this post was submitted on 17 Apr 2024
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Firefox Android Beta vs Nightly - new "Suggestions from the Web" and "Sponsored Suggestions"? (i.imgur.com)
submitted 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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I recently downloaded Firefox Nightly and noticed some new settings that were enabled by default:

  • Suggestions from Firefox Nightly
    Get suggestions from the web related to your search
  • Suggestions from sponsors
    Support Firefox Nightly with occasional sponsored suggestions

Learn more about Firefox Suggest

The link in the UI doesn't mention sponsorships anywhere. But this page does:

Who are Mozilla’s partners for sponsored suggestions?

We partner with organizations to serve up some of these suggestion types... For sponsored results, we primarily work with adMarketplace, while also providing non-sponsored results from Wikipedia.

This page links to the adMarketplace Privacy Policy which makes it pretty clear this company is okay with collecting your IP address and passing it to further unnamed entities.

Elsewhere, they say Firefox sends them "the number of times Firefox suggests or displays specific content and your clicks on that content, as well as basic data about your interactions with Firefox Suggest", and then will share interaction information "in an aggregate manner with our partners".

Update: Switched the link from the Desktop to the Mobile version. Added more quotes from FF, and bolded info about their one named AdTech partner.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I'd love to be able to donate to the browser development so they didn't have to do this type of enshittification, but as far as I'm aware its impossible to support the browser itself.

Firefox is foundational to my supply chain for Mull, Mullvad Browser, Tor Browser which i use daily, and I'd be happy to donate for browser development.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago (1 children)

They don't use the donations for the browser but for all types of bullshit projects. The browser is dramatically underfunded.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Which is crazy because nobody gives a shit about any of their other projects.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

Their stakeholders and advertisement partners do!

[–] vikingtons 9 points 7 months ago

Thank you for the heads up. I love Firefox for android but this was a very sneaky addition.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, you need to clean up the browser before using it because the browser is full of advertising and tracking by default. The massive telemetry and reflinks and "hidden" extensions need to be removed, as always.

Read through this: https://github.com/yokoffing/Betterfox

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

It looks like this has been in the desktop browser since 92 (released in 2021) but a new addition to Firefox 120 and beyond. But it's a staged release so not everybody is going to see this "experiment" at once.

You can't Betterfox your mobile Firefox, can you? Thank goodness for decent mobile browser forks...

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

You can’t Betterfox your mobile Firefox, can you?

You basically can’t do anything with mobile Firefox at all.

Here’s an instruction, but never tried: https://github.com/yokoffing/Betterfox/issues/240

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

That's interesting. I've been a Firefox Beta holdout, thinking about adopting Fennec as my daily driver, but I understand the value of sticking to the browser that receives the most timely security updates.

The biggest downside is, it looks like the modifications aren't intended for the mobile app, but they apparently partially work. But in a good way:

using the base user.js on Firefox Android only improves speed and battery life, which is great because telemetry can be very battery hungry.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

I’ve been a Firefox Beta holdout, thinking about adopting Fennec as my daily driver

After a decade of not using Firefox I just started using it again a few weeks ago. While desktop is absolutely fine, using the Android version is just a bad experience. Coming from Vivaldi Mobile it feels like a massive downgrade from a polished modern mobile browser down to an early alpha hobbyist project.

If it weren't for seamless tabs and bookmarks synchronization (everything else seems not to be synchronized at all) I would keep Vivaldi on Android because its just so much better.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Now we need LibreWolf for Android

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago

Fennec and Mull both exist... Mull is closer to LibreWolf and more likely to break sites, and Fennec is slightly less so.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

Now seems like a good time to plug Mull browser, a privacy oriented version of firefox

Then again, msybe mozilla really is just hurting for cash

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago (1 children)

ermagawD there's an toggle able option on my browser to turn off a feature I don't want?

And it's a free and open source software that I don't contribute to at all,

That's ducking it.

I'ma b̶u̶i̶l̶d̶ m̶y̶ o̶w̶n̶ b̶r̶o̶w̶s̶e̶r̶ w̶i̶t̶h̶ b̶l̶a̶c̶k̶j̶a̶c̶k̶ a̶n̶d̶ h̶o̶o̶k̶e̶r̶s̶ complain on an internet forum about how unfair it is that they are going against my principles and are making money off of it. They gotta ask for handouts like the rest of the opensource projects out ther. I'moutraged. They gotta learn their place.

It's unacceptable, I tell ya.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago

If you want to tell me I don't have the right to critique the browser, be upfront and simply say it.

And tell me exactly how you expect people to contribute before we earn the right. Especially considering Mozilla does not allow donations to go to Firefox development, and the CEO is badly overpaid.