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evilpie 3 days ago [-]
> The Firefox team is experimenting with ways to improve the built-in Enhanced Tracking Protection feature in Firefox. This is one of the libraries we're going to experiment with.
> - We are not, and have no plans to abandon MV2 extensions. This will ensure certain types of add-ons, like ad-blockers, continue to work best in Firefox.
> - Firefox supports several ad-blockers as add-ons on Desktop and Android, including uBlock Origin.
> - We are not bundling Brave's ad-blocking system, we're testing one of their open source Rust components to improve how Firefox processes tracker lists.
Memory-safe code can make a huge difference in trust and software risk. Google has said that a 70% of Chrome vulnerabilities are related to memory (un)safety. This is in the browser with dominant marketshare.
> This will ensure certain types of add-ons, like ad-blockers, continue to work best in Firefox.
Oof, so even people that should really know better are now equating MV3 with "no more ad blocking"? I think at this point the entire thing just needs to be renamed.
(Only Chrome removed the request blocking API from their MV3 implementation; Firefox did not.)
DangitBobby 3 days ago [-]
We shouldn't equate it with "no more ad blocking" because it didn't ship with an attempt to make ad blockers less effective or because that's not all it shipped with?
ragall 3 days ago [-]
"This will ensure certain types of add-ons, like ad-blockers, continue to work best in Firefox" clearly means that MV3 makes ad blocking worse, not entirely disabled. How can you get "no more ad blocking" out of that ?
lxgr 1 days ago [-]
Again, no. MV3 (the specification) does not do anything to ad blocking. Chrome's implementation of MV3 does.
For precision, I should have said "significantly worse ad blocking", not exaggerated as "no more ad blocking".
ragall 13 hours ago [-]
This is all sophistry. The spec is irrelevant, what matters is only the implementation and the fact that Chrome has a crushing dominance.
lxgr 11 hours ago [-]
How does Chrome’s implementation matter in an article about Firefox?
> However, DeclarativeWebRequest is limited in the number of rules that may be set, and the types of expressions that may be used.[336] Additionally, the prohibition of remotely-hosted code will restrict the ability for filter lists to be updated independently of the extension itself. As the Chrome Web Store review process has an invariable length, filter lists may not be updated in a timely fashion.[337][338]
Is that not true?
lxgr 3 days ago [-]
It is, but it’s not relevant. Firefox offers both APIs.
jeroenhd 3 days ago [-]
The people who know better should also know that tech social media was flooded with people not knowing what they were talking about mentioning manifest versions.
It wouldn't be the first time tech gossip rags would take something Mozilla did out of proportion to make outrage videos about that become a hit on Reddit.
When Mozilla added some weird AI thing (I think it was page summaries?) I was asked by people whose algorithm picked up this nonsense whether it'd be better for their privacy to switch back to Chrome or Edge.
swed420 3 days ago [-]
> It wouldn't be the first time tech gossip rags would take something Mozilla did out of proportion to make outrage videos about that become a hit on Reddit.
Sounds like the issue here is paid social media platforms, where everybody is looking for ways to differentiate their slop from the rest. It would be weird to expect a different outcome.
stavros 3 days ago [-]
Did Vivaldi? Or Brave? Will uBlock work properly with Mv3 and request blocking?
lxgr 3 days ago [-]
Of course everything based on Chromium will inherit most of Chrome's decisions, including this one. (Unless they fork their entire web extension implementation and maintain the fork forever.)
stavros 3 days ago [-]
Yeah but then "only Chrome" is misleading, when it's actually "every major browser except Firefox".
ahartmetz 3 days ago [-]
Safari isn't exactly non-major. By the way, it seems like WebKit Embedded (~resource-efficient Linux port) has regained some steam due to Igalia's work over the last two years or so.
zarzavat 3 days ago [-]
Brave still supports UBo though. How long they can maintain that support is an open question.
stavros 3 days ago [-]
Non-Chrome Chromium browsers should band together and support request blocking for Mv3 at this point. It would be one compelling feature that differentiates them from Chrome.
lxgr 3 days ago [-]
A single engine/implementation deprecated the feature. I don’t think this is particularly misleading in a hacker news context.
topranks 3 days ago [-]
Every major browser except Firefox is Chrome
jim33442 3 days ago [-]
or Safari
pixxel 3 days ago [-]
[dead]
3 days ago [-]
inquirerGeneral 3 days ago [-]
[dead]
gib444 3 days ago [-]
Am I so jaded that I read "we have no plans to" as "we likely will" ?
devsda 3 days ago [-]
I hope this isn't a precursor to removing support for other AdBlock addons(MV2) citing native availability of an AdBlock engine and then gradually shift to acceptable ads etc.
OsrsNeedsf2P 3 days ago [-]
The day Firefox drops MV2 is the day I find a new browser. We're already at <1% usershare, it's not like there's safety in numbers here
lxgr 3 days ago [-]
What exactly is your gripe with MV3?
Many people seem to treat it synonymously with "no more procedural request blocking", but that's not a thing Mozilla ever did:
> For Manifest V3 extensions, Chrome no longer supports the "webRequestBlocking" permission (except for policy-installed extensions). Instead, the "webRequest" and "webRequestAuthProvider" permissions enable you to supply credentials asynchronously. Firefox continues to support "webRequestBlocking" in Manifest V3 and provides "webRequestAuthProvider" to offer cross-browser compatibility.
The permission model also seems much more reasonable (less permissions have to be requested upfront at install time) than MV2, so I actually hope Firefox does deprecate it at some point.
Firefox's MV3 implementation doesn't remove the original netRequest API though IIRC.
crazygringo 3 days ago [-]
But MV3 supports uBlock Origin Lite.
Which, in my experience, blocks ads just as well, but also lets pages load significantly faster.
MV3 supports uBlock.
brycewray 3 days ago [-]
Just as one example: Chrome + uBOL on Reddit will show you plenty of "Sponsored" stuff. You can use Inspector to find the offending CSS classes and then use `display: none` on them with something like Stylus[0], but not everybody wants to play that whack-a-mole game on the many sites that push uBOL past its blocking capabilities.
Reddit's sponsored posts are blocked by default in uBOL when using _optimal_ (default) or _complete_ mode.
brycewray 3 days ago [-]
I will recheck my uBOL settings, then, sir. Thank you for your work!
EDIT: I did have it set to `Complete,` so perhaps I have something else going on.
gorhill 3 days ago [-]
Best is to report the issue using the "Report an issue" in the popup panel while on Reddit site. There could be other issues causing this, for instance if you didn't grant uBOL the permission to inject scripts on the site. Depending on which browser/os the issue occurs, we should be able to narrow down potential causes.
theturtletalks 3 days ago [-]
As the creator of UBO, what are your thoughts on uBO vs uBOL? Do you think Firefox’s MV3 will be an issue down the line?
brycewray 3 days ago [-]
> There could be other issues causing this, for instance if you didn't grant uBOL the permission to inject scripts on the site.
This list only applies to Chrome, so it's completely irrelevant when talking about Firefox.
2 days ago [-]
Moldoteck 3 days ago [-]
It supports limited ublock functionality, not all of it, which will gradually be exploited by ad corps like google unless you think those are saints
crazygringo 3 days ago [-]
The point is that it supports everything that currently matters in any substantial way.
Lots of people have been pointing out that ad companies will figure ways out around it. But they really haven't been.
MV3 and UBOL have been in wide usage for about a year and a half now. And nothing has been changing. Adblocking continues to be great.
The fact of the matter is, the ad block lists were getting so large and the JavaScript functionality was slow and it was significantly impacting page load times. UBOL uses vastly more efficient compiled code that is part of the browser and is just a far better ad blocking experience altogether.
But I guess that just doesn't fit the narrative that people want to believe, where MV3 was part of a big evil plan.
Moldoteck 2 days ago [-]
the narrative that google, largest ad company proposed MV3 which limits current functionality of UBO so that UBO Lite can be implemented? Yeah, such a narrative... It's clear google is our buddy here who will never squeeze and exploit any option to push more intrusive and targeted ads and we should totally trust it
lxgr 3 days ago [-]
It supports everything on Firefox on MV3, but not on Chrome.
ragall 3 days ago [-]
Most definitely not as well.
crazygringo 3 days ago [-]
It most definitely is as well. In fact it's better because you don't have the slower page loading times anymore.
And everyone I know who used UBO and switched to UBOL has had no complaints about ads not being blocked.
Whereas people who don't actually use it love to continue to insist that it's this degraded experience that doesn't work as well. And usually when one of them comes up with an example of some ad not being blocked, it turns out because they hadn't configured UBOL to use complete blocking mode.
If Lite is working for you then good. If you want fuller capability then you want uBlock Origin in Firefox.
ragall 3 days ago [-]
> And everyone I know
Everyone who you know is irrelevant. I've tested and see that ads pass through, and tracking passes through with uBo light on Chrome. I can see it in the browser trace, and I can see it in DNS logs.
crazygringo 3 days ago [-]
Your test is irrelevant. There is always going to be some tiny percentage of ads that passed through with any ad blocker. So the fact that you have seen ads passed through with it doesn't actually mean anything.
The only thing that means anything is how well it operates with your average browsing on a daily basis. And it's such a popular extension because it does an amazing job at blocking ads. That's just a fact. The only people who seem to claim otherwise appear to be the ones with an ideological axe to grind. It's silly.
ragall 2 days ago [-]
Your opinion is nothingness. I've tested on the same page that uBo on Firefox blocks more than Chrome, and especially it blocks hidden tracking. That's the reality. All else is irrelevant.
crazygringo 2 days ago [-]
Your one-page test is "nothingness." The internet does not consist of one page.
And other things are relevant, like resource usage.
ragall 2 days ago [-]
[flagged]
crazygringo 1 days ago [-]
Your comment is inappropriate. Please read the guidelines.
> Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.
> Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.
So you’re familiar with everybody’s web browsing? Impressive!
