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Comment by aktenlage | Hacker News Reader

It always hurts me, when people basically say "I'm not giving up [something that has cornered the market] for the alternative, because [minor-grievance]", even though it is already clear that the monopoly is being exploited to make things worse for all customers.

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I want to use Firefox, this was my Nth failed attempt at doing so. I just cited the first problem I saw again, not the only one as you're assuming. Mozilla has had years - literally over a decade - to fix such issues.

But hey, if there's one thing that's definitely going to convince people to do things they don't like, it's to diminish their grievances and guilt-trip them.

This whole debate is such a chestnut. Of course, you will do as you please, it's your right. But these choices do reveal values and priorities. Speaking personally (and, I suppose you will say, sanctimoniously), I choose to use Firefox despite its flaws because I don't want the internet to be privatized. I know what I'm missing out on. It's less important.

You're rather overconfident in your evaluation of people and not actually getting the sense of my values and priorities as you think you are. I care about these things and inconvenience myself a lot more than you realize.

When I do it it's because it is likely to make a difference in the ultimate outcome I want to achieve. I also criticize things when I think that criticism may have an impact on the ultimate outcome. What I don't care for is futility. In this particular case, it is absolutely futile to try to fight against big tech through shaming people into inconveniencing themselves for the sake of the free internet. You need to address the root causes to even stand a chance. Part of that is politics and legislation, and part technology. Getting Mozilla and other OSS to give a damn about the basic flaws in the user experience so their users actually want to use Firefox is going to have far more of an effect on the outcome you want to reach than shaming users for not inconveniencing themselves.

Use whatever, but that screenshot posted of your grievance is pretty telling. Whatever difference you're citing as unacceptable really puts the 'b' in subtle.

Also, no one is out to get you. You complained about failing to use Firefox, and folks are trying to explain to you that you can use it if you want to. But you assert that you fail to do so, despite wanting to, but for unspecified reasons. It makes it hard to assist, which I think is all people want to do. You keep bringing up guilt and shame, but you're the one that said you wanted something you keep failing at getting, so folks naturally want to help.

If you don't want to use Firefox, just use Chrome and move on. That's what everyone else does.

Self-fulfilling prophecy #6284: "Resistance is futile" -- the majority

"You need to address the root causes" -- everyone who is in no position to do so

For how long have you tried daily driving Firefox, if you don't mind me asking

Thanks for asking. Depends what time period you're asking about. My memory's faded so there may be inaccuracies here or things may be out of order, but this is what I remember.

There was a long era (years) when I loved Mozilla and used Firefox -- and then even Waterfox, IIRC because it was 64-bit -- exclusively. (As well as Thunderbird.) I did not like Chrome. IIRC at some point they started feeling like every update made them more bloated, broken, and unbearable in various ways. I forget all the exact issues but I distinctly remember rendering was a big one for all of them (I think it happened around the obsession with GPU rendering), my extensions constantly breaking or getting disabled because of "compatibility" issues forcing me to keep toggling flags in about:config being another, my toolbar styling/customizations getting constantly messed on every damn update up being another, the tab bar getting moved up like in Chrome when that was very much one of the reasons I liked Firefox being another, and slowness/bloat being another. I wasted too much of my time into finding workarounds, but eventually I couldn't take it anymore. Giving up everything including extensions like Greasemonkey and Stylebot and having the ability to customize everything just so I could have a better experience was painful, but I bit the bullet and switched to (I think Chromium first? and then) Chrome.

After that I basically stuck with them though I kept a Firefox around and updated it once in a while to see if maybe they would come to their senses and start improving the UX. They removed support for old-style extensions which immediately was like a punch in the gut. Regardless, a few years ago I figured maybe times have changed so I spent probably weeks on it (if not longer) and even sank quite a bit of time into manually porting porting my custom local Chrome extensions to it just to make sure I was giving it a fair shot. The snappiness was maybe better than before but overall I just felt like they didn't give a damn about longstanding UX issues people have been complaining about for years, and were too focused on other priorities. So I've stopped wasting more of my time on it until it passes a couple litmus tests, which it failed again today.

And don't get me wrong, Chrome has had its own issues and frustrated me too (MV3 being the most recent and frustrating), but at least it's not completely defeating the very reasons that drew me to it in the first place.

But the point being: I believe I've given it a fair shot enough times in the past, but I also have better things to do than fight with a browser vendor over the very things that drew me to their browser. For Chrome the speed was probably the biggest factor, and for Firefox it used to be UX/customizability. One of those companies understood that and never compromised on their core strengths, but the other never seemed to get the memo.

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