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Comment by extr0pian | Hacker News Reader

Just yesterday I had noticed that, "Suggestions from sponsors" in the address bar had been turned back on after a recent Firefox update, and then installed Librewolf. I really want to use it as my main browser, but certain use cases such as online banking (at least with my credit union) doesn't seem to work properly, so I re-disabled "Suggestions from sponsors" in Firefox and went on with my day. Seriously, changing user settings with updates is a major dick move and something I'd expect from Microsoft and not Mozilla.

Edit: Turning off the anti-fingerprinting feature in LibreWolf is needed for online banking to work.

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Mozilla has been frustrating, at least to me lately. I want to support them, but very little of the money given to them goes to the browser itself or even their research projects, and the "phoning home" aspect also annoys me. On top of that they are also heavily funded by Google. My personal theory on why they do that is so they don't get hit with an antitrust. Its concerning to me though because that means Google has influence in Firefox, so "using the alternative" still means being affected by Google's decision making. They have stood against some of Google's decisions like their web DRM, which is great! But I do wonder if any lower-profile changes might have been pushed through on Google's request.

> but very little of the money given to them goes to the browser itself or even their research projects

hi, do you have a breakdown or some stats for this?

not him. but there's this person whose paycheck is 7digits. pretty sure the person in question doesn't know a lick about rendering engine or other nitty gritty details of how browser works.

Am I misreading the financial statement linked by your sibling comment? It looks like they spent in the $250,000 or so range on all salaries combined in a given year, but maybe I’m misreading it.

It's in thousands so it should be $250,000,000? I don't know that I'm reading it right either.

https://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html

You are reading it right.

Remember how the new CEO upon joining fired 250 employees and simultaneously upped her own pay to 2.5 million? (Its much more now)

And it is nothing remarkable compared to any other tech company CEO's salary. Sure, shitty thing to do, but to smear Firefox's name over it..

I am saying the IT workers receiving low pay or being outright fired while non-tech gets paid more has precedent under the current CEO. Besides its not Firefox thats being smeared, its the CEO who is, and should be smeared for acts such as this. Firefox the software is still mostly fine.

Here is Mozilla's 2021 Audited Financial Statement [PDF]:

https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2021/mozilla-fdn-202...

>but very little of the money given to them goes to the browser itself or even their research projects

They can't take money given to a 501c3 charitable organization and use it to fund the expenses of a for-profit corporation (Mozilla Corp). That would be tax fraud. On the other hand the Mozilla Corp has to exist because otherwise it would be legally challenging to do a lot of things they need to do such as business deals. Exceedingly few Foundations work that way without doing something akin to what Mozilla does.

>Its concerning to me though because that means Google has influence in Firefox, so "using the alternative" still means being affected by Google's decision making. ... They have stood against some of Google's decisions like their web DRM, which is great! But I do wonder if any lower-profile changes might have been pushed through on Google's request.

HNers say this often but nobody has ever freaking pointed to anything. It's nothing but FUD at this point and it's incredibly tiring.

I disagree that its FUD. The fact of the matter is that Google is their biggest financial contributor, and that means by proxy Google can influence them. I don't have any examples right off the bat, but that doesn't discount the fact that it's a clear conflict of interest.

>The fact of the matter is that Google is their biggest financial contributor, and that means by proxy Google can influence them. I don't have any examples right off the bat,

Exhibit A.

Fine, it's a potential conflict of interest. But there's still a step between having a potential conflict of interest and being compromised by Google / influenced by proxy. You don't get to jump from point A to point B. That's FUD.

There are near-monthly examples of Mozilla going against Google on big-ticket items, and nobody seems to be able to point to any examples otherwise, but we're supposed to criticize them for being too dependent on Google while ALSO criticizing them for profitable side-projects or cross-marketing that diversifies their revenue (like VPN, Pocket, the Disney movie thing, etc.)

Simultaneously:

* "how dare they work on something other than Firefox even if it makes money" and

* "how dare they monetize Firefox" and

* "how dare they take so much money from Google"

> Simultaneously: "how dare they work on something other than Firefox even if it makes money" and "how dare they monetize Firefox" and "how dare they take so much money from Google"

Yes. Perhaps you've heard of the concept of a non-profit? Specifically a foundation, organized and operated exclusively for charitable purposes?

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/26/501, subsection (c)(3).

okay, and Librewolf is a fork of Firefox. even if I was worried, I'm not exactly reassured that Librewolf would be peachy if Mozilla got hit hard by something.

I'd rather Google does pull that trigger so we can get some anti-trust going. They've been overdue for years on that front.

https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/ability-to-donate-money...

> "phoning home" aspect also annoys me

That thing is so minuscule and more of an everyday feature that I really don't see all the fuss about it.

Also, it is a game theory "both would lose if stopped" situation with google, so no, google has no way to affect Mozilla directly. If they were to stop it, Firefox might stop being developed and Google definitely gets sued, and it is basically free money for Firefox, setting the default search engine is no big deal.

