Almost all the links in my front homepage are sponsored now. What’s next, a few ads in the bookmark bar? How about when I enter a URL, I then have to type “McDonald’s” before I can actually navigate there?

  • subtext@lemmy.world
    0·
    1 year ago

    These can be turned off. Not great that they’re on by default, but you gotta pay the bills somehow right?

    • Kushan@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      1 year ago

      People keep giving Mozilla shit for taking money from Google, yet they see an ad for a different company and lose their shit.

    • BombOmOm@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      1 year ago

      Yeah, this is basically the least offensive thing possible that ensures the lights stay on.

      • tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip
        0·
        1 year ago

        Remember when most sites had simple banner ads, and there was no widespread outcry about how much they sucked and we needed ad blocking software? Then they started flashing, then the popups and pop-unders came, then vids started autoplaying, and now here we are.

        If advertisers hadn’t gotten greedier than banners on the sides of sites, maybe no one would’ve gotten around to blocking all their shit.

      • Elgenzay@lemmy.ml
        0·
        1 year ago

        The only thing really offensive about it, judging from the post, is that they’re positioned before the user’s pins, not after.

      • davel [he/him]@lemmy.mlEnglish
        0·
        1 year ago

        https://www.jwz.org/blog/2024/06/mozilla-is-an-advertising-company-now/#comment-249969

        Preemptive subtwit.

        Let’s say you run a nonprofit animal shelter. And for some reason, some people feel you should be seeing hockey-stick growth, but the donations aren’t covering it.

        So you decide to start up a side-line of selling kittens for meat.

        Then you will inevitably have someone stroking their chin and saying, 'Yes, yes, but how could they afford to stay open if they weren’t selling kitten deli slices?"

        Some might say – maybe you aren’t an animal shelter any more. Some might say.

      • adarza@lemmy.caEnglish
        0·
        1 year ago

        Mozilla already has Scrooge McDuck amounts of money

        no. they don’t.

        the google money that they rely too heavily on, may not always be there. they need more diverse funding. these paid placements, which can be turned off, are one way to do that.

        turn off and delete the sponsored stuff at install, never see 'em again. it’s not like they’re microsoft or something, constantly turning that kind of shit back on with every-other-update.

      • JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world
        0·
        1 year ago

        While this analysis is somewhat convincing, let’s not forget that for now Firefox is all we have. Important not to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

        In my ideal scenario, Mozilla becomes like the Wikimedia Foundation. Which has somehow also accumulated “Scrooge McDuck amounts” of cash but seems to be on a firmer footing and better managed.

          • JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world
            0·
            1 year ago

            Okay but you mean which is harder?? Both projects rely on a bunch of salaried professionals supervising an army of volunteers. Firefox is a web browser, i.e. notoriously the space shuttle of software. But the Wikipedia is doing some surprisingly innovative and cutting-edge stuff with its own codebase too, as I understand it. Whichever is costlier, I’m not sure we’re talking about an order of magnitude of difference.

            • verdigris@lemmy.ml
              0·
              1 year ago

              I’m not an expert on either codebase but I believe the main driver of complexity with developing a browser engine is the sheer number of standards and how fast they change and multiply. Wikipedia has to update articles and maintain the server backend, which is no small task with such a global and comprehensive website, but Firefox has to do similar things on top of vastly more complex code with much more churn. There’s a reason Mozilla developed Rust as well.

              • JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world
                0·
                1 year ago

                Wikipedia has to update articles and maintain the server backend

                Firstly, updating the articles is the one thing Wikipedia doesn’t do, the army of unpaid volunteers does that.

                But as for “just maintaining the backend”, the Wikimedia Foundation does far more than that. It created and maintains and constantly iterates a huge pile of ever-complexifying frontend code - the wiki itself, discussion software, media tools etc - not just for Wikipedia but for a whole bunch of peer sites. Much of it is pretty cutting-edge, it’s used daily by many thousands of editors and there’s also the accessibility requirement. I know from personal experience that there’s nothing harder than front-end when you have to tick the accessibility box. No doubt Firefox’s technical challenge is greater but really the difference is not night and day.

  • davel [he/him]@lemmy.mlEnglish
    0·
    1 year ago

    I think the downvoters can’t hold these two thoughts in their mind at the same time:

    1. Firefox is the best browser.
    2. Firefox has serious problems because Mozilla is a terrible steward of it.
    • UltraGiGaGigantic@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
      0·
      1 year ago

      Let the people downvote. These points don’t matter. I turned off the visibility of points. I am immune, my morale is unbreakable. The downvoters have no power here!

    • comfy@lemmy.ml
      0·
      1 year ago

      Firefox is the best browser

      It’s only real competitors, in my eyes, are Firefox forks.

    • Scipitie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      0·
      1 year ago

      No it’s the complaint about one of the few transparent revenue flows Mozilla managed to pull off.

      It’s disabled one step deep on the settings

      There is a shitload of stuff going wrong with the Mozilla foundation and this doesn’t even make the top 10.

      That’s the reason for my down vote: it’s nothing I want this community to focus on. It’s basically engagement bait with the topic “ads bad”.

    • UltraGiGaGigantic@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
      0·
      1 year ago

      Was trying to reference this

      Maybe I should have added a paragraph somewhere in there. I was typing fast because I only get so much time on my break at work.

      • adarza@lemmy.caEnglish
        0·
        1 year ago

        on mobile, too, it looks like. on pc, i’ve only ever seen half that many, plus google pops in there if you switch your search default. click-dismiss and they’re gone. toggle a couple settings, done. they don’t come back.