Hizonner 3 days ago [-]
Reading comprehension is the defining feature of a good commenter.
jim33442 3 days ago [-]
Look I'm not an expert in web browsers, but I defer to those extension authors who definitely are. There's some reason uBO doesn't work well in MV3 even though they tried. Whatever technical explanation there is for why MV3 is fine, there's some caveat not mentioned.
lxgr 3 days ago [-]
That’s because Chrome removed an important API in their MV3 implementation, not because the MV3 specification mandates said removal.
ximm 3 days ago [-]
Firefox supports webRequestBlocking with MV3, so even if they fully remove support for MV2, ad blocking is still available.
TiredOfLife 3 days ago [-]
Mozilla refused to approve MV3 version of uBlock Origin
lxgr 3 days ago [-]
That's a problem, but an almost completely orthogonal one to MV2 being deprecated.
the_gipsy 3 days ago [-]
I wouldn't say completely orthogonal.
Narushia 3 days ago [-]
That's probably why they qualified it with 'almost'.
the_gipsy 3 days ago [-]
I would say "almost orthogonal".
Perepiska 1 days ago [-]
Like "partially pregnant" :)
lxgr 24 hours ago [-]
How are correlation or orthogonality binary conditions? Things can be almost (but not entirely) unrelated to other things as well.
I'd be genuinely curious what you could switch to that still has MV2 because, AFAIK, Firefox is the last holdout.
Brave still allows you to install uBlock & some other extensions that should technically not be supported under MV3, but they still ship it with support for those.
Just heard about Helium browser, which is just dechromium + uBlock and it's still beta.
feverzsj 3 days ago [-]
Helium still supports MV2, because the upstream hasn't removed related code. They basically turn on/off some macros to enable MV2 again. And this won't last long for sure.
cookiengineer 3 days ago [-]
> I'd be genuinely curious what you could switch to that still has MV2 because, AFAIK, Firefox is the last holdout.
My last hope is ladybird right now, I don't use Firefox or Chrome as my main browsers anymore, and use them only within temporary sandboxes. Without history, without cookies, without logins for the most part.
pogue 3 days ago [-]
You use ladybird as your primary web browser? And it works?
cookiengineer 3 days ago [-]
For the most part, it doesn't. It's not a consumer ready browser, but a pretty nice little rendering engine. If you use ladybird as bindings, it's a bit unstable right now because they are refactoring a lot of parts in the codebase.
I built my own tools on top of it, mostly to use internet websites and selfhosted kiwix archives with my local agentic env.
I guess what I am saying is that I don't have a primary browser anymore. Not a browser where I just can trust it that it doesn't do shit with my data. Being able to selfhost kiwix is a superb internet experience if you build your own search dashboard for it, I can fully recommend it.
Have to merge my things upstream with ZIMdex when I have the time (probably around June).
It seems to me that --unless you really, strictly compartimentalize your browser usage--, using multiple browsers will only supply your data to more parties.
el_io 3 days ago [-]
Ladybird supports MV2? I had no idea they have extensions.
laserbeam 3 days ago [-]
Ladybird is many years away from being usable by a casual human. The hope is it turns out to be a great browser eventually.
Zardoz84 3 days ago [-]
[flagged]
cookiengineer 3 days ago [-]
> Good luck with the main developer being in the alt right.
Sources? I can't find anything on that via google/ddg (Germany)
Oof indeed. Now I know that Kling is indeed open towards some alt right positions, but I really wouldn't call him a fascist for that. Conservative probably, but conflating conservative positions with fascism is probably not helpful in the fight against the real fascists.
But also oof to .. some other items there from the blog. Apparently rsync is now banned from the list of acceptable software, because they do not ban LLM's completely?
Sounds like you will never run out of problems, with a ideology like this.
imtringued 3 days ago [-]
Isn't this blog post more evidence that drewdevault became an extreme leftist?
I mean he's basically going off a checklist of leftist stereotypes here and trying to check as many of them as possible.
Meanwhile the other guy he's criticising is literally just a standard right-wing conservative, not far right, not alt right, just the regular kind. The far right I've seen is basically beyond the idea of being merely anti-immigration, they demand ICE style mass deportations immediately and in every country.
If both of them met in a bar through sheer coincidence, I'd expect drewdevault to start the fight.
HauntingPin 3 days ago [-]
Sorry, but painting these people as "standard right-wing" is just evidence for the shifting of the Overton window further to the right. White replacement theory and expressing support for an alt-right ideologue who manipulated people with bad faith, dishonest and downright monstrous arguments is not "standard right-wing".
Charlie Kirk was for mass deportation. He didn't even hide it. He said it openly. How do you come off saying that these people aren't far-right or alt-right when they are unabashedly so?
lukan 3 days ago [-]
Well, the overtone window certainly changed, but ... I judge a bit different here.
"expressing support for an alt-right ideologue"
This is what Kling actually said:
"RIP Charlie Kirk
I hope many more debate nerds carry on his quest to engage young people with words, not fists."
I also support fighting with words, not fists. I do not support his ideology at all and would have loved to debate him openly, but the concept of murdering someone for having the wrong opinion is disturbing to me, so I agree with Kling here.
And about "white replacement"
"'White males are actively discriminated against in tech.
It’s an open secret of Silicon Valley.'
One of the last meetings I attended before leaving Apple (in 2017) was management asking us to “keep the corporate diversity targets in mind” when interviewing potential new hires.
The phrasing was careful, but the implication was pretty clear.
I knew in my heart this wasn’t wholesome, but I was too scared to rock the boat at the time."
He said whites were discriminated for being white. Not replaced. That is not really the same to me.
krapp 3 days ago [-]
>White replacement theory and expressing support for an alt-right ideologue who manipulated people with bad faith, dishonest and downright monstrous arguments is not "standard right-wing".
It is now. That's what the shifting of the Overton Window and normalization of right-wing ideology does. These aren't fringe beliefs anymore, they're commonly held, mainstream right-wing views. They're policy within the US government. Charlie Kirk was treated as a martyr and a hero by the administration. He was treated with more dignity and respect than war veterans. The DHS posts memes about mass deportation.
The "far right" and "alt-right" no longer exist. Those labels are no longer useful and no longer describe reality.
throwawaypath 15 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
throwawaypath 3 days ago [-]
[flagged]
cookiengineer 3 days ago [-]
> Linking a pedo-leftist schizophrenic's blog post as "proof" does the complete opposite of supporting the claim.
Aren't fascists the ones that want you to correct your language?
abc123abc123 3 days ago [-]
[flagged]
Pay08 3 days ago [-]
I don't know if Edge supports MV2, but they do have uBlock available and it works just as well as on Firefox.
skeeter2020 3 days ago [-]
It may look like it works "just as well" but that's not true. There are numerous things that impact performance and effectiveness that are not possible with chromium-based browsers, or at least have to be done inefficiently, including
* pre-fetching
* html filtering
* use of WebAssembly
* data compression and private/incognito mode
Pay08 3 days ago [-]
Edge has its own extension API in addition to the Chromium one, it's possible that they've managed to mitigate or eliminate these problems.
raudette 3 days ago [-]
Safari still supports MV2
nuker 3 days ago [-]
> Firefox is the last holdout.
Nope, FF is being infiltrated by adtech for last year or two. Last holdout is Safari now :)
ThePowerOfFuet 3 days ago [-]
You cannot install uBlock Origin on Safari.
16bitvoid 3 days ago [-]
The Lite version, same as on Chrome, is actually available for Safari. Still not as good as the full one on Firefox though.
what's the diff between lite and full? i dont even remember what i use on safari, wipr or something. mostly use firefox but sometimes i casually just let things launch in safari
Why do people say crap like this... Safari was the first browser to completely remove mv2. From all the major browsers Safari has the worse adblocking experience and support for adblocking extensions...
nuker 3 days ago [-]
> Why do people say crap like this...
1. Third-party cookie blocking by default — 2003 (Safari 1.0); industry first.
2. Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP), using on-device machine learning to identify and limit cross-site trackers — 2017; industry first.
3. Storage Access API prompts for embedded third-party content (e.g., social login widgets) — 2018 (ITP 2.0); industry first (co-developed by WebKit, later adopted as a web standard).
4. Full third-party cookie blocking (no exceptions) — 2020 (ITP in Safari 13.1); industry first for a major browser.
potatoproduct 3 days ago [-]
Apple only does things to progress their own business model. Apple failed at becoming an ad business so they pivoted to subscriptions and app revenue. Now they are building an ad business. Just look at their ad revenue.
nottorp 3 days ago [-]
That's what the marketing department says.
Ad/tracking blocking is one of the things that can only be trusted if it's open source, i.e. uBlock Origin.
By the way, does this Adblock Engine actually block trackers? Or it just stops the ads from displaying?
saagarjha 3 days ago [-]
ITP is mostly part of WebKit and open source.
globalnode 3 days ago [-]
If Raymond Hill says blocking doesnt work anymore, ill use... umm... Lynx?
zephyreon 3 days ago [-]
Could definitely be writing on the wall that MV2 support will be deprecated in the future but imo not necessarily a bad thing if it’s not actively developed anyways. Maintaining both MV2 & MV3 support isn’t easily sustainable long term when you factor in the need to prioritize other features.
That said, if this is writing on the wall I’d hope they’ll listen to the community this time and allow the engine to be extended / make it such that a block all ads feature always exists. I’m cautiously optimistic given Mozilla’s track record just over the past year-ish. They have released some great new features that help bring Firefox closer to feature parity with other browsers.
I am a Firefox hopeful and recently switched back to using it as my daily driver when Arc went belly up (but mainly for uBlock Origin support).
charleslmunger 3 days ago [-]
>Maintaining both MV2 & MV3 support isn’t easily sustainable long term when you factor in the need to prioritize other features.
There is no feature Firefox provides that is more differentiating than ublock origin. As long as pages load and security issues are patched it is the reason to choose Firefox as a browser. What would they prioritize over it?
lxgr 3 days ago [-]
And there's nothing in MV2 that uBlock Origin needs that doesn't exist in MV3 on Firefox, unlike Chrome. This issue is completely overblown.
curt15 3 days ago [-]
Are you disputing uBlock Origin's list of MV3-incompatible capabilities [1]?
