Firefox is not what it once was. It ships with many user-hostile settings enabled by default. For example: telemetry, Pocket integration, sponsored shortcuts on the New Tab page, sponsored suggestions in the search bar.
The knobs to turn off each of the 4 things I just listed are found in 4 different places within the UI.
Literally all of that is opt-in, except for the sponsored new tab page backgrounds, which are one toggle (and a separate one from having other rotating pretty backgrounds delivered at Brave's expense)
Ohh Don't forget Firefox, for all it's privacy preaching:
- Hijacking all your DNS requests to Cloudfare by default
- installing a scheduled task to Windows PCs to phone home your Windows default browser setting choice (And if you delete this task it gets re-installed again at each update)
- Firefox Studies are OPT-OUT. I've seen a study active on initial install already (and sometimes THREE studies running at once in a recent Linux install).
- Google set as the default search despite many privacy oriented options available
- Unique ID generated upon install.
- A marketing company metrics enabled was included in Android/iOS (see link). See above about Unique ID and IP address collection to see how this could have been abused.
I have used FF daily since basically Opera went Chrome-clone. BUT having to research how to turn off all these things above and what you mentioned with telemetry etc over the past few years has REALLY sat bad with me to point I am ready to jump ship as well and let them figure out themselves why they continue to bleed users. Bring back Colorways again for v106 along with cutesy sayings?? UGH. But FF still is the lesser of evils imo among desktop browser choices.
... and once you do it (tbh the only thing I could care about is the telemetry thingie, but need to check details and I never see anything sponsored on new tab ) what are your objections against it?
yep, the respectful way all of these firefox additions that mozilla deems en vogue at the moment, is for them all the be opt in.
Firefox advertises themselves as user respecting but falls short frequently and that disconnect riles people more than being abused by google and chrome who we generally know don't care about respecting users at all (unless it's profitable)
The knobs to turn off each of the 4 things I just listed are found in 4 different places within the UI.