At the very least I don't feel like I need more out of Firefox than it has today. If it all goes to shit, then a free Firefox Ala chromium would do fine.
this post was submitted on 13 Feb 2024
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A reminder that there are many firefox forks that exist if base firefox is adding unwanted things or you might have different wants, but sites will still "see" firefox in terms of compatibility. I'm using Librewolf with some annoyances (it doesn't let things fingerprint to the point that it can't even get your current time), but overall I like it.
According to the Librewolf documentation, fingerprinting can be turned off, but they recommend adding the Canvas Blocker extension in its place. That is my current setup, as I didn't like that websites in Librewolf couldn't get the correct time and time zone for me.
Here's the direct quote from the Librewolf documentation:
If you don't like the downsides of RFP, or you are not concerned about fingerprinting, you can disable RFP in the LibreWolf settings, or in your overrides. In that case consider using an extension like CanvasBlocker to retain at least a minimum amount of fingerprinting protection.
Not sure what to think about this.
Sings “it’s the end of Mozilla as we know it”.
I'm not sure where people are getting the idea that they're talking about putting AI in Firefox.
Mozilla seized an opportunity to bring trustworthy AI into Firefox, largely driven by the Fakespot acquisition and the product integration work that followed. Additionally, finding great content is still a critical use case for the internet. Therefore, as part of the changes today, we will be bringing together Pocket, Content, and the AI/ML teams supporting content with the Firefox Organization.
emphasis mine
How do you interpret that?
Can an expert explain this - https://aussie.zone/post/6869951
Comparing brave and base Firefox is unfair IMO. Brave is security hardened out of the box, where as Firefox is a general purpose browser and has telemetry in the form of crash reports and the like (which can be turned off). It can be hardend well through arkenfox, or using a fork like Librewolf. Comparing Firefox and chrome is better imho.
Firefox has many built-in anti fingerprinting flags (such as letterboxing, RFP, font limiting, and many more} which when combined with ublock origin are unbeatable. A baked-in content blocker like that of braves loses because it isn't extensible. This website compares on only default settings which aren't representative of the extent each browser can be taken but useful nonetheless: https://privacytests.org/
The website you mentioned is created by Brave Developers
Incorrect. It is created by someone who is associated with brave, but not a directly created by Brave. I am sure the tests is accurate (at least per test), but the testing criteria could be biased. It'd just be weird to the end up with Librewolf and Mullvad as a clear winner if the intention was to favor brave browser.
Lol 🤣🤣🤣
A baked-in content blocker like that of braves loses because it isn’t extensible.
In what way? I use(d) Firefox since the very first Firebird days, and Netscape Navigator before it, and I'm practically married to uBO (don't tell my wife!). That said, Brave's 'shields' blocker is just skinned uBO with some tweaks. It can add custom cosmetic filtering rules, additional adblock format filter lists, disable or enable JS (globally or per-site) and has built in fingerprint resistance. Aside from the differing UI, I genuinely can't think of anything overtly missing as such.
I'm stated that because I know baked in features must wait for browser updates to get fixes (not talking about block list updates but the core itself). I also was basing it off a comment I read (can't find sadly) on the limitations of implementing a ublock-style blocklist into brave. And thirdly, I have seen no mention of anything like ublock's blocking modes (block 3rd party scripts/frames). Can you quickly select an element to block in brave?
I might have considered using brave as a 2ndary browser if it werent for the ceo's politics (spending thousands to support anti-lgbt legislation) which I feel are antithetical to privacy.
And thirdly, I have seen no mention of anything like ublock’s blocking modes (block 3rd party scripts/frames). Can you quickly select an element to block in brave?
You can enter as many custom filter rules as you like, with adblock syntax support. You can select an element to block, yes.
Here is a graph the illustrates the block efficiency of ublock+Firefox compared to other browsers with/without ublock. https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-best-on-Firefox
Despite the URL name, it shows bare browse Brave and Firefox+ublock compare at blocking 3rd party ads/trackers. It looks like this was updated November of last year.
Brave isn't represented anywhere on the graph? Unless I've misunderstood you. That's a comparison of Firefox with various ad blockers, and uBO with and without CNAME unclocking enabled. Brave also uncloaks CNAMEs, so that's one place they are equal. Chromium based browsers do lack some abilities compared to Firefox, however. I have daily driven Firefox since the first day, but Brave and Blink/Chromium based browsers are undeniably faster at rendering (unfortunately).
Look at the bottom of the graph. Each grouping is per browser.
Yes of course. I hadn't slept when I replied, how embarrassing to miss that. You can enable CNAME uncloaking in Brave, which I suspect draws them to a parallel. It would be interesting to see the test repeated with the setting enabled. Since one has to (or had to) enable it in uBO also, it would only be fair to compare apples to apples. As I said, the blocker in Brave is based on uBO anyway. To be clear, and as I've said before, I've daily driven Firefox since the beginning and run uBO in medium mode. I'm not shilling for Brave here, simply pointing out that the differences are small (much of the code is shared with uBO) and it does certainly render faster.
I do understand that you aren't shilling brave. Ublock medium mode is great and I think worth the effort. I wish Firefox had some of the native features present in chromium browsers (mostly quality of life features like native force dark mode on web contents). But I love the extent that Firefox can be taken to reduce not just fingerprinting, but also avenues of attack.
You can force Firefox to display dark mode in web content (even with privacy tweaks enabled to resist fingerprinting or tracking), by setting the two following hidden prefs in your user.js:
// PREF: enable a Dark theme for browser and webpage content
// [TEST] https://9to5mac.com/
user_pref("ui.systemUsesDarkTheme", 1); // HIDDEN
user_pref("browser.in-content.dark-mode", true); // HIDDEN
Does this force dark mode on pages or just what. I couldn't get it to work anywhere close to chomiums force dark mode.