So many people saying they're switching from Firefox. Won't this only make the problem worse?
If you're switching to Brave or qutebrowser or UnGoogled Chromium or something, you're only strengthening Google's monopoly. If you're switching to a Webkit-based browser like Epiphany, you're shifting the monopoly towards Safari, whose parent company doesn't consider the Web a priority.
That Mozilla has bad management doesn't change the fact that Firefox is the most viable option for the open web.
@dick_turpin @aadil Never follow the herd. 🙂
@aadil This is the sad conclusion I"ve been forced into over time.
@aadil Thanks for writing that down. One cannot stress enough how important this argument is.
The reflex to switch over to another browser because Mozilla did a stupid decision is something that is hard to grasp for me.
@_xhr_
There are some Firefox derivatives which don't include Mozilla's product placement etc. I use Fennec on my phone, for example.
Mozilla did not just make one stupid decision. For exame, they're trying to hide my user profile every few updates in an effort to make me look at their stuff (and to get an account and let them store my user profile on their server so I don't have to dig it out myself everytime...). You can't deal with that type of shit unless you have some expertise.
@aadil
@_xhr_ @aadil So I come to this thread thru some weird series of hops but as someone who switched away from Firefox (both desktop & mobile) after the mobile update, I want to note, it's not _one_thing. They've been making "stupid decisions" on and on for the last few years and a pattern seemed to emerge. Also, they slashed every single feature I used. I get the monopoly argument but I don't think sticking to inferior software is the answer. You can't expect that from the masses of people.
@_xhr_ @aadil IMHO at this point a better solution is the emergence of a foss project that develops a great browser engine, and only does that. Just like kernel devs develop Linux, and only do that. Leave the chrome to others. Whether that happens via hard forking WebKit or Blink, or from scratch is a different question. But Mozilla pretending to be a pocket-sized Google and trying to do everything from the compiler up to the widget toolkit and the chrome is not sustainable in FOSS economics.
@cadadr @aadil I totally get your argument but I don't think it's feasible. Writing a working and secure browser these days is in the same area of complexity as writing a whole operating system.
And even if a FOSS browser is finished, the continuous maintenance eats up tons of resources. This works for the Linux kernel since its backed by 100s of companies paying devs.
Mozilla does all that. And yes, they have a shitty management ...
@cadadr @aadil ... that makes wrong decisions! Nevertheless, FF is open source and active maintained and has tons of FOSS contributors.
And to be honest, what's the alternative? Having a web that's completely dominated by Google and MS? No, thanks.
And your argument of "inferior software" is subjective. FF never removed a feature I used in the last years. For me, every release made the browser better. See?
@aadil Didn't Mozilla began to give up on Gecko and already partially implemented Chromium codebase for some features? I guess it is not relevant what we do now. The duopoly is bad enough, and I think there is no real ethical choice of what to do now except hoping for a miracle of a new web (engine) coming. This is the reason why I will ditch Firefox, and will reduce my use of the Web drastically. I'm afraid even Firefox is not safe from corporate shills. There were too many incidences already.
@nihiltarian It is bleak as you say but I don't follow how ditching Firefox does anything to improve the situation, unless you are talking of ditching it in favor of gemini:// or gopher:// or other alternative protocols.
@aadil you're absolutely right. The situation cannot be improved at all though, it is clear that the modern web is so beyond repair that any *new* effort of creating new web engines will be more demanding than the Apollo missions. Capitalism screwed us over, and we will not be able to fix the web under it. It is just a question of time whether Mozilla or Google succeeds, and afterwards the winning team will just be a boring, not-privacy respecting entity.
@aadil The least I could do is to support independent projects already existing, i. e. Epiphany or Pale Moon (which I tend to in the moment). They are not perfect, of course, but they do not play into Mozilla's or Google's user statistics, and as they are independent, they rather respect our privacy more than even Firefox (concerning telemetry etc.)
@nihiltarian @aadil Pale Moon is independent in the same way brave is independent, ie not at all.
Epiphany is certainly a good contender and i respect the effort immensely
tho i remain to be convinced that the web has been forever lost, if that were the case, why bother with even trying to use an independent browser?
Are you referring to WebExtensions? It is the only Chrome-ish thing that comes to mind and even then, it isn't exclusive to them.
@aadil Switching to lynx (because I'm not hardcore enough to use curl) is OK.
@bortzmeyer @aadil I prefer w3m. But for now I stick on Firefox.
@bortzmeyer @aadil Another option: I'm building "Rhapsode" so you can listen to webpages.
Output's working great! Input shouldn't take me long...
@aadil thank you for this take. I largely like Firefox and would like to keep using it (my first browser was Netscape 2.0, IIRC, back in the '90s!), but I may start using an unbranded fork like IceCat or something similar.
One thing that really bugs me about FF is their abhorrent PDF export, at least on Linux. Could be operator error, but my Firefox PDFs turn out terribly, while Chrome/ium has a wonderful print-to-PDF engine. Not a huge deal but AFAIK it's a "wontfix" in FF.
@greyor you might like LibreWolf
@aadil thank you for this! I think I recently heard about this elsewhere and will have to check it out!
