this post was submitted on 29 Jan 2025
311 points (75.2% liked)

Firefox

21306 readers
22 users here now

/c/firefox

A place to discuss the news and latest developments on the open-source browser Firefox.


Rules

1. Adhere to the instance rules

2. Be kind to one another

3. Communicate in a civil manner


Reporting

If you would like to bring an issue to the moderators attention, please use the "Create Report" feature on the offending comment or post and it will be reviewed as time allows.


founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Almost all the links in my front homepage are sponsored now. What's next, a few ads in the bookmark bar? How about when I enter a URL, I then have to type "McDonald's" before I can actually navigate there?

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] subtext@lemmy.world 284 points 10 months ago (2 children)

These can be turned off. Not great that they’re on by default, but you gotta pay the bills somehow right?

[–] BombOmOm@lemmy.world 180 points 10 months ago (5 children)

Yeah, this is basically the least offensive thing possible that ensures the lights stay on.

[–] tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip 85 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Remember when most sites had simple banner ads, and there was no widespread outcry about how much they sucked and we needed ad blocking software? Then they started flashing, then the popups and pop-unders came, then vids started autoplaying, and now here we are.

If advertisers hadn't gotten greedier than banners on the sides of sites, maybe no one would've gotten around to blocking all their shit.

[–] Gork@lemm.ee 31 points 10 months ago

Pop-under ads were obnoxious. As were the popups that were like 1 pixel large but it still had the windows bordering around it.

[–] lemmeBe@sh.itjust.works 10 points 10 months ago

Nicely said.

load more comments (4 replies)
[–] Kushan@lemmy.world 12 points 10 months ago

People keep giving Mozilla shit for taking money from Google, yet they see an ad for a different company and lose their shit.

[–] davel@lemmy.ml 133 points 10 months ago (4 children)

I think the downvoters can’t hold these two thoughts in their mind at the same time:

  1. Firefox is the best browser.
  2. Firefox has serious problems because Mozilla is a terrible steward of it.
[–] comfy@lemmy.ml 50 points 10 months ago

Firefox is the best browser

It's only real competitors, in my eyes, are Firefox forks.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 35 points 10 months ago

Agreed. I love Firefox and don't really like Mozilla.

[–] Scipitie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 31 points 10 months ago

No it's the complaint about one of the few transparent revenue flows Mozilla managed to pull off.

It's disabled one step deep on the settings

There is a shitload of stuff going wrong with the Mozilla foundation and this doesn't even make the top 10.

That's the reason for my down vote: it's nothing I want this community to focus on. It's basically engagement bait with the topic "ads bad".

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] TrickDacy@lemmy.world 112 points 10 months ago (10 children)

This has been the case for several years. Super easy to turn them off

load more comments (10 replies)
[–] lemmylurkaround@lemmy.world 81 points 10 months ago (16 children)

See ads, "how dare they" Sees paid version, "how dare they" Development costs time and money, pick your poison.

load more comments (16 replies)
[–] Kbobabob@lemmy.world 77 points 10 months ago (1 children)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] stevedice@sh.itjust.works 57 points 10 months ago

Skill issue 1000017516

[–] ColdWater@lemmy.ca 55 points 10 months ago (9 children)

The browser itself is free, and they have to make money somehow to keep the company running (if the CEO didn't keep most of it for themself). If you don't like it, you can turn it off or download an ad-free fork.

load more comments (9 replies)
[–] mvirts@lemmy.world 50 points 10 months ago

Better than the unlabeled sponsorship behind the default search engine.

[–] Reddfugee42@lemmy.world 44 points 10 months ago (1 children)

If they make some money from harmless icons, I mean, I can live with it

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] Aeri@lemmy.world 35 points 10 months ago

Yeah but you can literally just turn this off with no fuss.

1.Firefox for Android.

2.Tap the menu button.

3.Tap. Settings.

4.Tap Homepage.

5.Deselect Sponsored shortcuts under Shortcuts.

[–] Vincent@feddit.nl 31 points 10 months ago

This was a bug

And looks like it's been fixed :)

[–] callyral@pawb.social 30 points 10 months ago (1 children)
[–] Gingerlegs@lemmy.world 28 points 10 months ago (3 children)
[–] Artyom@lemm.ee 21 points 10 months ago

Or, ya know, literally any other browser that's not a fork of Firefox.

[–] Ephera@lemmy.ml 9 points 10 months ago

And Brave has significantly lower costs, given they don't develop an own engine, but rather just put lipstick onto Chromium.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] superglue@lemmy.dbzer0.com 25 points 10 months ago (1 children)

If we want software to be FOSS we have to stop bitching so much about developers trying to make the math work.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] Evil_Shrubbery@lemm.ee 20 points 10 months ago (3 children)

I say let them cook a little, they arent drowning in donations and still do a tone of things for foss communities.

Let's remember that the de fuckto market (ie pleb) alternative is overwhelmingly Chrome.

We dont need such projects just so we as individuals can have privacy focused experiences but also for how that influences markets and society. And to have any influence you need certain power of masses.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] a9cx34udP4ZZ0@lemmy.world 20 points 10 months ago (3 children)

So how exactly were you planning on them making money if they don’t take money from Google to be the default search engine and they don’t take money to place advertisements on the default home page?

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] Jimmycakes@lemmy.world 16 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (4 children)

Either that or they go bankrupt. Design your own browser and give it out for free if you don't like it

load more comments (4 replies)
[–] Redex68@lemmy.world 13 points 10 months ago

Personaly those shortcuts are a feature I literally never use so much so I don't even register their existence anymore.

[–] lowleveldata@lemmy.world 11 points 10 months ago (5 children)

How do you get this? My home page just has some recent links

[–] superkret@feddit.org 20 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Depending on where you got Firefox from, default settings are different. Maybe your distro ships with these deactivated.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (4 replies)
[–] Vincent@feddit.nl 11 points 10 months ago

Ads are one thing, but this seems excessive and probably unintentional. Looks like someone just filed this bug, which is another sign that it might be an unintentional problem: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1944704

[–] LWD@lemm.ee 11 points 10 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (3 children)
load more comments (3 replies)
[–] geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml 10 points 10 months ago

This is why I torrent firefox pro using Limewire.

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 9 points 10 months ago
load more comments
view more: next ›