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Why do people switch from chrome to Brave browser and not to Firefox? (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world
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[–] 1 point 1 year ago

I like to use Firefox until a web page doesn't fucking work and then I switch to Chrome and then go take a shit and come back and then use Firefox again

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    [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    Firefox was borked on my machine when I started using Brave. Still using it on other machines though

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    [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    My Firefox is set up to more aggressively block sites from doing stuff and clear my cookies. I use Brave for when something breaks or if I want the site to track my preferences, like for YouTube.

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    [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    I've always preferred to choose from the options offered by my Distro's repository. I might not install that -exact- version (prefer to install where I can easily back things up).

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    [–] 125 points 1 year ago (19 children)

    I can't answer that question but I've always wondered why anyone switches to Brave. I installed it a few years ago because I heard it was privacy focused and it immediately hit me with a bunch of shit about crypto and rewards or something. I uninstalled it immediately.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago

    Because it is still Chromium based and it means it is fast on Android, plus it comes packed with an adblocker by default which works wonders in closed out systems like iOS, also as many browsers (not all of them) it supports account syncing which it is always a nice plus (I can use a good working version of Brave in all the systems and keep a good flow for example).

    I main Firefox in pretty much all the systems, but the Android app is missing a lot of features like tab management, and the iOS client just sucks (Brave works better there despite being Safari based too).

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    It does respect your privacy but it comes with bloatware. You can actually remove them pretty easily

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  • [–] 37 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    "Respect" for you as the user means you shouldn't have to do stuff like that in the first place.

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  • [–] -5 points 1 year ago (9 children)

    I installed it. Crypto stuff is off by default. Ad blocking built in. Multiple 3rd party testing shows it blocks virtually all tracking/fingerprinting.

    Firefox/Chrome - you need all kinds of addons and pihole type setups to do the same thing. God forbid you want to use it off your own network, you need additional tools. All these tools break with updates, whether they are the browsers or addons/tools themselves. Brave has never once broken its adblock/privacy settings in the years I've used it.

    Most of us on here are privacy focused, and want the average user to be that way too. Brave is a one click setup, nothing else needed solution. Is it perfect? Hell no. Is the owner a piece of shit? Hell yes. Does it allow the average user to take ownership of their privacy in an easy and non-technical way? Yes. Perfect is the enemy of good. I will gladly jump ship once another turnkey solution comes along that is as easy and privacy centric that Brave is.

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  • [–] 14 points 1 year ago* (8 children)

    Firefox/Chrome - you need all kinds of addons and pihole type setups to do the same thing.

    bullshit

    you need a single addon, ublock origin. enable additional builtin blocklists according to taste.
    you can have additional addons for additional functionality. does brave have libredirect built in? does it block and redirect google AMP sites by default? does it have a feature to only delete cookies regularly for specific sites?

    and let's not forget the elephant in the room: ublock is not working anymore in chrome! google made it so that you can only use the inferior lite version, that can only load much much fewer filtering rules into the browser.
    I don't know if brave kept supporting mv2 extensions, but if they do, I guarantee to you that it won't be that way for long. it has been relatively easy sailing so far because google did not actually remove support, but it will be lots of work when finally google does remove it, and they'll be needing to patch it in for every new version

    pihole is not used for firefox, and that's never been its use case. It's for everything else that uses the internet, but cannot have something like ublock origin: various software, windows itself, android and apps there, smart home and iot garbage.
    Honestly this statement of yours proves to me that you don't know what you're talking about.

    All these tools break with updates, whether they are the browsers or addons/tools themselves.

    I have no idea what you are talking about. anyone else?

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  • [–] -5 points 1 year ago* (7 children)

    About the addons and stuff breaking, I constantly see posts about this adblock isn't working because Chrome broke something, this addon is no longer updated, google broke this so that addon doesn't work. That's the issue with using 3rd party tools, you have to rely on the tool AND browser to work together, and not break with updates or changes. You also have to trust both the browser AND the tool to keep your info safe and private.

    Brave hasn't had even a hiccup in it's adblocking/privacy features with all the changes Chrome is implementing, due to how Brave is built. I just want a browser with strong, baked in privacy and adblocking that works out of the box. Brave is that solution at this time.

