Firefox app on android. Never seen this before until today. But Firefox is now putting ads in the app?
There are more shitfox
Explain? I use ironfox and its great.
Oh fuck that.
I think those have been there since forever?
This should be towards the top. I’ve been on FF4A for years now and they’ve had those links there the whole time. You can toggle them off if yku don’t want them.
how many people see that page tho? when i open a new tab i don’t even see the page, I open new pages quite often, all i see is the address bar until i type and hit enter. never even saw the “sponsored content”
You must have changed an option, by default the page shows up every time you open a new tab. (Though you can disable the ads on it)
The default search engine being google is a much worse offence imo, but somehow people dont complain about that.
You can literrally change that with just a few clicks. It takes a few seconds…
But I guess you don’t like that great software costs money to develop, so you will start using those alternatives that wouldn’t exist, if it were not for Mozilla/Firefox… Make that make sense!
I’ve been using Duck Duck Go through Firefox for years now.
Me too, but its surely still a decision that has much worse of an impact on the average non techie user than a random little bookmark thats even easier to remove.
That’s the one thing keeping Firefox (and all it’s forks) afloat.
Pretty much
This isn’t new afaik. You can disable it in settings
Now? That’s one reason I stopped using it 10 years ago
And what do you use now?
It’s not that bad, IMO.
That being said, you sould 100% be using Cromite if you’re on android. Not only is its adblocking/antifingerprinting basically state-of-the-art, but its (unfortunately) way faster than firefox.
Killing sideloading might kill it though…
Just checked out cromite… Had AdbluckPlus in it… Uninstalled it… Sorry but i dont want a adblocker from a company on my phone…
It uses a modified version of its engine and its own filter source. It’s not commercial ABP: https://github.com/uazo/cromite/blob/master/docs/ADBLOCKING.md
Why was AdBlock Plus used rather than uBlock?
ADB is developed in c++ while uBlock is an extension in javascript. Currently, support for extensions is not active in Android. ADB in Cromite is enhanced with support for cname uncloaking and blocking even in workers (a unique feature of Cromite). Support for “acceptable ads” has been completely removed.
I view this as a huge plus, as (theoretically) a C++ engine is faster than a javascript one.
Wow. Wtf… Thats absolutely ridiculous.
Edit: oh its the tab page. Never used it…
WaterFox and LibreWolf are decent alternatives if you get tired of needing to opt out of Mozilla nonsense.
Fennec!
They’ve always done that afaik?
As has always been the case, you can turn off Sponsored Shortcuts and Sponsored Stories.
Yeah… Never knew that setting existed because this is the first time I’m even seeing a sponsor.
If it was something besides some big Corpo I’d probably not have minded…
Mozilla’s #1 sponsor is Google, which is why you’ll see two Google logos on a fresh install of FF (after you click through their initial setup screens)
You expect them to work for free?
They get donations. Lots of them. And it is open source. I don’t expect ads in firefox, no
They get some small donations from some users… and Google.
It being open source means nothing. Open source developers still need to eat. It just means that you could remove all the things you don’t like.
I don’t get ads in Blender 3D.
Or Krita.
Or OBS.
You are severely underestimating the development burden of a modern web engine.
You’re severely underestimating the development burden of an industry standard 3D modelling program, much less the Swiss army knife that Blender 3D is.
If The Blender Foundation can operate with donations from big corporations like NVIDIA and AMD without selling out, then Mozilla has no excuse.
They’re both mature software packages with a ton of features. There are two gigantic obligations that a browser & especially web engine have that creative software don’t: massive security exposure and constantly changing web standards. Both create development burdens that are both non-trivial and time-sensitive. Many FOSS projects update at their own pace, which is simply not an option for a modern, feature-complete web engine.
Mozilla gets fucking loads. Way more than it can spend on Firefox. Like a certain online encyclopdia.
Ads are greedy, unwanted, and symptomatic of the culture there. They can fuck right off imo. And most open source software manages to avoid ads, why do you think that is?
And freeloading is the reason why we have an ad-based economy… Do you donate? Do you work for free?
I have worked for free on OS projects, I have donated to OS projects. None of this changes my opinion that Firefox should not have ads
Mozilla gets fucking loads
From Google. And if that deal disappeared, Mozilla would probably go bankrupt or rely on a worse deal from another provider. Neither would be good for Firefox development.
It makes sense that Mozilla wants to branch out, diversify. It just sucks that they’re terrible at doing it. Would have been cool if Mozilla operated like Proton or any other privacy-orientated service provider.
most open source software manages to avoid ads, why do you think that is
Because they have scruples and usually have financial issues as a result.
Firefox would be better off without Mozilla at this stage. The donations mozilla receives from individuals supporting firefox would pay for a large dev team easily. Google is a total red-herring and this money is spraffed on exec pay afaict, and they should be ending this today, as has been said by many other people
If that was true, then why don’t we have a fork of Firefox being developed by the community that is better than Firefox?
The only thing we have now are forks of Firefox. Sure, some are better, but all still rely on Mozilla’s upstream contributions. If Mozilla stopped supporting Firefox, these forks would be dead. They just add some features and UI changes. They are not working on web standards, fixing implementations of those standards, or security fixes.
So you donate, do you? Or are you working for free in general?
I contribute to a major Bionicle fan project. Yes, for free. I’ve been offered a reward for my work on said fan project. I refused it.
Oh, so you do free work on a project that doesn’t do anything good for the internet, the internet users, internet freedom, and so forth - and that makes it okay to demand that you are provided with free software, that competes against multi-billion-dollar companies?
I didn’t mind the occasional sponsor or two for many years. Then one day they went over the line.
Yeah I know i should be on librefox/waterfox. Im lazy okay?
Switching your firefox profile to a firefox fork is super easy peasy squeezy cheesy peas.
You just need to follow the steps for moving your profile in this Firefox support article: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/back-and-restore-information-firefox-profiles
When you start librewolf or whatever you switch to (librewolf is what I use) it will have everything from Firefox including whatever your last session was (if you save your session) and all of your history and bookmarks and even addons and UI customization etc.
Thanks for believing in me
That was actually a server-side bug 8 months ago which they not only fixed within 3 days of the issue being reported but followed it up with a hard block against more than 2 displaying at once to make extra sure this didn’t happen again.
If this is what you’re currently seeing then please report it to them. If instead this is an old screenshot then I’ll just agree that Mozilla has certainly suffered many avoidable self-inflicted wounds but this isn’t one of them.
You can disable them, but also I’m pretty sure the default behavior is just to fill extra space if you have less than 8 pinned shortcuts. Your single shortcut is why there are so many ads.
Former employee here. Firefox has been adding sponsored content to the new tab page since Firefox 60 in 2018. Their support article gives a good amount of detail on how it works, but perhaps more importantly for you, how to disable it.
I always wonder how these links even work. Who would even click on them except by accident?
If you don’t disable it, they always have.
My Android phone isn’t my primary and does not have an active SIM in it (it’s WiFi only), but my Firefox has no ads, and blocks all the ads (that I’ve encountered at least). iOS… is iOS. I mainly use Safari there, but, that’s a whole other story. Suffice it to say, I don’t have this problem on either handset.
