They've been doing it on desktop Firefox for ages
this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2025
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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?
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?
settings > homepage > shortcuts > uncheck 'sponsored shortcuts'
Opt-out is still toxic
Yeah but Firefox doesn't get their income like google does
They get it from Google ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
They will never compete with Google by adding ads to the browser. I pay for Kagi, I would pay for Firefox too, but I guess most people wont.
Yeah but it doesn't change that it's sh*t. It's no justification
How do you mean its not justificatin? If noone is paying you would you still go to work?
If we want firefox to be good again we need to pay for it, or rather give some symbolic amount that will be huge for them because there are tousent of people using firefox.
Even thou they are losing users for years and now hawe only a relativly small procent of world populacion. Which is bad because people dont understand that firefox is open source and chrome is proprietery.
And dont even understand what open source means.. Thats why we are in situacion like this where google is controling everything…
I think people need to appreciate that Mozilla is probably the only company in the world that will allow you to turn off ads like this, for free.
Low friggin' bar.
Low bar, but that's how far our options have sunk.
Yet one so many competitors fail to clear.
Ah hahahaha no. That's not even close to true. Do we seriously need to mention the dozens of alternative web browsers out there?
There are not dozens of alternative browsers. There is Chromium, Safari, and Firefox, with a few niche options that aren't really production ready yet and may never be. The "variety" you speak of is just Chromium in lots of disguises.
I turn everything off in Firefox’s new page except search! I always found the news stuff distracting too.
that's typically what i do but on desktop i turn off search too since a) i use the awesomebar primarily and b) my ntp is a background and i'd rather see that for a cleaner look :)
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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.
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Pretty much
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Oh fuck that.
As has always been the case, you can turn off Sponsored Shortcuts and Sponsored Stories.
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So, every real alternative to Firefox, is most likely based on all the work that Mozilla has done on Firefox. People get it for free, and yet they crumple and whine, when Mozilla tries to get the money to keep steady development going.
I want it free, I want them to do all the work, and then I'm going to use another browser, based on their work, because I don't like that great development cost money - and I won't pay! Buhuu!
Get over yourself. Mozilla does great work for users worldwide. Don't like to see ads? Then start donating! Grow TF up, and realize that nothing is free in a capitalistic world!
Donating to Mozilla doesn't change any behavior in Firefox.
Also, donations to Mozilla don't go towards Firefox development. As far as I'm aware the only way to "give" money to Mozilla Corp (who work on Firefox, as opposed to the Mozilla Foundation) is to subscribe to the VPN service they resell.
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I would pay for Firefox. The same way I donate every year to Thunderbird!
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I prefer to view this as a socialist. Firefox is the work of tens of thousands of laborers, and is not owned by an out of touch upper class. Yet, they are mismanaging it.
It took me time to realize that I, a highly trained engineer, was a laborer and have similar issues to most people the last few centuries.
It is literally needed that the workers of Firefox rise up and revolt before the entire project is harmed beyond repair
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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?
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.
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This isn't new afaik. You can disable it in settings
Use Fennec on FDroid. While you can, lol.
Making a browser is expensive (especially with such incompetent management), they need to make money somehow.
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