What, if anything, should I do about using Mozilla's Firefox

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Overall sentiment on Firefox

  • Many use Firefox reluctantly as the “least bad” option, not out of enthusiasm.
  • The new terms/advertising direction are seen as “frog‑boiling,” but most still rank Mozilla above Google and Apple on privacy.
  • Some decide to stay and aggressively disable telemetry and new “rubbish” features as they appear.

Privacy, data and business models

  • Mozilla is described as now clearly an advertising business that will sell user data, which breaks trust for some.
  • Others argue relative harm matters: 2–3% Firefox share selling aggregate data is less worrying than Google’s ad empire.
  • There’s recognition that any “free” browser must make money somehow; users are picking the least-bad tradeoff.

Firefox forks (Gecko-based)

  • Common suggestions: LibreWolf, Waterfox, Zen, Floorp, Mullvad Browser, GNU IceCat.
  • Pros: better defaults (telemetry off, disk cache minimized, Normandy disabled), more UI customization, closer to user wishes.
  • Cons: small volunteer teams, unclear funding, security/sustainability worries, still dependent on Mozilla’s upstream work.
  • Several report painless migration by copying Firefox profiles into LibreWolf/Waterfox; minor bugs and site-compat issues appear.

Chromium-based options and monoculture

  • Brave, Vivaldi, Thorium, Orion mentioned.
  • Brave: praised for adblocking and privacy stance, criticized for crypto push and past “sketchy” incidents; seen by some as “Chromium + crypto racket.”
  • Vivaldi: liked for features, but closed-source and Chromium-based; occasional instability reported.
  • Many worry a Chromium/WebKit duopoly lets Google (and Apple) dictate web “standards,” citing Manifest V3 and Chrome-only APIs.

Adblocking and Manifest V2

  • Firefox’s continued support for Manifest V2 and full uBlock Origin is a key reason some insist on staying.
  • Expectation that Chromium forks will struggle to maintain V2 once upstream rips out infrastructure.
  • Declarative-only blocking (Manifest V3) seen as too weak and too slow to adapt to adversarial platforms like YouTube.

Building/packaging Firefox yourself

  • Building from source is feasible and fast on modern hardware; Gentoo users highlight hardened, privacy‑friendly builds.
  • But most feel personal forks are unrealistic to maintain securely; better to rely on distro packages or established forks.

Future directions and despair

  • Ladybird is repeatedly cited as the most promising new engine, though many years and person‑years away from daily-driver status.
  • Some foresee browsers becoming like Windows: corporate‑controlled, unavoidable infrastructure.
  • A minority respond by trying to use the web less or hoping for alternative stacks (e.g., WASM/Wayland ideas).