That list contains issues with the APIs that Chrome exposes via MV3. Firefox still supports APIs that Chrome removed.
lxgr 24 hours ago [-]
Not really, but this FAQ, like almost all articles published on MV3, conflates MV3 the specification with Chrome's MV3 implementation. (FWIW, I'm almost certain that this is either due to sloppy/imprecise writing or intentional, with the authors not wanting to confuse users already appropriately riled up by equally imprecise reporting on MV3. They definitely know the difference.)
In any case, for better or worse, when people say MV3, they now usually mean "Chrome's MV3 implementation", which obviously never applies to Firefox.
ragall 3 days ago [-]
That's utter bullshit. The author of uBlock Origin has posted a long list of capabilities that declarativeNetRequest does not support.
tyushk 3 days ago [-]
Unlike Chrome, Firefox did not remove the older API.
ragall 3 days ago [-]
What's this supposed to mean ? OP was saying that MV3 is feature-equivalent to MV2 and would like to see MV2 support removed from Firefox just as it was from Chrome. I replied pointing out that's utterly false.
lxgr 3 days ago [-]
MV2 and MV3 are feature equivalent on Firefox when it comes to request blocking.
zephyreon 3 days ago [-]
I’d like to see more investment in their new profile manager. It feels pretty barebones at the moment. Arc had the ability to link profiles to “spaces” and you could easily switch between them without opening a new window. It was very nice to so easily swap between personal, work, & side business.
collabs 3 days ago [-]
The multi user containers are also very nice.
gawa 3 days ago [-]
And to go one step further, for achieving a profile-per-firefox-window workflow, I suggest to have a look at the underrated extension Sticky Window Containers [0]
While far from being perfect, I find it good enough for keeping things separated, especially when using a desktop/workspace workflow. For example, in workspace/desktop 2 I have a Firefox window opened with the first tab set to "container A", so hitting ctrl-t there opens new tabs with the same container "A", so I'm logged-in for all projects A. In another Firefox window in workspace 3 I work with "business project B" tabs (where I'm logged into different atlassian, github, cloud, gmail, ...)
Then with a Window Manager like i3wm or Sway I set keybinds to jump directly to the window (and workspace), using the mark feature [1]
It's also possible to open websites directly in specific containers so it's flexible. For example on my desktop 8 I have all my AI webchats in "wherever my company pay for it" tabs: `firefox --new-window 'ext+container:name=loggedInPersonnal&url=https://chat.mistral.ai' 'ext+container:name=loggedInBusinessA&url=https://chatgpt.com' 'ext+container:name=loggedInBusinessB&url=https://gemini.google.com' 'ext+container:name=loggedInBusinessB&url=https://claude.ai'`
It's also the only way I found to keep opened multiple chat apps (Teams, Slack, Discord, ...). The alternative electron apps are as resource-hungry, and in my experience never handled multiple accounts well (especially Teams).
Why does everything have to be "actively developed"? Sometimes a program is just done. Better not touch it. I actually do downgrade packages when "actively developing" causes regressions. Not curl or anything sensitive like that, but local programs definately yes.
In case of the extension manifest, that's probably layered on top of the JS engine which does get attention and scrutiny. It's not like an API needs to be updated. If you'd always do that, nothing would ever be interoperable and we'd likely have a hard time trying to communicate.
Dylan16807 3 days ago [-]
> Maintaining both MV2 & MV3 support isn’t easily sustainable long term when you factor in the need to prioritize other features.
The feature that better adblockers need is one callback that's similar to one that's still in V3. It's not difficult to keep if it's your own codebase.
striking 3 days ago [-]
Try Zen! Firefox fork with Arc-like UX.
pjjpo 3 days ago [-]
Zen is great and still mostly Firefox. I use standard Firefox on Android and everything syncs without hassle. The experience is so much better that personally cannot imagine using Chromium anymore. Of course I do wonder if the entire Firefox ecosystem is sustainable long-term funding wise.
userbinator 3 days ago [-]
As long as MITM proxies still work (which is something that Enterprise customers demand --- even the notoriously-closed Chrome needs to), it will always be possible to filter pages outside of any browser. I've been using one for over 2 decades and it works in any browser.
However, I am also concerned that this is an "embrace extend extinguish" move.
6ak74rfy 3 days ago [-]
Tell me more, what's your setup.
I use uBlock Origin in Firefox and network ad blocker. Wondering what other options are there.
spockz 3 days ago [-]
In general, install a proxy which has its own certificate, resign every tls session with those keys, add the certificate of the proxy as a trusted certificate on your device.
I’m not familiar with off the shelf solutions for this that have ad blocking built in. Also ads are injected by JS so you need a mechanism to detect that.
More and more ads are now served from the same domain as the site making it harder to distinguish them from real content.
Bender 2 days ago [-]
The open source solution is to configure the latest Squid proxy as a Squid SSL Bump proxy. There are a handful of sites it will not work with due to them still using public key pinning but its a tiny list. I do not have it handy at the moment.
Squid supports ACL's that can block URL patterns, domains, IP addresses, file extensions, mime types and much more.
Here [1] is an out of date example. There are probably better and more up to date examples. Some examples are based off Squid V3 as some distros still ship with that but Squid 6 added more flexibility around chaining options SOCKS options and such.
ZScaler Internet Access will do it with the right blocking configurations (eg, blocking "Advertising" groups).
But then you're using ZScaler and that just feels all nice and icky.
lxgr 3 days ago [-]
What would prevent sites from just injecting ads into their content server-side? You'll always need both element and request blocking.
ajb 3 days ago [-]
That's why GP wrote MITM, not just network blocking. MITM implies the middlebox is trusted by the browser in which it has installed a certificate, so can see and modify content.
lxgr 2 days ago [-]
Hm, you mean basically to edit all HTML, CSS etc. just in time? This seems significantly harder (concepts spread over files being loaded in parallel or being partially cached etc) than to do it in the browser once everything is loaded.
Steve6 3 days ago [-]
I migrated from Firefox to Brave years ago, and it's been incredible. It's easy to turn off the crypto stuff and turn on more advanced privacy protection. Then it's just a fast browser with awesome adblocking.
My favorite recent feature has been Brave Scriptlets, which are just little javascript functions you can run on specific sites. I've replaced most of the add ons I used with small scripts. Pretty nice.
I would prefer an engine not built on Chromium... but I've lost faith in Mozilla. I'm glad that Firefox added a built in adblock engine, but it seems too late too late. Brave has been awesome, and being Chromium based gives them time to keep working on stuff that matters.
abdullahkhalids 3 days ago [-]
The Greasemonkey Firefox addon that allows you to run site specific JS has been around for two decades [1].
It certainly is great to have first-party support for such a simple feature. It doesn't have to support the whole GM_ API
nananana9 3 days ago [-]
"The first thing you have to do is to turn off the cryptocurrency stuff."
Fantastic first impression. I'm good, thanks.
NoboruWataya 3 days ago [-]
Can you imagine the absolute boiling rage in these comments if Firefox implemented the same kind of opt-out "crypto stuff".
homebrewer 3 days ago [-]
It is opt-in. The amount of FUD in these threads is unbelievable, both against Mozilla, Brave, or anything else really.
wallst07 3 days ago [-]
There is a single toggle to turn this off, if it makes people rage so much for something you get for free (I realize not free beer/freedom) then I don't know what else to say.
To be clear, the toggle is to turn off the 'wallet' feature that isn't even enabled until you use it. So you are just disabling seeing the thing at all... with a simple toggle.
silver_silver 3 days ago [-]
You are missing the forest for the trees my friend
nananana9 3 days ago [-]
I also have to disable the "acceptable ads", with a simple toggle.
And the AI bullshit from their builtin search engine, I'd guess that too is a simple toggle.
Without googling, I'd put good money that there's a thing called "Brave VPN" in the homepage by default, and I have to disable that with a simple toggle.
In two years I may have to disable the crypto-miner, still with a simple toggle, of course, very user convenient.
This is the entire industry in a nutshell. Everyone, from every direction, at all times, is trying to squeeze you for a few cents with antagonistic "features" enabled by default. I have very little patience for this.
"But it's a simple click." Have some self respect, we can do better than this.
ndisn 3 days ago [-]
Correct. You have to spend a while in settings disabling stuff.
The browser does not re-enable the things you have disabled, but they keep implementing new stuff that you have to disable too.
It’s annoying, although that’s how most software works nowadays (and I include Firefox unfortunately). You have to disable a lot of stuff to make it usable.
aucisson_masque 3 days ago [-]
Lol. That's actually pretty bad for a web browser.
vachina 3 days ago [-]
I don’t see how supporting Chromium is better than not supporting an alternate rendering engine. Firefox for the end-user is fantastic.
eduction 3 days ago [-]
People build on chromium for the same reason they build on Linux. I’d personally prefer if they built on illumos or bsd but at a certain point people would rather spend their innovation budget higher up the stack and benefit from the platform that has the most open source engineers working on it.
MarsIronPI 3 days ago [-]
Except it turns out that it's a good thing that the alternative implementations exist. Standards are meaningless if there's only one implementer.
dlcarrier 3 days ago [-]
It's too bad that Mozilla does everything they can to alienate its users, with failed attempts to attract a different but non-existent new user-base. Without them, and with Safari being run by a company that likes to tie its software to its hardware, there's pretty much no reasonable non-Chrome-based web browsers, so it's the new Internet Explorer, and many web pages only work on it, because no one tests their web pages on anything else.
jeroenhd 3 days ago [-]
People online rant about Firefox all the time for adding stuff Google and Microsoft shoved into their Chromium forks a few years ago, but when they do it the response is always "well what did you expect from <x>" while when Mozilla does it, the response is "this is an outrage, I'm switching to <some browser that already has the shitty feature anyway>".
I don't think there is or ever will be a "new internet explorer". If your page works in Chrome, there's a 99% chance it'll work in Firefox and Safari. Web standards have been unified to the point painting and layout algorithms are now part of the spec. It's why Ladybird managed to get a decently compatible engine in an extremely short time frame.
Latty 3 days ago [-]
And people treat Mozilla like the devil when while they make mistakes, they routinely fix them too. E.g: when people had concerns about the AI stuff, they added a general opt out with a feature-by-feature opt-in.
