13 ms·

Firefox displayed a pop-up ad for Mozilla VPN over an unrelated page

468 points by ReadCarlBarks 3y ago

ReadCarlBarks 3y ago
Many users on Mozilla support communities and Reddit are reporting that their browsing sessions were suddenly interrupted by an overlay ad for Mozilla VPN today. To disable this, users need to set browser.vpn_promo.enabled to false on the about:config page.
- xattt 3y ago
  > To disable this, users need to set browser.vpn_promo.enabled to false on the about:config page How the fuck are you supposed to know about this in advance and prevent this from happening‽
  - pessimizer 3y ago
    If you knew about it ahead of time they would have changed it. The point is to show you advertising that you don't want to see.
  - ekianjo 3y ago
    look at the source code! Simple!
  - folmar 3y ago
    Usually you would just use one of the common user.js files for fixing firefox, for example https://github.com/yokoffing/Betterfox https://github.com/yokoffing/Betterfox
- drivers99 3y ago
  I got that too. They just closed the ticket too: Status: UNCONFIRMED → RESOLVED Closed: 1 minute ago Resolution: --- → WORKSFORME
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - sfink 3y ago
    Yeah, that closure was completely uncommented and mysterious. A later comment linked to a bug saying that the ad had been disabled, presumably because it was showing up where it shouldn't? WORKSFORME doesn't seem like the right resolution for that.
    - bithaze 3y ago
      The two bugs were also closed as duplicates of each other, which feels a little sloppy.
- mikl 3y ago
  The list of Mozilla bullshit you have to use about:config to get rid of grows ever longer. Still annoyed that Pocket can’t be removed like a regular extension, only disabled in about:config.
  - cwillu 3y ago
    Also, about:config is disabled on mobile unless you're running a nightly build.
    - ReadCarlBarks 3y ago
      You can access about:config and use add-on collections on Firefox Beta too now.
    - laurentlbm 3y ago
      Mull (https://github.com/divested-mobile/mull-fenix https://github.com/divested-mobile/mull-fenix) is a great fork with privacy improvements, and about:config is accessible.
      - cwillu 3y ago
        Does it have all the usual codecs, or are some of them considered too proprietary to give users the option of using them?
lambda 3y ago
Yep, I got this too. Absolutely unacceptable.
koito17 3y ago
I have no idea how I consistently miss all of the random advertisements Mozilla apparently does in Firefox. Then again, I have a heavily customized Firefox and I'm used to every 5 or so versions breaking something in my userChrome.css or hiding a button I didn't ask for.
mikae1 3y ago
Go arken. https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js
manx 3y ago
Maybe it's time to focus more on servo, a browser engine written in rust, originally created, but later abandoned by Mozilla. Seems like it starts rolling again. https://servo.org/ https://servo.org/
avg_dev 3y ago
I had this happen... I didn't and still don't understand what was going on. Edit: as noted in the linked ticket, there are some discussions going on about this in https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/ https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/ .
grt_thr 3y ago
[flagged]
mtmail 3y ago
Last year Firefox displayed a Disney ad (for the movie 'Turning Red') on the whats-new tab, the tab gets diplayed by default after you upgrade to a new Firefox version I think. US users only. Screenshot https://web.archive.org/web/20220308222503/https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/98.0/whatsnew/?oldversion=97.0.1 https://web.archive.org/web/20220308222503/https://www.mozil... HN discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30608022 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30608022
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- Aeolun 3y ago
  I can sort of live with that? The what’s new page is not my content that is being invaded with ads. When they start popping it up all over the place is when I draw the line.
- userbinator 3y ago
  I bet that more than a few users were "turning red" --- with anger --- when they saw that shit. "Did I get infected with something?" No, it's just Firefox itself being the adware.
- rrdharan 3y ago
  Don’t forget the Mr. Robot debacle: https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/16/16784628/mozilla-mr-robot-arg-plugin-firefox-looking-glass https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/16/16784628/mozilla-mr-robo... They pull this crap all the time and never learn their lessons.
  - zo1 3y ago
    Or how about how they still replace pinned shortcuts in the new page with sponsored ads. Like the magical top left one that I don't even look at before clicking because it's a link to my mail. Two years later and they're still doing it. https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/ppludl/since_when_has_firefox_been_adding_sponsored/ https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/ppludl/since_when_...
  - 3y ago
internet2000 3y ago
I haven't trusted Mozilla since the Pocket incident. I see they haven't learned the lesson.
bhhaskin 3y ago
This is unacceptable. Mozilla has shown they are incapable of not abusing Firefox. There shouldn't be an advertising channel/system in the browser. If you want to advertise, have a newsletter that people can opt into. If you need money, allow people to pay for just Firefox.
- echelon 3y ago
  This was them trying to let people pay for Firefox. It was Mozilla VPN. Everyone gets angry and has an opinion of how this sucks. There's no way for this to work out for Mozilla. Nothing they do will work or make everyone happy. Google won.
  - redundantly 3y ago
    People pay for Firefox by using it. They make money from Google being the default search engine. They were previously getting paid to have yahoo be the default. Bing wants them to switch to them. The VPN pop-up isn't an effort to provide funding for a dying browser. This is greed, pure and simple.
    - echelon 3y ago
      > This is greed, pure and simple. A single revenue source is incredibly risky and they're foolish if they aim to rely on search sponsorship revenue alone. Since when is it greedy to want to raise capital for the expensive thing you're building? I think it's lazy to waste momentum and let it peter out into nothingness. At least this is an attempt to stand on their own legs. Why does Mozilla draw this ire when literally every entity out there is hustling against the gradient of entropy? We single out Mozilla to lambaste. The thing I'm angry about is that Mozilla isn't trying hard enough, and that when they do try, they're not playing smart. They're making bets that I perceive to be foolish - "ethical AI", "VR/metaverse", etc. These are not good synergies or paths to profitability. They're wasting their limited resources on things outside of their scope, that do not matter to their core mission, and that won't turn a profit. As I see it, the web may not even have another 15 years left if AI takes over question answering, content generation, etc. Maybe it's foolish to even try to prop up Mozilla at this point. The world has moved on and left them in the dust. Mozilla is simply an antitrust defense strategy for tech giants. Not a good place to be in as the gravity starts to move away from websites.
sleepytimetea 3y ago
Apparently the "fix" is to fix the bug in the idle time calculation. They marked it Resolved but the popup will still happen after 20 mins of idle time after the fix, if I read the Bug details correctly.
PrimeMcFly 3y ago
I switched to LibreWolf (A fork of Firefox with privacy enhancements and ublock preinstalled) and haven't had to deal with anything like this since.
- mattl 3y ago
  What’s your user agent with that browser?
  - PrimeMcFly 3y ago
    Same as FireFox normal.
    - mattl 3y ago
      Interesting. When I used Iceweasel it was different enough to break sites.
      - PrimeMcFly 3y ago
        I'm guessing that was because Debian refused/wasn't able to sue the Firefox branding and they extended that to the user agent. So a ton of sites just saw Iceweasel as the UA and broke because it was unexpected.
        mattl 3y ago
        Yeah I’m surprised more forks don’t have this issue. Maybe they’re too small for Mozilla to care.
        lolinder 3y ago
        LibreWolf isn't strictly a fork of Firefox, it's a preconfigured installation that locks things down and disables anti-features. So it's strictly accurate to use the Firefox user agent, because that's what actually gets compiled.
        3y ago
pyridines 3y ago
This happened to me while I was working on a site. It may even have been localhost. This seriously erodes my trust in Firefox
imnotjames 3y ago
Per https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1414266#answer-1582507 https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1414266#answer-1... > Thank you for reaching out with your concern. Firefox is committed to creating an online experience that puts people first, as such we quickly stopped running the ad experience, and are reviewing internally.
- Waterluvian 3y ago
  I’m always glad that PR people can’t help but speak in such inhuman language that makes it obvious that it’s not a real sentiment but just part of the play.
  - Wowfunhappy 3y ago
    Honestly, I thought it was a pretty strong statement. They basically said "we screwed up."
    - candiddevmike 3y ago
      They used the words "stopped running" instead of "removed"...
      - Aeolun 3y ago
        I mean, I wouldn’t expect them to be able to pull the whole thing out of the code at the drop of a hat.
        Zuiii 3y ago
        For a browser that claims to be privacy focused, I would expect them to tightly contain the code in an external module that can easily be turned off. I would absolutely expect them to pull the whole thing out.
    - lolinder 3y ago
      "Stopped running the ad experience" tells me the kind of language they've been using internally to describe projects like this, and it is not language that I'm okay with from Mozilla. Using the toxic language in the retraction doesn't breed confidence that they really understand what the error was.
CrimsonCape 3y ago
From the link: https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/browser/components/newtab/content-src/asrouter/docs/index.html https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/browser/components/n... "Messaging System" "Vision" "Firefox must be an opinionated user agent that keeps folks safe, informed and effective while browsing the Web. In order to have an opinion, Firefox must have a voice." "That voice will respect the user’s attention while surfacing contextually relevant and timely information tailored to their individual needs and choices." Somewhere in all of these companies exists the belligerent ** who orders the subordinates to inject inappropriate profit-seeking changes into the product. And then cajole/order/encourage another subordinate to write a florid virtuous editorial justifying their belligerent idea.
