It's really funny that the bold stance in tech now is essentially, "hey, we won't fuck with our product."
Vivaldi putting up a W by pledging to simply not do anything. It's that easy.
this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2026
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I too pledge not to put AI in your life!
I mean, I'm not a programmer, and I have no products, but.....I needed a win in my life, and if I get a W by pledging not to do things I wasn't going to do anyways? I'll take it!
I also pledge not to eat unhealthy today.
..........I might break that one actually. We'll see.
Just like that, you get a W!
I too pledge not to put AI in your life!
Sold. I'm switching to you.
In a lot of cases I find that the more recent tech comes out, the more I don't want it. It's kinda nice when something that works, just keeps working and isn't trying to integrate everything new for no reason.
I’ve been struggling with this shift too. Tech used to game changing ideas for people, now it’s sole purpose is a vehicle for corporate profits. Tech used to be an exciting Wild West of crazy new ideas and new ways to be creative or play or communicate and share with friends or do less work. Now consumer focused tech is just minor evolutions of current tech launched with billion dollar marketing campaigns, corporate traps to lock you into app addictions or various subscriptions to see stock price increase 0.1%. And I don’t see any light at the end of the tunnel.
It doesn't help anything, but I've started finding the remaining or recreated web 1.0 corners of the internet. Like creating a gopher hole and joining a pubnix server. Something about being nice to not have the modern internet always trying to track me or sell me something. Dunno.
Yeah, I miss the late 00s, when every new tech release was actually fun and exciting. Now it's just "we increased a few specs and shoehorned in an ai feature that no one actually wants"
Mozilla should really take note. For all that talk about ethics - more than a whole manifesto worth - they really would rather reject the easy W.
I think Mozilla sees there is a bigger userbase interested in AI features than the userbase distancing themselves from it. and they need to be doing something to grow the market share because they are disappearing.
I don't know whether it's a good path for them. what I know is that thanks to volunteers like librewolf, I can continue using a browser on my terms.
I agree that that's what Mozilla seems to be doing, but that doesn't seem like a smart idea at all. Mozilla has their niche (that they're alienating), while AI enthusiasts already have browsers that did the AI thing earlier than Mozilla, and probably much better.
But don't take my word for it alone:
Maybe look back at that 30 year history and see what they were doing when they had positive DAU and do that again?
I'll give them a hint because I was around then: It wasn't chasing the latest fads.
It was doing what they're good at, being deeply abnormal, and helping folk make what they really wanted.
I wish Vivaldi wasn't Chrome, I wish they didn't sell Opera to a Chinese predatory loan company, but I find this browser to be the best by far. It has a lot of privacy functions built in, so no third party extensions needed. And remember, with almost everything that is free, you and your data is the product. So less companies hoarding in tour data is a plus. Next to that it's so user friendly. Mouse gestures, tab grouping, built in Proton VPN option, and so much more. Really a browser made to personalize and for ergonomics.
Still Chromium based. Pass. Librewolf
Still based on Chrome, hard pass.
This is great, but my immediate concern is what's going to happen to ad blocking.
The built in blocker is already great for that; you can even add additional sources (EastList, Peter Lowe, etc) or add in your own. It's not as powerful as UBO but on Android Vivaldi where there are no extensions having EasyList configured as a blocker works on Youtube.
Pledge .... Pledge ....
committed to avoiding AI features
Promises Not to Force AI on You
I might give them the benefit of the doubt and try them again ('t has been years since)
while i don't use them as my main browser it feels vivaldi is one of the few ones who at least tries something new. who isn't just trying to emulate chrome with a few quality of life ones. i remember them introducing tiled tabs, stacked tabs, the tab bar on the sides or the bottom, way before i've seen any other browser do that? might not have been the first with all of those but at least firefox, chrome and edge didn't have that as an option back then
Tab management on Vivaldi is second to none. I pray every day that they swap to a Firefox backend one day, would be the best browser by a mile
That's why I still use them as my main. I can't close tabs, so between their workspaces with tiled tabs and tab memory management not keeping 200 processes open (I know!) it's been amazing for me. My only reservation is it being chromium.
What makes firefox's backend better? I've been considering switching from it lately.
It's not chrome
Basically this.
Any browser that leverages Google's Chromium project is enabling Google to continue to drive the web. Alternative browsers, first and foremost, must not be built using Chromium.
Not that Firefox's back end is better rather that every other browser out there is some form of chromium which means Google getting to control the internet.
Chromium based ones are at the mercy of Google. Firefox, however, is independent in that sense.
When google decides to drop support for manifest V2 (which is the one unlock origin uses), every chromium browser drops support for it. Unless they make a fork of chromium and add manifest V2 back in. Which means extra effort every time they want to update with upstream, since there probably will be merge conflicts.
Firefox can just not drop support for it, literally 0 effort.
On PC I’ve used them pretty much since the start and I have very little to complain about.
On mobile (iOS) I tried a few times but it’s unbearably slow.
The issue with iOS is all browsers have to use Safari backend so it's not the same as on other devices.
I've also been on Vivaldi since right around the start. I'd just wish they would fix their address bar suggestions to actually work. It isn't great to start, and then decides to completely break every few months and do stuff like when I type "you" to go to youtube it insists on autofilling to a specific video I watched months ago. The only fix I've found is to nuke the profile and start over.
I've switched to Zen on my computer a couple months ago exclusively because of that issue.
yeah I use vivaldi on mobile and it's so painfully slow and horrible. I'd switch but I hate using my phone anyways so I don't really care.
I'd like to agree but they are proprietary and still based on Chromium.
Hmm. I might be interested in switching to Vivaldi.
Does anybody have any recommendations for a non chrome based browser that has the compatibility to play things like MKV files? That’s essentially the only thing I keep my Thorium install around for. I use an app that I push an MKV to and then add subtitles in order to study Japanese.
Tell me more about your use case. I'm confused about what the app does beyond what VLC does out of the box.
I'm so gonna try vivaldi when I finally have some issue with librewolf or if
Vivaldi's UI Autohide is legitimately great; I use it all the time in my browsing flow.
