Hacker News Reader

Comment by gnicholas | Hacker News Reader

After decades of using FF and its progenitors, I switched to Brave a couple years ago for performance reasons. As much as I like the experience (especially now that vertical tabs are rolling out), I'd rather support a non-Chromium browser like FF. (I've been playing with Orion for the same reason, and it also seems great.)

Does any one have any suggestions for what addons to use with FF these days to make the web livable? It's been years since I was gone, and I want to do an apples-to-apples comparison to see how it fares.

View on HN

I use these Firefox extensions which provide certain features that are built in on Brave:

  - uBlock Origin for general content blocking. Brave's filtering uses EasyList heavily so if those are enabled the results should be similar. Enable a social blocking list to match Brave's social blocking settings.
  - CanvasBlocker can get you closer to Brave in anti-fingerprinting at the expense of performance. I don't personally keep it enabled for everyday browsing, but it's there if that's important to you.
  - Auto Reader View to automatically enter reader mode like Brave SpeedReader. Difference is you have to enable it per site, which I prefer anyway.
  - There are quite a few small Brave QoL features that aren't built in to Firefox, like protecting the ability to copy/paste in text fields and removing URL tracking parameters (Firefox removes some parameters but it's quite limited). For these I like StopTheMadness, which is actively maintained and works on Firefox, Chromium, and Safari. It is paid and Mac-only, however. On other platforms or to get the functionality for free just search the addon store for the stuff you want, for the most part the Firefox addon store has a lot less garbage than Chrome.
  - IPFS Companion for IPFS.
  - If you use Brave's Tor windows, just get Tor Browser which is Firefox-based and better configured for Tor.
  - Firefox's new tab page might seem both barren (no background image or useful widgets) and spammy out of the box...first of all turn off sponsored links and all the Pocket stuff, then if it's too barren try out some extensions that replace the new tab page and see which one you like.

Thanks, this is super helpful. I do have to agree with the spamminess of the Pocket-sponsored ads on new tabs. Last time I used FF I didn't mind the Pocket stories section, but when I opened up today it was half-full of credit card offers and other undeniable spam (unlike sponsored news stories that I remember from before).

I get that they're trying to free themselves from utter dependence on Google search revenue, but boy is this a spammy alternative... I used to leave the Pocket stories on, but now I will definitely be disabling them.

I use a combination of strict FF settings, https-only, disabled suggestions, disabled autoplay, DDG search by default plus several keyword searches. Extension-wise only uBlock Origin and multi-account containers. That’s it. The web is very livable, no ads anywhere, the vast majority of tracking is gone, the browser is fast and responsive.

I add Privacy Badger to that.

Is Privacy Badger still needed in 2022? My impression was that uBlock Origin updates filters often enough, and so Badger's heuristics don't give it an advantage anymore.

I don't know the answer to your question but I would agree with you. I used to be all for Chrome but with Manifest V3 it's clear Google has too much influence and we need to either switch to Firefox or create a fork of Chromium that is developed entirely separately

Bingo. I forgot to mention my company has two Chrome extensions, which we are now in the throes of updating. That definitely soured my mood, and increased my interest in getting off the Chromium train (even though I understand Brave plans to continue supporting V2 extensions indefinitely).

> I switched to Brave a couple years ago for performance reasons.

Same. They also staunchly fight against introducing adblocking to the iOS version, with no justification given.

Sadly, the fight over on which browser engine the web runs is a done deal. Even if Manifest V3 sucks, it won’t lead to a mass exodus to Gecko. People will just switch their upstream to a Manifest V2 fork. Blink has become the Linux kernel of the web.

I use Brave on iOS too and it blocks YouTube ads :)

I'm not convinced about Blink having won. Webkit is a significant factor which seems to be making it harder for Google to drag standards wherever they want, and Firefox still _works_ in 99% of cases (i.e. black swan could cause easily public perception shift, and there's an alternative right there).

I agree that this is what makes FF such a great alternative. If I tell my mom to use Brave instead of Chrome, she'll wonder what it is. If I say to use FF, she'll remember it from years/decades past and have no problem.

That said, I think Brave works better out-of-the-box from a privacy/security perspective. Hopefully FF can take some cues in terms of turning on some of this stuff by default (or at least having an onboarding that facilitates it)!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com