- ReadCarlBarks 3y ago
  > write a florid virtuous editorial Related: https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/mozilla-now-only-seems-to-speak-using-creepy-gibberish-lunatic/td-p/16863 https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/mozilla-now-only-...
  - dingledork69 3y ago
    Thanks so much for linking that. This is 1000% on point and I'm so confused with what mozilla has been doing the past few years. It's like the organization as a whole suffered a stroke, and the result is this flowery meaningless prose.
    - xg15 3y ago
      As JRRM wrote, "any man who must say 'I am king' is no true king at all." Any browser who constantly reminds you how private and user-empowering it is, is probably neither. Add to that a vaguely liberal-sounding rethoric that could be right out of Ron Desantis' worst "woke lib" stereotypes - without even actually being liberal. Like, not that I'd see the browser an appropriate location for that, but if they actually wanted to commit to a liberal political view, I'd at least have expected "diverse voices" somewhere. But I have no clue what "independent voices" is supposed to mean.
leroy-is-here 3y ago
Firefox shows literal advertisements in the “new tab” window. I recently started using Firefox again because I was told I was being “ridiculous” when I said Firefox shows me literal advertisements. And then I get this pop-up on a window which hadn’t been refreshed in several hours.
- sergiomattei 3y ago
  You can disable them in less than a minute. I haven’t seen a single ad since the moment I installed Firefox and clicked “don’t suggest stuff”.
  - grayhatter 3y ago
    The reason people are upset isn't because you can't disable it. The frustration comes from the fact you need to be able to trust your web browser. And mistakes like this, mistakes that are so egregious, and demonstrate such bad judgement, that it makes it harder to trust something that you need to be able to trust.
  - cdme 3y ago
    Yeah they were weird to see until I turned them off immediately. I don't like the direction they've taken Pocket in with so much focus on "editorial" content. Instapaper's better at getting out of the way (even if it feels neglected).
  - gpm 3y ago
    I have. Every time it updates it opens a new tab to spam about their VPN (or whatever the flavour of the month is).
  - Rebelgecko 3y ago
    Where's the "don't suggest stuff" box? That seems much easier than the multiple about:config changes I'd have to do to turn off all of the new avenues for advertising
  - matkoniecz 3y ago
    Ads by default are still not acceptable to me. Yes, I am willing to pay say 100$/year for web browser if money would entirely go to development. Maybe something to support staff like CEO. But not over 5 000 000 per year ( see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitchell_Baker#Negative_salary-achievements_correlation_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitchell_Baker#Negative_salary... ) And if such browser would be actually user-first, without ads for VPN and Disney movies (especially without ads pretending to not be ads).
gazby 3y ago
I've had the Mozilla VPN website open for a few days with an intent to purchase when I get around to it. Not anymore. I love you Mozilla, but you've gotta do better. Please.
grt_thr 3y ago
[flagged]
- cubefox 3y ago
  No, the other way round: People who support Firefox fight the dominance of the Chromium engine. If anything, one engine dominating is bad for the Web. (There is also Safari, but for Apple OSes only.)
  - grt_thr 3y ago
    If Firefox was bad for Google then would Google be paying them 500m a year?
    - Phrodo_00 3y ago
      You could argue they do this in order to keep antitrust from looking at chrome too closely.
      - cubefox 3y ago
        Google paid Firefox for search before Chrome even existed.
        Phrodo_00 3y ago
        Yes, and at that point it was because Firefox was the second most popular browser. Motivations do change.
        wkat4242 3y ago
        Of course but their reasoning will have changed over time. Because Firefox's market share has changed tremendously as well.
- mort96 3y ago
  What are people who need a browser supposed to use? Chrome..? Would that make for a healthier web?
matrix_overload 3y ago
Firefox has been going downhill for a while now, so it's not surprising. That said, if you don't want to use Chrome, a fairly good alternative would be Vivaldi [0] - a surprisingly neat browser created by the ex-founder of Opera. It's based on the Chromium engine, so no weird rendering shenanigans, but at the same time is quite technically capable, with ad blocking, mouse gestures, email client, etc. [0] https://vivaldi.com/ https://vivaldi.com/
- Phrodo_00 3y ago
  > It's based on the Chromium engine Google has enough control over the internet as is, thank you. I'd really wish there were other gecko browsers now. Epiphany was good but they switched to Webkit. Edit: Just learned of LibreWolf. Might be looking into migrating over.
  - Snuupy 3y ago
    I have a saner list of defaults here: https://gist.github.com/Snuupy/6dbb69bf667385db0a530ccb85926200 https://gist.github.com/Snuupy/6dbb69bf667385db0a530ccb85926...
  - keyboardJones 3y ago
    There's also Mullvad browser: https://mullvad.net/en/browser https://mullvad.net/en/browser
- em-bee 3y ago
  we need alternatives that are not based on chromium.
  - charcircuit 3y ago
    Why? Chromium works well and is easy to extend. It also comes with many security features, includes the latest and greatest standards, has good performance, and is actively maintained. It lets you focus on creating the best browser possible instead of wasting time working on the parts of the browser engine which aren't relevant to your product.
james4k 3y ago
I just got this ad when opening a new tab. Wild.
tedunangst 3y ago
It's really weird how every time this happens, Firefox promises it will never happen again until next time.
cookiengineer 3y ago
Happened to me too, even though I thought all ads were disabled in my modified libre/wolf profile. I guess I have to go back to ungoogled chromium as my main browser again and start working again on RetroKit. Good bye Mozilla, thanks for now being the corporation hell hole that you initially fought against. I guess that's what happens if you fire the people that actually cared for the project.
- asdff 3y ago
  You can unmozila firefox just like your chromium too. When I open a new tab I see a blank page, no pocket, no suggested whatever, no bullshit. I'd take firefox just to be able to use full on ublock origin (1). 1. https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-best-on-Firefox https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-b...
  - sovok_x 3y ago
    At this point I just wonder whether Firefox userbase will flee the browser in droves if someone will make its unmozilled tracking fork sustained by easily payable tips, that has all the BS disabled and uBlock + couple of other top 10 extensions like Stylus and Tampermonkey natively implemented in it, with a good unified UI and all, for added value.
    - cookiengineer 3y ago
      The issue I have with the TOR browser (as an example of an actual real fork) is that they only stub away the APIs they know of, they don't really remove them and from time to time other methods of tracking glitch through; including all the fingerprinting requests when opening a fresh browser session. I guess with a hard fork they couldn't keep up with upstream. But honestly, I would totally be okay with a browser that doesn't have modern Web APIs because literally all of them from the last 10 years were just integrated to allow "appifying websites". If I wanna see a fancy WebGL demo I can also use a temporary chrome, but my main browser should not have that amount of (unmaintained) attack surfaces. All "forks" of Firefox usually aren't forks but just profiles with user.js configs. The only real fork of the engine itself is Pale Moon, and that project is a political shitshow and super outdated (which would be okay if it focussed on stability instead).
blibble 3y ago
firefox is an extremely hard product to recommend to friends/family it's becoming more and more user hostile with every upgrade pocket everywhere, telemetry, vpn ads, disney ads, amazon ads etc (and despite the constant UI changes it still feels like something out of 1997)
- NotYourLawyer 3y ago
  And yet it’s someone the least shitty browser there is.
- lost_tourist 3y ago
  It's all quite easy to turn off, or just recommend librewolf to them
  - lolinder 3y ago
    No, it's not. Every few months there's a new garbage "experience" released under a new about:config setting. Playing whack-a-mole with ads from the browser by navigating through a scary-looking UI that warns you that it's dangerous is not an experience I can recommend to family or friends.
    - asdff 3y ago
      Just set new tab to blank page. Thats where they live anyhow right? I haven't seen any of these ads people complain about and I suspect its because of my new tab setting.
      - lolinder 3y ago
        My new tab is a blank page. This promo today popped up over an open webpage while I was working on another monitor.
2h 3y ago
reposted, since they are trying to silence and confuse: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1835182 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1835182
mnadkvlb 3y ago
Can someone recommend how to disable the firefox update popup on osx latest ? I have already disabled the updates checking background service. (disclaimer: i agree to security issues and stuff due to not updating, i manage my firwalls and adblocks to prevent getting hacked, and take full responsibility in case i get hacked, thank you).
trashface 3y ago
This happened to me a couple hours ago. The page it displayed over was chat gpt. I thought, well I guess mozilla has to make money somehow!
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
tysam_and 3y ago
I ironically got the same popup while sitting on the HackerNews homepage. The top article on the homepage was this one, visible through the dark-ish tint behind the ad. Lol.
stuaxo 3y ago
Yep, this happened completely at random and I'm pretty sure the browser focused itself.
suby 3y ago
