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?

  • ColdWater@lemmy.ca
    561·
    3 days ago

    The browser itself is free, and they have to make money somehow to keep the company running (if the CEO didn’t keep most of it for themself). If you don’t like it, you can turn it off or download an ad-free fork.

  • subtext@lemmy.world
    2834·
    4 days ago

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

    • BombOmOm@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1824·
      4 days ago

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

      • tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip
        862·
        4 days 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
        3·
        4 days ago

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

    • Kushan@lemmy.worldEnglish
      11·
      3 days ago

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

  • Evil_Shrubbery@lemm.ee
    19·
    3 days ago

    I say let them cook a little, they arent drowning in donations and still do a tone of things for foss communities.

    Let’s remember that the de fuckto market (ie pleb) alternative is overwhelmingly Chrome.

    We dont need such projects just so we as individuals can have privacy focused experiences but also for how that influences markets and society. And to have any influence you need certain power of masses.

      • Evil_Shrubbery@lemm.ee
        1·
        1 day ago

        Be that as it may we are old enough to know foss needs support.

        I myself rarely click on some campaign for donations, I prefer the coffee button or whatever they have on their page or bithub.

  • Aeri@lemmy.world
    34·
    3 days ago

    Yeah but you can literally just turn this off with no fuss.

    1.Firefox for Android.

    2.Tap the menu button.

    3.Tap. Settings.

    4.Tap Homepage.

    5.Deselect Sponsored shortcuts under Shortcuts.

  • davel@lemmy.mlEnglish
    1429·
    4 days 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.
    • comfy@lemmy.ml
      49·
      4 days ago

      Firefox is the best browser

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

    • Scipitie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      311·
      4 days 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
      45·
      4 days 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!

  • lemmylurkaround@lemmy.world
    864·
    4 days ago

    See ads, “how dare they” Sees paid version, “how dare they” Development costs time and money, pick your poison.

    • UltraGiGaGigantic@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
      61·
      4 days 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
            2·
            3 days 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
        2·
        3 days 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!

        • Robust Mirror@aussie.zone
          22·
          3 days ago

          Are they going to give me a link to a version that doesn’t do this? Otherwise what exactly am I paying for?

          • Fecundpossum@lemmy.worldEnglish
            101·
            3 days ago

            How has no one in this thread put together that you can literally just customize your home page, removing categories until it’s literally blank, or only keeping pages you select available.

            Git good noobs.

        • fine_sandy_bottom@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
          1·
          4 days 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
            4·
            3 days 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. But I expect they don’t do that because they probably fear all donations will move there and they don’t want to lose funds for other things. We might need to create a separate organization if we want an independent fund for Firefox-based browsers.

            • fine_sandy_bottom@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
              2·
              3 days 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.

  • superglue@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    25·
    3 days ago

    If we want software to be FOSS we have to stop bitching so much about developers trying to make the math work.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldEnglish
      7·
      3 days ago

      One could posit an ideal public sector development studio that takes grants from the state/federal government to produce useful Open Source software. Think public radio or public broadcasting, but for apps.

      Hell, it isn’t even wild in the current moment. Modern day AWS and Azure subsidize much of its small/new user client base with the massive public sector clientele. OpenAI and DeepSeek are both the product of giant state-sponsored initiatives to develop AI that is free at point of service. Plenty of the original internet architecture was the product of public investment and grants, as was the university-centric ARPNET that would eventually be commoditizated into the commercial World Wide Web.

      Look up the history of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications and the pioneering of Mosaic, the first widely available GUI-based web browser. It was the foundation for both Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator, which licensed the original design for the tiniest fraction of what it would ultimately generate in future revenues.

  • Redex@lemmy.world
    141·
    3 days ago

    Personaly those shortcuts are a feature I literally never use so much so I don’t even register their existence anymore.

    • davel@lemmy.mlEnglish
      4111·
      4 days ago

      Mozilla already has Scrooge McDuck amounts of money. It doesn’t need any more to maintain a browser and an email client.

      From jwz, who founded Mozilla & Firefox:

      .

      Mozilla had a duty to preserve the open web.

      Instead they cosplayed as a startup, chasing product dreams of “growth hacking”, with Google’s ad money as their stand-in for a VC-funding firehose, with absolutely predictable and tragic results.

      And those dreams of growth and market penetration failed catastrophically anyway.

      (Except for the C-suite, who made out quite well. And Google, who got exactly what they paid for: a decade of antitrust-prosecution insurance. It was never about ad revenue. The on-paper existence of Firefox as a hypothetical competitor kept the Federal wolves at bay, and that’s all Google cared about.)

      Now hear me out, but What If…? browser development was in the hands of some kind of nonprofit organization?

      As I have said many times:

      In my humble but correct opinion, Mozilla should be doing two things and two things only:

      1. Building THE reference implementation web browser, and
      2. Being a jugular-snapping attack dog on standards committees.
      3. There is no 3.
      • adarza@lemmy.caEnglish
        293·
        4 days 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.

      • davel@lemmy.mlEnglish
        259·
        4 days 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.

        • o_d [he/him]@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
          31·
          4 days ago

          It’s a real shame what’s happened to Mozilla. Maybe Trump will add browser software to the list of sanctions on China and we’ll end up with a Deepfox in a year or two.

      • JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world
        9·
        4 days 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
            1·
            3 days 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
              1·
              3 days 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
                1·
                3 days 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.

        • o_d [he/him]@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
          1·
          4 days ago

          It’s amazing what you can pull off with free labour and CIA funding. I also find it funny how that donation banner still shows up every year when they’ve already accumulated so much capital.