I'm still on Firefox 89, so I'm a tad outdated in this

It is up to you. The same as with the every other aspect of your (internet) life: you have facebook, instagram, whatever else account? Do you have one or many email providers, is your kernel hardened, your services trimmed to the minimum?

Personally I always had Firefox modified to me needs including config. Not sure what the deal is here.

Therein lies the nub. How to balance a user's freedom and privacy with usability?
While corporate culture is allowed to maintain that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with collecting exposed private data to enhance the user experience, then the only resort for those still longing for the age of privacy is to harden and limit the private data exposed.

The marketing gurus of Big Tech could learn a few things from this thread...

Whenever someone complains about telemtry and surviellance tech, just pull out some old anecdotes about the Soviets...

On topic: Mozilla sold out a long time ago. It should never have come down to a choice between Mozilla, google or MS being a matter of choosing the lesser evil. It has. That was unthinkable 10 years ago.

To me it does come down to that kind of decision. And after surveying the alternatives, I have to just cave in and continue using the browser backed by a foundation which seems to have utterly lost it's way and become mired in activism and side projects. The foundation website feels like it should have a section at the bottom entitled "we also do a web browser"...

5 members found this post helpful.

We just being stripped step by step from security and privacy. But is really what we wish for: walking naked on streets.

everyone here has unmodified slackware?
just because there is the word privacy or freedom, it costs you to check or uncheck boxes in firefox?
while hardening or tuning slackware doesn't cost anyone anything, it gets complicated when it comes to firefox ...

This made me laugh. But more correct would be: does someone has unmodified Slackware?

Me.

So, Why don't you complain about that damned browser that had the misfortune to put checkboxes so that you could express your disagreement with the company's policy?

1 members found this post helpful.

So browsers have had search suggestions for years. They still needed to send your keystrokes to those servers to be able to provide search suggestions as you're typing. How is this new thing much different than that in relation to privacy?

It seems the only difference now is some server (seemingly Mozilla owned? I'm too lazy to research since I haven't used Firefox as my primary browser in probably a decade) is doing additional processing of those keystrokes to show the suggested results in addition processing that was done to show the search suggestions.

If the previous was enabled by users, what's the big deal with this new one? If the previous one was disabled by previous users, what's the big deal with disabling this one?

Seems like something that people should've already avoided or come to terms with before this addition was made, unless I'm missing something big about this addition that doesn't apply with the previous search suggestions (which I'm happy for someone to explain).

It's a fair point to a degree. I'd even go further and say if I had to choose one or the other (which I don't), I'd rather search strings go to Mozilla's servers than to Google's.

However, with previous "provide search suggestions" (which by the way was pointed out as a privacy problem back when it started, IIRC) you could at least say Firefox was providing a handy feature for your benefit. You get what you might have needed to visit a new web page to see, and that would plausibly be a useful thing if you don't think too hard about how it is accomplished and the ramifications. In this case, as I understand it, Mozilla is taking money to put those who pay into your suggestions. The feature works in their interest and against my own.

It's what FSF people call an antifeature in that respect. If I wrote the browser all by myself somehow, there's no way I'd write in the feature to have suggestions come up from companies who pay Mozilla. If anything I'd demand they pay me and accept the suggestions from those who are paying me to see them. But really (since I am unfathomably wealthy already) I'd want the most probably useful suggestions which you could at least fantasize is what web search results try to provide. Paid for suggestions, no way. That's space that should have been occupied by more optimal text.

And Firefox is a massive program I don't understand very well. To not be able to trust the organization and its main developers to make things I would like, it's a serious problem in my mind. Solidifies even more the need to avoid the web by using gmane and gwene, what remains of usenet (in some ways the slackware news group is better than this place, btw.) gemini, gopher. And then when web is needed tor, icecat, eww, dillo and finally if nothing works and I still feel I need to view the page, then I can try firefox or some other corporate browser.

We got the hint about Mozilla when they went along with encrypted media extensions. Back then I could buy the argument that you have to keep a foot into what the mainstream is doing, that they were compromising so people could mostly run free software but still get to watch video streams for sale. But this move shows their general direction going off the rails, at least for the time being. Reminds me of when Ubuntu put amazon suggestions in local search bar results. If I ever wondered if Ubuntu had any advantage for me over Debian I dismissed that possibility when I heard about that. Maybe Ubuntu is less bad now. Hopefully Mozilla will hear from their users enough to learn from this error too.

4 members found this post helpful.

@marav

Unfortunately it is not as simple as just checking / unchecking a few checkboxes to get rid of all the BS mozilla has put into firefox. Even changing some settings in "about:config" is not enough, because they will be reset when you update firefox. Only "user.js" will disable things properly. Until mozilla simply removes the settings completely and hardcodes 'em in the source code.

@allend & others

As long as people will choose convenience and usability over privacy and freedom, nothing will change.

I am not trying to convince y'all - we each have to walk our own paths and make our own decisions. And deal with the consequences of our own decisions. Be responsible for your own actions.

But I do get the impression that y'all did not read this post by RadicalDreamer - Self-Censorship is the worst kind of censorship.

Is that the future you want for your children and grandchildren?

1 members found this post helpful.

Thank You, thirdm.

That’s not right
Because all these settings are stored in $HOME/.mozilla

ditto with /usr/lib64/firefox/distribution

1 members found this post helpful.

@marav
www.ghacks.net/2016/12/05/beware-firefox-updates-may-reset-preferences/
Even though this article is from 2016, there is no reason to believe this has improved.