    By the way, you seem focused on Firefox, I'm not attacking Firefox, I'm calling out every browser that needs addons to create a more secure and private browsing experience.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    About the addons and stuff breaking, I constantly see posts about this adblock isn't working because Chrome broke something, this addon is no longer updated, google broke this so that addon doesn't work.

    well yeah, google has intentionally broken all effective content blockers. that's the fault of chrome. firefox is fine.

    firefox will never be able to add built in support for adblocking. reasons include that websites would not just happily drop support for firefox, but some would even put in work to block it entirely! a 3rd party fork can do that, but the main thing can't because of what will follow.

    By the way, you seem focused on Firefox, I'm not attacking Firefox,

    I'm not focused on firefox, I'm against anything chrome. firefox is not good, its the least bad, but in my eyes there's a large difference between it and chromium. we need more engines.

    I'm calling out every browser that needs addons to create a more secure and private browsing experience.

    I think having this built in is a very dangerous move for a browser that wants to become popular, and does not want to be blocked by sites.

    if all you want is to not need to install anything manually, librewolf has ublock preinstalled.

    but I'm not confident about the content blocking abilities of brave. I get that it hides ads, but is that's all it does, or does it also block the resources from loading, tracking scripts from operating? because ublock origin is very effective with that, with its large toolset, if the blocklists utilize them

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (5 children)

    Like I stated earlier, 3rd party testing places Brave at the top of almost any fingerprinting/ad blocking/tracking/privacy metrics tested. It might not be the product you like, that's fine, but you can't deny the testing that proves it works.

    I don't hate on Firefox, far from it. I think it's great for those who don't mind extra layers of tinkering/having control on how the browser uses it's privacy functions. Firefox, unfortunately, isn't 100% web compatible, and almost every fox user has some form of Chromium as a backup. The discussion about web standards ignoring Chromiuim alternatives are valid, but I feel that's an entirely different discussion.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    I think it's great for those who don't mind extra layers of tinkering/having control on how the browser uses it's privacy functions.

    except that you don't need to tinker. firefox is simply just not doing anything risky, anything that could easily break websites.
    you want ublock? install that 1 addon. that's not any more tinkering than setting a dark theme, or the language.

    Firefox, unfortunately, isn't 100% web compatible,

    that's funny because that's not how I know. as I know, firefox is more up to spec than chrome, but chrome often has its odd nonstandard behaviours which web devs take as standards simply because that's the most popular browser, and developing for its quirks is easier than developing for standards and also supporting its quirk at the same time

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (3 children)

    Tinkering - I remember when the ad blocking addons stopped working due to a Google change. Everyone hopped on the webs to see what to do next. Edits and tricks to make Firefox look like Google to the web page, which was needed to make it work again. I was just over here with Brave carrying on like nothing happened.

    Firefox compatibility- Even users in this post say they have a backup browser when Firefox doesn't work.

    Look, I'm not here evangelizing an imperfect browser. I'm also not sitting here arguing anyone's choice in browsers. I use what works for me. I just wanted to clarify some statements made that weren't correct. The Firefox vs anything else debate is as loaded as Linux vs anything else. Everyone argues and claims their software package is the end all be all when it just doesn't fit 100% of use cases. I use what works for me. When a better alternative comes along, I will gladly look at it.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Tinkering - I remember when the ad blocking addons stopped working due to a Google change.

    once again, and I wont repeat this anymore: this did not affect firefox. only the google controlled chrome.

    Edits and tricks to make Firefox look like Google to the web page,

    I don't understand what you mean here. there is no need to make firefox look like "google"

    Firefox compatibility- Even users in this post say they have a backup browser when Firefox doesn't work."

    yes, because certain corporate software's developers not only fail to test with anything but chrome, but they use non-standard web APIs that only chrome has implemented, and nothing else.

    and before I need to repeat this point of mine too: this is not firefox being not web compatible, but chrome being not web compatible.

    Look, I'm not here evangelizing an imperfect browser.

    that I see, you are instead here to speak false statements with such certainty as an LLM does

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    One tweak I was talking about is changing the user agent, which is absolutely something Firefox users on here and many platforms talked about doing to rectify changes that broke some functionality.