Mozilla deserves to fail. This is absolutely unacceptable, it makes me irrationally angry. I've been using Firefox since 2004, I'm tired of these tactics. We're now playing whack a mole with their settings with things like advertising on the new tab page, user studies (which seems to randomly get re-enabled on updates), and now I need to add an opt out for this specific advertisement in my about:config? How many future advertisements am I going to need to opt out of on an individual basis as they come up? It's akin to what Microsoft is doing with their many toggles required to change the default browser settings. Even if there were a setting to opt out of everything it would be unacceptable. Might as well use Chromium if they are going to pull this shit. I'm just done with this, Mozilla deserves to fail.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
  Yes it deserves to fail. But can any of us afford for it to do so?
  - account42 3y ago
    Yes. Can we afford for it to not fail and keep preventing any real alternative from gaining momentum?
- lost_tourist 3y ago
  I turned off ads as soon as they added them and have no issues. I'm not sure why everyone is being overly dramatic about this. Furthermore, I subscribe to their relay service, so it pitches a couple bucks a month to them. I vote with my wallet. I don't think everything should be free or lose my mind when I see an annoyance in something that I get a ton of utility out of. The world isn't a perfect place.
  - lolinder 3y ago
    I turned off ads and I still saw this ad today. It sounds like this one is behind a new setting. > I subscribe to their relay service, so it pitches a couple bucks a month to them. I vote with my wallet. I would love to vote with my wallet. I want to donate to Firefox directly. If they'd given me an option to donate and have the money go to Firefox and not Mozilla's other pet projects, I'd happily have set up a recurring monthly donation for it.
xg15 3y ago
One of the related tickets [1] seems to give some hints on the root cause - which in a way almost makes it worse IMO. Basically, what they wanted to do was to build a background process that detects when you're away from the PC and then pops up the message, so it's the first thing you see what you get back. Unfortunately (or maybe not) the detection logic had a bug, which caused the message to pop up right away sometimes, spoiling the whole thing. [1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1835175 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1835175
- lamontcg 3y ago
  I think it worked entirely 'correctly', and yet still annoyed the shit out of me.
- housemusicfan 3y ago
  > what they wanted to do was to build a background process that detects when you're away from the PC and then pops up the message, so it's the first thing you see what you get back This unnecessary bullshit is how you introduce security bugs into software. Mozilla can preach all they want about security and privacy but this shows that it's all rotten to the core.
- esprehn 3y ago
  Are you sure that code is related to this? That looks specific to the new tab page while the linked bug on HN shows a random website.
  - xg15 3y ago
    It was linked in the "related" section of the original bug.
- isaacremuant 3y ago
  This is terrible. I don't want their popups ever. Why do they feel they can block popups by default from others but their popups are fine? Really hate Firefox doing this kind of thing. It's supposed to be a browser that cares about the user.
wejick 3y ago
When this kind of things happened, I'm sure it's an honest mistake and someone has learned a very good lesson.
throwaway290 3y ago
Probably this whole story comes down to "there's 'Allow Firefox to make personalized extension recommendations setting' and it is on by default".
ants_everywhere 3y ago
I've been using IceCat recently as part of a video project I'm doing. I started using Guix just for fun and IceCat happens to be the version of Firefox they have available by default. It has some quirks but it's overall pretty usable and strips Mozilla branding. It's a shame because I pay for Mozilla features, including Mozilla VPN. But I find this behavior (1) kind of gross, and (2) a clear signal of either desperation or indifference to their mission.
crossroadsguy 3y ago
It’s like Google and Mozilla just don’t want me to leave Apple’s phone OS and its browser, respectively. At least in Google’s case it makes good business sense - as in, it already works for them and their target audience already has been using the OS with all that, and doesn’t care about it, ads and tracking; besides there aren’t too many phone OS options. But in the case of Mozilla? Heck the target audience cares very much about these things and not liking shit like this was a reason they were in Firefox for. Now a lot have already dumped it for Safari, Brave etc. Then they keep doing such tricks. Someone at Mozilla has to be especially dumb to have done this.
- jay_kyburz 3y ago
  But you can't run uBlock Origin on Apple as far as I'm aware?
- Aeolun 3y ago
  Yeah, I guess they’re aware that there’s basically no alternatives for their audience? If there were a viable non-chromium alternative to Firefox I’d already have switched.
  - itsuka 3y ago
    I've been using Firefox as my main browser to support its decreasing market share, alongside Safari for development and Ungoogled Chromium when things are unexpectedly broken in Firefox (due to strict privacy settings most of the time). I'm considering dropping Firefox because I don't want to deal with updating about:config anymore to remove ads, telemetry, etc. The other two browsers just work for me. Edit: this is not completely true - I enabled Private Relay (Safari only) and installed uMatrix and uBlock Origin on Chromium, but that's about it.
- schemescape 3y ago
  > the target audience cares very much about these things I recently switched from Edge to Firefox (on both Desktop and phone) specifically because Edge was showing me irrelevant "news" articles (which I assume are just ads in disguise) [1]. I guess on phone I can move back to Safari (which I abandoned due to a bug where scroll position is frequently lost when navigating backwards), since it is apparently the only major browser that hasn't tried to show me ads. Not sure what to do about desktop... [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35705502 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35705502
mvdtnz 3y ago
This bug is closed as a duplicate of a bug which is itself closed as a duplicate of this bug.
frozenlettuce 3y ago
That should be a accessibility disaster baked right into the browser(related to yesterday's anti-modal post)
jeroenhd 3y ago
I think the way the dialog is designed says enough. There's "Get Mozilla VPN" and "not now". No "stop showing me ads", "disable recommendations", "show privacy settings", instead, just "not now". This illusion of choice is a very common dark pattern that helps people feel like postponing ads was their choice (and their idea) rather than making them feel upset that ads have snuck into their browser in the first place. Websites run by trash marketeers like Reddit and Twitter do the same thing. I wonder how long it'll take before I will just switch to some Chrome fork. This whole "privacy first" shtick is nice but if I need to turn off as many settings in Firefox to make my browser pleasant to use as I do privacy settings in Chrome, I don't see the advantage. Last time I checked brave they were still pushing their shady crypto stuff and the UI was kind of meh. I wonder if I should reevaluate it with the ongoing erosion of Firefox as a browser.
- Aeolun 3y ago
  There’s this weird new browser for mac that I think is called Arc?
  - anderber 3y ago
    Are they private by default or do you need to make adjustments to the settings to it? So far Brave seems to be the most private popular browser out-of-box.
  - Nextgrid 3y ago
    Maybe it was Orion Browser?
    - idle_zealot 3y ago
      Orion and Arc are both new-ish Mac browsers. Both proprietary though.
  - jabroni_salad 3y ago
    I'm not sure about their user experience either. The website for it has zero concrete information and you can't even see that there is no windows support until you give it an email address.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
hartator 3y ago
Upvoting as I feel most posts critical of Mozilla get flagged.
lolinder 3y ago
Mozilla has pulled a lot of dumb crap over the years, but this crossed a hard red line. I defended them with Pocket, with promotions in the new tab screen, with dumb wastes of time like Colorways. I've continued to evangelize Firefox in spite of the fact that I knew the company had lost touch with reality because I want there to be an alternative to chromium-based browsers. Today I'm done. I can shrug off promos in the new tab page, in the settings, whatever. But there are no second chances for full-page pop-up ads, especially when the "oops" is in the timing code. "Oops, you were supposed to see that after 20 minutes inactivity" doesn't cut it. Mozilla has lost it, and I'm done defending them and evangelizing for them.
- iJohnDoe 3y ago
  Agreed. There have been many defenders of Firefox on HN. I’m not sure why after all the crap they have pulled over the years. Unrelated mini rants. 1. They fill the default new tab page with garbage content. They have amazing reach with viewers. It’s a shame they can’t fill it with quality stuff. I understand you have to pay the bills, but at least find some balance. 2. Firefox 47.x was the greatest release. I’ve never been able to keep hundreds of tabs open with Firefox. Eventually Firefox eats up so much RAM and eventually crashes. Chromium based browsers can have multiple windows with hundreds of tabs each and not crash even after being open for days/weeks.
  - Groxx 3y ago
    >I’m not sure why after all the crap they have pulled over the years. Have you seen the competition? It may be disturbingly similar to trying to vote for a decent politician, but there are absolutely degrees of badness. Plus there are still forks.
    - adastra22 3y ago
      Brave seems to work just fine for me, and gets out of the way.
    - Karunamon 3y ago
      Yes. Brave does a demonstrably better job at protecting my privacy and not making unwarranted connections to third parties I did not ask for.
userbinator 3y ago
What in the bloody hell!?!? Why does everything around the "web ecosystem" seem to grow paternalising adware/spyware-infested user-hostile "features" over time (I have observed this with other software, but browsers in particular seem to be the worst)? This is disturbingly close to Microsoft's tactics with Edge. A browser doesn't need popups, a "messaging system", "telemetry", or anything other than to show me the content of URLs that I tell it to visit.