Here is a Peertube Video:
https://tube.tchncs.de/videos/watch/a8493008-a9b9-4de6-8e8a-5aac70f6e45a
@aadil Because they put things I don't want in there browser and I can only deactivate it bc I know about:config. Ungoogled-Chromium and Pale Moon are the only browsers that are only a base for addons, not more. But Pale Moon became unusable. Additionally, with ungoogled-chromium I got VA-API support already for a long time and at Firefox it's currently in trial and wasn't available for a long time.
@bionade24 perhaps this would fit your use case https://tube.tchncs.de/videos/watch/a8493008-a9b9-4de6-8e8a-5aac70f6e45a
@aadil Yeah, it's without pocket and DoH is disabled by default, but it still hasn't hw decoding. Even when you use mpv most of the time you still need it on trips with a laptop or when you don't want to wear headphones. Maybe give it a try when(if) I don't need WebRTC for online meetings anymore.
@aadil For me one of the most important criteria of a browser is, that I can sync the bookmarks, extensions and passwords accross all my devices by a selfhosted server appication - and unfortunately Firefox is the only browser which support that.
@aadil yeah it's the "least worse" option…
@aadil The thing is: the firefox browser has trackers (even from Google) in its mobile app. Why would I want to support that, even when I could block it with TrackerControl. Thats why I use Kiwi browser on my phone.
@AnarchoFox you could use Fennec from F-droid
@aadil I know but its the slowest browser I have ever seen in my life. 3-10 seconds per Website.
@AnarchoFox that's fair. But there are good FF forks on desktop though
@aadil fully agree!
@aadil "If you're switching to a Webkit-based browser like Epiphany" - aren't they all Blink based since the split? I know that at least Qt and JavaFX both went with Google's engine fork, instead of staying with WebKit.
Also, yea, Firefox sadly is the most viable option... The lesser evil.
@zilti afaik Epiphany is based on GTKWebKit. Not as informed about QT browsers
@aadil Yes, I agree with you. I've use Firefox for 3 years.
@aadil I agree totally. I have no intention of moving away from Firefox. I am holding out hope that work on Servo (and/or Gecko) will continue...somehow...outside of Mozilla.
Maybe I will be wrong. Maybe Firefox really will die. But I don't see any point in giving up until we've actually lost.
@aadil In the end, the web is over anyways. Google will take it over. Whatever you do now. You are too weak for anythink - do you think you can prevent that? What bad things have you prevented in this millennium?
Do you see how the web is replaced by Google/Apple apps in their walled garden? Where is the web?
Also: Why do I need two parties that try to fool me? One is enough.
Why exactly is Firefox a more viable option for the open web? Can you explain details? What are they doing for that?
@pino_ac @aadil You are so pessimistic. if everyone thought that, linux, openstreetmap, vlc, libreoffice, wikipedia, mastodon and so many other great projects wouldn't have existed. But they exist. I prefer a weak concurrent than no concurrent, because freedom is very important.
At least, Firefox is preventing Google to have a monopoly with chrome (and all chromium based browser), which is invaluable.
And I don't understand why Firefox is fooling their users ? I would be happy to know more, I trust Firefox.
And sure, web isn't a priority in it, which IMO is a great idea, we need to slow the fuck down on web ""features"" (a lot of them being user-hostile).
And Mozilla has also been shifting from Firefox as their main product to a bunch of services.
@lanodan It isn't only Apple, but it feels like it is 98% Apple.
From what I have seen, the GNOME/Igalia folks are mostly playing catch-up to implement features that are already in Safari, and integrating the browser better with the desktop environment.
I say this as a fan of GNOME Web.
It's good that Firefox is diversifying their revenue streams, relying on search revenue from Google is a terrible business model.
And sure, Mozilla should get money from other sources but I'm pretty sure they're not going to make much with Pocket, Firefox Send, … as it's gratis.
Also Firefox's Market Share has been dropping to a mere few percents that it's going more and more irrelevant (and Firefox has less and less identity as a browser).
@aadil
Yes !
Yes !
Thanks for saying it !
@aadil Exactly.
@aadil it seems like "I want to use a browser engine that has maintainers" is a pretty good reason to me?
@technomancy
It is not that the layoffs will make all of the maintainers disappear.
@aadil
@aadil why are people switching? Because of the lay offs?
we're fuckin broke, we can't do this anymore
so uh the CEO took home his five mil this year but sorry guys you're all fired oh but hate speech is bad or something!
Mikoto 
> whose parent company doesn't consider the Web a priority
I despise apple but they have done more regarding privacy on the web than Mozilla did. Plus webkit has (had?) many non-apple contributors too. Before blink Google was the biggest contributor and even before that they were cooperating with KDE to merge changes from/to KHTML.
@MisakaMikoto they are good with privacy, but they also do things like refusing to allow any browser engine besides theirs on OS, and this:
> refusing to allow any browser engine besides theirs on OS
What do you mean? On Mac OS X? I thought that it allowed to run programs without signed binaries.
> and this:
> https://andregarzia.com/2020/03/private-client-side-only-pwas-are-hard-but-now-apple-made-them-impossible.html
Honestly, this is great.
@MisakaMikoto I meant iOS.
> Honestly, this is great.
it's not so great for developers who want to publish privacy-respecting web-apps that also work offline.
@aadil The web is a mistake.
We're now stuck with its overarching complexity and forced adoption because everything is one the web now.
We have to deal with the fact that all options are utter trash too.
Sigh.
@aadil I've just installed Brave Browser, No idea why other than EVERYONE keeps telling me to do it. 🤔