    At the end of the day, the focus of my post was that Firefox (and most browsers) need addons to block ads and options to increase privacy. That's not a good/bad thing, just a different thing.

    Brave is an out of the box turn key solution that requires no additional anything to do it. Again, not a good/bad thing, just a different thing.

    Neither of those last 2 statements are false. Use Brave, use Firefox, hell, use Edge if you like it, and it works for you. I know what works for me.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    One tweak I was talking about is changing the user agent, which is absolutely something Firefox users on here and many platforms talked about doing to rectify changes that broke some functionality.

    I don't know when did I do that last time, but it was years ago. there are some snowflake services like ms teams that need this, unfortunately, but again, that's because teams is not developed to web standards, it is developed for chrome.

    Neither of those last 2 statements are false. Use Brave, use Firefox, hell, use Edge if you like it, and it works for you. I know what works for me.

    that's fair. but above, you were spouting false statements en masse, possibly discouraging people from firefox. despite not risking to have ad blockers by default, I can confidently say that firefox allows more comprehensive filtering without tweaks, and with stability.

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  • [+] -8 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    I tried to install Brave and it almost nuked my PC. Completely jammed up. I uninstalled it immediately.

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  • [+] -6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Yeah so true!! I installed it, and it launched an attack to overheat and destroy my CPU. Thankfully I reacted quick enough, and unplugged my computer quickly. However when I turned it back on, all my files were gone. It was cryptomining without my consent. Absolutely crazy!

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    • [–] 22 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 child)

    Somewhere along the line Brave tricked people into thinking they weren't owned by a couple of really bigoted dudes.

    In fairness Brian Bondy might be a good dude, but Brendan Eich sucks.

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    • [–] 21 points 1 year ago (9 children)

    Firefox is my main browser but there's a few specific things that only work in chromium.
    People will use whatever works for them.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (7 children)

    Other than MS Teams, which is garbage by default, I have yet to find anything that's not working in Firefox.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (2 children)

    Might be a niche use case, but I sometimes need WebUSB, WebSerial or WebXR, none of which are supported in Firefox.
    Just gotta protect them like with other permissions.

    Also, Firefox mobile still doesn't support mutual TLS, and so I need another browser just for that.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    When I've used Teams for meetings from my home computers, I use the web version (as I don't really want to instal the app.) I've never had an issue with it on Firefox; not even on devices running Linux.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    I always use the browser versions as well since I want to avoid installing anything Microsoft that's not absolutely necessary, and never got teams to work in Firefox. With user agent faker I can get it to connect, but the connection was horrible and that tab in FF hogged up 8GB RAM all by itself.

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    • [–] 39 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    SCNR if they were able to make good decisions, they would never have switched to chrome anyway. /s

    tbh, i don't get all the mozilla/firefox hate. even "the linux project" missed the mark by a mile with his firefox critique.

    whatever mozilla does, it's not even half as evil as google

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    • [–] 110 points 1 year ago (14 children)

    Brave falls under "security theatre" and is absolutely useless

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  • [–] 97 points 1 year ago (13 children)

    And run by a homophobic crypto bro.

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  • [–] 40 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    Who also inflicted Javascript upon the world, the incompetent piece of shit.

    I won't say that's worse than the homophobia because I don't want to seem dismissive about oppression of queer folks, but it sure as Hell isn't better, either!

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  • [–] 9 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Attacking his politics is valid, and that does make me uneasy about using Brave. I’m curious where the security theater accusation comes from. Brave strikes a nice balance imo. If I wanted true security I would use Tor, but honestly that would add so much friction I would probably quit the internet.

    Attacking JavaScript is a stupid argument. So many people just pile on JavaScript. I bet a lot of the same people are into FOSS and self hosting. If you write your app in 100% JavaScript without a backend, it can run on almost every operating system. Think about that for a second. We have the ultimate cross platform language. Yes it’s grown out of something that was originally messy, but a lot of work has been done to make it better.

    Don’t attack JavaScript, attack the bad parts of JavaScript like type coercion. Yes, you can probably blame Brendan Eich for that part. Attack the businesses that are enshitifying everything.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    We could have had Scheme or Python (both of which are also cross-platform, BTW) embedded in the browser instead. And yes, Netscape was seriously considering those two specific languages before Eich oozed into the situation and fucked it all up.

