351–360 of 851 posts
> Mozilla believes in the value of an open and free (and thus ad-supported) web. > and thus ad-supported What a sad view of the web. Advertisement is a net-negative for society.
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and funnily enough uBO author didn't want any money even though he's making our lives a lot better
Most adblocker developers throughout history have routinely taken millions of dollars to weaken their adblockers, though. That's why we're all using uBO instead of uB.
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Like many others, the ability to run uBO is the main reason I use Firefox. Otherwise I'd use Chrome or Safari.
I have used Firefox as my default browser through thick and thin for damn near two decades. If Mozilla killed andblocking extensions I’d switch to Helium Browser in a heartbeat since they’re maintaining manifest v2 support for uBO and even ship it OOTB. The web is unusable without a proper Adblock.
It's a privacy nightmare as well. Few people reason how much data they give away to a host of shady companies just by letting ads display.
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Firefox has a market share around 3%. Even most technologists stopped using it long ago. Many banks and government websites don’t even support it anymore and loudly tell people to use Chrome instead, especially in developing countries. Nothing can kill Firefox, because it’s already dead for all practical purposes.
> Many banks and government websites don’t even support it anymore and loudly tell people to use Chrome instead, especially in developing countries. I cannot remember the last time I came across one myself.
How much of that is Firefox rendering being worse vs artificial slowdowns by Google owned sites kind of doesn't matter in the end. Objectively it's a slower browsing experience but I solely use it for uBlock Origin.
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Firefox has a market share around 3%. Even most technologists stopped using it long ago. Many banks and government websites don’t even support it anymore and loudly tell people to use Chrome instead, especially in developing countries. Nothing can kill Firefox, because it’s already dead for all practical purposes.
My software stopped working because its drawing on canvas in a way that causes firefox to glitch with hw acceleration enabled. Not one of my customers/users complained
It's kinda frustrating that Mozilla's CEO thinks that axing ad-blockers would be financially beneficial for them. Quite the opposite is true (I believe) since a ton of users would leave Firefox for alternatives.
The whole web ecosystem was first run by VC money and everything was great until every corner was taken, the land grab was complete and the time to recoup the investment has come. Once the users were trapped for exploitation, it doesn’t make sense to have a browser that blocks ads. How are they supposed to pay software salaries and keep the lights on? People don’t like paying for software, demand constant updates and…
I currently pay zero for ad-blocking (FF + uBlock Origin) and it works perfectly; but I would pay if I had to.
It's kinda frustrating that Mozilla's CEO thinks that axing ad-blockers would be financially beneficial for them. Quite the opposite is true (I believe) since a ton of users would leave Firefox for alternatives.
Which alternatives though? On Mac at least, I'm not aware of any viable non-Chromium alternatives.
Apple doesn't collect your browsing data, they build in privacy controls that are pretty much as strong as they can manage given the state of the world, and while it doesn't support uBO, it supports a variety of pretty solid adblockers (I use AdGuard, which, AFAICT, Just Works™ and even blocks YouTube ads most of the time, despite their arms race).
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I don't like how he assumes that a free internet must be ad-supported. The ad-supported web is hideous, even with their ads removed. A long, convoluted, inane mess of content. On the other hand, the clean web feels more direct, to the point, and passionate. I prefer to read content written by passion, not by money seeking purposes.
If something is free (en masse), you are probably a product. If you don't want to be a product you need to give something out instead, like ads.
What are good Firefox alternatives these days that will run a proper uBlock origin (not chrome’s watered down manifest v3 version)?
Amazing how they continue not to cater to their core audience. They literally have lost 90% of their market share from their peak, I guess I can see the temptation to try to regain it by reaching out to others, but doing that at the expense of your core is a terrible business strategy. It's not like those users are all that sticky, they're leaving as Mozilla pisses them off, and likely Mozilla are going to be left wi…
> Amazing how they continue not to cater to their core audience. Who is Mozilla's core audience? From what I remember, it's not addon-users, as most users never have used even just a single addon. > They literally have lost 90% of their market share from their peak, To be fair, it's not entirely their own fault. Competition is strong, especially from Google and Apple. Even with perfect decisions, they likely would st…
If most users who install Firefox do so for superior adblocking and those same users are also very likely to turn off telemetry (which I think some privacy/adblock extensions probably do by default?), then at Mozilla's end one might get the impression that "most users don't use extensions" - even though the vast majority of users do.
So to answer the questions of:
> Who is Mozilla's core audience?
It's probably the kind of user that has telemetry off. You don't know much if anything about them.