this post was submitted on 06 Oct 2025
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Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.
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maybe it's because I've been using nightly for some time now, but these aren't new, right? that said, you can (and probably should) turn these off; for each new system I provision with Firefox as the browser, I run through a check list of toggles / flags to turn on and off.
Alternatively, there are several forks of Firefox that are preconfigured to be more private out of the box
Yeah, this is ancient news and takes all of 8 seconds to permanently disable.
Or you can just switch to LibreWolf and get no ads and no tracking, the way Mozilla was supposed to be
firefox extensions still work fine?
Most of them.
LibreWolf is literally just the FireFox build, with the telemetry & adware ripped out, and ublock origin and similar preinstalled. (I suspect people that downvoted me above assume I am shilling some commercial browser and just don't know what LW is)
I ran into a problem with Video Download Helper, it installs a co-app that had "~/.firefox" hardcoded in a script. I changed that to point to LibreWolf and it worked.
lol no
Perhaps, one day, someone will talk about "the people that downvoted me" without sounding like a total goober. But that day is not today.
aah, a good old load-bearing "just" with all the trimmings
love it when a post tells you how much experience someone has in large-scale software and systems management (and thus also how seriously to take their advice)
Mind sharing said list?
I'll see if I can export all modified flags but generally skim through about:config for references to "reporting", "telemetry", "pocket", "browser.ml".
On desktops I also like to enable UI density == 1.
In the settings GUI I generally disable sponsored links, autoplay stuff, studies and recommendations.
prior to anything, I install ublock origin and enable its use in private browsing.
Edit: if you use regular firefox for android (not beta, nor nightly), you can access about:config via chrome://geckoview/content/config.xhtml
That is helpful! Thanks!
Hey no prob - I've swept through a new install of nightly on another system to get a concise set of ideas together (personal preference / UX tweaks have a † prepended):
#GUI configs:
about:preferences#general
about:preferences#home
about:preferences#search
about:preferences#privacy
uncheck Send technical and interaction data to Mozilla (I don't usually offer my information as my behaviour is a poor representation of end users)
uncheck Allow personalized extension recommendations (disabled with the above)
uncheck Install and run studies (disabled with the above)
uncheck Send daily usage ping to Mozilla
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin/
(install ublock origin and allow its use in provate browsing)
[right click and customise toolbar]:
#about:config
falsify the following:
Dang, that is a thorough list! Thanks a lot!
very welcome - happy browsing!
You don't have a script for all the stuff you toggle, do you?
No, this is something i should have, particularly given how many systems I provision in general. I'll see if I can put one together when I have some time.
Counterpoint - these are literally least intrusive ads possible and Firefox gets a few pennies from me leaving it active so that I can enjoy the product for free. And this is coming from someone whose run ublock origin for over a decade on every PC I own, and has installed an alternative YouTube frontend on my TV because fuck ads.
ew
mozilla has alienated a large number of its supporters by going all-in on LLM horseshit in their browser and anywhere else (MDN) they can shove it, exploitative crap (especially directed inwards towards its own developers, go find some ex-Mozilla postmorts if you want to see some of the nicest people you know get curbstomped by awful management and then fired), and doing a ton of other semi-to-fully fraudulent nonprofit boondoggle shit. they’ve made it clear they don’t want our donations (and plenty of people were donating more than just a few pennies from ads) and they really don’t deserve your advocacy. all Mozilla as a company cares about is the funding they get from Google. everything else is just layered affinity grifts.
Q&A!
what browser do you recommend then
none. we fucked it. once Mozilla dies, and they will die, none of the Gecko forks are realistically in shape to take on browser development on their own. chromium will be the only game in town, and google will use their dominant position to push through crap like browser attestation to secure their deathgrip on the web. ladybird is unserious fascist shit. chromium forks solve nothing. everything else is targeting an early 2000s version of the web’s features, which is good for them.
the only way I can see out of the above is Servo, the ex-Mozilla browser engine that Mozilla did their best to bury after Firefox Quantum, and they’re starved for cash and developers. I’d love if Servo was a workable browser today, but it just isn’t. it’ll take a lot more than a couple of pennies in some grifter’s pocket and the laziest possible advocacy to get it there.
We won't have any usable web browsers, but that's OK, because there won't be a web worth browsing.