    Javascript did not "need" to happen. The only reasons it exists are Not-Invented-Here and Dunning-Kruger Syndromes (specifically, Netscape wanting something new and vaguely Algol-like that they could name to glom onto the Java hype at the time, and Eich having the inexperience and hubris to think he could hack together a half-assed design in a week and it would somehow turn out okay).

    Yes it’s grown out of something that was originally messy, but a lot of work has been done to make it better.

    Yeah, no shit! Literally millions upon millions of man-hours, probably! Do you have any concept at all of how much better the Web could have been if all that effort had been put towards something actually useful instead of working around Eich's mistakes?!

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  • [–] 12 points 1 year ago

    I can’t speak to Scheme as I haven’t spent more than a few days using it. Python has a lot of strengths but also a lot of weaknesses. JavaScript has had to evolve with 100% backwards compatibility. The python you enjoy today would have had to evolve differently if it was the language of the browser.

    Look I’m kinda young. Not that young, but too young for Netscape. You clearly lived through more of the history than I did. But imo, the thing ruining the internet isn’t JavaScript, it’s late stage capitalism and greedy companies. You could have Python or Scheme or whatever and late stage capitalism would still have ruined it.

    If you feel so strongly that JavaScript is the issue, why don’t you invest your time in helping Webassebly grow? Imo that’s more useful than complaining about JavaScript.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    I’m curious where the security theater accusation comes from

    Closed source ad-block that allows "unobtrusive" ads by default. They also ran a scheme a few years ago that replaced ads on web pages with their own and paid users tiny amounts of cryptocurrency for viewing them.

    All this is marketed by them as browsing securely

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  • [+] 4 points 1 year ago (7 children)
    [deleted]
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  • [–] 47 points 1 year ago* (5 children)

    Not my work, it is from a saved comment by @cannedtuna@lemmy.world in a now deleted post.

    This is a very well written an thorough article and I highly recommend reading it. If you don't want to however, here is a summary of the key points:

    • Brendan Eich's anti-LGBTQ+ political involvement

      • Brendan Eich donated to anti-LGBT political organizations, politicians, and initiatives such as CA Prop 8 which banned same-sex marriages.

    • 2016 — Brave Browser promises to replace webpage ads

      • Brave promised to replace ads with privacy friendly ads that would actually pay publishers and even users with a volatile cryptocurrency while keeping a cut for themselves. This never actually came to life and was criticized as "blatantly illegal".

    • 2018 — Brave runs a questionable donation campaign

      • Brave collected donations for popular content creators without actually involving or seeking consent from said creators. In short they accepted donations in crypto for creators, but would only pay out if it reached a minimum value of $100. When called out, Brave said refunds were impossible.

    • 2020 — Brave injects referral links when visiting crypto wallets

      • Brave injected their own referral links for services such as Binance without informing users or asking permission.

    • 2020 — Brave puts ads in user's home screens

      • Brave turned their home screen image rotator into a place to serve ads, many of which were suspicious or crypto related.

    • 2021 - Brave ships an insecure Tor feature

      • Brave added a Tor feature which exposed users DNS requests

    • 2023 - Brave hides their crawlers to websites

      • Brave refuses to disclose their crawler bot to websites since many websites want to block Brave Search. Brave will only chose not to crawl a website if it also blocks Google's crawler.

    • 2024 - So-called "privacy browser" deprecated advanced fingerprinting protection

      • Brave removed a the Strict, Block Fingerprinting privacy feature from their browser.

    • And More!

      • Brave paid for targeted ads for users searching for Firefox in the Play Store and ran a campaign to "Forget the Fox". When called out on this the VP publicly denied it and claimed it was photo-shopped.
      • The VP of Brave, Luke Mulks, frequently posts about all things crypto, from NFTs to FTX, and uses AI-gen images to promote them. He also frequently re-tweets right-wing activists.
      • Brendan Eich's feed also frequently contains right-wing content and Republican propaganda despite his claims to be "independent".

    Edit: corrected a mistake noted below.

