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Exists
New member
Status: Trending idea

Firefox should include a built-in adblocker, just like what Brave, Opera, etc have done. This should be something all browsers should include

28 Comments
Status changed to: New idea
Jon
Community Manager
Community Manager

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

Anonymous
Not applicable
Anonymous
Not applicable

Blatantly referring to ad blockers can create friction. However, as an extension of user style sheets, the right of users to customize website content should exist.

scalebearer
Making moves

I have been an avid user of uBlock Origin for years, however I am against having a built-in adblocker.

1. A built-in adblocker would never be as good as uBlock Origin.

uBlock Origin is mature and has been iterated upon for many years by Raymond Hill and many other open source contributors.

This will also take Firefox development resources away from core browser development just to build something that probably wouldn't be as good as uBlock Origin.

2. Given the bulk of Firefox's income still comes from payments from Google in exchange for making Google the default search engine, having a built-in adblocker that is on by default might antagonise Google and might make for some awkward conversations between Google and Mozilla, given the former's core business is advertising and user behaviour tracking to target aforementioned advertising.

The only situation where it would make sense for Firefox to dedicate resources to a built-in adblocker would be if Raymond Hill suddenly decided he didn't want to work on uBlock Origin any more and either nobody steps up to replace him or anyone that does is not as good and potentially ends up trashing the extension or they have nefarious intentions in mind and use it to save people's browsing history to a remote server (basically what happened to Nano Adblocker, a fork of uBlock Origin).

If this happens and there was no obvious replacement of similar quality and philosophy (i.e. not trying to make money by letting ad companies pay to let their ads through on an acceptable ads program like AdBlock Plus), then it would make sense.

Hopefully this either does not happen, or if it does, Mozilla has diversified its revenue sources enough to the point where Google's payments no longer comprise such a large percentage of their income.

Obviously this remains unlikely. I'm not holding my breath.

My pragmatic recommendation to people who like adblockers is to quietly keep using uBlock Origin. Having one built-in has more potential to do damage to Mozilla's relationship with Google (and income as a result) and the result would likely not be as good as mature extensions such as uBlock Origin.

Anonymous
Not applicable

There can be no perfect ad blocker, and I think Firefox's built-in one is simple enough. If you need more than that, you can use extensions. And I don't expect the relationship between Mozilla and Google to continue.

LinuxDev
Making moves

I agree with the comments... uBlock Origin is a great extension, implemented in the LibreWolf fork. Firefox gives you the option of an additional ad-blocker, but for me the "strict" settings in Firefox work great.ff-privacy.png

 

Nich
Making moves

I agree!

Thoromem
Making moves

I think pre-installing uBlock Origin would be better.

ParsaJR
New member

I do not agree at all. If this feature is added to Firefox, I will delete Firefox! It is not moral. Why do you want to force users to destroy the rights of websites and YouTubers! If the ads are annoying, don't visit that site

CosmicHappiness
New member

Brave does that and it's one of the coolest features a browser can have for many many people. With the advent of Manifest V.3 Mozilla could really become as an excellent alternative out of the box for people who don't want ads. 🙂