To make an obviously unproven and not universal observation: I feel like it's people who just like the google integration in Chrome and want an excuse to run it, even though they feel like they should use Firefox because it's more compatible with their world view, so they latch onto any issues Firefox has to go "see, they are all the same anyway", and then just repeat vague "Mozilla sucks" stuff.
swed420 3 days ago [-]
> I feel like it's people who just like the google integration in Chrome and want an excuse to run it, even though they feel like they should use Firefox because it's more compatible with their world view
What world view is this? Considering that Mozilla is a puppet Google basically owns if you look at where the funding comes from.
unethical_ban 3 days ago [-]
I simply have no idea why people hate on Firefox so much. I mean it, it feels like an outlet for frustration toward an org people think might listen.
search_facility 3 days ago [-]
With current standartization the issue of "page not working on non-Chrome browser" is non-existent. Thanks god nowadays everything (pages) work everywhere in very similar manner, I am using chrome, firefox, safary and opera and have zero problems last 5+ years. Old days are gone.
PufPufPuf 3 days ago [-]
So like... Google Chrome with adblocker and Tampermonkey bundled? Just need to disable the cryptocurrency stuff? You don't really make it sound good.
jim33442 3 days ago [-]
What's the alternative if you want full ad-blocking in a Chromium browser? I use Firefox normally and wouldn't trust Brave, but there are some sites FF doesn't work with, so it's understandable why some people wouldn't use it.
PufPufPuf 2 days ago [-]
What doesn't work with Firefox?
jim33442 17 hours ago [-]
I don't remember, it's usually a random poorly-made site like the DMV or a budget airline. Reddit used to have issues but not anymore.
Even better now that they have a paid offering with all that crap stripped out (Brave Origin) which is free on Linux.
pogue 3 days ago [-]
Everyone has made these Brave debloat tools that basically do the same thing as their ridiculous Origin offering.
To sell for $60 a web browser that technically has all the features removed is a pretty goofy move.
topspin 3 days ago [-]
> a pretty goofy move
I'm doing a goofy thing and buying it, despite knowing I can debloat Brave, because I already do that. I didn't know this existed till I read this thread. I've been benefitting from Brave for many years now; it's great that they've provided a way to pay for this without dealing with the crypto stuff, and I'm extremely happy to do so, because they deserve some of my money.
chappi42 3 days ago [-]
I'll also pay and support their work to provide a really good browser (which needed a bit debloating).
esperent 3 days ago [-]
That's such a weird reaction. There's constantly, for years, people here asking for Firefox to just start offering a paid version to get away from needing support from Google. And yet when someone actually does that apparently it's goofy and we should just be manually stripping that out without paying.
If you can't afford it or don't want to pay, fine. But why are you trying to influence other people to do that by labelling it "goofy"?
How would you strip those things out mobile, by the way?
cr125rider 3 days ago [-]
Eh that’s a common business model. Pay to get the ads removed is basically the same thing.
Just watched it. Brave Origin seems like a superior product in every single way.
I don't trust Brave though and don't want to use chromium.
Zardoz84 3 days ago [-]
uBlock Origin was and is the BEST adblock. And it was one of the fist suggested add-ons when you get in the add-ons page. It should have been integrated.
armada651 3 days ago [-]
> It's easy to turn off the crypto stuff
I'm living under a rock, but my first thought was that you turned off TLS.
If your mind goes to TLS when you read crypto, you surely do live under a rock ... in bliss.
devsda 3 days ago [-]
As a developer, personally I would be worried if that wasn't my first thought when someone uses browser and crypto together :D
Markoff 3 days ago [-]
Why not Cromite (or Ultimatum, Helium)? Hard to understand why someone reading HN use browser without extensions support.
charcircuit 3 days ago [-]
Brave has extensions support. You can get them from the regular chrome store for them.
Markoff 2 days ago [-]
not on phone
even less reason to use it on desktop
Daedren 3 days ago [-]
I don't think the parent poster is talking about Android.
jasonvorhe 3 days ago [-]
Do any of them support sync ootb, selfhosted?
trueno 3 days ago [-]
i've never known what to think about brave because it was being pitched by cryptocurrency bros so i've always ignored its existence. who are these guys and is it genuinely good software?
rpdillon 3 days ago [-]
Brave has probably the most comprehensive and transparent page of any browser available about what features it supports, how it makes money, and who is behind it.
Brave being led by an absolute asshole does indeed make it less palatable as a main browser to me. It's on the list, right after the crypto stuff and the full page ads on the new tab screen that are enabled by default.
It's still the best Chromelike that's easily available, but I'm not switching my default any time soon.
eknkc 3 days ago [-]
I mean he also invented the fucking JavaScript.
At that rate one needs to abolish all modern technology and go tribal. Cause I’m certain my toothbrush runs JavaScript.
Latty 3 days ago [-]
There is an obvious difference between someone who is still actively involved in running something and working on it, profiting from it's success in the market, and using something someone invented but is no longer leading development of or profiting from.
It's normal and reasonable to discover someone who makes bad decisions is running something and decide that makes using it a higher risk for you. Sometimes you don't have a choice, but sometimes you do.
MarsIronPI 3 days ago [-]
People who make social decisions you don't like don't always make technical decisions you don't like. I can't stand JWZ, but XScreenSaver is a good piece of software. I wouldn't trust him in any part of government, but I would run XScreenSaver on my computer.
wallst07 3 days ago [-]
> so you're already half a fascist for using Brave,
Are you really calling the 100M monthly brave users half fascist? Can you explain more how you reach this conclusion, specifically relative to every other product you judge people for using?
daneel_w 3 days ago [-]
OP was making a sarcastic joke, but nobody bothers reading the second paragraph to understand that.
3 days ago [-]
jasonvorhe 3 days ago [-]
Read my comment again and you'll have your answer.
Come on.
pixxel 3 days ago [-]
[dead]
gbil 3 days ago [-]
If this means that they release a iOS version with the same Adblock features as brave then I’m sold.
I use essentially all OSs and I want a browser with basic features like adblocking/custom filters on all the platforms and currently Firefox fails this on iOS devices.
Still I believe the Firefox sync is much more robust than eg. Brave one , among various platforms.
But then I will also need Firefox to fix keyboard shortcuts on Android which they had until the Fenix rebase some years ago and still haven’t fixed since
bartvk 3 days ago [-]
Same, I'd love for the iOS version to be a little more developed. Especially support for plugins for dark mode and stuff. Safari for iOS does.
Pay08 3 days ago [-]
Doesn't iOS restrict all browsers to using WebKit?
Hizonner 3 days ago [-]
Yep, but your typical Apple user is happy to blame everybody but themselves and Apple.
ihutgckmig 3 days ago [-]
Only because your typical non-Apple user is almost always the one trying to enforce non-Apple standards onto Apple hardware and software.
gmokki 2 days ago [-]
Not in EU anymore
mmooss 3 days ago [-]
What is the use case for keyboard shortcuts on handheld devices?
On desktops/laptops, keyboard shortcuts save reaching for a mouse, aiming (on the relativley large screen), and clicking. On handhelds, I don't think it's faster to use a shortcut than to simply tap something an inch away.
Also, on handhelds, the keyboard blocks a significant part of the screen. And keyboard shortcuts typically use accelerator keys, which are hard to use on handhelds.
Do you use Android with a physical keyboard?
gbil 3 days ago [-]
I use an Android tablet with detachable keyboard and works great also with Samsung DEX if you want something more for basic multitasking and there i want the shortcuts, I actually used it a lot, before firefox switched to Fenix base, for navigating tabs, opening closing them really really smooth but then....
CapricornNoble 3 days ago [-]
>What is the use case for keyboard shortcuts on handheld devices?
As someone who bought an HTC Dream / Android G1 when it was new, and wishes more handhelds had a similar form factor, this comment depresses me.
Back when Android had an actually pretty and unique UI. Good times.
JoshTriplett 3 days ago [-]
I have a physical keyboard for my foldable. Works great, except that keyboard shortcuts don't typically work as expected.
catlikesshrimp 3 days ago [-]
Yes, I do, now on then. I started using a keyboard on handhelds with my palm m100, so I am not in the mayority.
gbear605 3 days ago [-]
Could be referring to a physical keyboard attached to an iPad
2 days ago [-]
MrAlex94 3 days ago [-]
I think people are reading into this too much - I don’t think Mozilla would ever implement an actual full spectrum ad blocker (although who knows with the new direction Firefox is headed), this will likely be used as an improvement/replacement for the current tracking protection implementation.
Weirdly enough, the same time this was added to Geckko is when I started implementing the adblock-rs library for Waterfox - I stumbled across the bindings by accident when using searchfox on the main branch instead of esr140! Quite the coincidence doing it at the same time.
Markoff 3 days ago [-]
For anyone looking for Android alternative:
Cromite - Chromium, MV2 extensions, good new tab page with 4x4 shortcuts (2x4 pinnable) with direct access to bookmarks
Ultimatum - Chromium, MV2 extensions, not so good new tab page similar to original Chrome with only like 4 shortcuts without swiping, limitec customization, no password manager AFAIR
Former Kiwi Browser, then for about year IceRaven (Firefox) user up until recently when they fckd up already bad illogical UI and made it even worse, which was the last drop to again give up on this users hating browser (will never forget users begged for 10 years so dear devs will implement simple pull down to refresh).
On desktop the recommendation is much easier:
Vivaldi - Chromium, MV2, no AI, amazing customization compared to primitive Brave, faster than FF
Oh, I've always used Fennec; does the main Firefox Android build not support extensions?
JoshTriplett 3 days ago [-]
Firefox for Android supports extensions just fine. I use Firefox with uBlock Origin as my only browser on both mobile and desktop, and use Firefox Sync to send tabs between them. I literally disable the preinstalled Chrome on Android.
nirui 3 days ago [-]
Great. Coming just in time when people think the "main stream" browsers are too boring.
I'm actually glad to see Mozilla has grown a little bit "predatorial" if it can bring good to the users. The implementation is polite too, as it lets you know there was an ad been muted.