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  • [+] -6 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    So you seem pretty well versed in the topic and I've been using Brave for a very long time. But what chromium alternative would you recommend that tries to accomplish what Brave clearly isn't doing well? I'm open to switching but also not really interested in Firefox.

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  • [–] 16 points 1 year ago*

    I would not switch to a chromium-based browser at all. For lots of reasons, but if I had to pick one it would be to avoid creating a dominant browser and ceding control over web standards to a single entity the way MS used IE to do what they wanted and force everyone else to comply.

    Those were dark times. I was still being forced to make sites IE5 compatible in 2015 — official support ended in 2005.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Vivaldi has built in ad and tracking blocker and a much better UI.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    Kind of. It's still not nearly as effective as Firefox with uBlock and a few other extensions. The downside is that some sites are just broken on Firefox, and blocking ads, etc. makes a relative few sites unusable. Which, yeah, 99.999% of the time I'm fine with. Until it's something I need to do for my day job.

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    • [–] 11 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    cause most people just google a chrome alternative. they dont do research. brave gives them a surafce level adblocking, and they feel fine with it.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Doesn't Firefox still have brand recognition though? I'd have thought even people who answer "google" to "what browser do you use" would have heard of firefox, and therefore looked it up rather than using the neurons to ask, "what alternative browsers are there?"

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    You're assuming people know things about the tech field. Very few do. I mean, those of us that do recognize the name Firefox. But someone who heard from a friend that Google went on trial for bad monopoly practices and wants to deGooglefy has no idea what's available or what any of it means.

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    • [–] 11 points 1 year ago

    No idea it's been plain to me is Brave is kind of dodgy to the point I've never even tried it.

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    [–] 19 points 1 year ago

    I wanted to try Brave a couple of years ago. I ran the installer, and it was one of those pieces of shit installers that just goes ahead and installs without any input from the user, dumping god knows what onto your system, and it puts everything in some obscure AppData subdirectory that can't be deduced without right-clicking the desktop shortcut. I uninstalled it without even launching it once.

    If a user is 50/50 on whether or not they just installed malware, you might wanna check your programming practices.

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    [–] 16 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    Well reading comments here has me going to download Vivaldi to replace Brave.

    Thank y'all!

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago* (2 children)

    How vivaldi isn't more popular with tech users that want to use chromium totally eludes me. The browser is super moddeable and the devs have so far been nothing but super open and correct to their community. I don't think there's been a single vivaldi "scandal" of note. It literally opera before that went down the drain, and is a better browser on top.

    The whole "it's not open source" mantra has also been thoroughly addressed.

    Also don't get me started on the brave love. It feels astroturfed. I do not get how you can genuinely shill that browser...

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  • [–] -1 points 1 year ago

    I choose Brave instead of Vivaldi in Android as a second browser just because of 1 feature:

    Vivaldi won't force dark mode in all the websites WHEN the device is in dark mode only, it includes a toggle to on or off only and it doesn't care if the device is light or dark.

    I use automatic light/dark mode and Brave and Firefox (with the Dark Reader extension) works well with this.

    Also the Vivaldi team is aware of this lacking feature since years ago but they can't seem to fix it somehow... That's fine by me, I can work my way without it.

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    • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    promotion, especially as a 'security focused' browser with 'uncommon' features.

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    [–] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

    Firefox is some other type of engine that renders pages differently and doesn't always work the same but brave has Chrome underneath it so it's the same thing and it's fine and uses all the same extensions and you like it

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    [–] 5 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    A good chunk of websites are just broken with Firefox and their not even broken in obvious ways. Some times they fail to load, sometimes they render weirdly, sometimes their just unresponsive. I use Firefox as my main browser but I always have something chromium based as my backup for when a website I wanna use just doesn't work. A lot of the time I don't even think to use it and assume the site would be broken on chromium as well but nope. Its almost always Firefox:/.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Can you give any examples where we can see these differences?

