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Comment by eznzt | Hacker News Reader

This new release also includes new ads, seems they forgot to put that in the release notes: https://twitter.com/CohanRobinson/status/1364172683118866433

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From the tweet's Author it's disabled via:

about:config

browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.showSponsored

browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.showSponsoredTopSites

there is also:

services.sync.prefs.sync.browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.showSponsored

services.sync.prefs.sync.browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.showSponsoredTopSites

Yes, this works. For now. The bigger problem is that this will probably go away at some point and the "sponsored" items will have no way (or a very difficult way) of being removed.

This has happened before with the browser toolbar having an about:config option to disable enlarging behavior, now you have to do some hacky CSS thing.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1274579

Now you don't just have to anticipate having options removed; that's the explicit development plan. (Quote is about a different preference, but I think it makes the style of development clear.)

> We intend to add a keyboard shortcut for this[1]. In the meantime you can revert to the old printing interface by setting the `print.tab_modal.enabled` preference to `false` via the page `about:config`. In a few releases time, after we've finished integrating user feedback and polishing rough edges, we intend to remove that preference though.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26275683

they plan to remove a hidden about:config preference for the system print dialog and replace it with a _dedicated keyboard shortcut_. if you think that's evidence that they want to take away your control, i beg to differ.

No, to be honest, I misread and thought that the final sentence meant that they were taking all configurability, both preference and keyboard shortcut, away.

Those preferences are also available in the Firefox UI so they are accessible to non-power users:

1. Click the "Customize your New Tab page" gear icon on the New Tab page.

2. Uncheck the "Sponsored Top Sites" and "Sponsored Stories" checkboxes.

I use Firefox ESR just so I don't have to do this every couple months.

Oh wow.

Say what you want about Safari being outdated etc. but at least they’re not going to pull shit like this.

While it's scummy, I had those on 85, so it's not this release.

Don't think the ads are in this release. They're being rolled out to a cohort of users, independent of version.

These are nearly unnoticeable because they seem to disappear as soon as you start typing.

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