felixgallo 3y ago
If any readers here are from Mozilla -- everyone involved in this frankly needs to be fired immediately.
- toyg 3y ago
  I don't know about the engineer who wrote the feature, but definitely any layer of management who came up with the idea and approved it, should be shown the door immediately. It's clear they don't understand the values they're supposed to uphold.
  - sdf4j 3y ago
    I'd fire the engineer too. There's no due obedience in software engineering.
weirdindiankid 3y ago
This thread led to my discovering and switching to LibreWolf. Here's to a Firefox-ish browser that does better!
wg0 3y ago
Developing a browser is almost as close to an effort as writing an OS. Read the Flexbox specs alone. It's complicated and then there are hundreds of such specs. And then it is a moving target, constantly. Alternatives to Firefox are free. If this software has to survive than enough people will have to pay either directly or indirectly as in case of ads. What are other ways that an open source software can survive that cannot have "Open core" or "On premise" options available to it?
- Nextgrid 3y ago
  > What are other ways that an open source software can survive that cannot have "Open core" or "On premise" options available to it? Ask for money? Hell there's still not actually any way to pay for Firefox. Even this ad doesn't actually allow you to pay for Firefox, but instead for a service that's useless to the vast majority of people and relies on fear-mongering to sell itself.
  - wkat4242 3y ago
    I don't think Mullvad is bad, but I prefer signing up with them directly instead of through Firefox, so I can use it with more different devices. Also whatever they get through the Mullvad deal nurse be a fraction of what you pay. After all Mullvad must supply the service for this money also and make a profit. What I'd actually pay for is something more elaborate like icloud private relay. Unfortunately Mozilla just cancelled that and it was only in beta in the US. I'd also pay for Firefox itself if I could (I already donate to the other projects I use a lot like KDE) but I feel a bit disenfranchised with Mozilla still aiming very hard at the mainstream user they have long lost.
  - wg0 3y ago
    I'm merely genuinely asking what models exist for free open source software.
Nextgrid 3y ago
I've often said that Firefox is the most user-hostile piece of free & open source software I've used. It is much worse than a lot of paid, proprietary software.
- userbinator 3y ago
  Open source ended up being exactly what it says: you can see (and change, with enough time and effort) the source code. Nothing more, nothing less. It doesn't say anything about the incentives of its authors and their alignment with yours. I'd still rather patch the binary (which is actually largely a zipped collection of JS that implements most of the UI) than figure out how to compile Firefox from scratch. Android (at least the AOSP part) and Linux is a similar situation.
jmuguy 3y ago
What’s stupid about this is the only people still using Firefox are the people they have to know are going to hate this shit the most. I’d prefer they just charge for the software instead of doing this over and over again, and saying “oops we’re sorry, won’t happen again” every single time.
- opportune 3y ago
  I wish Mozilla or Microsoft or friends would let me pay $50 extra for a no-bullshit version of their products. It is infuriating when your UX is ruined by a corporation trying to make a couple fucking pennies off you
- asdff 3y ago
  I'm using firefox and I don't ever see this sort of stuff people complain about. Where does it even appear? I have new tab set to blank page. Are people leaving new tab at default with suggested content? At the end of the day firefox is a last refuge of a browser that allows me to block tracking and ads. As long as ublock origin works here and nowhere else this is the browser that I will be using. It's that simple, the internet is just too unusable without ad blocking.
  - DangitBobby 3y ago
    I was incredibly surprised today while checking my gmail to see a modal with a darkened background pop-up to cover the entire web page. It was an ad for Mozilla VPN. I did some googling to find out if it was a gmail ad or a FireFox ad but didn't find anything until the bug report was shared here.
- wkat4242 3y ago
  This is what bothers me a lot yes. Especially in terms of features. Mozilla is still targeting the mainstream user that uses Chrome. Spending a lot of time on gloss and removing 'power' features. Yet they don't understand they already lost the chrome user years ago so badly that they don't even remember the name. And they're now alienating their remaining userbase.
lucb1e 3y ago
Let me put first and foremost that this is shitty. What irks me about these comment threads is that people hold Mozilla to a standard that nobody holds Google to. The negativity spiral, deserved as it may be, seems to then tip a lot of people (self-proclaimed) towards going with Chrome when that is still the worse option. Looking at Firefox' market share, I feel bad for the shit it gets and what it has to pull to try and stay relevant (.: to pay the devs). At the same time, I would also not mind an unmozillad firefox, perhaps in exchange for a certain donation amount per year. I currently don't donate much to Mozilla because they keep making the experience worse time and again (I'm still salty on a daily basis because the new mouse gestures "extension" is crap compared to the "add-on"-based one from before Firefox 57), because donating adds your email address to their spam list, and because I can't tell them to spend it on useful things like Thunderbird and Firefox rather than developing yet another VPN frontend or buying Pocket. Having a Firefox subscription that gets rid of their ads would not limit what they can spend it on, but it would send a clear message of what it is that I'm wanting to pay for. Wouldn't solve all problems but I wonder if this might help.
- Macha 3y ago
  If Firefox is not achieving a better standard than Google, then what is the reason for using it over the better resourced Google Chrome? Being better than Google is the bar it needs to meet to overcome the inertia of Chrome's market share
- worrycue 3y ago
  > What irks me about these comment threads is that people hold Mozilla to a standard that nobody holds Google to. We have already accepted Google as the “bad guy”. “Good guys” are held to a different standard. If Mozilla want to be a “bad guy” too, they will lose to Google who has the better product.
- lolinder 3y ago
  Firefox is supposed to hold itself to a higher standard than Google. It's why it exists, it's why I evangelized it all these years. It's supposed to be the browser that respects its users as human beings, not as conversion numbers. If Mozilla becomes as bad as Google, then there's no reason to choose them over the larger and more stable platform. That's why we hold them to a higher standard—if they can't meet that standard they have no reason to exist at all.
daguava 3y ago
[dead]
schemescape 3y ago
> RESOLVED WORKSFORME Why does this resolution even exist as an option? There’s no way the big filer will find that satisfactory.
- account42 3y ago
  It makes sense for when a user claims there is a bug but then doesn't provide any evidence or other information than can be used to track it down and perhaps just disappears entirely. Happens often enough with any even remotely large project. The problem is using without trying to triage the bug at all.
OneLeggedCat 3y ago
That "WORKSFORME" tag is such a powerful insult at the users.
dizhn 3y ago
Mozilla. They must have some really great and well meaning employees. Otherwise a good product like Firefox (or Thunderbird) would never come out of such a garbage company. Imagine if they were actually a good company with a tech focus.
Zuiii 3y ago
> WORKSFORME Looks like this feature is working as Mozilla intended.
Animats 3y ago
There are lots of forks of Firefox. Is there a reliable one without all the crap?
endgame 3y ago
Just. Let. Me. Pay. For. The. Browser.
eimrine 3y ago
Why the bug is closed, is this wontfix? Sorry for not trying hard enough to figure out what's up with this bug, all I can see is " Opened 8 hours ago Closed 6 hours ago "
scoutt 3y ago
Maybe relevant: "Firefox VPN Spotlight modal test content" [0] We are running a/b tests on a VPN spotlight modal in Firefox. Here's a link to the project info: Google doc There are two versions of content, identical except for the inclusion of a promotional code in one of them. Where the tests also differ is in the imagery used, which you can see in the Figma file linked in this ticket. Also, "Add vpn spotlight targeting" [1] Targeting to support https://mozilla-hub.atlassian.net/browse/OMC-419 https://mozilla-hub.atlassian.net/browse/OMC-419 - Existing users with a profile >28 days old, at least 1 day of use in the last 28 days, on Windows 10+, no VPN or Enterprise policy [0] https://github.com/mozilla-l10n/nimbus-l10n/issues/5 https://github.com/mozilla-l10n/nimbus-l10n/issues/5 [1] https://github.com/mozilla/experimenter/pull/8853 https://github.com/mozilla/experimenter/pull/8853
xnx 3y ago
Absolute rule of the attention economy: If someone has your attention, they will eventually try and make money off of it.
gen220 3y ago
IDK if they’re ready for the limelight, but if you’re an internet enthusiast and on the market for a non-Mozilla non-FAANG browser, you should check out The Browser Company’s Arc. No affiliation, just a happy user for the last year or so. After being a long, long time FF supporter, even through all this tragic disintegration.
- 0xffff2 3y ago
  Their website really doesn't tell me anything I want to know about a new browser. Most importantly, is it Chromium based?
  - gen220 3y ago
    Yep, Chromium.
    - 0xffff2 3y ago
      I know it's incredibly hard to build a browser engine, but any browser build in chromium is just giving Google more market share, which is a hard pass for me.
      - gen220 3y ago
        Agreed that it'd be nice to have a less ethically-ambiguous alternative. Since you seem to be pretty knowledgeable in this space, are you aware of any competitive FOSS engines and/or browsers built around those engines?
chrisledet 3y ago
so are we switching to Brave now?
- slater 3y ago
  Usually you want to switch to something better, not worse.
account42 3y ago
From the screenshots it looks like the popup greyed out the entire browser window, including the window controls. Did this make the window controls non-interactive? If so I will add this to the long list of reasons why application developers cannot be trusted with client-side window decorations.

