This is genuinely disturbing.

A developer was planning on sneaking data collection into a product through a sketchy terms of service. That on its own should keep the app out of any marketplace.

The subsequent claim that the developer simply forgot to include this in the TOS doesn’t get any extra sympathy from me. Funny the apology only appeared after the developer got caught with their pants down, isn’t it?

That GitHub discussion seems to confirm it. The developers shutting down their extension immediately afterwards too just reeks of suspicious activity.

The version number for the extension in my browser (1.8.8) doesn’t match the latest release that’s visible on this otherwise public repository (1.8.0)

So presumably at some point “someone” “somewhere” modified or added some files to the source code of this extension out of public view… and then “somehow” got a hold of this dev account password or whatever which was subsequently used to surreptitiously push it to the chrome webstore…

There are web clipping tools - even open source ones - to help you with stuff like this.

Based on your other comments here, you should probably start organizing your tabs before your browser simply crashes.

They’re already going that direction. Mozilla needs a change of heart, not just a change of income

I wondered why this was downvoted before I saw the original message in my notifications

yeah, thanks Mr/Ms obvious, you described exactly the reason of why it does not look vanilla at all, that big giant bottom ad banner

Anyway, my point is that I would assume Firefox would look different if there was evidence the user caused this banner by accidentally injecting malware into the browser within Linux.

Text fragment linking already works in the latest version of Firefox, although you’ll need to install an extension like this one to create links.

What are the chances Mozilla will actually open source the deepfake text detector, which is literally the only part of the entire fake spotport folio that might be worth preserving?

PieFed has a way to keep votes (more) private. From 11 months ago:

There was a widely held belief that votes should be private yet it was repeatedly pointed out that a quick visit to an Mbin instance was enough to see all the upvotes and that Lemmy admins already have a quick and easy UI for upvotes and downvotes (with predictable results).

Vote privacy may be especially important because it’s really easy for a malicious server to get set up, unbeknownst to anybody else, and just pull vote data that other servers freely provide.

This narrows the possibilities down to three four interesting options.

1. Mozilla did this, and you’re the first person to talk about it online
2. Your OS did this, and you’re the first person to talk about it online
3. A protected browser page got hijacked by malware on Linux
4. You did this and forgot, somehow

Some other comments have been annoyingly dismissive, but I hope you push onward to figure out what the hell this is. Because if it’s one of the first two, it’s a big deal.

What part of it doesn’t? Besides the massive banner added the bottom of the screen, everything looks like it’s the default. That icon in the top-left corner comes preinstalled. The search engine is still the default. The only customization I see here is an extra theme and a couple of add-ons.

This is something new. What’s under the 3-dot menu? And to cover our bases, can you look through your browsing history to determine where this copy of Firefox came from?

“thought-provoking stories” has been part of Mozilla’s Firefox for a while, originally tied to their Pocket branding. I guess Pocket is dead but sadly not this part of it.

Looks like the original post disappeared.

Right before it was, OP claimed in a comment that part of their post was a joke. Part of me hopes this is an exercise in technically correct creative writing, and based on their account…

Custom Search Engines: Firefox now supports adding even more search engines. To add a custom engine, right-click a search field of a supported website and select “Add Search Engine”, or go to Settings > Search > Add (below the search shortcuts table) to manually enter a search URL.

“Settings > Search > Add” was already available in Firefox for Desktop, but you manually had to travel to about.config to add the missing browser.urlbar.update2.engineAliasRefresh boolean and set it to true. You’ve been able to do this for at least 4 years, and it’s worked on Android for a while too.

Maybe they finally finished polishing it up.

Apology accepted.

Crazy how Mozilla has done so much stuff that people just forgot

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Firefox doesn’t let you use alt text anywhere, except for the most ridiculously niche location.

People who want to see it when they browse webpages get nothing.

It’s only if you

• open a PDF in Firefox
• and then choose to edit it
• and then choose to add an image
• and then choose to add alt text to it
• and then choose to generate alt text instead

If Mozilla cares about accessibility, what a weird niche of a niche of a place to put it.

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I don’t need to be a source code expert to understand what Mozilla has done, thankfully. That’s not a technological hurdle the average person should have to overcome. I know more than most people have the privilege to know, and further gatekeeping (any gatekeeping) is unnecessary.

If that was not your intent, or for other people who are genuinely interested:

https://noyb.eu/en/firefox-tracks-you-privacy-preserving-feature

If gatekeeping my comment was your intent, I would be happy to track down the source code as long as you made an extensive effort to get Mozilla to remove the code that collects your data…