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.