468 points by ReadCarlBarks 3y ago

Many users on Mozilla support communities and Reddit are reporting that their browsing sessions were suddenly interrupted by an overlay ad for Mozilla VPN today. To disable this, users need to set browser.vpn_promo.enabled to false on the about:config page.

xattt 3y ago
> To disable this, users need to set browser.vpn_promo.enabled to false on the about:config page How the fuck are you supposed to know about this in advance and prevent this from happening‽
- pessimizer 3y ago
  If you knew about it ahead of time they would have changed it. The point is to show you advertising that you don't want to see.
- ekianjo 3y ago
  look at the source code! Simple!
- folmar 3y ago
  Usually you would just use one of the common user.js files for fixing firefox, for example https://github.com/yokoffing/Betterfox https://github.com/yokoffing/Betterfox
drivers99 3y ago
I got that too. They just closed the ticket too: Status: UNCONFIRMED → RESOLVED Closed: 1 minute ago Resolution: --- → WORKSFORME
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- sfink 3y ago
  Yeah, that closure was completely uncommented and mysterious. A later comment linked to a bug saying that the ad had been disabled, presumably because it was showing up where it shouldn't? WORKSFORME doesn't seem like the right resolution for that.
  - bithaze 3y ago
    The two bugs were also closed as duplicates of each other, which feels a little sloppy.
mikl 3y ago
The list of Mozilla bullshit you have to use about:config to get rid of grows ever longer. Still annoyed that Pocket can’t be removed like a regular extension, only disabled in about:config.
- cwillu 3y ago
  Also, about:config is disabled on mobile unless you're running a nightly build.
  - ReadCarlBarks 3y ago
    You can access about:config and use add-on collections on Firefox Beta too now.
  - laurentlbm 3y ago
    Mull (https://github.com/divested-mobile/mull-fenix https://github.com/divested-mobile/mull-fenix) is a great fork with privacy improvements, and about:config is accessible.
    - cwillu 3y ago
      Does it have all the usual codecs, or are some of them considered too proprietary to give users the option of using them?

lambda 3y ago

Yep, I got this too. Absolutely unacceptable.

koito17 3y ago

I have no idea how I consistently miss all of the random advertisements Mozilla apparently does in Firefox. Then again, I have a heavily customized Firefox and I'm used to every 5 or so versions breaking something in my userChrome.css or hiding a button I didn't ask for.

mikae1 3y ago

Go arken. https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js

manx 3y ago

Maybe it's time to focus more on servo, a browser engine written in rust, originally created, but later abandoned by Mozilla. Seems like it starts rolling again. https://servo.org/ https://servo.org/

avg_dev 3y ago

I had this happen... I didn't and still don't understand what was going on. Edit: as noted in the linked ticket, there are some discussions going on about this in https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/ https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/ .

grt_thr 3y ago

[flagged]

mtmail 3y ago

Last year Firefox displayed a Disney ad (for the movie 'Turning Red') on the whats-new tab, the tab gets diplayed by default after you upgrade to a new Firefox version I think. US users only. Screenshot https://web.archive.org/web/20220308222503/https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/98.0/whatsnew/?oldversion=97.0.1 https://web.archive.org/web/20220308222503/https://www.mozil... HN discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30608022 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30608022

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
Aeolun 3y ago
I can sort of live with that? The what’s new page is not my content that is being invaded with ads. When they start popping it up all over the place is when I draw the line.
userbinator 3y ago
I bet that more than a few users were "turning red" --- with anger --- when they saw that shit. "Did I get infected with something?" No, it's just Firefox itself being the adware.
rrdharan 3y ago
Don’t forget the Mr. Robot debacle: https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/16/16784628/mozilla-mr-robot-arg-plugin-firefox-looking-glass https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/16/16784628/mozilla-mr-robo... They pull this crap all the time and never learn their lessons.
- zo1 3y ago
  Or how about how they still replace pinned shortcuts in the new page with sponsored ads. Like the magical top left one that I don't even look at before clicking because it's a link to my mail. Two years later and they're still doing it. https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/ppludl/since_when_has_firefox_been_adding_sponsored/ https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/ppludl/since_when_...
- 3y ago

internet2000 3y ago

I haven't trusted Mozilla since the Pocket incident. I see they haven't learned the lesson.

bhhaskin 3y ago

This is unacceptable. Mozilla has shown they are incapable of not abusing Firefox. There shouldn't be an advertising channel/system in the browser. If you want to advertise, have a newsletter that people can opt into. If you need money, allow people to pay for just Firefox.

echelon 3y ago
This was them trying to let people pay for Firefox. It was Mozilla VPN. Everyone gets angry and has an opinion of how this sucks. There's no way for this to work out for Mozilla. Nothing they do will work or make everyone happy. Google won.
- redundantly 3y ago
  People pay for Firefox by using it. They make money from Google being the default search engine. They were previously getting paid to have yahoo be the default. Bing wants them to switch to them. The VPN pop-up isn't an effort to provide funding for a dying browser. This is greed, pure and simple.
  - echelon 3y ago
    > This is greed, pure and simple. A single revenue source is incredibly risky and they're foolish if they aim to rely on search sponsorship revenue alone. Since when is it greedy to want to raise capital for the expensive thing you're building? I think it's lazy to waste momentum and let it peter out into nothingness. At least this is an attempt to stand on their own legs. Why does Mozilla draw this ire when literally every entity out there is hustling against the gradient of entropy? We single out Mozilla to lambaste. The thing I'm angry about is that Mozilla isn't trying hard enough, and that when they do try, they're not playing smart. They're making bets that I perceive to be foolish - "ethical AI", "VR/metaverse", etc. These are not good synergies or paths to profitability. They're wasting their limited resources on things outside of their scope, that do not matter to their core mission, and that won't turn a profit. As I see it, the web may not even have another 15 years left if AI takes over question answering, content generation, etc. Maybe it's foolish to even try to prop up Mozilla at this point. The world has moved on and left them in the dust. Mozilla is simply an antitrust defense strategy for tech giants. Not a good place to be in as the gravity starts to move away from websites.

sleepytimetea 3y ago

Apparently the "fix" is to fix the bug in the idle time calculation. They marked it Resolved but the popup will still happen after 20 mins of idle time after the fix, if I read the Bug details correctly.

PrimeMcFly 3y ago

I switched to LibreWolf (A fork of Firefox with privacy enhancements and ublock preinstalled) and haven't had to deal with anything like this since.

mattl 3y ago
What’s your user agent with that browser?
- PrimeMcFly 3y ago
  Same as FireFox normal.
  - mattl 3y ago
    Interesting. When I used Iceweasel it was different enough to break sites.
    - PrimeMcFly 3y ago
      I'm guessing that was because Debian refused/wasn't able to sue the Firefox branding and they extended that to the user agent. So a ton of sites just saw Iceweasel as the UA and broke because it was unexpected.
      - mattl 3y ago
        Yeah I’m surprised more forks don’t have this issue. Maybe they’re too small for Mozilla to care.
        lolinder 3y ago
        LibreWolf isn't strictly a fork of Firefox, it's a preconfigured installation that locks things down and disables anti-features. So it's strictly accurate to use the Firefox user agent, because that's what actually gets compiled.
        3y ago

pyridines 3y ago

This happened to me while I was working on a site. It may even have been localhost. This seriously erodes my trust in Firefox

imnotjames 3y ago

Per https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1414266#answer-1582507 https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1414266#answer-1... > Thank you for reaching out with your concern. Firefox is committed to creating an online experience that puts people first, as such we quickly stopped running the ad experience, and are reviewing internally.

Waterluvian 3y ago
I’m always glad that PR people can’t help but speak in such inhuman language that makes it obvious that it’s not a real sentiment but just part of the play.
- Wowfunhappy 3y ago
  Honestly, I thought it was a pretty strong statement. They basically said "we screwed up."
  - candiddevmike 3y ago
    They used the words "stopped running" instead of "removed"...
    - Aeolun 3y ago
      I mean, I wouldn’t expect them to be able to pull the whole thing out of the code at the drop of a hat.
      - Zuiii 3y ago
        For a browser that claims to be privacy focused, I would expect them to tightly contain the code in an external module that can easily be turned off. I would absolutely expect them to pull the whole thing out.
  - lolinder 3y ago
    "Stopped running the ad experience" tells me the kind of language they've been using internally to describe projects like this, and it is not language that I'm okay with from Mozilla. Using the toxic language in the retraction doesn't breed confidence that they really understand what the error was.

CrimsonCape 3y ago

From the link: https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/browser/components/newtab/content-src/asrouter/docs/index.html https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/browser/components/n... "Messaging System" "Vision" "Firefox must be an opinionated user agent that keeps folks safe, informed and effective while browsing the Web. In order to have an opinion, Firefox must have a voice." "That voice will respect the user’s attention while surfacing contextually relevant and timely information tailored to their individual needs and choices." Somewhere in all of these companies exists the belligerent ** who orders the subordinates to inject inappropriate profit-seeking changes into the product. And then cajole/order/encourage another subordinate to write a florid virtuous editorial justifying their belligerent idea.

