Are you for fucking real?

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[–] 24 points 11 months ago (18 children)

maybe it's because I've been using nightly for some time now, but these aren't new, right? that said, you can (and probably should) turn these off; for each new system I provision with Firefox as the browser, I run through a check list of toggles / flags to turn on and off.

Alternatively, there are several forks of Firefox that are preconfigured to be more private out of the box

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  • [–] 11 points 11 months ago (6 children)

    Yeah, this is ancient news and takes all of 8 seconds to permanently disable.

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  • [–] 0 points 11 months ago (5 children)

    Or you can just switch to LibreWolf and get no ads and no tracking, the way Mozilla was supposed to be

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  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago (4 children)

    firefox extensions still work fine?

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago (3 children)

    Most of them.

    LibreWolf is literally just the FireFox build, with the telemetry & adware ripped out, and ublock origin and similar preinstalled. (I suspect people that downvoted me above assume I am shilling some commercial browser and just don't know what LW is)

    I ran into a problem with Video Download Helper, it installs a co-app that had "~/.firefox" hardcoded in a script. I changed that to point to LibreWolf and it worked.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago

    aah, a good old load-bearing "just" with all the trimmings

    love it when a post tells you how much experience someone has in large-scale software and systems management (and thus also how seriously to take their advice)

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  • [–] 7 points 11 months ago (5 children)
  • [–] 12 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (4 children)

    I'll see if I can export all modified flags but generally skim through about:config for references to "reporting", "telemetry", "pocket", "browser.ml".

    On desktops I also like to enable UI density == 1.

    In the settings GUI I generally disable sponsored links, autoplay stuff, studies and recommendations.

    prior to anything, I install ublock origin and enable its use in private browsing.

    Edit: if you use regular firefox for android (not beta, nor nightly), you can access about:config via chrome://geckoview/content/config.xhtml

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  • [–] 6 points 11 months ago (3 children)
  • [–] 6 points 11 months ago* (2 children)

    Hey no prob - I've swept through a new install of nightly on another system to get a concise set of ideas together (personal preference / UX tweaks have a † prepended):

    #GUI configs:

    about:preferences#general

    • † check Open previous windows and tabs
    • † uncheck Ask before quitting with Ctrl+Q
    • uncheck Use AI to suggest tabs and a name for tab groups
    • † uncheck picture in picture video controls
    • uncheck Recommend extensions as you browse
    • uncheck Recommend features as you browse
    • uncheck Enable link previews

    about:preferences#home

    • uncheck Recommended stories
    • uncheck Sponsored shortcuts
    • uncheck Sponsored stories (disabled when you uncheck Recommended stories)

    about:preferences#search

    • Default Search Engine: duckduckgo (or whatever you'd prefer)
    • uncheck Suggestions from Nightly (Firefox)
    • uncheck Suggestions from sponsors
    • Search Shortcuts (remove google, bing, ebay, etc)

    about:preferences#privacy

    [right click and customise toolbar]:

    • † remove view recent browsing across windows and devices
    • † show bookmarks bar on new tab page only
    • † customise gui to remove spacers, add home button

    #about:config

    • † browser.uidensity == 1 (thinner top bar)

    falsify the following:

    • browser.tabs.crashReporting.sendReport
    • datareporting.healthreport.uploadEnabled
    • datareporting.policy.dataSubmissionEnabled
    • datareporting.usage.uploadEnabled
    • security.csp.reporting.enabled
    • toolkit.telemetry.reportingpolicy.firstRun
    • browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.feeds.telemetry
    • browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.telemetry
    • browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.telemetry.ut.events
    • browser.search.serpEventTelemetryCategorization.enabled
    • browser.search.serpEventTelemetryCategorization.regionEnabled
    • dom.security.unexpected_system_load_telemetry_enabled
    • identity.fxaccounts.telemetry.clientAssociationPing.enabled
    • network.trr.confirmation_telemetry_enabled
    • nimbus.telemetry.targetingContextEnabled
    • telemetry.fog.init_on_shutdown
    • toolkit.telemetry.archive.enabled
    • toolkit.telemetry.bhrPing.enabled
    • toolkit.telemetry.reportingpolicy.firstRun
    • toolkit.telemetry.shutdownPingSender.enabled
    • toolkit.telemetry.unified
    • toolkit.telemetry.updatePing.enabled
    • browser.ml.chat.enabled
    • browser.ml.chat.menu
    • browser.ml.chat.page
    • browser.ml.chat.page.footerBadge
    • browser.ml.chat.page.menuBadge
    • browser.ml.chat.shortcuts
    • browser.ml.chat.shortcuts.custom
    • browser.ml.chat.sidebar
    • browser.ml.enable
    • browser.ml.linkPreview.longPress
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  • [–] -4 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    Counterpoint - these are literally least intrusive ads possible and Firefox gets a few pennies from me leaving it active so that I can enjoy the product for free. And this is coming from someone whose run ublock origin for over a decade on every PC I own, and has installed an alternative YouTube frontend on my TV because fuck ads.

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  • [–] 6 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    Counterpoint

    ew

    these are literally least intrusive ads possible and Firefox gets a few pennies from me leaving it active so that I can enjoy the product for free

    mozilla has alienated a large number of its supporters by going all-in on LLM horseshit in their browser and anywhere else (MDN) they can shove it, exploitative crap (especially directed inwards towards its own developers, go find some ex-Mozilla postmorts if you want to see some of the nicest people you know get curbstomped by awful management and then fired), and doing a ton of other semi-to-fully fraudulent nonprofit boondoggle shit. they’ve made it clear they don’t want our donations (and plenty of people were donating more than just a few pennies from ads) and they really don’t deserve your advocacy. all Mozilla as a company cares about is the funding they get from Google. everything else is just layered affinity grifts.

    Q&A!

    what browser do you recommend then

    none. we fucked it. once Mozilla dies, and they will die, none of the Gecko forks are realistically in shape to take on browser development on their own. chromium will be the only game in town, and google will use their dominant position to push through crap like browser attestation to secure their deathgrip on the web. ladybird is unserious fascist shit. chromium forks solve nothing. everything else is targeting an early 2000s version of the web’s features, which is good for them.

    the only way I can see out of the above is Servo, the ex-Mozilla browser engine that Mozilla did their best to bury after Firefox Quantum, and they’re starved for cash and developers. I’d love if Servo was a workable browser today, but it just isn’t. it’ll take a lot more than a couple of pennies in some grifter’s pocket and the laziest possible advocacy to get it there.

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