Look, this sucks, FIFA is a shitty organization, but it's possible that the devs are just soccer fanatics. You think Mexicans are boycotting FIFA for instance? They probably mistakenly believed this was apolitical
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Yeah I think this is a little attempt to make Firefox more appealing to the everyman. There’s no link to FIFA’s site, no sponsor symbols, no tournament branding, etc. If it was an ad it would be written as FIFA ™ World Cup ™ ®️™ 2026 ™. You’d know because if they wrote it like that and stuck an ugly logo without any agreement with FIFA they would have been sued for 600 million dollars.
Even back when I had zero interest in watching sports and hung out with people who also didn’t, when the World Cup was happening, all plans change to make the most out of the match schedule.
For most people on earth, visiting the tournament is pretty political, but watching it at a restaurant or bar kind of isn’t, and seeing a fixture list and scores absolutely isn’t. That’s why there’s so much jockeying over the political potential of the sport in the first place.
can we stop shoving sports into everyone's faces? I live in brazil and is so fucking annoying to hear about yet a fucking another sports news
I hate this expectation people impose onto me and everyone that they should care and magically be enthusiastic about it
Brazil? impossible to avoid then but yeah, still sucks
Who do I submit a complaint to?
Edit: hey, also make sure it isn't set to delete everything it's ever downloaded when you clear your history. This setting is enabled by default now! Wtf is happening at Mozilla?
hey, also make sure it isn't set to delete everything it's ever downloaded when you clear your history. This setting is enabled by default now! Wtf is happening at Mozilla?
I think that part is just a misunderstanding, the setting simply defines what to do when you delete a download from the downloads page. Clearing your history does not affect you downloads
The World Cup used to be something that people actually looked forward to with a kind of simple joy. Before, say, 2018, this kind of countdown would have been useful information to me.
I think this is someone who misread the mood of their users to FIFA not paid placement.
Why would FIFA give a shit about Firefox users anyway? 😆
Agreed. Back when FIFA announced that the US was going to get another world cup I was over the moon and thought for sure my husband and I would go to at least one game, and that was before the host cities were announced. (At that point we were season ticket holders for our local MLS club as well.) I live in a host city, so going wouldn't be even mildly inconvenient, but not only am I not, I don't even plan to watch the cup. 12 and 16 years ago I was watching every single game, even streaming them on my phone while at work. Not that FIFA was a bastion of morality even then, but I feel like it's gotten so much worse, and supporting the games in any way just rubs me wrong. I'm also not happy helping this administration get a win of any kind, so I'll just catch on Lemmy who wins and call it good enough.
In 2010 the entire office shut down, people were projecting games on sheets hung up in the cafeteria, two of my engineers were dutch so the whole team went to go watch one of the games to support them, and nobody even thought about trying to stop it.
It was a multinational company and it gave everybody something to talk about and even the people who didn't care about the games often went along for the drama.
And that's dead dead dead.
My kid asked me yesterday "why does everything just keep getting shittier?"
It’s Firefox caring about FIFA ad money, not FIFAa caring about you.
I used to work at Google before it sucked and this was exactly the kind of thing the search team used to build info boxes for, just cause they knew people would want to know.
Like, there was a time when that company genuinely wanted to be helpful and informative.
I still have room in my heart to believe that people are still enthusiastic soccer fans, even if I'm not any more.
But yeah could also just be monetization.
The laast update re-enabled shortcuts on Ironfox
I did see that and was wtf about it. And "Nimbus experiments" (per Katy's post below) means "ads"? Give it a break, Mozilla. Ok I'll turn off the experiments before they start injecting AI slop into pages.
Go to Settings -> About Firefox/Fennec
Tap the logo until it says "Debug settings enabled"
Go back and enter the new "Secret Settings" menu. There you can turn off Nimbus and Labs permanently. Also toggle "Keep Debug Menu revealed" so you don't have to enable it every time you want to change something.
ew
It's not on my waterfox mobile :)
Nor on Firefox for Android. But I've removed the "sponsored stuff" on my new tabs page. This is more user error than intrusion IMO.
I had sponsored stuff disabled too, and it still shows up. So it's not 'user-error'. Now don't get me wrong. I'm excited for the world cup so I don't mind the countdown. But only excited to see how big of a cluster fuck it's going to be.
They added a new setting for "world cup" specifically. Its not user error since its enabled by default and silently.
I got it on a fresh Firefox install.

This is what my homepage settings look like on android. The world cup ad is entirely separate from sponsored stuff, and is enabled by default
Boycott
God forbid devs be excited for something.
They can be excited about something, just don't run ads about it on a browser that I only use so that I don't see ads
The Devs need to be as emotionless and devoid of personality like me
Yeah same here wtf
I wonder how much the FIFA paid Mozilla for this.
Is it an advertisement? Looks more like a countdown to a world event.
Widely corrupted organization, and why this date in particular ? why not something actually useful ?
it's (functionally) an ad
Who cares? Billions of people enjoy the world cup, whats wrong with a little timer? I think its fun that they added this idk also if fifa did pay mozilla for this it just wouldnt make any sense no? 2% use firefox while majority use chrome, why would fifa pay mozilla and not chrome? They clearly have enough to advertise on chrome. I think its the devs appealing to people who enjoy world cup
I saw this ad too.
As far as I know, I have all that crap disabled, and yet Mozilla shoved this ad up my ass.
Did I miss anything? What do I need to disable?
Settings -> Homepage -> Turn off "World Cup"
Thanks. There was indeed a new setting there and it was enabled by default.
I'm fucking angry.
You're welcome, I had to go find it after seeing it pop up on mine
wtf me too. where do i complain?
i was expecting more from the fennec team
Yep, came with the AI update yesterday for me on Fennec. Wish they would leave Fennec as the no-bullshit version as it should be.
nothing new here. esr from trixie; release and devedition from packages.mozilla.org. just updated and ran all three to see. sponsored and recommended crud was off (it is literally the first things that get changed on new installs) and are still off.
Over the past week or so this has been so infuriating. Firefox is now randomly turning back on sponsored/featured stories in the homepage. So anti-user.
I use regular Firefox and dont have any ads.
I remember some early version of Firefox all the way back in 2002 or 2006 had some world cup promotion kinda thing. But I guess it wasn't a payed promotion or anything like that and the event was perceived to be a lot less corporate then nowadays.
I’m not gonna lie idk what I’m supposed to be seeing here
I'm not seeing it on my Firefox Mobile, nor do I see any additional setting under the 'homepage' section.
Can't reproduce on my end. I'm currently on a WiFi with a pihole, though (and uBlock Origin on FF mobile, but that might not work on those pages)