There's a lot of things that can still be done in the browser space. For example, one-click login even without entering email, easy purchase without the website ever collecting your card number (or other financial detail beyond necessary), etc etc. Ads can also be improved too, by making them not violating nor annoying.
The possibilities are still great, I hope Mozilla can figure out a way to tap into it.
8cvor6j844qw_d6 3 days ago [-]
Open source doing what it's meant to. Brave built a solid engine, Firefox gets to use it. Hoping Firefox maintainers contribute back upstream too, rather than making it a one-way street.
nextaccountic 3 days ago [-]
Does this benefit people that use uBlock Origin?
Maybe uBlock Origin for Firefox could be updated to make use of this
toofy 3 days ago [-]
sounds like it just uses ublocks lists.
though it doesn’t seem to work as well as ublock, the ad slots are still there with just the ad missing so there’s a giant ugly blank spot.
SadTrombone 3 days ago [-]
I'd imagine that's the reason it's not enabled by default, they're not finished fully implementing it in Firefox yet.
I recently switched from Android to iOS... no comment except all of the browsers just being a wrapper for Safari is really limiting. I love Firefox and still use it on desktop but I couldn't handle it without extensions on mobile and switched to Brave. Somehow Brave on iOS can do content blocking really well. Will this change make it to the iOS version? I would love to switch back to Firefox where all my stuff is synced.
elros 3 days ago [-]
I stopped paying attention when the major browsers started to act somewhat against the interests of ad-blocking add-ons, some years ago.
Would anyone who has kept up let me know what would be the 2026 "industry standard" in terms of an ad-blocking and privacy stack?
I primarily use Chrome on Mac and Safari on iPhone but I'm willing to change browsers for better ad-blocking and privacy.
I would also be interested in solutions that scale beyond a single machine, for when I'm at home (e.g. should I get a little box and use it as an ad blocker between my internet my router and my network or something?)
maleldil 3 days ago [-]
Firefox with uBlock Origin. Nothing else comes close.
the1thatgb 3 days ago [-]
[dead]
emirdw 2 days ago [-]
This reminds me of how powerful client-side processing has become recently.
gnabgib 2 days ago [-]
How has client-side processing (powerful or not) caused Firefox to reuse Brave's Adblock engine?
fishgoesblub 3 days ago [-]
It's surprising, and disappointing that this hasn't happened sooner. A real shame that it took a browser company other than Mozilla to make (In Rust no less!) adblock-rust. I wonder if this could've been a native Firefox feature and selling point years ago if Eich wasn't kicked out.
jasonvorhe 3 days ago [-]
I'm so glad Brave arose from all this overblown mess. What a solid product, one you disable the web3 crap. Using Firefox and derivatives feels like using a Java application on the desktop years ago. Every interaction seems foreign. Meh.
gtrevorjay 3 days ago [-]
This feels like a betrayal of their ousting of Eich in the first place. I can't imagine a world I would do this and be able to look at myself in the mirror.
silisili 3 days ago [-]
Same. The entire company more or less turned on him. Not picking a side, that's your right. But to then start 'borrowing' from someone you refused to work with feels... hypocritical.
Timon3 3 days ago [-]
Brendan Eich didn't personally write the code, and he doesn't benefit from Firefox using it. If anything this hurts him, since Firefox is catching up to an advantage of Brave without investing their own development resources.
No matter from what angle I look at this situation, your complaint makes no sense.
dlcarrier 3 days ago [-]
The whole organization is a huge mess that doesn't really want to accept any management.
prox 3 days ago [-]
They try to make it feel like an “us” browser, but it just comes off as a corp trying to talk cool.
You have to walk the walk too Mozilla! Saying that as a FF for years.
yborg 3 days ago [-]
>"their"
It's an entirely different management team.
Paul-Craft 3 days ago [-]
I can certainly imagine such a world. I don't use Brave because I don't want to support Brendan Eich.
jasonvorhe 3 days ago [-]
If he showed up in the Epstein files I'd stop using Brave. Until then, I'll keep on rolling my eyes whenever someone brings up this stuff from... 2008.
rpdillon 3 days ago [-]
Indeed. I wonder if the folks rejecting Brave have also vetted the political beliefs of everyone that delivers their packages, manufactured their phone, and grown their food.
The injection of politics into absolutely everything is so arbitrary and harmful.
Timon3 3 days ago [-]
Why should they have to vet everyone? If I learn that the people who deliver my packages, manufacture my phones, or grow my food support practices that I deem fundamentally harmful to society, I change my behavior accordingly. Where does this weird idea come from that I have to vet literally everyone for my rejection of Brave to be valid?
> The injection of politics into absolutely everything is so arbitrary and harmful.
Are you referring to Eich, or the people who react to his political choices?
rpdillon 3 days ago [-]
You're probably going to want to take a look at how your smartphone battery is made. You're taking a principled stand on the basis of not using a browser from a company cofounded by a guy that voted differently than you, but it sounds like you're willfully ignoring the child slave labor used to create the device you're using to type that opinion.
Do as you please, but it makes no sense to me, and doesn't strike me a principled at all: it's basically virtue signaling. But then again, I don't view people that hold different political views as my enemy. They're just people I disagree with, and they can still make a great browser, even though we disagree on some things.
Timon3 3 days ago [-]
Sorry, but if you think that the issue is that Brendan Eich "voted differently than" me, you're either not understanding or willfully misrepresenting what this discussion is about.
rpdillon 2 days ago [-]
I'm not sure what you're so upset about. He gave a thousand dollars to a political campaign that was in favor of outlawing gay marriage in California. This is standard political stuff that people can agree or disagree on.
What's being misrepresented?
Timon3 2 days ago [-]
First, I'm pretty sure you know what I'm upset about considering your first comment ignored the donation, even though that's the primary critique levied against him.
Second, it's your subjective view that this "is standard political stuff that people can agree or disagree on", and I very much disagree! Tax policy or similar areas, sure, we can agree or disagree. But keeping basic rights (or even taking them away) from a subset of the population is not "standard political stuff" to me.
Would you say the same if, instead of gay marriage, the issue was interracial marriage? I sincerely hope not, even though certain voices on the right are trying to turn this into "standard political stuff" too these days.
rpdillon 2 days ago [-]
I do view interracial marriage the same way. The answer is very clear to me, but I know it's a constant topic of discussion across the world in different societies, religions, and cultures. Right now there's a debate in my country about whether we should post religious texts on the walls of public schools. We've also regressed in our discussion of women's rights and autonomy with their body. The list is basically endless, and amazingly, people really do have different opinions about this stuff. I mean that seriously. It's easy to imagine that there's one right answer and that you have it. But if I look around at the opinions of 300 million people, there's still 37% in the U.S. that think Trump is doing a good job.
I guess I'm just not willing to write off 40% of society because they disagree on a particular issue that may seem clear as day to me. The most important thing I would like to foster is civility in our discourse with our neighbors, and that has been sacrificed on the altar of dogma to a degree that I cannot condone.
But I'm not absolute in my tolerance. Marriage rights don't trigger me much at all, but genuine human rights abuses like we're seeing in the wars going on, and the rise of fascism in the US are both areas where I would boycott a company (like OnlyOffice, for example).
Tax policy is actually a big part of the driver of fascism, since it entrenches oligarchs and allows consolidation of e.g. the media, and therefore the narrative. But I guess I'd call that standard political stuff, too.
So I guess I'm not exactly sure where I draw the line, but donating a thousand dollars to speak out against gay marriage didn't cross it for me. Yes, I disagree with him. And yes, I still like Brave.
I do appreciate the discussion!
MarsIronPI 3 days ago [-]
What technical difference do the social opinions of the people who write your software make? Genuinely curious.
Timon3 3 days ago [-]
What exactly is a "technical difference", and why is only that relevant? I am more than my interactions with software and companies, just like every other human. Why should I focus on an arbitrary subset of factors when making decisions?
MarsIronPI 3 days ago [-]
Because the technical factors are what you experience when you interact with software written by a company/person?
Timon3 3 days ago [-]
And the non-technical factors are what my friends and loved ones have to experience due to Brendan Eich's choices. So again, why should I ignore them? I'm more than a user of software.
MarsIronPI 3 days ago [-]
Because when we decide on a goal for our technical work and decide on an acceptable code of conduct inside the project, our differences outside the project don't matter to our collaboration within the project. This is a core foundation of the Free Software and Open Source movements. (And it's worrisome to me that it's being eroded.)
My point is that this same setting aside of irrelevant (to the technical aspects) differences should apply to use of software in addition to development of software.
JoshTriplett 3 days ago [-]
> Because when we decide on a goal for our technical work and decide on an acceptable code of conduct inside the project, our differences outside the project don't matter to our collaboration within the project.
That's a choice you are free to make. Other people can and will make different choices. Many people never shared that principle, and instead happily exercised freedom of association to not support or spend time around awful people.
Projects are not some magic boundary in which everything outside is left outside. You can't dump piles of money into hurting your colleagues and expect them to see that as a neutral choice.
Timon3 3 days ago [-]
I'm not working on a project together with Brendan Eich, I'm choosing not to use a product from which he directly profits. I sincerely hope that we both agree that this is a completely normal and rational choice.
MarsIronPI 3 days ago [-]
I think I failed to explain my point: Just like OSS contributors don't have to agree on anything but the goal of the project and how to treat each other while working on it, people shouldn't decide what software to use based on anything but the technical merits of the program.
Also, you don't have to benefit Brendan Eich by using Brave. Turn off the crypto and AFAICT Brave gets no money from you.
Not that I actually recommend Brave: I have no opinions on it. I'm just tired and worried by the attitude of judging software by the non-technical opinions of who wrote it.
JoshTriplett 3 days ago [-]
You have explained your point. You have not understood why people reject it.
> I'm just tired and worried by the attitude of judging software by the non-technical opinions of who wrote it.
And I'm thrilled that it continues to happen more and more.
Timon3 3 days ago [-]
But why? You haven't given an argument. In our capitalist societies, I have two avenues of influencing public life: my vote and my wallet. Rich people like Brendan Eich have a much more impactful vote due to their capital, so the only real avenue I have left is my wallet.