I’ve had problems with e-commerce as well. Recently I tried this with Nike & the checkout phase was trying to read all my sensors, canvas, etc. were all being hit & failing according to the console. Disabling fingerprinting let me get ‘further’ but even disabling uBlock, something on my network was blocking some other piece of tracking spyware & I couldn’t complete the checkout. I reported it to customer service & later got an no-reply email response from their technical teams saying I should “disable your anti-virus, then proceed with the checkout, and reenable when the purchase was complete”. Funny since I don’t run an anti-virus on Linux just being careful but already having a lot of malware blocked by my system/router/DNS. What’s also funny is that you don’t need to fingerprint me to prove its me since I’m already on an authenticated account, so what are they doing with that fingerprint? Ultimately, I traded a Hong Kong pie to a friend to do the purchase on my behalf as he doesn’t care about his online privacy—and I got to add noise to his purchase history with my own.

When are we going to get e-commerce & e-banking to stop being so hostile towards consumers?

> When are we going to get e-commerce & e-banking to stop being so hostile towards consumers?

"We" won't because the vast majority of internet users don't care about privacy. It sucks, but that's the way it is.

You and I, however, are free to vote with our wallets. I literally will not buy from a company or brand that tries to take advantage of me in some way, even if the alternatives are worse somehow. It's a drop in the bucket, but it's all I can do.

(And before someone mentions it, no, shouting about it on social media is not a valid action to take, because social media is where everybody shouts about everything all the time.)

Don’t care or are ignorant about why they should care (even when they “have nothing to hide”)? I think this part of the these conversations get lost. Consumers care about privacy, even if just at a surface level as we’ve seen the megacorps change their messaging to trick folks into feeling they are safer. These consumers just don’t know what is at stake when they do something ‘foolish’ like running not using an ad blocker, browsing with Google Chrome, emailing with GMail, chatting in Discord, hosting code with Microsoft GitHub, sharing their contacts with WhatsApp, tweeting on X/x-ing on Twitter, etc. When it comes to e-commerce, often it’s the only way to get items now & when it comes to banks, they’re all blocking root “for our safety” but users not understanding their value doesn’t mean there is no value.

The amount of stuff (personal preference) I have to disable in firefox such as Telemetry, Studies/Normandy, Pocket, Advertising and such makes LibreWolf worth it.

I do keep a user.js around to speed things up when doing a new install, but it's still annoying to have to read reddit or here to see if an update adds something new to disable.

Mullvad browser is another option for those who enjoy Mullvad. Note that it can be used without Mullvad service.

> I do keep a user.js around to speed things up when doing a new install

Could you share, if possible..

I use both Firefox and Librewolf to achieve browser isolation. Librewolf is my default browser for all anonymous browsing such as news sites. I use Firefox for all my real name ID account logins such as banking. This way your Librewolf browser fingerprint is never associated to your real ID.

Yeah, I get the concept of using different browsers for different things to compartmentalize, and I've tried it, but to me it just seems like I'm making my life more complicated switching back and forth, and I feel like it's cluttering up my system. I love how Librewolf takes privacy to another level, but honestly, all I want is Firefox without all the BS and the ability to disable things I don't want (and not having them turned back on).

A custom user.js will do the job

It used to be really easy to search about:config for 'http' and just delete all URL's to quiet things down. More recently the about:config search only searches attributes not values so you have to "show all" and it's quite tedious to find them all. Even then there are some things you have to block with a hosts file entry.

That said it is possible to have firefox start cleanly with absolutely no network traffic except for sites you visit.

    alias workfox="firefox -P work"
    alias funfox="librewolf"

This is one of those trade-offs between convenience and privacy I have internalized over years. You can refer to this guide to configure Firefox to be more private. https://www.privacyguides.org/en/desktop-browsers/#firefox

Browser isolation is smart, and Firefox+Librewolf is better than Firefox+somethingelse.

Don't forget about Firefox profiles though. You can have unlimited, 100% isolated browsers with profiles. I use a few dozen Firefox profiles.

For isolation of cookies but not preferences, you can use Multi-Account Containers within a single Firefox profile. I use this for admin-vs-user accounts at AWS, GitHub, etc.

I still think it's better to use Firefox containers on either of these browser, and combine them with temporary containers to isolate different aspects of your online life. By default all browser sessions are ephemeral, so no cookies are stored, just like incognito mode. Only when you whitelist a site to use a named container do they gain the ability to use your local storage. Using different containers appear to change fingerprints, it seems.

You can just disable the anti-fingerprinting features in LibreWolf and it'll work fine with online banking and stuff if you just want de-cluttered Firefox.

Thank you! I just fired up Librewolf and turned off Fingerprint Resisting and my online banking now loads my transaction history. This had been a big annoyance and why I hadn't completely switched. The recommendation I got 6 months ago was "just use Firefox for banking". Much appreciated!

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