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?

  • Evil_Shrubbery@lemm.ee
    0·
    11 months ago

    I say let them cook a little, they arent drowning in donations and still do a tone of things for foss communities.

    Let’s remember that the de fuckto market (ie pleb) alternative is overwhelmingly Chrome.

    We dont need such projects just so we as individuals can have privacy focused experiences but also for how that influences markets and society. And to have any influence you need certain power of masses.

      • Evil_Shrubbery@lemm.ee
        0·
        11 months ago

        Be that as it may we are old enough to know foss needs support.

        I myself rarely click on some campaign for donations, I prefer the coffee button or whatever they have on their page or bithub.

      • adarza@lemmy.caEnglish
        0·
        11 months ago

        Mozilla already has Scrooge McDuck amounts of money

        no. they don’t.

        the google money that they rely too heavily on, may not always be there. they need more diverse funding. these paid placements, which can be turned off, are one way to do that.

        turn off and delete the sponsored stuff at install, never see 'em again. it’s not like they’re microsoft or something, constantly turning that kind of shit back on with every-other-update.

      • davel@lemmy.mlEnglish
        0·
        11 months ago

        https://www.jwz.org/blog/2024/06/mozilla-is-an-advertising-company-now/#comment-249969

        Preemptive subtwit.

        Let’s say you run a nonprofit animal shelter. And for some reason, some people feel you should be seeing hockey-stick growth, but the donations aren’t covering it.

        So you decide to start up a side-line of selling kittens for meat.

        Then you will inevitably have someone stroking their chin and saying, 'Yes, yes, but how could they afford to stay open if they weren’t selling kitten deli slices?"

        Some might say – maybe you aren’t an animal shelter any more. Some might say.

        • lamassu@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
          0·
          11 months ago

          It’s a real shame what’s happened to Mozilla. Maybe Trump will add browser software to the list of sanctions on China and we’ll end up with a Deepfox in a year or two.

      • JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world
        0·
        11 months ago

        While this analysis is somewhat convincing, let’s not forget that for now Firefox is all we have. Important not to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

        In my ideal scenario, Mozilla becomes like the Wikimedia Foundation. Which has somehow also accumulated “Scrooge McDuck amounts” of cash but seems to be on a firmer footing and better managed.

        • tempest@lemmy.ca
          0·
          11 months ago

          Serving Wikipedia is a different order of magnitude vs building a web browser

          • JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world
            0·
            11 months ago

            Okay but you mean which is harder?? Both projects rely on a bunch of salaried professionals supervising an army of volunteers. Firefox is a web browser, i.e. notoriously the space shuttle of software. But the Wikipedia is doing some surprisingly innovative and cutting-edge stuff with its own codebase too, as I understand it. Whichever is costlier, I’m not sure we’re talking about an order of magnitude of difference.

            • verdigris@lemmy.ml
              0·
              11 months ago

              I’m not an expert on either codebase but I believe the main driver of complexity with developing a browser engine is the sheer number of standards and how fast they change and multiply. Wikipedia has to update articles and maintain the server backend, which is no small task with such a global and comprehensive website, but Firefox has to do similar things on top of vastly more complex code with much more churn. There’s a reason Mozilla developed Rust as well.

              • JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world
                0·
                11 months ago

                Wikipedia has to update articles and maintain the server backend

                Firstly, updating the articles is the one thing Wikipedia doesn’t do, the army of unpaid volunteers does that.

                But as for “just maintaining the backend”, the Wikimedia Foundation does far more than that. It created and maintains and constantly iterates a huge pile of ever-complexifying frontend code - the wiki itself, discussion software, media tools etc - not just for Wikipedia but for a whole bunch of peer sites. Much of it is pretty cutting-edge, it’s used daily by many thousands of editors and there’s also the accessibility requirement. I know from personal experience that there’s nothing harder than front-end when you have to tick the accessibility box. No doubt Firefox’s technical challenge is greater but really the difference is not night and day.

        • lamassu@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
          0·
          11 months ago

          It’s amazing what you can pull off with free labour and CIA funding. I also find it funny how that donation banner still shows up every year when they’ve already accumulated so much capital.

  • Redex@lemmy.world
    0·
    11 months ago

    Personaly those shortcuts are a feature I literally never use so much so I don’t even register their existence anymore.

  • BarbecueCowboy@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    11 months ago

    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?

    Don’t give them new ideas, Sony might jump in and patent that too.

  • TxTechnician@lemmy.ml
    0·
    11 months ago

    I think the best viable option for them is to either offer a subscription model. Or increase requests for donations.

    • Ephera@lemmy.mlEnglish
      0·
      11 months ago

      And Brave has significantly lower costs, given they don’t develop an own engine, but rather just put lipstick onto Chromium.

    • Artyom@lemm.ee
      0·
      11 months ago

      Or, ya know, literally any other browser that’s not a fork of Firefox.

  • Aeri@lemmy.world
    0·
    11 months ago

    Yeah but you can literally just turn this off with no fuss.

    1.Firefox for Android.

    2.Tap the menu button.

    3.Tap. Settings.

    4.Tap Homepage.

    5.Deselect Sponsored shortcuts under Shortcuts.

  • ColdWater@lemmy.ca
    0·
    11 months ago

    The browser itself is free, and they have to make money somehow to keep the company running (if the CEO didn’t keep most of it for themself). If you don’t like it, you can turn it off or download an ad-free fork.