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AstralSerenity | 11 months ago

Firefox and its derivatives remain the only true alternative at this point.

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fyrabanks|11 months ago

You can still install uBlock Origin in Brave, assuming you don't mind the crypto stuff and how they pay it out (or, rather don't) to site owners. Even Firefox feels a little weird now with the advent of Mozilla Advertising.

Very much a lesser of all evils situation.

AstralSerenity|11 months ago

You can, but ultimately Brave is downstream of Chrome and their stated intention of supporting Manifest V2 "for as long as [they're] able" doesn't inspire as much confidence.

Firefox is also the only open alternative to Chromium at the moment, so I prefer to endorse it instead.

ClikeX|11 months ago

Luckily, Firefox has several forks that strip that telemetry.

somenameforme|11 months ago

Brave has a native adblocker that lets basically nothing through, though it can be configured as desired. Crypto stuff is opt-in, though there is a little monochrome button for it on the browser that one can disable with a right click.

novemp|11 months ago

Another day, another subtle insinuation that Brave is the only Chrome fork anyone uses. Are you people being paid to do this?

jhickok|11 months ago

Do you have thoughts about Kagi/Orion browser? I've been using it for a bit now and I've been pleased with the ad blocking capabilities and the ability to have ublock origin on my iPhone and iPad. The browser definitely has scales but it's usable for me at this point.

64805968473|11 months ago

Not open source.

bluescrn|11 months ago

How long will Mozilla be around for, though?

mrandish|11 months ago

If the Google, Pocket and other ad money dries up, Mozilla the company may go away but the Firefox browser itself will continue on because it's open source. As an exclusively Firefox user for over 20 years, I suspect if Mozilla the company dies, it will won't negatively impact Firefox much, at least in any meaningful way. In fact, the browser may be somewhat better off managed like the Blender or MAME projects.

In the last five years or so Firefox has increasingly introduced controversial changes that make it (IMHO) less good, primarily around interface design. And, from what I understand, Mozilla employs full-time UX designers who've been driving much of that. Of course, with Firefox it's still possible to modify, fix and restore all these recent interface "improvements" with user CSS but it's a constant annoyance to need to keep fixing it. Fortunately, there's an active community effort around restoring the Firefox interface and usability, exemplified by the brilliant Lepton project https://github.com/black7375/Firefox-UI-Fix/releases.

My perception just watching the evolution of Firefox from the outside, is that it used to be a browser that celebrated the ethos of "Have it Your Way." However, Mozilla the company gets money to pay its executives and employees (millions in the case of more than one recent CEO) by actively driving users and eyeballs for Google, Pocket and other advertisers. So the company is highly incentivized to try myriad changes and redesigns to increase appeal to "the masses" of browser users. Thus, the UX keeps getting 'simplified' and 'de-cluttered' with advanced functionality 'de-prioritized' and add-on support demoted to second-class afterthought - instead of the shining key feature advanced users value most. Basically, in recent years the Firefox UX and end-user features have been pushed by the substantial payroll needs of the Mozilla company to become more like Chrome and Safari instead of embracing its unique position as a tool for power users who value advanced features, customization and extension. And it was all for naught because Firefox has continued to lose market share while ignoring (and even actively alienating) its niche community of fanatically devoted power users.

squarefoot|11 months ago

As long as Google pays them to remain alive to reinforce the narrative that Chrome isn't a monopoly.

carlosjobim|11 months ago

It's easy to block ads on an entire system DNS level, instead of using browser plugins.

h4x0rr|11 months ago

This way you're missing out on specific js patches for sites with hard to block ads (like YouTube)

Yeul|11 months ago

How does that work on a smartphone?

johnklos|11 months ago

...so long as you're not in a market where they automatically opt you in to sending all your DNS requests to a for-profit company without asking, and if you are, you remember to set up a canary domain or go and update your settings for every new install and new profile.