Almost all the links in my front homepage are sponsored now. What's next, a few ads in the bookmark bar? How about when I enter a URL, I then have to type "McDonald's" before I can actually navigate there?
this post was submitted on 29 Jan 2025
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See ads, "how dare they" Sees paid version, "how dare they" Development costs time and money, pick your poison.
I was okay with the sponsored links, but now this is affecting the functionality of the app. My phone is shit and I have a hard time sliding to the next page.
You can disable sponsored shortcuts on the homepage settings, if that's what it's referring to
Everyone is too busy being angry to click the little gear icon.
Eh, the criticism isn't invalid - those are still ads being added on the front page. What does irk me is people talking about how something breaks their workflow, yet they don't even try to fix the issue.
This shit irks me so much, because it keeps happening!
There's this feature that makes your address bar randomly auto complete sponsored URLs instead of your actual history. Pretty fucking annoying to type
nand have Netflix pop up, even though I don't use it.When you disable this "feature", it still breaks your autocomplete! Now instead of suggesting Netflix, it just sometimes doesn't suggest anything before I continue typing.
If you must add these anti-features to pay for your CEO, at least don't break the app when it's disabled!
I think you can make it only autocomplete your bookmarks in the settings.
But I also don't want that. I just want the normal auto-complete to work 10/10 times, not just 9/10.
@UltraGiGaGigantic @lemmylurkaround Actually, I would gladly pay for a browser that is just doing its job.
I need one for macOS and iOS, preferrably one solution for both.
Could you point me in the right direction, please?
Maybe you can donate to Mozilla?
Are they going to give me a link to a version that doesn't do this? Otherwise what exactly am I paying for?
How has no one in this thread put together that you can literally just customize your home page, removing categories until it’s literally blank, or only keeping pages you select available.
Git good noobs.
https://kagi.com/orion/
Pay how much and how often?
$20 a month? $50 a month.
I'm not really sure what you're getting at?
I understand that my circumstances are unusual but I would absolutely pay $20 a month without a moment's hesitation.
I would pay $50, but I'd really have to believe in the project.
It's worth noting that presently mozilla earns $0 from my not using google, and not seeing sponsored tabs.
I thought Google pays (or paid?) Mozilla just to be the default engine out the box, regardless of whether you change it or not.
Another point is that it's so easy to turn those things off (the sponsored shortcuts too) that I wonder if it would be worth the cost of launching an alternate version behind a paywall while making sure it works only for people who pay (which could be seen as DRM anyway, with potentially massive backslash). So I imagine the end result would not be that profitable (whether they decide to paywall it properly or not). Those who wanna donate and have no ads can do that already, those who want a cleaned up version of Firefox can have that and from neutral and independent third parties which I'd argue is better than if it were Mozilla who did it (and you can donate to Mozilla while using those too).. so I'm not sure it would make sense.
But it would make sense to have a donation pool specifically to fund Firefox development. That would be something interesting, considering Mozilla does other things besides Firefox. But I expect they don't do that because they probably fear all donations will move there and they don't want to lose funds for other things. We might need to create a separate organization if we want an independent fund for Firefox-based browsers.
You might be right about Googles agreement with Mozilla. I had assumed it would be based on the number of searches performed with a mozilla user agent but that's just a guess.
I'm not sure why exactly but I just feel very uncomfortable with the idea of donating to Mozilla. I absolutely believe in the importance of Firefox' existance, and if I felt I was contributing to that then I would donate. I think with the situation as it is making a donation would feel a bit like voting - my own contribution isn't going to effect the outcome, and I don't really agree with mozilla's behavior anyway.
On the other hand, if Mozilla declared that they were going to spin off a separate org exclusively to develop and maintain firefox, and would have no ongoing relationship with google nor advertising of any kind, would focus on privacy, and were going to survive entirely on subscriptions, I feel like that's something I could get behind and feel happy to contribute.