So please explain: why shouldn't I use my wallet to prevent people like Brendan Eich from shaping society against my friends and loved ones? Why should I add to his capital while he's actively trying to make the lives of the people I care about worse?
> Also, you don't have to benefit Brendan Eich by using Brave. Turn off the crypto and AFAICT Brave gets no money from you.
Or I can use Firefox and strengthen the competition.
MarsIronPI 2 days ago [-]
> But why? You haven't given an argument.
Fair enough. My argument is this: as a society we need to live alongside people we disagree with, perhaps even disagree with fundamentally. My ideal is to not judge people's work in one field by their work (or opinions) in another. I think that this way we can get more done in the fields in which we are in agreement. How well do you think the United States would have gone without the Three-fifths Compromise? IMO not well. Do I agree with the slaveholders? No. Do I think the compromise was better than refusing to work with them at all? Yes.
> Why should I add to his capital while he's actively trying to make the lives of the people I care about worse?
Uh, I don't see this as a matter of capital once you turn off BAT crypto stuff. Please enlighten me.
Timon3 2 days ago [-]
Thanks, with that argument I can better understand where you're coming from. But I would counter: compromise on a social level doesn't require all individuals to compromise too. Boycotts etc. have always been a tool for individuals to make their voices heard, and to influence the exact compromise that is reached.
Since we're apparently still trying to find a compromise on this topic, it seems imperative to me that I continue my boycott of Brendan Eich's companies, so the eventual compromise will have better terms for my friends and loved ones. Unless I see definitive proof that this approach is worse for the people close to me, I won't give up the only social tool I have to protect them.
> Uh, I don't see this as a matter of capital once you turn off BAT crypto stuff. Please enlighten me.
First, Brave has lots more monetization avenues than just the crypto stuff. But even if I turned all of that off, I would increase the usage stats of Brave while decreasing the stats of Firefox. Just because Brendan Eich doesn't profit quite as much off of me doesn't mean he gains no profit.
MarsIronPI 1 days ago [-]
I'm glad I could make my position clear and I'm sorry it didn't come out coherently the first time. I'm also glad you're willing to look for compromise.
Out of curiosity, where do you draw the line when it comes to boycotting people or companies?
kulahan 3 days ago [-]
So instead you use, what, Chrome because you want to support Sundar Pichai??
JoshTriplett 3 days ago [-]
You are literally on a thread about Firefox, and you think someone saying they don't use Brave must be using Chrome?
kulahan 3 days ago [-]
You are literally in a thread where 90% of the discussion is surrounding chromium and you think this isn’t a connected idea?
Edit: also crazy that someone who doesn’t want to support the Brave guy would support the browser using the Brave guy’s stuff, but I guess I see lots of chick-fil-a haters shopping in Amazon these days, so who am I to question what’s in vogue?
> Brendan Eich didn't personally write the code, and he doesn't benefit from Firefox using it. If anything this hurts him, since Firefox is catching up to an advantage of Brave without investing their own development resources.
> No matter from what angle I look at this situation, your complaint makes no sense.
Don't assume the positions of people who disagree with you are not thought out. It is a dangerous line of reasoning to go "if only they thought it through for more than five seconds they'd agree with me".
kulahan 2 days ago [-]
Right, it still doesn’t make sense. You’re still using a product created by a company run by the guy you supposedly hate, why would you the decide to use a product that came from them if you wouldn’t use their product in a manner that doesn’t enrich them at all?
Remember, this isn’t based on like, logic or functionality or power or visibility or anything related to the product - it’s based on an emotional view of someone related to the product. It actually doesn’t matter if you could theorize a way that he gave away his core tech just to screw his ow company over. It’s arguably irrelevant to the conversation.
Avoiding just about any company for ethical reasons without avoiding the vast majority is performative or something most people can ignore because it’s insanely personal.
I don’t think you spent more than 5 seconds thinking about this if you thought my only POV was “he’d believe me if he thought about this for a few seconds”. I don’t think it’s obvious, I just think it’s significant.
SadTrombone 3 days ago [-]
If only there was another browser option that was the first word of this thread's title!
kulahan 3 days ago [-]
Well the guy running Brave must’ve had absolutely nothing to do with Brave’s Adblock engine going into Firefox, so I can see why you’re acting so smug. After all, why would the guy involved with Brave be involved with Brave’s thing going somewhere other than Brave? Maybe it’s just random evolution! Excellent point, friend. I can tell you thought it out.
pixxel 3 days ago [-]
[dead]
poisonborz 3 days ago [-]
Why do people still have hope in / clinge on Firefox when projects like Librewolf and Waterfox exists? Yes those are still dependent on Mozilla's upstream changes, but users not trusting them have still options.
jeroenhd 3 days ago [-]
Same reason people want Chromium to stay around: their forks will collapse within months if the free work from upstream stops happening.
Brave, Vivaldi, Opera, Tor Browser, Librewolf, they're all little more than reconfigurations and reskins of Chromium when you look at the entire code base. Yes, the Brave as block engine and Operas power saving modes are non-trivial, but the engine they're built on is the size of an operating system.
lightdot 3 days ago [-]
Librewolf: "This project is a custom and independent version of Firefox, with the primary goals of privacy, security and user freedom."
"Tor Browser is based on Mozilla Firefox ESR (Extended Support Release) but has been heavily modified for use with the Tor network."
Those are direct quotes from their respective web pages. Neither of them has anything to do with Chromium.
jeroenhd 3 days ago [-]
You're right, I edited my sentence to include more examples and forgot to add "or Firefox" for Tor and Librewolf. Sorry about that.
I would edit my comment above to clarify, but the limited edit time window for HN seems to have passed.
lxgr 3 days ago [-]
Maybe they're being realistic about how long these projects could survive without Mozilla doing all the work upstream?
> - We are not, and have no plans to abandon MV2 extensions. This will ensure certain types of add-ons, like ad-blockers, continue to work best in Firefox.
> - Firefox supports several ad-blockers as add-ons on Desktop and Android, including uBlock Origin.
> - We are not bundling Brave's ad-blocking system, we're testing one of their open source Rust components to improve how Firefox processes tracker lists.
https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/1sttf82/firefox_wi...
This is what the official Firefox account had to say when this came up on reddit.
> The browser now ships adblock-rust, Brave's open source Rust-based ad and tracker blocking engine.
It makes sense that Mozilla would test this. The amount of Rust code in Firefox is already at 12%.
https://4e6.github.io/firefox-lang-stats/
Memory-safe code can make a huge difference in trust and software risk. Google has said that a 70% of Chrome vulnerabilities are related to memory (un)safety. This is in the browser with dominant marketshare.
https://www.chromium.org/Home/chromium-security/memory-safet...
Oof, so even people that should really know better are now equating MV3 with "no more ad blocking"? I think at this point the entire thing just needs to be renamed.
(Only Chrome removed the request blocking API from their MV3 implementation; Firefox did not.)
For precision, I should have said "significantly worse ad blocking", not exaggerated as "no more ad blocking".
> However, DeclarativeWebRequest is limited in the number of rules that may be set, and the types of expressions that may be used.[336] Additionally, the prohibition of remotely-hosted code will restrict the ability for filter lists to be updated independently of the extension itself. As the Chrome Web Store review process has an invariable length, filter lists may not be updated in a timely fashion.[337][338]
Is that not true?
It wouldn't be the first time tech gossip rags would take something Mozilla did out of proportion to make outrage videos about that become a hit on Reddit.
When Mozilla added some weird AI thing (I think it was page summaries?) I was asked by people whose algorithm picked up this nonsense whether it'd be better for their privacy to switch back to Chrome or Edge.
Sounds like the issue here is paid social media platforms, where everybody is looking for ways to differentiate their slop from the rest. It would be weird to expect a different outcome.
Many people seem to treat it synonymously with "no more procedural request blocking", but that's not a thing Mozilla ever did:
> For Manifest V3 extensions, Chrome no longer supports the "webRequestBlocking" permission (except for policy-installed extensions). Instead, the "webRequest" and "webRequestAuthProvider" permissions enable you to supply credentials asynchronously. Firefox continues to support "webRequestBlocking" in Manifest V3 and provides "webRequestAuthProvider" to offer cross-browser compatibility.
The permission model also seems much more reasonable (less permissions have to be requested upfront at install time) than MV2, so I actually hope Firefox does deprecate it at some point.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/Web...
https://blog.mozilla.org/en/firefox/firefox-manifest-v3-adbl...
Running an adblocker is the defining feature of the extensions API. ublock origin has 5x as many users as the second-most-popular extension [1]
Supporting ublock isn't just a nice-to-have add-on feature for an extension API, it's literally the only thing most users care about.
[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/search/?promoted=re...
Which, in my experience, blocks ads just as well, but also lets pages load significantly faster.
MV3 supports uBlock.
[0]: https://github.com/openstyles/stylus
EDIT: I did have it set to `Complete,` so perhaps I have something else going on.
Bingo. That was it. Again, thanks.
Not sure about page load, but CPU time is about the same between the two: https://x.com/gorhill/status/1792648742752981086/photo/1
Lots of people have been pointing out that ad companies will figure ways out around it. But they really haven't been.
MV3 and UBOL have been in wide usage for about a year and a half now. And nothing has been changing. Adblocking continues to be great.
The fact of the matter is, the ad block lists were getting so large and the JavaScript functionality was slow and it was significantly impacting page load times. UBOL uses vastly more efficient compiled code that is part of the browser and is just a far better ad blocking experience altogether.
But I guess that just doesn't fit the narrative that people want to believe, where MV3 was part of a big evil plan.
And everyone I know who used UBO and switched to UBOL has had no complaints about ads not being blocked.
Whereas people who don't actually use it love to continue to insist that it's this degraded experience that doesn't work as well. And usually when one of them comes up with an example of some ad not being blocked, it turns out because they hadn't configured UBOL to use complete blocking mode.
No. uBlock Origin works best in Firefox: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-b...
uBlock Origin Lite can't do everything uBlock Origin does: https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home/wiki/Frequently-as...
If Lite is working for you then good. If you want fuller capability then you want uBlock Origin in Firefox.
