I feel like there is no web browser with a sane default configuration that I can recommend to other people. All browsers are preconfigured in a way that harms the privacy of their users or include services that no one wants such as Pocket and BAT.
Here are my problems with some popular browsers.
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Mozilla Firefox: Pocket integration, no ad-blocking without extensions.
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Brave: Everything related to crypto. Also its start page is horrible.
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Chromium: No ad-blocking without extensions and soon Manifest v3 will cripple all content blockers.
Now, these suboptimal defaults wouldn’t be such a big problem if the configuration files were easy to backup and restore and respected the XDG base directory specification.
Ad blocking shouldn’t be tied to the browser, anyway. ublock is superb, imagine if firefox devs should have to develop it along with the browser (that nowadays is a herculean task).
Anyway, extensions give user freedom to chose how they use their browser.
Pocket take 2 seconds to disable.
That is why forks like librewolf exist.
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Brave is based on Chromium, so the candy doesn’t have so nice taste.
Just when I was getting used to car analogies, here’s candy analogies
Just use Librewolf. It’s a fork of Firefox, with Pocket disabled, Ublock Origin preinstalled, and privacy settings enabled by default.
How many people maintain LibreWolf? How closely does it track the upstream?
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don’t expect browsers to block ads out of the box
What’s wrong with pocket integration?Nobody forces you to use it. Apart from that it stores user data e2e encrypted, mozilla has no access to your data (as opposed to chromes sync functionality). Imho, a browser should not block some content by default. But ad-blocking must be easy to enable/install. All of that’s the case in FF so I see no reason not to recommend it.
Yeah, Pocket does nothing unless you press the button.
And as for telemetry that’s publicly available on telemetry.mozilla.org if anyone wants to see what’s being sent. It’s very useful for Mozilla to see what and how features are used.
Mozilla is our last tiny hope for freedom really, in this Chrome/Blink world…
Not to mention they have a freaking Help page explaining how to remove it if you really don’t like it for some reason.
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/disable-or-re-enable-pocket-for-firefox
Just remove pocket in about:config
You’re going to be spending a lot of time with your browser, make it a 2 way dialog, customize.
Firefox has an extremely vibrant extension ecosystem and seems to overall be doing well, but see what works for you.
In other news, emacs still didn’t ship my
init.elas part of the default configuration! LolJust install u block origin lmao.
And I’d have to do that manually for every computer on which I install the browser. I can’t just tell someone to install a browser and use it as is, there are always several additional steps required after install to have a decent experience. This is especially a problem for people who are not tech savvy.
Or just use their built in sync and sign in one time, and all your addons will be installed and enabled for you.
If your argument boils down to “none of the browsers are exactly pre-configured for me, one of the 7 billion not special people on the planet”, I’m not sure there’s a productive conversation to be had here.
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Use NixOS, nix package manager or home manager, declaratively add all the extensions and config you want, boom same browser every time
People who are not tech savvy can handle installing a browser extension manually the one or two times they have to set one up
You can backup your profile folder. See here: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/back-and-restore-information-firefox-profiles
What’s the problem with using uBlock on FF. Gets rids of ads, has ton of features to custom add filters and more.
Also, I kinda like Pocket Integration on FF. Found some interesting articles that way.
The problem with Pocket is: most of us don’t want it, and cannot get rid of it like you do with extension.
Well you can just remove the button by right-clicking on it. But if that’s not enough, Mozilla has a help page to completely disable it.
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/disable-or-re-enable-pocket-for-firefox
Disabling it (even “completely”) is not the same as removing it. The code is still there. Mozilla don’t even provide a method to exclude it when building from source code.
IMO that logic is really absurd. If you can disable it so that it doesn’t bother you, nor steal your data, then it’s completely fine. They are giving you the option to opt-out.
Pretty sure there was a flag to disable it.
I didn’t know about the Manifest v3 thing, and I found this article. Sharing in case anyone else is out of the loop.
Librewolf or one of the other Firefox forks
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Mullvad Browser
On Android F-Droid app store there are some off-shoots of Firefox that are real good. Fennec comes with a bunch of the most popupar extensions already installed and none of that Pocket nonsense.
Why do people dislike pocket so much? I barely even know what it is, used it once to see what it was about and then forgot about it completely, it’s not exactly obstructive
- It yet another step along the ever increasing march to enshitifaction where everything on the fucking internet wants to collect data about me.
- It’s utterly pointless and is ergo wasting system resources.