ReadCarlBarks 3y ago
> write a florid virtuous editorial Related: https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/mozilla-now-only-seems-to-speak-using-creepy-gibberish-lunatic/td-p/16863 https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/mozilla-now-only-...
- dingledork69 3y ago
  Thanks so much for linking that. This is 1000% on point and I'm so confused with what mozilla has been doing the past few years. It's like the organization as a whole suffered a stroke, and the result is this flowery meaningless prose.
  - xg15 3y ago
    As JRRM wrote, "any man who must say 'I am king' is no true king at all." Any browser who constantly reminds you how private and user-empowering it is, is probably neither. Add to that a vaguely liberal-sounding rethoric that could be right out of Ron Desantis' worst "woke lib" stereotypes - without even actually being liberal. Like, not that I'd see the browser an appropriate location for that, but if they actually wanted to commit to a liberal political view, I'd at least have expected "diverse voices" somewhere. But I have no clue what "independent voices" is supposed to mean.

leroy-is-here 3y ago

Firefox shows literal advertisements in the “new tab” window. I recently started using Firefox again because I was told I was being “ridiculous” when I said Firefox shows me literal advertisements. And then I get this pop-up on a window which hadn’t been refreshed in several hours.

sergiomattei 3y ago
You can disable them in less than a minute. I haven’t seen a single ad since the moment I installed Firefox and clicked “don’t suggest stuff”.
- grayhatter 3y ago
  The reason people are upset isn't because you can't disable it. The frustration comes from the fact you need to be able to trust your web browser. And mistakes like this, mistakes that are so egregious, and demonstrate such bad judgement, that it makes it harder to trust something that you need to be able to trust.
- cdme 3y ago
  Yeah they were weird to see until I turned them off immediately. I don't like the direction they've taken Pocket in with so much focus on "editorial" content. Instapaper's better at getting out of the way (even if it feels neglected).
- gpm 3y ago
  I have. Every time it updates it opens a new tab to spam about their VPN (or whatever the flavour of the month is).
- Rebelgecko 3y ago
  Where's the "don't suggest stuff" box? That seems much easier than the multiple about:config changes I'd have to do to turn off all of the new avenues for advertising
- matkoniecz 3y ago
  Ads by default are still not acceptable to me. Yes, I am willing to pay say 100$/year for web browser if money would entirely go to development. Maybe something to support staff like CEO. But not over 5 000 000 per year ( see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitchell_Baker#Negative_salary-achievements_correlation_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitchell_Baker#Negative_salary... ) And if such browser would be actually user-first, without ads for VPN and Disney movies (especially without ads pretending to not be ads).

gazby 3y ago

I've had the Mozilla VPN website open for a few days with an intent to purchase when I get around to it. Not anymore. I love you Mozilla, but you've gotta do better. Please.

grt_thr 3y ago

[flagged]

cubefox 3y ago
No, the other way round: People who support Firefox fight the dominance of the Chromium engine. If anything, one engine dominating is bad for the Web. (There is also Safari, but for Apple OSes only.)
- grt_thr 3y ago
  If Firefox was bad for Google then would Google be paying them 500m a year?
  - Phrodo_00 3y ago
    You could argue they do this in order to keep antitrust from looking at chrome too closely.
    - cubefox 3y ago
      Google paid Firefox for search before Chrome even existed.
      - Phrodo_00 3y ago
        Yes, and at that point it was because Firefox was the second most popular browser. Motivations do change.
      - wkat4242 3y ago
        Of course but their reasoning will have changed over time. Because Firefox's market share has changed tremendously as well.
mort96 3y ago
What are people who need a browser supposed to use? Chrome..? Would that make for a healthier web?

matrix_overload 3y ago

Firefox has been going downhill for a while now, so it's not surprising. That said, if you don't want to use Chrome, a fairly good alternative would be Vivaldi [0] - a surprisingly neat browser created by the ex-founder of Opera. It's based on the Chromium engine, so no weird rendering shenanigans, but at the same time is quite technically capable, with ad blocking, mouse gestures, email client, etc. [0] https://vivaldi.com/ https://vivaldi.com/

Phrodo_00 3y ago
> It's based on the Chromium engine Google has enough control over the internet as is, thank you. I'd really wish there were other gecko browsers now. Epiphany was good but they switched to Webkit. Edit: Just learned of LibreWolf. Might be looking into migrating over.
- Snuupy 3y ago
  I have a saner list of defaults here: https://gist.github.com/Snuupy/6dbb69bf667385db0a530ccb85926200 https://gist.github.com/Snuupy/6dbb69bf667385db0a530ccb85926...
- keyboardJones 3y ago
  There's also Mullvad browser: https://mullvad.net/en/browser https://mullvad.net/en/browser
em-bee 3y ago
we need alternatives that are not based on chromium.
- charcircuit 3y ago
  Why? Chromium works well and is easy to extend. It also comes with many security features, includes the latest and greatest standards, has good performance, and is actively maintained. It lets you focus on creating the best browser possible instead of wasting time working on the parts of the browser engine which aren't relevant to your product.

james4k 3y ago

I just got this ad when opening a new tab. Wild.

tedunangst 3y ago

It's really weird how every time this happens, Firefox promises it will never happen again until next time.

cookiengineer 3y ago

Happened to me too, even though I thought all ads were disabled in my modified libre/wolf profile. I guess I have to go back to ungoogled chromium as my main browser again and start working again on RetroKit. Good bye Mozilla, thanks for now being the corporation hell hole that you initially fought against. I guess that's what happens if you fire the people that actually cared for the project.

asdff 3y ago
You can unmozila firefox just like your chromium too. When I open a new tab I see a blank page, no pocket, no suggested whatever, no bullshit. I'd take firefox just to be able to use full on ublock origin (1). 1. https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-best-on-Firefox https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-b...
- sovok_x 3y ago
  At this point I just wonder whether Firefox userbase will flee the browser in droves if someone will make its unmozilled tracking fork sustained by easily payable tips, that has all the BS disabled and uBlock + couple of other top 10 extensions like Stylus and Tampermonkey natively implemented in it, with a good unified UI and all, for added value.
  - cookiengineer 3y ago
    The issue I have with the TOR browser (as an example of an actual real fork) is that they only stub away the APIs they know of, they don't really remove them and from time to time other methods of tracking glitch through; including all the fingerprinting requests when opening a fresh browser session. I guess with a hard fork they couldn't keep up with upstream. But honestly, I would totally be okay with a browser that doesn't have modern Web APIs because literally all of them from the last 10 years were just integrated to allow "appifying websites". If I wanna see a fancy WebGL demo I can also use a temporary chrome, but my main browser should not have that amount of (unmaintained) attack surfaces. All "forks" of Firefox usually aren't forks but just profiles with user.js configs. The only real fork of the engine itself is Pale Moon, and that project is a political shitshow and super outdated (which would be okay if it focussed on stability instead).

blibble 3y ago

firefox is an extremely hard product to recommend to friends/family it's becoming more and more user hostile with every upgrade pocket everywhere, telemetry, vpn ads, disney ads, amazon ads etc (and despite the constant UI changes it still feels like something out of 1997)

NotYourLawyer 3y ago
And yet it’s someone the least shitty browser there is.
lost_tourist 3y ago
It's all quite easy to turn off, or just recommend librewolf to them
- lolinder 3y ago
  No, it's not. Every few months there's a new garbage "experience" released under a new about:config setting. Playing whack-a-mole with ads from the browser by navigating through a scary-looking UI that warns you that it's dangerous is not an experience I can recommend to family or friends.
  - asdff 3y ago
    Just set new tab to blank page. Thats where they live anyhow right? I haven't seen any of these ads people complain about and I suspect its because of my new tab setting.
    - lolinder 3y ago
      My new tab is a blank page. This promo today popped up over an open webpage while I was working on another monitor.

2h 3y ago

reposted, since they are trying to silence and confuse: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1835182 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1835182

mnadkvlb 3y ago

Can someone recommend how to disable the firefox update popup on osx latest ? I have already disabled the updates checking background service. (disclaimer: i agree to security issues and stuff due to not updating, i manage my firwalls and adblocks to prevent getting hacked, and take full responsibility in case i get hacked, thank you).

trashface 3y ago

This happened to me a couple hours ago. The page it displayed over was chat gpt. I thought, well I guess mozilla has to make money somehow!