Everyone who you know is irrelevant. I've tested and see that ads pass through, and tracking passes through with uBo light on Chrome. I can see it in the browser trace, and I can see it in DNS logs.
The only thing that means anything is how well it operates with your average browsing on a daily basis. And it's such a popular extension because it does an amazing job at blocking ads. That's just a fact. The only people who seem to claim otherwise appear to be the ones with an ideological axe to grind. It's silly.
And other things are relevant, like resource usage.
> Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.
> Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home/issues/197#issueco...
Brave still allows you to install uBlock & some other extensions that should technically not be supported under MV3, but they still ship it with support for those.
Just heard about Helium browser, which is just dechromium + uBlock and it's still beta.
My last hope is ladybird right now, I don't use Firefox or Chrome as my main browsers anymore, and use them only within temporary sandboxes. Without history, without cookies, without logins for the most part.
I built my own tools on top of it, mostly to use internet websites and selfhosted kiwix archives with my local agentic env.
I guess what I am saying is that I don't have a primary browser anymore. Not a browser where I just can trust it that it doesn't do shit with my data. Being able to selfhost kiwix is a superb internet experience if you build your own search dashboard for it, I can fully recommend it.
Have to merge my things upstream with ZIMdex when I have the time (probably around June).
[1] WIP https://github.com/cookiengineer/exocomp
[2] WIP https://github.com/cookiengineer/zimdex
Sources? I can't find anything on that via google/ddg (Germany)
edit: oof.
[1] https://drewdevault.com/blog/Cloudflare-and-fascists/
But also oof to .. some other items there from the blog. Apparently rsync is now banned from the list of acceptable software, because they do not ban LLM's completely?
https://drewdevault.com/blog/rsync-without-rsync/
Sounds like you will never run out of problems, with a ideology like this.
I mean he's basically going off a checklist of leftist stereotypes here and trying to check as many of them as possible.
Meanwhile the other guy he's criticising is literally just a standard right-wing conservative, not far right, not alt right, just the regular kind. The far right I've seen is basically beyond the idea of being merely anti-immigration, they demand ICE style mass deportations immediately and in every country.
If both of them met in a bar through sheer coincidence, I'd expect drewdevault to start the fight.
Charlie Kirk was for mass deportation. He didn't even hide it. He said it openly. How do you come off saying that these people aren't far-right or alt-right when they are unabashedly so?
"expressing support for an alt-right ideologue"
This is what Kling actually said:
"RIP Charlie Kirk
I hope many more debate nerds carry on his quest to engage young people with words, not fists."
I also support fighting with words, not fists. I do not support his ideology at all and would have loved to debate him openly, but the concept of murdering someone for having the wrong opinion is disturbing to me, so I agree with Kling here.
And about "white replacement"
"'White males are actively discriminated against in tech.
It’s an open secret of Silicon Valley.'
One of the last meetings I attended before leaving Apple (in 2017) was management asking us to “keep the corporate diversity targets in mind” when interviewing potential new hires.
The phrasing was careful, but the implication was pretty clear.
I knew in my heart this wasn’t wholesome, but I was too scared to rock the boat at the time."
He said whites were discriminated for being white. Not replaced. That is not really the same to me.
It is now. That's what the shifting of the Overton Window and normalization of right-wing ideology does. These aren't fringe beliefs anymore, they're commonly held, mainstream right-wing views. They're policy within the US government. Charlie Kirk was treated as a martyr and a hero by the administration. He was treated with more dignity and respect than war veterans. The DHS posts memes about mass deportation.
The "far right" and "alt-right" no longer exist. Those labels are no longer useful and no longer describe reality.
Sources for those pretty serious claims?
* pre-fetching
* html filtering
* use of WebAssembly
* data compression and private/incognito mode
Nope, FF is being infiltrated by adtech for last year or two. Last holdout is Safari now :)
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ublock-origin-lite/id674534269...
https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-b...
Why do people say crap like this... Safari was the first browser to completely remove mv2. From all the major browsers Safari has the worse adblocking experience and support for adblocking extensions...
1. Third-party cookie blocking by default — 2003 (Safari 1.0); industry first.
2. Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP), using on-device machine learning to identify and limit cross-site trackers — 2017; industry first.
3. Storage Access API prompts for embedded third-party content (e.g., social login widgets) — 2018 (ITP 2.0); industry first (co-developed by WebKit, later adopted as a web standard).
4. Full third-party cookie blocking (no exceptions) — 2020 (ITP in Safari 13.1); industry first for a major browser.
Ad/tracking blocking is one of the things that can only be trusted if it's open source, i.e. uBlock Origin.
By the way, does this Adblock Engine actually block trackers? Or it just stops the ads from displaying?
That said, if this is writing on the wall I’d hope they’ll listen to the community this time and allow the engine to be extended / make it such that a block all ads feature always exists. I’m cautiously optimistic given Mozilla’s track record just over the past year-ish. They have released some great new features that help bring Firefox closer to feature parity with other browsers.
I am a Firefox hopeful and recently switched back to using it as my daily driver when Arc went belly up (but mainly for uBlock Origin support).
There is no feature Firefox provides that is more differentiating than ublock origin. As long as pages load and security issues are patched it is the reason to choose Firefox as a browser. What would they prioritize over it?
[1] https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home/wiki/Frequently-as...
In any case, for better or worse, when people say MV3, they now usually mean "Chrome's MV3 implementation", which obviously never applies to Firefox.
While far from being perfect, I find it good enough for keeping things separated, especially when using a desktop/workspace workflow. For example, in workspace/desktop 2 I have a Firefox window opened with the first tab set to "container A", so hitting ctrl-t there opens new tabs with the same container "A", so I'm logged-in for all projects A. In another Firefox window in workspace 3 I work with "business project B" tabs (where I'm logged into different atlassian, github, cloud, gmail, ...)
Then with a Window Manager like i3wm or Sway I set keybinds to jump directly to the window (and workspace), using the mark feature [1]
It's also possible to open websites directly in specific containers so it's flexible. For example on my desktop 8 I have all my AI webchats in "wherever my company pay for it" tabs: `firefox --new-window 'ext+container:name=loggedInPersonnal&url=https://chat.mistral.ai' 'ext+container:name=loggedInBusinessA&url=https://chatgpt.com' 'ext+container:name=loggedInBusinessB&url=https://gemini.google.com' 'ext+container:name=loggedInBusinessB&url=https://claude.ai'`
It's also the only way I found to keep opened multiple chat apps (Teams, Slack, Discord, ...). The alternative electron apps are as resource-hungry, and in my experience never handled multiple accounts well (especially Teams).
[O] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sticky-window...
[1] https://i3wm.org/docs/userguide.html#vim_like_marks
In case of the extension manifest, that's probably layered on top of the JS engine which does get attention and scrutiny. It's not like an API needs to be updated. If you'd always do that, nothing would ever be interoperable and we'd likely have a hard time trying to communicate.
The feature that better adblockers need is one callback that's similar to one that's still in V3. It's not difficult to keep if it's your own codebase.
However, I am also concerned that this is an "embrace extend extinguish" move.
I use uBlock Origin in Firefox and network ad blocker. Wondering what other options are there.
I’m not familiar with off the shelf solutions for this that have ad blocking built in. Also ads are injected by JS so you need a mechanism to detect that.
More and more ads are now served from the same domain as the site making it harder to distinguish them from real content.
Squid supports ACL's that can block URL patterns, domains, IP addresses, file extensions, mime types and much more.
Here [1] is an out of date example. There are probably better and more up to date examples. Some examples are based off Squid V3 as some distros still ship with that but Squid 6 added more flexibility around chaining options SOCKS options and such.
[1] - https://github.com/alatas/squid-alpine-ssl
But then you're using ZScaler and that just feels all nice and icky.
My favorite recent feature has been Brave Scriptlets, which are just little javascript functions you can run on specific sites. I've replaced most of the add ons I used with small scripts. Pretty nice.
I would prefer an engine not built on Chromium... but I've lost faith in Mozilla. I'm glad that Firefox added a built in adblock engine, but it seems too late too late. Brave has been awesome, and being Chromium based gives them time to keep working on stuff that matters.
[1] https://www.greasespot.net/2005/03/
Chrome also used to natively support userscripts back in 2010 [2] but they mostly killed it off
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Userscript
[2] https://lifehacker.com/chrome-4-supports-greasemonkey-usersc...
Tampermonkey has analytics enabled, and is closed source.
Here's a comprehensive summary on all three. [3]
[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/violentmonkey
[2] https://violentmonkey.github.io/
[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26057106
Fantastic first impression. I'm good, thanks.
To be clear, the toggle is to turn off the 'wallet' feature that isn't even enabled until you use it. So you are just disabling seeing the thing at all... with a simple toggle.
And the AI bullshit from their builtin search engine, I'd guess that too is a simple toggle.
Without googling, I'd put good money that there's a thing called "Brave VPN" in the homepage by default, and I have to disable that with a simple toggle.
In two years I may have to disable the crypto-miner, still with a simple toggle, of course, very user convenient.
This is the entire industry in a nutshell. Everyone, from every direction, at all times, is trying to squeeze you for a few cents with antagonistic "features" enabled by default. I have very little patience for this.
"But it's a simple click." Have some self respect, we can do better than this.
The browser does not re-enable the things you have disabled, but they keep implementing new stuff that you have to disable too.
It’s annoying, although that’s how most software works nowadays (and I include Firefox unfortunately). You have to disable a lot of stuff to make it usable.
I don't think there is or ever will be a "new internet explorer". If your page works in Chrome, there's a 99% chance it'll work in Firefox and Safari. Web standards have been unified to the point painting and layout algorithms are now part of the spec. It's why Ladybird managed to get a decently compatible engine in an extremely short time frame.
To make an obviously unproven and not universal observation: I feel like it's people who just like the google integration in Chrome and want an excuse to run it, even though they feel like they should use Firefox because it's more compatible with their world view, so they latch onto any issues Firefox has to go "see, they are all the same anyway", and then just repeat vague "Mozilla sucks" stuff.
What world view is this? Considering that Mozilla is a puppet Google basically owns if you look at where the funding comes from.
