded by countries.

    Certain western countries could donate 100k€ or 200k€ each per year to a nonprofit org that creates a public browser (let's start with firefox), countries people vote for features, priority is given to BC policy, cross compatibility and stability.

    I know, it's end-of-the-year-utopia but still..

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  • ceetsct@app.wafrn.net
    Dec 20, 2025, 2:20 PM

    Firefox is close to crashing and burning, but it'll take long enough that there is hope Servo or Ladybird will be more viable replacements by then. (even though ladybird leadership aren't exactly trustworthy, it's still an open project with good tech).

    Also, if you ask me, "Firefox spends X million dollars" isn't necessarily a fair measure of how much it costs to maintain a secure browser, we know that Mozilla is managed inefficiently and an alternative might not be so impossibly costly.

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  • Joe Cooper 🇺🇦 🍉swelljoe@mas.to
    Dec 20, 2025, 10:33 AM

    @Doomed_Daniel yeah, my position continues to be, yes, Mozilla is run by incompetent people who don't actually want to make a browser (made evident by all the ridiculous detours into every fad that comes along, including obviously stupid ones), but that's all. The alternatives are ruthlessly efficient at stripping me of privacy and autonomy. That they make a slightly better browser by some metrics is completely irrelevant, given that fact.

    The removal of the privacy pledge raises concerns...

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  • sinandlerdsinandlerd@social.tchncs.de
    Dec 20, 2025, 10:45 AM

    @Doomed_Daniel Absolutely. I couldn't agree more.
    As long as there is a 'disable ai' switch I will stick with it.
    It's quite 'interesting' to hear, that so many (tech-)people think that all these chromium based browsers are an alternative...

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  • Dekkiadekkia@dekkia.com
    Dec 20, 2025, 10:53 AM

    @Doomed_Daniel

    I think we desperately need a hard fork of firefox by a non-evil organisation.

    It's crazy how there are only two browsers and both of them are shit.

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  • Daniel GibsonDoomed_Daniel@mastodon.gamedev.place
    Dec 20, 2025, 3:12 PM

    @dekkia
    yes, that would be nice, but such an organization (not evil, big and well funded enough to pull it off, ideally not based in the US or similar authoritarian countries) does not exist, AFAIK

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  • Mark Ridgwellmark@mastodon.markridgwell.com
    Dec 20, 2025, 11:10 AM

    @Doomed_Daniel Just oping that something happends with Servo and Ladybird before this so theres a credible alternative... Still too early for either of them, but both begining to look promising

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  • Pēteris Krišjānispeteriskrisjanis@toot.lv
    Dec 20, 2025, 11:47 AM

    @Doomed_Daniel I don't know, I use this time actively investigate Waterfox, LibreWolf and WebKit based browsers. I don't believe Firefox management gonna change any time soon, so not sure what would be things I would wait for to change.

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  • TheTootingTitanseaborgium1234@mastodon.social
    Dec 20, 2025, 12:09 PM

    @Doomed_Daniel

    It's quite the modern dilemma, isn't it? To find oneself in a position where one must actively 'disable new AI features' from a browser whose management you disparage, all to prevent what's seen as a far greater digital evil.

    It's a rather dramatic calculus for simply browsing the web, I must say. I do wonder, do you ever feel that your commitment is less about choosing a preferred tool and more about maintaining a constant, low-level rebellion?

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  • AlexTECPlayzalextecplayz@techhub.social
    Dec 20, 2025, 2:22 PM

    @seaborgium1234 you're an AI bot, every post on your profile asks questions for engagement and uses horribly low-quality AI-gen images. Blocked.

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