"Firefox is filling up with ads, tracking, and mandatory plugins."
I feel like I follow these issues pretty close, and I don't think that's accurate. Did I miss somethings? I know they've made at least a few bad moves, but in general they do the right thing, and have stepped back some of the bad things. It's entirely possible I'm missing something though.
https://www.ghacks.net/2018/12/31/firefox-with-ads-on-new-ta...
https://www.zdnet.com/article/firefox-60-will-show-sponsored...
Tracking:
https://gist.github.com/0XDE57/fbd302cef7693e62c769
https://www.zdnet.com/article/firefox-tests-cliqz-engine-whi... (ads, too)
Mandatory plugins:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9667809
There are more cases of each, but these are the ones I thought of off-hand. Setting up Firefox today still requires you to manually go to about:config and turn off a whole bunch of crap. A stock install of Firefox has ads and sends telemetry, searches, and more to both third- and first-party network services.
An alternative is to use packages provided by Debian (and possibly other distributions), which turn most of this stuff off by default
Time to go back to Linux. Hopefully the desktop has improved since the abandonment of 30-year-old UI paradigms for "cleanliness and focus".
Come on, the Pocket hysteria? It's a bit of JS and a one button you can turn off with two clicks. Pocket is now owned by Mozilla. It's a Firefox feature now, and not any more of "mandatory plugin" than the Sync or Add On Store are. I thought you were at least flipping out about EME, which is a 3rd party code and actually a plug-in.
Your central point is valid. There's no need to embellish it with clickbait backed by sources that are clickbait themselves.
I just hope Firefox keeps being a real counterpart to Chrome and doesn't try to mirror it. Funding is a problem as Mozilla is far too dependant on Google, but I don't know a solution to that.