To sell for $60 a web browser that technically has all the features removed is a pretty goofy move.
I'm doing a goofy thing and buying it, despite knowing I can debloat Brave, because I already do that. I didn't know this existed till I read this thread. I've been benefitting from Brave for many years now; it's great that they've provided a way to pay for this without dealing with the crypto stuff, and I'm extremely happy to do so, because they deserve some of my money.
If you can't afford it or don't want to pay, fine. But why are you trying to influence other people to do that by labelling it "goofy"?
How would you strip those things out mobile, by the way?
Brave Just Released a Paid Browser: Here's What You Need to Know https://youtube.com/watch?v=3i5KH0l895o
I don't trust Brave though and don't want to use chromium.
I'm living under a rock, but my first thought was that you turned off TLS.
even less reason to use it on desktop
https://brave.com/about/
It's still the best Chromelike that's easily available, but I'm not switching my default any time soon.
At that rate one needs to abolish all modern technology and go tribal. Cause I’m certain my toothbrush runs JavaScript.
It's normal and reasonable to discover someone who makes bad decisions is running something and decide that makes using it a higher risk for you. Sometimes you don't have a choice, but sometimes you do.
Are you really calling the 100M monthly brave users half fascist? Can you explain more how you reach this conclusion, specifically relative to every other product you judge people for using?
Come on.
On desktops/laptops, keyboard shortcuts save reaching for a mouse, aiming (on the relativley large screen), and clicking. On handhelds, I don't think it's faster to use a shortcut than to simply tap something an inch away.
Also, on handhelds, the keyboard blocks a significant part of the screen. And keyboard shortcuts typically use accelerator keys, which are hard to use on handhelds.
Do you use Android with a physical keyboard?
As someone who bought an HTC Dream / Android G1 when it was new, and wishes more handhelds had a similar form factor, this comment depresses me.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTC_Dream
Weirdly enough, the same time this was added to Geckko is when I started implementing the adblock-rs library for Waterfox - I stumbled across the bindings by accident when using searchfox on the main branch instead of esr140! Quite the coincidence doing it at the same time.
Cromite - Chromium, MV2 extensions, good new tab page with 4x4 shortcuts (2x4 pinnable) with direct access to bookmarks
https://github.com/uazo/cromite/releases
Ultimatum - Chromium, MV2 extensions, not so good new tab page similar to original Chrome with only like 4 shortcuts without swiping, limitec customization, no password manager AFAIR
https://github.com/gonzazoid/Ultimatum/releases
Helium - Chromium, only MV3 extensions, built in browser from Graphene
https://github.com/jqssun/android-helium-browser/releases
Elixir - Chromium, only MV3, tabbed interface suitable for tablets
https://github.com/SF-FLAM/ElixirBrowser/releases
Former Kiwi Browser, then for about year IceRaven (Firefox) user up until recently when they fckd up already bad illogical UI and made it even worse, which was the last drop to again give up on this users hating browser (will never forget users begged for 10 years so dear devs will implement simple pull down to refresh).
On desktop the recommendation is much easier:
Vivaldi - Chromium, MV2, no AI, amazing customization compared to primitive Brave, faster than FF
https://vivaldi.com
I'm actually glad to see Mozilla has grown a little bit "predatorial" if it can bring good to the users. The implementation is polite too, as it lets you know there was an ad been muted.
There's a lot of things that can still be done in the browser space. For example, one-click login even without entering email, easy purchase without the website ever collecting your card number (or other financial detail beyond necessary), etc etc. Ads can also be improved too, by making them not violating nor annoying.
The possibilities are still great, I hope Mozilla can figure out a way to tap into it.
Maybe uBlock Origin for Firefox could be updated to make use of this
though it doesn’t seem to work as well as ublock, the ad slots are still there with just the ad missing so there’s a giant ugly blank spot.
Would anyone who has kept up let me know what would be the 2026 "industry standard" in terms of an ad-blocking and privacy stack?
I primarily use Chrome on Mac and Safari on iPhone but I'm willing to change browsers for better ad-blocking and privacy.
I would also be interested in solutions that scale beyond a single machine, for when I'm at home (e.g. should I get a little box and use it as an ad blocker between my internet my router and my network or something?)
No matter from what angle I look at this situation, your complaint makes no sense.
You have to walk the walk too Mozilla! Saying that as a FF for years.
It's an entirely different management team.
The injection of politics into absolutely everything is so arbitrary and harmful.
> The injection of politics into absolutely everything is so arbitrary and harmful.
Are you referring to Eich, or the people who react to his political choices?
Do as you please, but it makes no sense to me, and doesn't strike me a principled at all: it's basically virtue signaling. But then again, I don't view people that hold different political views as my enemy. They're just people I disagree with, and they can still make a great browser, even though we disagree on some things.
What's being misrepresented?
Second, it's your subjective view that this "is standard political stuff that people can agree or disagree on", and I very much disagree! Tax policy or similar areas, sure, we can agree or disagree. But keeping basic rights (or even taking them away) from a subset of the population is not "standard political stuff" to me.
Would you say the same if, instead of gay marriage, the issue was interracial marriage? I sincerely hope not, even though certain voices on the right are trying to turn this into "standard political stuff" too these days.
I guess I'm just not willing to write off 40% of society because they disagree on a particular issue that may seem clear as day to me. The most important thing I would like to foster is civility in our discourse with our neighbors, and that has been sacrificed on the altar of dogma to a degree that I cannot condone.
But I'm not absolute in my tolerance. Marriage rights don't trigger me much at all, but genuine human rights abuses like we're seeing in the wars going on, and the rise of fascism in the US are both areas where I would boycott a company (like OnlyOffice, for example).
Tax policy is actually a big part of the driver of fascism, since it entrenches oligarchs and allows consolidation of e.g. the media, and therefore the narrative. But I guess I'd call that standard political stuff, too.
So I guess I'm not exactly sure where I draw the line, but donating a thousand dollars to speak out against gay marriage didn't cross it for me. Yes, I disagree with him. And yes, I still like Brave.
I do appreciate the discussion!
My point is that this same setting aside of irrelevant (to the technical aspects) differences should apply to use of software in addition to development of software.
That's a choice you are free to make. Other people can and will make different choices. Many people never shared that principle, and instead happily exercised freedom of association to not support or spend time around awful people.
Projects are not some magic boundary in which everything outside is left outside. You can't dump piles of money into hurting your colleagues and expect them to see that as a neutral choice.
Also, you don't have to benefit Brendan Eich by using Brave. Turn off the crypto and AFAICT Brave gets no money from you.
Not that I actually recommend Brave: I have no opinions on it. I'm just tired and worried by the attitude of judging software by the non-technical opinions of who wrote it.
> I'm just tired and worried by the attitude of judging software by the non-technical opinions of who wrote it.
And I'm thrilled that it continues to happen more and more.
So please explain: why shouldn't I use my wallet to prevent people like Brendan Eich from shaping society against my friends and loved ones? Why should I add to his capital while he's actively trying to make the lives of the people I care about worse?
> Also, you don't have to benefit Brendan Eich by using Brave. Turn off the crypto and AFAICT Brave gets no money from you.
Or I can use Firefox and strengthen the competition.
Fair enough. My argument is this: as a society we need to live alongside people we disagree with, perhaps even disagree with fundamentally. My ideal is to not judge people's work in one field by their work (or opinions) in another. I think that this way we can get more done in the fields in which we are in agreement. How well do you think the United States would have gone without the Three-fifths Compromise? IMO not well. Do I agree with the slaveholders? No. Do I think the compromise was better than refusing to work with them at all? Yes.
> Why should I add to his capital while he's actively trying to make the lives of the people I care about worse?
Uh, I don't see this as a matter of capital once you turn off BAT crypto stuff. Please enlighten me.
Since we're apparently still trying to find a compromise on this topic, it seems imperative to me that I continue my boycott of Brendan Eich's companies, so the eventual compromise will have better terms for my friends and loved ones. Unless I see definitive proof that this approach is worse for the people close to me, I won't give up the only social tool I have to protect them.
> Uh, I don't see this as a matter of capital once you turn off BAT crypto stuff. Please enlighten me.
First, Brave has lots more monetization avenues than just the crypto stuff. But even if I turned all of that off, I would increase the usage stats of Brave while decreasing the stats of Firefox. Just because Brendan Eich doesn't profit quite as much off of me doesn't mean he gains no profit.
Out of curiosity, where do you draw the line when it comes to boycotting people or companies?
Edit: also crazy that someone who doesn’t want to support the Brave guy would support the browser using the Brave guy’s stuff, but I guess I see lots of chick-fil-a haters shopping in Amazon these days, so who am I to question what’s in vogue?
> Brendan Eich didn't personally write the code, and he doesn't benefit from Firefox using it. If anything this hurts him, since Firefox is catching up to an advantage of Brave without investing their own development resources.
> No matter from what angle I look at this situation, your complaint makes no sense.
Don't assume the positions of people who disagree with you are not thought out. It is a dangerous line of reasoning to go "if only they thought it through for more than five seconds they'd agree with me".
Remember, this isn’t based on like, logic or functionality or power or visibility or anything related to the product - it’s based on an emotional view of someone related to the product. It actually doesn’t matter if you could theorize a way that he gave away his core tech just to screw his ow company over. It’s arguably irrelevant to the conversation.
Avoiding just about any company for ethical reasons without avoiding the vast majority is performative or something most people can ignore because it’s insanely personal.
I don’t think you spent more than 5 seconds thinking about this if you thought my only POV was “he’d believe me if he thought about this for a few seconds”. I don’t think it’s obvious, I just think it’s significant.
Brave, Vivaldi, Opera, Tor Browser, Librewolf, they're all little more than reconfigurations and reskins of Chromium when you look at the entire code base. Yes, the Brave as block engine and Operas power saving modes are non-trivial, but the engine they're built on is the size of an operating system.
"Tor Browser is based on Mozilla Firefox ESR (Extended Support Release) but has been heavily modified for use with the Tor network."
Those are direct quotes from their respective web pages. Neither of them has anything to do with Chromium.
I would edit my comment above to clarify, but the limited edit time window for HN seems to have passed.