this post was submitted on 17 Apr 2024
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Firefox

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I recently downloaded Firefox Nightly and noticed some new settings that were enabled by default:

  • Suggestions from Firefox Nightly
    Get suggestions from the web related to your search
  • Suggestions from sponsors
    Support Firefox Nightly with occasional sponsored suggestions

Learn more about Firefox Suggest

The link in the UI doesn't mention sponsorships anywhere. But this page does:

Who are Mozilla’s partners for sponsored suggestions?

We partner with organizations to serve up some of these suggestion types... For sponsored results, we primarily work with adMarketplace, while also providing non-sponsored results from Wikipedia.

This page links to the adMarketplace Privacy Policy which makes it pretty clear this company is okay with collecting your IP address and passing it to further unnamed entities.

Elsewhere, they say Firefox sends them "the number of times Firefox suggests or displays specific content and your clicks on that content, as well as basic data about your interactions with Firefox Suggest", and then will share interaction information "in an aggregate manner with our partners".


Update: Switched the link from the Desktop to the Mobile version. Added more quotes from FF, and bolded info about their one named AdTech partner.

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[–] jet@hackertalks.com 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'd love to be able to donate to the browser development so they didn't have to do this type of enshittification, but as far as I'm aware its impossible to support the browser itself.

Firefox is foundational to my supply chain for Mull, Mullvad Browser, Tor Browser which i use daily, and I'd be happy to donate for browser development.

[–] Dirk@lemmy.ml 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They don't use the donations for the browser but for all types of bullshit projects. The browser is dramatically underfunded.

[–] rickyrigatoni@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Which is crazy because nobody gives a shit about any of their other projects.

[–] Dirk@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago

Their stakeholders and advertisement partners do!

[–] vikingtons@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago

Thank you for the heads up. I love Firefox for android but this was a very sneaky addition.

[–] Dirk@lemmy.ml 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah, you need to clean up the browser before using it because the browser is full of advertising and tracking by default. The massive telemetry and reflinks and "hidden" extensions need to be removed, as always.

Read through this: https://github.com/yokoffing/Betterfox

[–] starman@programming.dev 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Now we need LibreWolf for Android

[–] pop@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

ermagawD there's an toggle able option on my browser to turn off a feature I don't want?

And it's a free and open source software that I don't contribute to at all,

That's ducking it.

I'ma b̶u̶i̶l̶d̶ m̶y̶ o̶w̶n̶ b̶r̶o̶w̶s̶e̶r̶ w̶i̶t̶h̶ b̶l̶a̶c̶k̶j̶a̶c̶k̶ a̶n̶d̶ h̶o̶o̶k̶e̶r̶s̶ complain on an internet forum about how unfair it is that they are going against my principles and are making money off of it. They gotta ask for handouts like the rest of the opensource projects out ther. I'moutraged. They gotta learn their place.

It's unacceptable, I tell ya.

[–] ReversalHatchery@beehaw.org 0 points 1 year ago

You're right. I invite you to build our own browser with blackjack and hookers!
Maybe we will be able to get a release in around 10 years, +-3, if we work on it full time.