Firefox needs a drastic change: privacy by default.

[xUxSxExR]

What made Firefox successful in the past? It was simply fast, adaptable and user friendly.

Then Chrome came and did exactly the same. But now its faster, and has very similar Addons at least.

It sucks, but people dont seem to care about privacy? Is that too short? What if they care about privacy, why should they use Firefox?

Firefox is not a privacy out of the box browser. Its a flawed concept. Everything a product stands for, has to be actually enabled by default!

I use Arkenfox, and I used Librewolf before. But Librewolf is slower than Arkenfox with native Fedora Firefox, so I chose the extremely manual way. But even for me that is work.

On other installs I simply set some GUI settings and thats it. No RFP, no webgl, useragent or canvas randomization...

Firefox is not a privacy browser, even though its easy to make it one. Privacy is literally the only reason why people would use it!

Firefoxes userbase is big enough. I dont even know how to donate to the Browser, I already did to the other Mozilla and in the end didnt care anymore.

If every Firefox user donates like 1€/month, its enough to get rid of the shady search engine deals.

Those Search engines and useless presets make Firefox a useless browser. For normies that dont know its the only private browser once configured, will simply use Brave.

Having Google by default makes it useless, Chrome is the Google Browser.

Firefox needs to take this step: get rid of all the crap that makes the internet the place it is. Ads are flawed. Invasive search engines should be removed.

Having no vision for this gives people no reason to use Firefox. A privacy browser does not include Google out of the box.

Why not?

• Block Ads by default
• Be very secure by default
• Use containers by default
• Simply integrate Arkenfox as an out of the Box setting.
• Have a "secure mode" toggle that enables this

Arkenfox is usable for daily life! Really! And even with Noscript it is.

The only thing stopping Firefox from doing this out of the box is the shady Ad deals. If they dont rely on those companies, why not just block all Ads?

Why develop "privacy preserving Ads" techniques, and not just a way to donate to websites you often visit? With crypto, or anything else. Maybe have a database and donate bigger amounts to fewer sites to reduce transactions. Everything anonymized.

Firefox is a great Toolbox. But as nobody uses a browser like that, its current state is useless for people. Without out of the box privacy and real innovations, it has nothing to offer compared to Chrome or Edge.

[Jon]

Thanks for submitting an idea to the Mozilla Connect community! Your idea is now open to votes (aka kudos) and comments.

[Jon]

Some related ideas here on Connect:

Firefox built-in Adblocker 

Integrate the Multi-Account Containers add-on 

[pg_78]

100%.

As an example of the way that Firefox has allowed its principles to be compromised, I was shocked when I found that FF has a backdoor allowing at least 5 cross-site cookies per session: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1385799

Cross-site cookies are a privacy violation. When a site tries to perpetrate this violation, Firefox should be loud and proud about preventing it, explaining to the user why it has prevented it, and requiring the user to explicitly approve the cookies. Unethical corporations shouldn't be provided with a backdoor justified by this "signal to the browser that it needs to use [third-party cookies] for important functionality" shenanigans.

I sense there is some timidity in Mozilla about deterring "normal" users when they find that privacy-violating sites don't work seamlessly on Firefox. Frankly, Mozilla should embrace that Firefox will never be the dominant browser in the market - it should get its confidence back, focus on its core constituency, and stand up for what's morally right: resisting monopoly and surveillance.

[TLHighbaugh]

Use Fennec then, you can get it from F-Droid and it has about:config for you to go privacy crazy at expense of breaking content of course.

[wutongtaiwan]

I agree

[wutongtaiwan]

I love this idea

[mozillian]

@TLHighbaughFennec, Mull and all other forks pretty much take too long to update, especially if they're on Android (like Fennec, Mull, Iceraven etc.). Also, why should like our parents have to download Mull and like 50 addons + 2 hours of about:config settings ++ occasionally checking what Mozilla changed just to make the browser they use a bit more personal to themselves?

[nistee]

Maybe you can archive both. You could still get funding from Alphabet while including Google as the default browser in the default profile, but generating multiple profiles for different scenarios out of the box. If the user could easily switch between different profiles for different scenarios as mentioned here. So it would be useful if the UX for switching profiles was as simple as in Edge, and the profiles included the extensions and configs mentioned right out of the Firefox installer.

 For Thunderbird, you could also give us the option to choose between a default and a more secure configuration. Potentially, you could give us an advanced installation button to add this configuration and add-ons.

[xUxSxExR]

wow, long time has passed. I would phrase it differently today, but the point got even clearer with the "TOS debacle"

- Firefox is a great browser, very extendible and FOSS
- It has enough users that would likely donate to the project, so that search engine deals (that may become illegal!) would not be needed. See what happened with Thunderbird, which is pretty much in the same situation as Firefox.
- There are "forks" like Librewolf or Ironfox that fix Firefox. They make it a users-first browser that does no things behind their backs and actually does what it promises: a secure and private by default browser, that allows users to surf the web in a safe way

Firefox is still my favourite browser, BUT
- Mozilla corp probably gets no cent from me because I harden it. Meanwhile "my grandma" or even siblings and parents would use it, knowing nothing, clicking on ads, and being victims of the horrible internet that we have today
- I would like to donate to FF. I have not watched ads since more than 5 years and will never do. I pay for MetaGer search, my mailprovider and more, in exchange for a good product and no ads. I have no way to donate or pay for Firefox, even if I wanted to.

Manifest v2 might actually be problematic. There were vulnerabilities in UBlockOrigin that allowed code execution. Integrating adblock into Firefox would make sense. Just like it makes sense in Brave.

I think Brave had good ideas, but their crypto payment thing is scammy. Websites need money, not ads. Crypto is fine but should not be a lockin into the browser company.

Brave also has things like "forget me when I close the tab" that Firefox has not. Brave afaik has stronger anti-fingerprinting than Firefox. Brave is also way more secure on Android, which is why I use it now and it is kinda fine?

I dont want to need to use a fork of the best browser there is. Firefox is a product and not a framework to tweak, to get a good product after XYZ configuration changes.

[xUxSxExR]

oh and btw, Firefox Focus and Firefox Klar (no idea what the difference is) are not what I want. A separate, way less usable product, that pretends that privacy is a drawback?

I agree that the 2 settings could work. Either pay for Firefox and get a private and hardened version, or watch ads, have popups, Pocket, tracking search engines, recommended websites on pocket etc. Then you can see who actually cares.

oh and btw the HTML editor is broken so I need to write HTML now, LOL.