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I'm super into this, and I was tempted to sign up immediately. But then I realized I have privacy/tracking concerns; does anyone have a line on what Scroll/Mozilla say on this? I couldn't find anything after a (very shallow) search.
In case you are also wondering how that works and what's supported. Based on https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2019/02/25/exploring... it looks like it's a collaboration with https://scroll.com/ and supports sites like: - Vox - The Atlantic - Buzzfeed - Gizmodo - Slate
Firing Brendan was a bad decision.
As others stated, the submitted title of "Ad-Free Internet by Firefox" overstates what this actually is: pay $4.99/month for ad-free experience on a handful of media publishers' websites[1]. (I.e. it's not a universal ad blocker that lets you avoid ads on Youtube.) The Firefox webpage itself doesn't oversell the feature as "ad-free internet" so not sure why writing a misleading title for HN was necessary. [1] https:/…
it's not even that! it's not even something that they have! go on click the link to subscribe and see what happens.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Google has the resources to make better products. True but for the past 5 years or so they have been interested in making more money not better products.
And yet I've had to switch all my Lubuntu devices to using Chrome because Firefox can't seem to manage to remain open without eventually locking up the entire system.
This is sort of unfortunate news to me, as I take this as a sign that they won't do adblocking by default. I think this is a mistake; users want ads to be blocked. Especially on mobile, where it's more important from a perf perspective. Brave has ads blocked, Opera has ads blocked. If Firefox wants to follow the lead and be a privacy focused company like they say, then they need to block ads.
I don't necessarily want ads blocked, especially on sites that I regularly enjoy that I don't pay for with money. I do want to block the underlying tracking/fingerprinting/profiling etc. This is why I'm very much against Brave - I don't really see why they have the right to edit or censor other people's revenue models and replace them with their own. That seems.. unethical.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ok, fair enough. Before I wrote my comment, I did perform a "view source" to search for "ad-free internet" and it wasn't found. However, if one uses F12 Developer Tools to inspect the DOM, it does have: " Ad-free Internet by Firefox " It's interesting that that phrase is not visibly used and the big bold text people actually see just says "Support the sites you love, avoid the ads you hate" . EDIT to the replies: Yep…
It's the page title. It appears e.g. in the tab heading (but yours may be very small).
This is sort of unfortunate news to me, as I take this as a sign that they won't do adblocking by default. I think this is a mistake; users want ads to be blocked. Especially on mobile, where it's more important from a perf perspective. Brave has ads blocked, Opera has ads blocked. If Firefox wants to follow the lead and be a privacy focused company like they say, then they need to block ads.
I like content, and I don't mind paying for it. I'd prefer to pay with money, not via ads. Give me that option.
Further, I don't want a subscription. I want to pay as I go, at the rates ads pay. 50¢ per thousand pages sounds ok to me.
This looks like it's a bundling of Scroll into Firefox, probably with different UX. It seems dishonest to me if you're gonna say "Ad-Free Internet" and "We share your payment directly with the sites you read" and really only do that for 12 domains. The internet is much bigger than that. Find a way to do this for ALL sites!
To be fair to them, they have to start somewhere. If they had to get every single site on the internet onboard as a prerequisite (as you seem to be suggesting) they'd never launch anything.
edit: maybe I am being too harsh... maybe this is a starting point to something bigger. Let's hope!