Almost all the links in my front homepage are sponsored now. What’s next, a few ads in the bookmark bar? How about when I enter a URL, I then have to type “McDonald’s” before I can actually navigate there?
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Better than the unlabeled sponsorship behind the default search engine.
These can be turned off. Not great that they’re on by default, but you gotta pay the bills somehow right?
Yeah, this is basically the least offensive thing possible that ensures the lights stay on.
The only thing really offensive about it, judging from the post, is that they’re positioned before the user’s pins, not after.
I was okay with it before for that reason, but they went to far (as all eventually do).
Settings -> Homepage:
Uncheck everything “sponsored”.
Done.
It’s already done but I appreciate you being helpful. My black heart wiggled one time from the kindness you have shown here today. Peace.
Remember when most sites had simple banner ads, and there was no widespread outcry about how much they sucked and we needed ad blocking software? Then they started flashing, then the popups and pop-unders came, then vids started autoplaying, and now here we are.
If advertisers hadn’t gotten greedier than banners on the sides of sites, maybe no one would’ve gotten around to blocking all their shit.
Pop-under ads were obnoxious. As were the popups that were like 1 pixel large but it still had the windows bordering around it.
Nicely said.
People keep giving Mozilla shit for taking money from Google, yet they see an ad for a different company and lose their shit.
Just turn it off. If they don’t have income they don’t exist.
Mozilla already has Scrooge McDuck amounts of money. It doesn’t need any more to maintain a browser and an email client.
From jwz, who founded Mozilla & Firefox:
While this analysis is somewhat convincing, let’s not forget that for now Firefox is all we have. Important not to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
In my ideal scenario, Mozilla becomes like the Wikimedia Foundation. Which has somehow also accumulated “Scrooge McDuck amounts” of cash but seems to be on a firmer footing and better managed.
It’s amazing what you can pull off with free labour and CIA funding. I also find it funny how that donation banner still shows up every year when they’ve already accumulated so much capital.
Serving Wikipedia is a different order of magnitude vs building a web browser
Okay but you mean which is harder?? Both projects rely on a bunch of salaried professionals supervising an army of volunteers. Firefox is a web browser, i.e. notoriously the space shuttle of software. But the Wikipedia is doing some surprisingly innovative and cutting-edge stuff with its own codebase too, as I understand it. Whichever is costlier, I’m not sure we’re talking about an order of magnitude of difference.
I’m not an expert on either codebase but I believe the main driver of complexity with developing a browser engine is the sheer number of standards and how fast they change and multiply. Wikipedia has to update articles and maintain the server backend, which is no small task with such a global and comprehensive website, but Firefox has to do similar things on top of vastly more complex code with much more churn. There’s a reason Mozilla developed Rust as well.
Wikipedia has to update articles and maintain the server backend
Firstly, updating the articles is the one thing Wikipedia doesn’t do, the army of unpaid volunteers does that.
But as for “just maintaining the backend”, the Wikimedia Foundation does far more than that. It created and maintains and constantly iterates a huge pile of ever-complexifying frontend code - the wiki itself, discussion software, media tools etc - not just for Wikipedia but for a whole bunch of peer sites. Much of it is pretty cutting-edge, it’s used daily by many thousands of editors and there’s also the accessibility requirement. I know from personal experience that there’s nothing harder than front-end when you have to tick the accessibility box. No doubt Firefox’s technical challenge is greater but really the difference is not night and day.
Mozilla already has Scrooge McDuck amounts of money
no. they don’t.
the google money that they rely too heavily on, may not always be there. they need more diverse funding. these paid placements, which can be turned off, are one way to do that.
turn off and delete the sponsored stuff at install, never see 'em again. it’s not like they’re microsoft or something, constantly turning that kind of shit back on with every-other-update.
https://www.jwz.org/blog/2024/06/mozilla-is-an-advertising-company-now/#comment-249969
Preemptive subtwit.
Let’s say you run a nonprofit animal shelter. And for some reason, some people feel you should be seeing hockey-stick growth, but the donations aren’t covering it.
So you decide to start up a side-line of selling kittens for meat.
Then you will inevitably have someone stroking their chin and saying, 'Yes, yes, but how could they afford to stay open if they weren’t selling kitten deli slices?"
Some might say – maybe you aren’t an animal shelter any more. Some might say.
It’s a real shame what’s happened to Mozilla. Maybe Trump will add browser software to the list of sanctions on China and we’ll end up with a Deepfox in a year or two.
And it will be running on Deepin also
Skill issue
deleted by creator
Honestly, I don’t care. I don’t even look at that stuff, I just type in the bar thing what I want. Mozilla has to fund the project somehow.
I don’t mind as those are easy to switch off.
Don’t give them any ideas
Ads are one thing, but this seems excessive and probably unintentional. Looks like someone just filed this bug, which is another sign that it might be an unintentional problem: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1944704
Then turn it off?
Also, I rarely use Firefox on my phone and my links are still all from websites I’ve visited.
If they make some money from harmless icons, I mean, I can live with it
I was fine with 2. Having all but one icon in the tray be an ad is too much.
How do you get this? My home page just has some recent links
Fresh install.
on mobile, too, it looks like. on pc, i’ve only ever seen half that many, plus google pops in there if you switch your search default. click-dismiss and they’re gone. toggle a couple settings, done. they don’t come back.
This is the same garbage we condemn Windows for, though. It’s still not okay.
nah in firefox those ads can be disabled by unchecking a checkbox, in windows it’s probably not just an easy to find checkbox and i bet after removing the ads they’ll just come back after an update.
Depending on where you got Firefox from, default settings are different. Maybe your distro ships with these deactivated.
Yep. I get it from Librewolf. 😁
Almost all the links in my front homepage are sponsored now. What’s next, a few ads in the bookmark bar? How about when I enter a URL, I then have to type “McDonald’s” before I can actually navigate there?
Don’t give them new ideas, Sony might jump in and patent that too.
I think the downvoters can’t hold these two thoughts in their mind at the same time:
- Firefox is the best browser.
- Firefox has serious problems because Mozilla is a terrible steward of it.
Agreed. I love Firefox and don’t really like Mozilla.
No it’s the complaint about one of the few transparent revenue flows Mozilla managed to pull off.
It’s disabled one step deep on the settings
There is a shitload of stuff going wrong with the Mozilla foundation and this doesn’t even make the top 10.
That’s the reason for my down vote: it’s nothing I want this community to focus on. It’s basically engagement bait with the topic “ads bad”.
Firefox is the best browser
It’s only real competitors, in my eyes, are Firefox forks.
Let the people downvote. These points don’t matter. I turned off the visibility of points. I am immune, my morale is unbreakable. The downvoters have no power here!
