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Alert HN: Mozilla puts advertising into Firefox AGAIN

114 points by throwaway81523 ↗ HN
See: How to customize Firefox Suggest settings, https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-suggest

They have added a new option to Firefox privacy settings, enabled by default of course, to allow "suggestions from sponsors" to "occasional"ly appear in the navigation bar dropdown, as if they were bookmarks. I noticed this by seeing a link to Office Depot in the pulldown, wondering what Office Depot page I had bookmarked or in my history, and discovering that it was an in-browser "sponsored suggestion". It appears to work by sending all your navigation bar typeahead to Mozilla so it can match you with a sponsor (oops about that privacy, lol). I'm not sure how recent this "feature" is, but I think it is recent, and I only noticed it today (I'm on LTS Firefox but installed an update a few days ago). Maybe the less stable releases have had it for longer.

Turning the sponsored suggestions off is not that difficult (see the url above for instructions), but Mozilla's unceasing obsession with inveigling advertising into the browser is... disturbing. Another day in the enshittification of the web.

50 comments

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smoldesu
> but Mozilla's unceasing obsession with inveigling advertising into the browser is... disturbing.

Why? It's Open Source.

activiation
Yeah I guess the few people still using it can modify the source code and compile it...
talonx
Reminds of the days when any complaint about a missing video codec in Linux used to be met with "write and compile your own kernel".
smoldesu
So... bearing this in mind, did Linux fail?
i_have_an_idea
it did, on the desktop
smoldesu
And eggs crack when you drop them from waist height.
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zorrolovsky
Because Mozilla misleads users with corporate-speak bs, telling them that they respect their privacy when in reality they have a history of doing anti-user nasty stuff.

Today, the public is well aware that G, Meta, Amazon, Apple, etc... spy them and monetize their data to sell ads. So most people using products from those organizations know what to expect.

What Mozilla does is worse than FAANG. They release anti-user and spyware features but they have the nerve to preach in their site, docs, UX, etc about how they "lead a revolution to save the web" and "deeply care for user's rights". Perverse and disgusting.

joao_lopes
Mozilla's tracking is not even in the same ballpark as Microsoft's and Google's. I agree that the hypocrisy is annoying but saying they're worse than FAANG is just wrong.
zorrolovsky
I see your point but... not sure if I agree. Here's an example:

Mozilla makes Google the default search engine in Firefox for all users. That's FAANG + misinformation + hypocrisy + perversity on my book.

Misinformation because you can´t be serious about privacy if your default search engine is Google. Hypocrisy because they position themselves as a privacy-focused product but they still push Google, Pocket, ads and other nasty stuff. Perversity because they emotionally manipulate users to make them feel safe, while at the same time they make them vulnerable to tracking.

Today I installed Firefox on my iPhone. When you launch the app, there's a child-like drawing of a smiling woman hugging the FF logo. A heading reads "Welcome to an independent internet". Subheading reads "Firefox puts people over profits and defends your privacy as you browse". Whatever you type on the URL bar connects you to Google. So... because of their defaults any user action will lead such user in exactly the opposite direction of what they were promised a second ago. That's perverse and disturbing.

I'm done with Mozilla and Firefox, they need to be exposed and shamed like any other FAANG orgs. I've been wishing and hoping they get things right but this behavior has now been going on for over a decade.

smoldesu
> Mozilla makes Google the default search engine in Firefox for all users

Be still, my beating heart! Thank goodness Apple doesn't subtly push Google search on it's users or anything. Otherwise it might feel like you're throwing stones from a glass house.

> they need to be exposed and shamed like any other FAANG orgs

They're not a FAANG org. They are a nonprofit that publishes their code and optionally allows you to use their software.

The parent comment is right - whatever "misinformation + hypocrisy + perversity" you perceive Mozilla to be responsible has been done 100fold by your pick of any Fortune 500 company. If your largest demonstrable harm is "defaulting to Google" then we shall expose and shame every big tech org connected to AWS or GCP.

smoldesu
Somehow, Open Source spyware and anti-user features don't really scare me. Is there any good reason to stop using Firefox today?
JohnFen
Not if it works for you.
dotcoma
Luckily, there’s a solution…

https://librewolf.net/

no_time
It does indeed look superior. But getting the 2nd most important software on my PC from a group of randos with not even full names and God knows what level of opsec is just too scary even for me.