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

tysam_and 3y ago

I ironically got the same popup while sitting on the HackerNews homepage. The top article on the homepage was this one, visible through the dark-ish tint behind the ad. Lol.

stuaxo 3y ago

Yep, this happened completely at random and I'm pretty sure the browser focused itself.

suby 3y ago

Mozilla deserves to fail. This is absolutely unacceptable, it makes me irrationally angry. I've been using Firefox since 2004, I'm tired of these tactics. We're now playing whack a mole with their settings with things like advertising on the new tab page, user studies (which seems to randomly get re-enabled on updates), and now I need to add an opt out for this specific advertisement in my about:config? How many future advertisements am I going to need to opt out of on an individual basis as they come up? It's akin to what Microsoft is doing with their many toggles required to change the default browser settings. Even if there were a setting to opt out of everything it would be unacceptable. Might as well use Chromium if they are going to pull this shit. I'm just done with this, Mozilla deserves to fail.

NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
Yes it deserves to fail. But can any of us afford for it to do so?
- account42 3y ago
  Yes. Can we afford for it to not fail and keep preventing any real alternative from gaining momentum?
lost_tourist 3y ago
I turned off ads as soon as they added them and have no issues. I'm not sure why everyone is being overly dramatic about this. Furthermore, I subscribe to their relay service, so it pitches a couple bucks a month to them. I vote with my wallet. I don't think everything should be free or lose my mind when I see an annoyance in something that I get a ton of utility out of. The world isn't a perfect place.
- lolinder 3y ago
  I turned off ads and I still saw this ad today. It sounds like this one is behind a new setting. > I subscribe to their relay service, so it pitches a couple bucks a month to them. I vote with my wallet. I would love to vote with my wallet. I want to donate to Firefox directly. If they'd given me an option to donate and have the money go to Firefox and not Mozilla's other pet projects, I'd happily have set up a recurring monthly donation for it.

xg15 3y ago

One of the related tickets [1] seems to give some hints on the root cause - which in a way almost makes it worse IMO. Basically, what they wanted to do was to build a background process that detects when you're away from the PC and then pops up the message, so it's the first thing you see what you get back. Unfortunately (or maybe not) the detection logic had a bug, which caused the message to pop up right away sometimes, spoiling the whole thing. [1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1835175 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1835175

lamontcg 3y ago
I think it worked entirely 'correctly', and yet still annoyed the shit out of me.
housemusicfan 3y ago
> what they wanted to do was to build a background process that detects when you're away from the PC and then pops up the message, so it's the first thing you see what you get back This unnecessary bullshit is how you introduce security bugs into software. Mozilla can preach all they want about security and privacy but this shows that it's all rotten to the core.
esprehn 3y ago
Are you sure that code is related to this? That looks specific to the new tab page while the linked bug on HN shows a random website.
- xg15 3y ago
  It was linked in the "related" section of the original bug.
isaacremuant 3y ago
This is terrible. I don't want their popups ever. Why do they feel they can block popups by default from others but their popups are fine? Really hate Firefox doing this kind of thing. It's supposed to be a browser that cares about the user.

wejick 3y ago

When this kind of things happened, I'm sure it's an honest mistake and someone has learned a very good lesson.

throwaway290 3y ago

Probably this whole story comes down to "there's 'Allow Firefox to make personalized extension recommendations setting' and it is on by default".

ants_everywhere 3y ago

I've been using IceCat recently as part of a video project I'm doing. I started using Guix just for fun and IceCat happens to be the version of Firefox they have available by default. It has some quirks but it's overall pretty usable and strips Mozilla branding. It's a shame because I pay for Mozilla features, including Mozilla VPN. But I find this behavior (1) kind of gross, and (2) a clear signal of either desperation or indifference to their mission.

crossroadsguy 3y ago

It’s like Google and Mozilla just don’t want me to leave Apple’s phone OS and its browser, respectively. At least in Google’s case it makes good business sense - as in, it already works for them and their target audience already has been using the OS with all that, and doesn’t care about it, ads and tracking; besides there aren’t too many phone OS options. But in the case of Mozilla? Heck the target audience cares very much about these things and not liking shit like this was a reason they were in Firefox for. Now a lot have already dumped it for Safari, Brave etc. Then they keep doing such tricks. Someone at Mozilla has to be especially dumb to have done this.

jay_kyburz 3y ago
But you can't run uBlock Origin on Apple as far as I'm aware?
Aeolun 3y ago
Yeah, I guess they’re aware that there’s basically no alternatives for their audience? If there were a viable non-chromium alternative to Firefox I’d already have switched.
- itsuka 3y ago
  I've been using Firefox as my main browser to support its decreasing market share, alongside Safari for development and Ungoogled Chromium when things are unexpectedly broken in Firefox (due to strict privacy settings most of the time). I'm considering dropping Firefox because I don't want to deal with updating about:config anymore to remove ads, telemetry, etc. The other two browsers just work for me. Edit: this is not completely true - I enabled Private Relay (Safari only) and installed uMatrix and uBlock Origin on Chromium, but that's about it.
schemescape 3y ago
> the target audience cares very much about these things I recently switched from Edge to Firefox (on both Desktop and phone) specifically because Edge was showing me irrelevant "news" articles (which I assume are just ads in disguise) [1]. I guess on phone I can move back to Safari (which I abandoned due to a bug where scroll position is frequently lost when navigating backwards), since it is apparently the only major browser that hasn't tried to show me ads. Not sure what to do about desktop... [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35705502 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35705502

mvdtnz 3y ago

This bug is closed as a duplicate of a bug which is itself closed as a duplicate of this bug.

frozenlettuce 3y ago

That should be a accessibility disaster baked right into the browser(related to yesterday's anti-modal post)

jeroenhd 3y ago

I think the way the dialog is designed says enough. There's "Get Mozilla VPN" and "not now". No "stop showing me ads", "disable recommendations", "show privacy settings", instead, just "not now". This illusion of choice is a very common dark pattern that helps people feel like postponing ads was their choice (and their idea) rather than making them feel upset that ads have snuck into their browser in the first place. Websites run by trash marketeers like Reddit and Twitter do the same thing. I wonder how long it'll take before I will just switch to some Chrome fork. This whole "privacy first" shtick is nice but if I need to turn off as many settings in Firefox to make my browser pleasant to use as I do privacy settings in Chrome, I don't see the advantage. Last time I checked brave they were still pushing their shady crypto stuff and the UI was kind of meh. I wonder if I should reevaluate it with the ongoing erosion of Firefox as a browser.

Aeolun 3y ago
There’s this weird new browser for mac that I think is called Arc?
- anderber 3y ago
  Are they private by default or do you need to make adjustments to the settings to it? So far Brave seems to be the most private popular browser out-of-box.
- Nextgrid 3y ago
  Maybe it was Orion Browser?
  - idle_zealot 3y ago
    Orion and Arc are both new-ish Mac browsers. Both proprietary though.
- jabroni_salad 3y ago
  I'm not sure about their user experience either. The website for it has zero concrete information and you can't even see that there is no windows support until you give it an email address.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

hartator 3y ago

Upvoting as I feel most posts critical of Mozilla get flagged.

lolinder 3y ago

Mozilla has pulled a lot of dumb crap over the years, but this crossed a hard red line. I defended them with Pocket, with promotions in the new tab screen, with dumb wastes of time like Colorways. I've continued to evangelize Firefox in spite of the fact that I knew the company had lost touch with reality because I want there to be an alternative to chromium-based browsers. Today I'm done. I can shrug off promos in the new tab page, in the settings, whatever. But there are no second chances for full-page pop-up ads, especially when the "oops" is in the timing code. "Oops, you were supposed to see that after 20 minutes inactivity" doesn't cut it. Mozilla has lost it, and I'm done defending them and evangelizing for them.

iJohnDoe 3y ago
Agreed. There have been many defenders of Firefox on HN. I’m not sure why after all the crap they have pulled over the years. Unrelated mini rants. 1. They fill the default new tab page with garbage content. They have amazing reach with viewers. It’s a shame they can’t fill it with quality stuff. I understand you have to pay the bills, but at least find some balance. 2. Firefox 47.x was the greatest release. I’ve never been able to keep hundreds of tabs open with Firefox. Eventually Firefox eats up so much RAM and eventually crashes. Chromium based browsers can have multiple windows with hundreds of tabs each and not crash even after being open for days/weeks.
- Groxx 3y ago
  >I’m not sure why after all the crap they have pulled over the years. Have you seen the competition? It may be disturbingly similar to trying to vote for a decent politician, but there are absolutely degrees of badness. Plus there are still forks.
  - adastra22 3y ago
    Brave seems to work just fine for me, and gets out of the way.
  - Karunamon 3y ago
    Yes. Brave does a demonstrably better job at protecting my privacy and not making unwarranted connections to third parties I did not ask for.

userbinator 3y ago

What in the bloody hell!?!? Why does everything around the "web ecosystem" seem to grow paternalising adware/spyware-infested user-hostile "features" over time (I have observed this with other software, but browsers in particular seem to be the worst)? This is disturbingly close to Microsoft's tactics with Edge. A browser doesn't need popups, a "messaging system", "telemetry", or anything other than to show me the content of URLs that I tell it to visit.

felixgallo 3y ago

If any readers here are from Mozilla -- everyone involved in this frankly needs to be fired immediately.

toyg 3y ago
I don't know about the engineer who wrote the feature, but definitely any layer of management who came up with the idea and approved it, should be shown the door immediately. It's clear they don't understand the values they're supposed to uphold.
- sdf4j 3y ago
  I'd fire the engineer too. There's no due obedience in software engineering.

weirdindiankid 3y ago

This thread led to my discovering and switching to LibreWolf. Here's to a Firefox-ish browser that does better!

wg0 3y ago

Developing a browser is almost as close to an effort as writing an OS. Read the Flexbox specs alone. It's complicated and then there are hundreds of such specs. And then it is a moving target, constantly. Alternatives to Firefox are free. If this software has to survive than enough people will have to pay either directly or indirectly as in case of ads. What are other ways that an open source software can survive that cannot have "Open core" or "On premise" options available to it?