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 child)

    The royal mail tracking website for example brings up an obnoxious full page block on top of the actual content. Only happens on Firefox on android. Chrome worked fine.

    chrom3

    firefox

    Edit: also, just for reference, I'm amazed anyone actually needs examples of this. Its very well known that different browsers have different supported functionalities and unless the webdevs are properly customising styles and scripts for different platforms their gonna deviate. Thusly its not surprising most stuff only works as designed on Chrome since that's the only Web browser that's guaranteed to be tested on (it has the lions size of market share, to the point Firefox barely even registers).

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    Interesting! Thanks for the screenshots. I’m on iOS, so not familiar with Chrome vs FF on mobile.

    I was curious for an example because it’s probably been a decade since I’ve had an issue with FF rendering something improperly (or even differently) compared with Chrome. A while back, we did have one internal webpage at work that had a very small difference in FF, but that went away after a few FF updates happened. I was the only one who ever noticed the difference.

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    • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    I got my dad to try Firefox and he said it drained his phone battery like no tomorrow, so now he uses brave because it doesn't

    I've been using Firefox for years on my phone with no such problems, so I can't exactly verify what he's saying

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    • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    I have Firefox but gave Brave a shot too. Works fine for me. I'll use anything that gets around YouTube ads.

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    • [–] 7 points 1 year ago (13 children)

    Because vanilla Firefox has to be tinkered with to get the best out of it and the average user is not able to do it

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  • [–] 12 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    As a user of Firefox from 1-3 and quantum to current.... What exactly are you tinkering with? Install ublock and be done.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (5 children)

    Dude I use firefox as main browser too, I'm not saying that brave is better, read my comment again.

    What I'm saying is that you and I are not the average user. Our moms are the average user, our brother that got a DUI last friday is the average user, our anti-vax aunt is the average user...

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Read their comment again.

    They didn't say that you said brave was better.
    They said that folks barely need to tinker with anything, and was asking what you need to tinker with to make it suitable for you.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago* (1 child)

    and was asking what you need to tinker with to make it suitable for you.

    For myself I like to add a couple addons, like u-Block origins with automatic cookie reject and containers for when I have to browse IG or Google stuff, plus some tweaks in the about:config for disabling telemetry and such.

    My point is that many people either don't feel like going through this process, even if it takes just a few minutes, or don't care about privacy at all, they just fancy an ad blocker. So they may end up installing Brave.
    I'll give you one of many examples I have: I've taken guitar lessons for the last year and a half and every time my teacher put a background track on youtube we had to sit through 30 seconds of ads, while he complained about it every single time. For the first month I tried to persuade him to install FF + u-Block, but he kept saying things like "I'm not a computer guy". Even after I offered to do it myself, he was afraid that "there may be some sort of virus" so at one point I just stopped suggesting it. A couple months ago he installed Brave because a frend of his told him to and that was it.

    And that's because what me and you see as "barely tinkering", as you put it, other people see it as this herculean labor they cannot even imagine to approach. Of course this is because of a lack of culture on the matter, but most of people don't care about making a culture at all, they just want to be spoon fed with stuff that works, no matter what happens under the hood.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    Does Firefox have an app (plug-in/extension) store where you get it from? Are they even able to use an iPhone?

    If not, than installing any browser is probably gonna be too complicated for them. Otherwise it's not a hurdal of technical expertise, but rather they just don't care

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  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago* (3 children)

    In what way?

    I switched recently to Librewolf, but as a long time Firefox user (of which Librewolf is a fork anyway) it didn't seem unusable out of the box. There are some settings for privacy and studies etc you mght want to change, but they are all very obvious in the GUI preferences.

    I did personally go into about:config to set a few things, like not allowing searches from the address bar because I'm weird, but what makes Firefox no good for the average user?

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    The typical conversation I have is:

    • Hey, how don't you have ads on Youtube?
    • Well, its easy: you install Firefox and then...

    and that's where I loose most of the people, that extra step.

    Me and you can go down on the about:config all day long to dissect every aspect of privacy we care about. For the other 90% of people, even just going to Mozilla extensions manager and downloading u-Block Origin is too much.

    Bear-proof trash can theorem...

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    • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    I tried out Firefox on my phone a year or two ago. I had a number of issues, including accessing secure pages for work. I have little doubt that it wasn't Firefox at fault so much as it was narrow testing by website developers, but the end result was problems for me regardless of who was at fault, so I switched back to Chrome.

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