I've been toying with the idea of setting up a build enviroment for LibreWolf myself but that would still require auditing the patches and their changes as they come in every day.

solarkraft
Do you mean they keep patching stuff? What's the problem with tracking their patches a bit more slowly?
no_time
Eh. It might be fine until it isn't. One build system breakage and you are looking at an afternoon of fiddling if you are like me. (not much experience in C++ and it's tooling)
kuroguro
> from a group of randos with not even full names

Somehow I'd trust a group of randos more than most corporations

no_time
For most things, me too. I have no qualms about running a keygen for example. It doesn't get updated, doesn't reach out to the internet, and has a tiny set of functionality.

But a browser is none of these. If one of the devs gets their machine hacked, a trojanized build can reach you in mere seconds if you are unlucky enough to start your browser shortly after the build pipeline gets infected.

zorrolovsky
Me too... and this illustrates the sad state of the internet in 2023. Let's keep hope that things improve somehow in the future!
50
the librewolf maintainers are trustworthy - i know user fxbrit, the librewolf macos maintainer, is also, if i'm not mistaken, the macos maintainer of mullvad browser, the browser collaboration between mullvad vpn and tor

further reading, for anyone looking for an alt browser/config: arkenfox (af) v librewolf (lw) v mullvad browser (mb) from the af owner, mb maintainer, and lw, ff, & tor contributor: https://github.com/mullvad/mullvad-browser/issues/1#issuecom...

RGBCube
Does it support Firefox accounts? It's too useful to not have
laurentlbm
Yes, you can enable the feature from the settings.
Alifatisk
I would switch to Librewolf but I can't find it on iOS. I like that Firefox is able sync with my other devices.
aswerty
Looks to be only in the US the advertising is being run (for now) according to the link you shared.

> Note: Firefox Suggest is currently available in the United States. For users outside of the US, only local results (browsing history, bookmarks and open tab suggestions) are provided.

MaxikCZ
My homepage showing most visited sites got started showing ads, masking themselves as sites I visit the most (needles to say I never visited them before) just 2 days after I arrived in Dominican Republic from Europe. As soon as I noticed the ads I just uninstalled the browser, which is basically the strongest signal I can send.
gary_0
I stopped updating Firefox on version 89.0 because I got tired of having to unfuck it after every update.
sha-3
How long would they send security patches if we stop updating?
veave
What I did when I used firefox was using the ESR version. It also comes with ads but you can disable them and you know they won't reenable them. And at least you get security patches.
drakz
And here we go again, Mozilla pissing its users, just few weeks ago after they pushed their VPN ads into Firefox.
Rastonbury
They will always let you turn it off, the way I see it is necessary evil for the greater good. The less reliance on daddy Google the better
wkat4242
Just let us pay for it directly then.

Instead of this roundabout thing with the "Mozilla Foundation".

I donate monthly to KDE and yearly to FreeBSD and I would pay for Firefox too if I could, but I want to pay for Firefox and not for all the other stuff they do.

Amd when I pay I want none of that ad stuff in it of course. Time for a Firefox Premium paid version.

its-summertime
> We are in the process of rolling out a new offering to improve the Firefox Suggest experience. This feature requires access to new data and is only available to a small number of users via an *opt-in* prompt. Mozilla collects the following information to power Firefox Suggest when users have opted in to the improved experience.

I would assume anything outside of that is inferred from local data, much like firefox's new tab page does

pawelduda
I missed tree tab extension in Firefox the most, now I'm using Brave and they just added vertical tab bar, which does the job for me. Strongly recommend it. Also they don't revamp the top bar every update with cool new color themes.
ShamelessC
You "missed" it? Tree Style Tab in Firefox still exists and works better than ever for me.
pawelduda
Sorry, I missed it since I stopped using Firefox
solarkraft
I've been thinking about starting an "un-Mozillaed" distribution of Firefox for a long time. Maybe the IceWeasel brand is now free?
JHonaker
It’s called IceCat, and it already exists.
archerx
Ironically Firefox was the "un-Mozillaed" version of the Mozilla browser back in the day and Firefox was released as the lean, unbloated, very fast version of the Mozilla browser and now we have come full circle.

I have stopped using Firefox after using it daily for years because I was just so sick of their updates making things progressively worse.

doubled112
Is the SeaMonkey project “active enough” for daily use? Could I go somewhat full circle?

They update the engine from Firefox periodically, but the browser is a rather important part of security.

hulitu
As a firefox and chrome replacement, no. It has difficulties with the new web standards and JS bloat. But for the rest of the internet is ok.
xyzal
Don't put ads in -- show a "support Firefox development" button instead
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MaxikCZ
I got ads in my "Most visited sites" picker homepage to amazon and adidas. Uninstalled the browser right that minute.
ChrisLTD
I think we may be using the term “enshittification” a bit too freely. But I suppose there’s no stopping it.