The author mentioned someone switching from Firefox to Vivaldi because Firefox got on twitter, while Vivaldi is already on twitter. I see people make these same kind of brain-dead attacks on Firefox all the time, I don't get it. They just really want to hate Firefox for some reason. Like I heard someone say once that they switched to Chrome because they didn't like Firefox pushing AI. Are you kidding me?!

I'm using a Firefox based alternative, LibreWolf.

I love Firefox. It's great!

Use Zen Browser if you still want Firefox based browsing with the better ergonomics; No AI, tracking or telemetry included.

Just use Waterfox instead

I am not in the AI==bad camp because I believe in nuance. I see a lot of people shit on Firefox for integrating LLM-related features. What the blog post points out and people fail to recognize is that if Mozilla stopped maintaining Firefox, almost all of its forks would die. People make similar arguments about Canonical and Ubuntu. Would these people pay Mozilla or Canonical for their work? The corporate investors do. I'm not saying I agree with it all, but that's how it works.

There is zero reason to not use both. The are supposedly a FOSS organization yet they alienate FOSS users.

Firefox is our last best hope for browser engine diversity

Browser engine diversity died a decade ago. As soon as Google helped extend the standards, making browser engines the overengineered mess of today,xyou can barely get past basic html and js without a multi-million-dollar company/orgnization.

We need to start anew. You can do simpler with the same capabilities, if you drop the right "features".

I just use Floorp with my linux and windows installs. on OpenBSD my options are a bit more limited so I need to either try to compile Floorp for it or find something else (if there even is anything else)

Hell Floorp is even on Haiku. It's a rock solid firefox fork made by a Japanese dev team that doesn't release/update until things are absolutely rock solid. I can't even recall the last time floorp broke, if it ever has. good browser, always my go to FF fork.

This is a bad article. Embarassingly bad at points.

The author claims Firefox is good because of only one reason: inherent moral value to be Not Google.

Firefox is our last best hope for browser engine diversity and competition.

But when Mozilla returned to Twitter - basically tweeting out an apology - the author suddenly forgot to hold Firefox to that single standard, and created an excuse for why they had to ditch the moral high ground to pursue user growth:

I’m sure the reason Firefox is on X is because they’re hoping to reach out to new users... they desperately need to reach out wherever they can.

• If Firefox's only claim to fame is to be Not Big Tech, it has to not follow in the footsteps and align itself with Big Tech.
• And if Firefox eventually makes itself ethically indistinguishable (or worse!) than the corporate alternatives, then it loses its reason to claim even moral value.

Here are some other thoughts.

The latest [complaint] was a post from a prolific blogger who has switched to Vivaldi because Firefox is now on X. He is somehow able to reconcile this with the fact that Vivaldi is also on X...

Probably because Vivaldi doesn't spend a ton of its time and money marketing itself as an alternative to big platforms. Maybe because Vivaldi realized talk is cheap and put it into action by hosting their own Mastodon server. Maybe because when Mozilla went back to Twitter, they did it with their strange apology.

the over thinkers on Hacker News come up with convoluted reasons to hate on Firefox every time the subject arises. It makes me wonder if it’s a bot campaign by Google

"Everyone I disagree with is bots" is the lowest point of this whole post.

you desperately need to help [Firefox].

The author of this post must not know that it Mozilla has rigged the game in favor of Google: you cannot "help" Firefox with a donation. That money only goes to the Foundation, which is currently spending their time lobbying against antitrust legislation. Only their corporate partners (read: Google) can give money to Firefox.

But Mozilla has been doing everything they can to make users dump Firefox!