Nextgrid 3y ago
> What are other ways that an open source software can survive that cannot have "Open core" or "On premise" options available to it? Ask for money? Hell there's still not actually any way to pay for Firefox. Even this ad doesn't actually allow you to pay for Firefox, but instead for a service that's useless to the vast majority of people and relies on fear-mongering to sell itself.
- wkat4242 3y ago
  I don't think Mullvad is bad, but I prefer signing up with them directly instead of through Firefox, so I can use it with more different devices. Also whatever they get through the Mullvad deal nurse be a fraction of what you pay. After all Mullvad must supply the service for this money also and make a profit. What I'd actually pay for is something more elaborate like icloud private relay. Unfortunately Mozilla just cancelled that and it was only in beta in the US. I'd also pay for Firefox itself if I could (I already donate to the other projects I use a lot like KDE) but I feel a bit disenfranchised with Mozilla still aiming very hard at the mainstream user they have long lost.
- wg0 3y ago
  I'm merely genuinely asking what models exist for free open source software.

Nextgrid 3y ago

I've often said that Firefox is the most user-hostile piece of free & open source software I've used. It is much worse than a lot of paid, proprietary software.

userbinator 3y ago
Open source ended up being exactly what it says: you can see (and change, with enough time and effort) the source code. Nothing more, nothing less. It doesn't say anything about the incentives of its authors and their alignment with yours. I'd still rather patch the binary (which is actually largely a zipped collection of JS that implements most of the UI) than figure out how to compile Firefox from scratch. Android (at least the AOSP part) and Linux is a similar situation.

jmuguy 3y ago

What’s stupid about this is the only people still using Firefox are the people they have to know are going to hate this shit the most. I’d prefer they just charge for the software instead of doing this over and over again, and saying “oops we’re sorry, won’t happen again” every single time.

opportune 3y ago
I wish Mozilla or Microsoft or friends would let me pay $50 extra for a no-bullshit version of their products. It is infuriating when your UX is ruined by a corporation trying to make a couple fucking pennies off you
asdff 3y ago
I'm using firefox and I don't ever see this sort of stuff people complain about. Where does it even appear? I have new tab set to blank page. Are people leaving new tab at default with suggested content? At the end of the day firefox is a last refuge of a browser that allows me to block tracking and ads. As long as ublock origin works here and nowhere else this is the browser that I will be using. It's that simple, the internet is just too unusable without ad blocking.
- DangitBobby 3y ago
  I was incredibly surprised today while checking my gmail to see a modal with a darkened background pop-up to cover the entire web page. It was an ad for Mozilla VPN. I did some googling to find out if it was a gmail ad or a FireFox ad but didn't find anything until the bug report was shared here.
wkat4242 3y ago
This is what bothers me a lot yes. Especially in terms of features. Mozilla is still targeting the mainstream user that uses Chrome. Spending a lot of time on gloss and removing 'power' features. Yet they don't understand they already lost the chrome user years ago so badly that they don't even remember the name. And they're now alienating their remaining userbase.

lucb1e 3y ago

Let me put first and foremost that this is shitty. What irks me about these comment threads is that people hold Mozilla to a standard that nobody holds Google to. The negativity spiral, deserved as it may be, seems to then tip a lot of people (self-proclaimed) towards going with Chrome when that is still the worse option. Looking at Firefox' market share, I feel bad for the shit it gets and what it has to pull to try and stay relevant (.: to pay the devs). At the same time, I would also not mind an unmozillad firefox, perhaps in exchange for a certain donation amount per year. I currently don't donate much to Mozilla because they keep making the experience worse time and again (I'm still salty on a daily basis because the new mouse gestures "extension" is crap compared to the "add-on"-based one from before Firefox 57), because donating adds your email address to their spam list, and because I can't tell them to spend it on useful things like Thunderbird and Firefox rather than developing yet another VPN frontend or buying Pocket. Having a Firefox subscription that gets rid of their ads would not limit what they can spend it on, but it would send a clear message of what it is that I'm wanting to pay for. Wouldn't solve all problems but I wonder if this might help.

Macha 3y ago
If Firefox is not achieving a better standard than Google, then what is the reason for using it over the better resourced Google Chrome? Being better than Google is the bar it needs to meet to overcome the inertia of Chrome's market share
worrycue 3y ago
> What irks me about these comment threads is that people hold Mozilla to a standard that nobody holds Google to. We have already accepted Google as the “bad guy”. “Good guys” are held to a different standard. If Mozilla want to be a “bad guy” too, they will lose to Google who has the better product.
lolinder 3y ago
Firefox is supposed to hold itself to a higher standard than Google. It's why it exists, it's why I evangelized it all these years. It's supposed to be the browser that respects its users as human beings, not as conversion numbers. If Mozilla becomes as bad as Google, then there's no reason to choose them over the larger and more stable platform. That's why we hold them to a higher standard—if they can't meet that standard they have no reason to exist at all.

daguava 3y ago

[dead]

schemescape 3y ago

> RESOLVED WORKSFORME Why does this resolution even exist as an option? There’s no way the big filer will find that satisfactory.

account42 3y ago
It makes sense for when a user claims there is a bug but then doesn't provide any evidence or other information than can be used to track it down and perhaps just disappears entirely. Happens often enough with any even remotely large project. The problem is using without trying to triage the bug at all.

OneLeggedCat 3y ago

That "WORKSFORME" tag is such a powerful insult at the users.

dizhn 3y ago

Mozilla. They must have some really great and well meaning employees. Otherwise a good product like Firefox (or Thunderbird) would never come out of such a garbage company. Imagine if they were actually a good company with a tech focus.

Zuiii 3y ago

> WORKSFORME Looks like this feature is working as Mozilla intended.

Animats 3y ago

There are lots of forks of Firefox. Is there a reliable one without all the crap?

endgame 3y ago

Just. Let. Me. Pay. For. The. Browser.

eimrine 3y ago

Why the bug is closed, is this wontfix? Sorry for not trying hard enough to figure out what's up with this bug, all I can see is " Opened 8 hours ago Closed 6 hours ago "

scoutt 3y ago

Maybe relevant: "Firefox VPN Spotlight modal test content" [0] We are running a/b tests on a VPN spotlight modal in Firefox. Here's a link to the project info: Google doc There are two versions of content, identical except for the inclusion of a promotional code in one of them. Where the tests also differ is in the imagery used, which you can see in the Figma file linked in this ticket. Also, "Add vpn spotlight targeting" [1] Targeting to support https://mozilla-hub.atlassian.net/browse/OMC-419 https://mozilla-hub.atlassian.net/browse/OMC-419 - Existing users with a profile >28 days old, at least 1 day of use in the last 28 days, on Windows 10+, no VPN or Enterprise policy [0] https://github.com/mozilla-l10n/nimbus-l10n/issues/5 https://github.com/mozilla-l10n/nimbus-l10n/issues/5 [1] https://github.com/mozilla/experimenter/pull/8853 https://github.com/mozilla/experimenter/pull/8853

xnx 3y ago

Absolute rule of the attention economy: If someone has your attention, they will eventually try and make money off of it.

gen220 3y ago

IDK if they’re ready for the limelight, but if you’re an internet enthusiast and on the market for a non-Mozilla non-FAANG browser, you should check out The Browser Company’s Arc. No affiliation, just a happy user for the last year or so. After being a long, long time FF supporter, even through all this tragic disintegration.

0xffff2 3y ago
Their website really doesn't tell me anything I want to know about a new browser. Most importantly, is it Chromium based?
- gen220 3y ago
  Yep, Chromium.
  - 0xffff2 3y ago
    I know it's incredibly hard to build a browser engine, but any browser build in chromium is just giving Google more market share, which is a hard pass for me.
    - gen220 3y ago
      Agreed that it'd be nice to have a less ethically-ambiguous alternative. Since you seem to be pretty knowledgeable in this space, are you aware of any competitive FOSS engines and/or browsers built around those engines?

chrisledet 3y ago

so are we switching to Brave now?

slater 3y ago
Usually you want to switch to something better, not worse.

account42 3y ago

From the screenshots it looks like the popup greyed out the entire browser window, including the window controls. Did this make the window controls non-interactive? If so I will add this to the long list of reasons why application developers cannot be trusted with client-side window decorations.