A place to discuss the news and latest developments on the open-source browser Firefox
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?
Can't you remove those?
Yup, you can turn it off.
It's not overly difficult to get to the setting either.
There's literally a settings button on that new tab page to take you right to the correct setting.
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.
Name an internet browser that costs money
Name an internet browser that's not rigged to show you adds, or one that doesn't havest your data.
Y'all can use LibreWolf or BestHomePageEver if it really bugs somebody. I do get being annoyed by shortcut ads though.
I wouldn't recommend LibreWolf to the average user as they'll unfoubtedly stretch their attack surface thin.
It's not gonna make them more exposed than vanilla Firefox
Absolutely, it's just the browser extensions most end-users want/need that would cause them distress in that regard. It's simply not as user friendly from what I can recall, it's been a while since I last used it so it may have improved since then
Microsoft Edge
If we want software to be FOSS we have to stop bitching so much about developers trying to make the math work.
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.
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.
So how exactly were you planning on them making money if they don’t take money from Google to be the default search engine and they don’t take money to place advertisements on the default home page?
Open source projects shouldn't have "making money" on their priority list. I would donate to Mozilla if I had some guarantee that my money would actually fund Firefox development
But why does (some) people want every software to be open source if making money can't be an objective? /genq
The best thing about this is that you can turn it off
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?
Don't give them new ideas, Sony might jump in and patent that too.
Seems fine to me, they need to make money somehow.
Why is this an issue ??
Meanwhile Let's discuss on how we can make Mozilla Great again (as in independent)
Breaking news: Businesses need to make money, more at 11
someone on lemmy has a bit of a hateboner for mozilla.
Then turn it off?
Also, I rarely use Firefox on my phone and my links are still all from websites I've visited.
If they make some money from harmless icons, I mean, I can live with it
I was fine with 2. Having all but one icon in the tray be an ad is too much.
Ads are one thing, but this seems excessive and probably unintentional. Looks like someone just filed this bug, which is another sign that it might be an unintentional problem: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1944704
Honestly, I don't care. I don't even look at that stuff, I just type in the bar thing what I want. Mozilla has to fund the project somehow.
Better than the unlabeled sponsorship behind the default search engine.
See ads, "how dare they" Sees paid version, "how dare they" Development costs time and money, pick your poison.
This has been the case for several years. Super easy to turn them off
Don't give them any ideas
These can be turned off. Not great that they’re on by default, but you gotta pay the bills somehow right?
People keep giving Mozilla shit for taking money from Google, yet they see an ad for a different company and lose their shit.
I think the downvoters can’t hold these two thoughts in their mind at the same time:
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".
Firefox is the best browser
It's only real competitors, in my eyes, are Firefox forks.