          • festnt@sh.itjust.works
            0·
            1 year ago

            nah in firefox those ads can be disabled by unchecking a checkbox, in windows it’s probably not just an easy to find checkbox and i bet after removing the ads they’ll just come back after an update.

    • superkret@feddit.org
      0·
      1 year ago

      Depending on where you got Firefox from, default settings are different. Maybe your distro ships with these deactivated.

  • Jimmycakes@lemmy.world
    0·
    1 year ago

    Either that or they go bankrupt. Design your own browser and give it out for free if you don’t like it

  • tritonium@midwest.social
    0·
    1 year ago

    Also, not being able to set the home button to a custom URL is fucking crazy. I want the home button to take me to my selfhosted dashboard that has all my services and links on it. I don’t want the home button to take me to the dumbass firefox page and have to click another link to get to it.

    Been using Kiwi instead for this sole reason but now Kiwi is dead. I’m not willing to concede this workflow and make an extra click because Mozilla is braindead and can’t implement a functional home button like every single browser since the beginning of time.

        • Possibly linux@lemmy.zipEnglish
          0·
          1 year ago

          What part of it doesn’t work? Rather than resorting to name calling I would instead say what the problem is. You will get way more help when you aren’t being a jerk.

          Are you talking about Firefox based browsers or is my link broken? Firefox allows pinning a web page to start and setting a home page.

        • alekwithak@lemmy.world
          0·
          1 year ago

          Well first of all, rude! Second, where was that stated? Oh it wasn’t? You just felt like being a little bitch on the Internet for no reason? Honestly, relatable.

            • alekwithak@lemmy.world
              0·
              1 year ago

              As is mine. But the post and discussion itself are about sponsored links on the home page which are present and look exactly the same across platforms. You’re the only one talking about the android app. Despite making zero clarifying statements in your original post, you still have the audacity to lie like anyone else is with you on this, and call me names when all I’ve done is go out of my way to try and help you. Well, suck my whole ass, dick!

      • stray@pawb.social
        0·
        1 year ago

        I think they mean on mobile as opposed to PC. I can’t find any option besides the dashboard-style homepage offered by default. I can customize it, but I can’t make it a specific URL.

      • tritonium@midwest.social
        0·
        1 year ago

        You literally can not, how fucking dumb are you. Go ahead, show me how on Android firefix you can set the home button to a specific URL. You cant, you fucking imbecile

  • TxTechnician@lemmy.ml
    0·
    1 year ago

    I think the best viable option for them is to either offer a subscription model. Or increase requests for donations.

        • fine_sandy_bottom@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
          0·
          1 year ago

          I’m not really sure what you’re getting at?

          I understand that my circumstances are unusual but I would absolutely pay $20 a month without a moment’s hesitation.

          I would pay $50, but I’d really have to believe in the project.

          It’s worth noting that presently mozilla earns $0 from my not using google, and not seeing sponsored tabs.

          • Ferk@lemmy.ml
            0·
            1 year ago

            It’s worth noting that presently mozilla earns $0 from my not using google, and not seeing sponsored tabs.

            I thought Google pays (or paid?) Mozilla just to be the default engine out the box, regardless of whether you change it or not.

            Another point is that it’s so easy to turn those things off (the sponsored shortcuts too) that I wonder if it would be worth the cost of launching an alternate version behind a paywall while making sure it works only for people who pay (which could be seen as DRM anyway, with potentially massive backslash). So I imagine the end result would not be that profitable (whether they decide to paywall it properly or not). Those who wanna donate and have no ads can do that already, those who want a cleaned up version of Firefox can have that and from neutral and independent third parties which I’d argue is better than if it were Mozilla who did it (and you can donate to Mozilla while using those too)… so I’m not sure it would make sense.

            But it would make sense to have a donation pool specifically to fund Firefox development. That would be something interesting, considering Mozilla does other things besides Firefox.

            • fine_sandy_bottom@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
              0·
              1 year ago

              You might be right about Googles agreement with Mozilla. I had assumed it would be based on the number of searches performed with a mozilla user agent but that’s just a guess.

              I’m not sure why exactly but I just feel very uncomfortable with the idea of donating to Mozilla. I absolutely believe in the importance of Firefox’ existance, and if I felt I was contributing to that then I would donate. I think with the situation as it is making a donation would feel a bit like voting - my own contribution isn’t going to effect the outcome, and I don’t really agree with mozilla’s behavior anyway.

              On the other hand, if Mozilla declared that they were going to spin off a separate org exclusively to develop and maintain firefox, and would have no ongoing relationship with google nor advertising of any kind, would focus on privacy, and were going to survive entirely on subscriptions, I feel like that’s something I could get behind and feel happy to contribute.

    • UltraGiGaGigantic@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
      0·
      1 year ago

      I was okay with the sponsored links, but now this is affecting the functionality of the app. My phone is shit and I have a hard time sliding to the next page.

          • KubeRoot@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
            0·
            1 year ago

            Eh, the criticism isn’t invalid - those are still ads being added on the front page. What does irk me is people talking about how something breaks their workflow, yet they don’t even try to fix the issue.

      • FooBarrington@lemmy.world
        0·
        1 year ago

        but now this is affecting the functionality of the app

        This shit irks me so much, because it keeps happening!

        There’s this feature that makes your address bar randomly auto complete sponsored URLs instead of your actual history. Pretty fucking annoying to type n and have Netflix pop up, even though I don’t use it.

        When you disable this “feature”, it still breaks your autocomplete! Now instead of suggesting Netflix, it just sometimes doesn’t suggest anything before I continue typing.

        If you must add these anti-features to pay for your CEO, at least don’t break the app when it’s disabled!