this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2023
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I feel like there is no web browser with a sane default configuration that I can recommend to other people. All browsers are preconfigured in a way that harms the privacy of their users or include services that no one wants such as Pocket and BAT.

Here are my problems with some popular browsers.

  • Mozilla Firefox: Pocket integration, no ad-blocking without extensions.

  • Brave: Everything related to crypto. Also its start page is horrible.

  • Chromium: No ad-blocking without extensions and soon Manifest v3 will cripple all content blockers.

Now, these suboptimal defaults wouldn't be such a big problem if the configuration files were easy to backup and restore and respected the XDG base directory specification.

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[–] [email protected] 105 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Ad blocking shouldn't be tied to the browser, anyway. ublock is superb, imagine if firefox devs should have to develop it along with the browser (that nowadays is a herculean task).

Anyway, extensions give user freedom to chose how they use their browser.

Pocket take 2 seconds to disable.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

It’s kinda the same with Brave. Just take 2 seconds to turn off the crypto thing and forget it was ever there.

I’m primarily a Firefox user but keep Brave around for Chromium-based browser testing.

Just turn it off, folks!

[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 year ago (4 children)

The difference is brave is shady as fuck.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (11 children)

Yeah, and there's definitely some pay-offs going on with their reviews. Almost every one of them says something close to "This browser pays you just for browsing the internet!," most of them don't mention that it's crypto, and none of them mention that it has nothing to do with browsing, but is instead for clicking integrated ads.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Been seeing a lot of people talk positively about Brave like it's some hail corporate shit

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

They were definitely astroturfing for a while, especially around the time of that Firefox Megabar stuff on the Firefox subreddit. I can understand not liking the Megabar but there were so many people acting like the sky was falling and saying they were going to abandon Firefox after 15 years or so... for Brave.

A few years later and almost none of those accounts look like real users. A bunch of them were active on Brave subreddits well before the Megabar.

The impotent r/Firefox more missed all this of course, and let a bunch of trolls go rampant and unchecked.

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

though brave has 2 issues you can't turn off:

  • it's chromium-based, and strenghtens the browser engine monopoly
  • the company behind it seems quite shady, and afaik the ceo/leader/founder/... is homophobic
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[–] [email protected] 68 points 1 year ago

That is why forks like librewolf exist.

[–] [email protected] 61 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

This list looks like:

Firefox: comes with different candy than I like but will get me the candy I want if I ask

Brave: has candy, but stares at me uncomfortably and asks me to lick everything slowly

Chromium: comes with candy I don't like and I'm pretty sure is going to kill me

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Brave is based on Chromium, so the candy doesn't have so nice taste.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Just when I was getting used to car analogies, here's candy analogies

[–] [email protected] 41 points 1 year ago (3 children)

No browser will ever tick ALL your boxes. You pick one and make it work.

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[–] [email protected] 39 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Just use Librewolf. It's a fork of Firefox, with Pocket disabled, Ublock Origin preinstalled, and privacy settings enabled by default.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I still like firefox. I configure it using a json file. Just load that file and the browser is configured for all users on the system.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

How many people maintain LibreWolf? How closely does it track the upstream?

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[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 year ago

don't expect browsers to block ads out of the box

[–] [email protected] 33 points 1 year ago (3 children)

What's wrong with pocket integration?Nobody forces you to use it. Apart from that it stores user data e2e encrypted, mozilla has no access to your data (as opposed to chromes sync functionality). Imho, a browser should not block some content by default. But ad-blocking must be easy to enable/install. All of that's the case in FF so I see no reason not to recommend it.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago

Yeah, Pocket does nothing unless you press the button.

And as for telemetry that's publicly available on telemetry.mozilla.org if anyone wants to see what's being sent. It's very useful for Mozilla to see what and how features are used.

Mozilla is our last tiny hope for freedom really, in this Chrome/Blink world..

[–] jayandp 3 points 1 year ago

Not to mention they have a freaking Help page explaining how to remove it if you really don't like it for some reason.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/disable-or-re-enable-pocket-for-firefox

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago

You're going to be spending a lot of time with your browser, make it a 2 way dialog, customize.

Firefox has an extremely vibrant extension ecosystem and seems to overall be doing well, but see what works for you.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago (6 children)

What's the problem with using uBlock on FF. Gets rids of ads, has ton of features to custom add filters and more.

Also, I kinda like Pocket Integration on FF. Found some interesting articles that way.

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Just install u block origin lmao.

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago

In other news, emacs still didn't ship my init.el as part of the default configuration! Lol

[–] priapus 15 points 1 year ago

Librewolf or one of the other Firefox forks

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago

I didn't know about the Manifest v3 thing, and I found this article. Sharing in case anyone else is out of the loop.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/12/chrome-delays-plan-to-limit-ad-blockers-new-timeline-coming-in-march/

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

Mullvad Browser

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

For me Firefox is perfect as is. I tweak some stuff only because I like to play with css sometimes.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

On Android F-Droid app store there are some off-shoots of Firefox that are real good. Fennec comes with a bunch of the most popupar extensions already installed and none of that Pocket nonsense.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Why do people dislike pocket so much? I barely even know what it is, used it once to see what it was about and then forgot about it completely, it's not exactly obstructive

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Mullvad browser is perfect out of the box

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Qutebrowser has great, sensible defaults with no telemetry. 😊

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

Can confirm, I only configured some visual changes, font, minimal font size and alike.

Only problem I have with it is, an increasing number of webpages tell me, my browser is outdated and rarely some pages don't work correctly.

I am thinking of moving to Epiphany (gnome-web) some day, but I may start missing the vim-like interaction with qutebrowser.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Have you updated Qutebrowser recently? It was running a pretty ancient version of Chromium under the hood before the 3.0 release (2 weeks ago), but it’s up-to-date now.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Thx for the reminder; I need to do that update.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

I have a little known browser which is released by DuckDuckGo. Hasn't failed me yet.

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

Nyxt includes a blocker, and has an appealing minimalistic interface, but I never tested.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (4 children)

You should REALLY try Vivaldi.

Best browser for desktop and mobile. Privacy respecting and great onboarding, plus very versatile and powerful if you want that.

Or keep it simple. They let you choose.

https://vivaldi.com/

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