Mozilla is making it clear that they do not care about users any more.
Firefox is full of ads, with ads being in the homepage shortcuts, the news feed and the omnibox dropdown, as well as various ads for Mozilla services throughout the UI. Their ad network is also marketed to companies as allowing them to reach adblocker users.
Mozilla’s 210M+ global users are typically hard to reach. They’re usually hidden behind ad blockers, nearly half avoid dominant social media, and most say no to default platforms. They’re selective, tech savvy, and paying attention. From: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/advertising/
Firefox is also full of tracking, with their mobile app sending data to the tracking company Adjust, and it having options for “personalised extension recommendations” and “Install and run studies”. The latter allows them to install what they want into your browser without your consent out of the box.
Their tracking protection also mostly works only in private / incognito mode by default, with tracking scripts being allowed to run in standard windows with just isolated cookies protecting you, which is not a decision that a company who actually cares about privacy would make.
Mozilla is also partnering with Perplexity, an AI search engine who wants to collect as much data as possible even outside of their app to sell “hyper personalized” ads, which is exactly who you shouldn’t work with if you claim to care about privacy. From: https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/24/perplexity-ceo-says-its-browser-will-track-everything-users-do-online-to-sell-hyper-personalized-ads/
I recommend switching to Librewolf as it takes Firefox and removes this bullshit. Some other alternatives like Brave are just as bad.
Ok but you still need the Firefox project to succeed for librefox to exist. So how does that work?
Unless you actively support Mozilla, they could not care less about your boycott.
They make money from non-tech savvy people who are recommended Firefox as the pro-consumer alternative but leave it on default settings which are just as bad as Chrome.
Using Librewolf isn’t boycotting Firefox. Librewolf is a soft fork and is dependent on Mozilla for updates. You could switch to Ladybird or something more obscure, but I don’t think you’ll achieve much with that either.
Using Librewolf deprives Firefox of sponsor money, so it’s to some extent a boycott. The idea though that we need to switch to a new browser engine because we lost faith in Mozilla is a bit silly, the Gecko engine is open source so it can be stuck with even if Mozilla goes away. Just look at Pale Moon (not great security-wise, but it does exist).
the Gecko engine is open source so it can be stuck with even if Mozilla goes away
Good luck finding people both capable and willing to maintain it if Mozilla abandons it.
The idea though that we need to switch to a new browser engine because we lost faith in Mozilla is a bit silly
I am saying the opposite. I explicitly said I don’t think that would achieve anything. Just because something constitutes a boycott (i.e. using a different browser engine) doesn’t mean that there’s a point to it.
Unfortunately, there aren’t many options in the 2025 internet browser market.
Unless something has changed, the gecko engine Firefox uses is the only distinctly different engine from Chrome, and I don’t think writing a browser engine from scratch is easy. So if the solution is to hard pivot away from Firefox entirely, I don’t know how you don’t end up using some Chrome based browser.
At least Mozilla hasn’t tried to kill adblockers like Google clearly is trying to.
Forking the codebase and stripping out any AI code is much easier than trying to invent another wheel.
Forking the codebase and stripping out any AI code is much easier than trying to invent another wheel.
I never said otherwise. I simply said that using Librewolf is not boycotting Firefox.
You know, that’s a fair point. But I think it will still be a measurable shift if people start using privacy forks of their codebase.
Everyone yelled at me for Brave being dogshit. Go to Firefox they said.
It seems we are stuck just accepting the least bad actors in this realm which just sucks.
Just let browse the goddamn internet without being spied on how much is that to ask? (Actually its asking a ton bc of the multi billion dollar industries predicated on predatory data harvesting but ya know)
you’re right. screw Firefox. let’s all go to chrome. wait, no, edge, wait no, that one browser half the sites don’t work on.
Chrome is shit, so is anything that forks from it. Untill servo or ladybird are ready for the show. We’re stuck with Firefox. I tried libre wolf but half of my workflow/activities had issues (images didn’t download or sites working bad), I switched to Zen and I’m happy with it. It may not be as secure/private but it’s not chrome and it doesn’t have all the Firefox shenanigans.
You can turn off resistFingerprinting in the settings then disable the URL tracking protection and URL shortener filter lists in uBlock Origin to fix it. I think Librewolf’s default settings are too cautious as Mullvad Browser serves the maximum privacy niche.
I’m not trying to convince you to switch to anything, but, all that sounds like I’m installing librewolf to then transform it into zen browser. I’m pragmatic, it works for me, I don’t get the “features” I don’t want and I only need to install ublock, suscribe to webannoyance ultra list and install sponsorblock. Profit. But you do librewolf if that’s what suits you.
Edit: typos
