I've almost always been a strong supporter of the Firefox web browser. Since before Chrome was ever released, I always used and loved Firefox, even when it was a crashy buggy mess back in the day, and I was a big fan of its strong add-ons, general feature set, and, later, its libre nature. When Chrome first hit the market, for some reason it became the popular thing to switch over from Firefox to Chrome, maybe just because it was the shiny new kid on the block and it integrated with Google accounts and Gmail better. But I always stuck with Firefox - especially because about half the time I was using Linux, and Firefox was the premier choice, or Chrome wasn't offered at all. Sadly, the days of Firefox being even slightly popular have all but evaporated, and most people used either Chrome, Chromium, or a Chromium-based browser such as Opera, Edge, or Brave. Firefox stands as one of the last browsers to use its own in-house browser engine and have its own control of the features in the browser, rather than being a slave to upstream changes by Google. Even I eventually switched to Ungoogled Chromium for awhile because it was, ironically, a little less security-focused than LibreWolf out of the box and therefore was more usable for every day use-cases, while also being more secure than default Firefox on paper.
However, I can happily say that my days with Chromium-based browsers are at an end, all because of a change Google is making to the base Chromium browser to update to a new policy for extensions called Manifest v3. This new extension API removes many of the primary features required by content blockers and ad blockers (such as uBlock Origin and I'm assuming other ones like Decentraleyes, LocalCDN, and NoScript) through multiple different means, basically gimping or completely destroying their capabilities. Chromium from the very first days has always had a less capable extension API than Firefox; I remember back in the day NoScript would complain that it is not as effective as its Firefox counterpart when you installed it, and LocalCDN does the same thing today. Google hates extensions that allow you to have more security and privacy on the internet. Absolutely hates them. Probably the only reason they even supported them at all was so that they could reasonably get people to move away from Firefox when the browser was first created, and it took them until now to completely crush all the competition so badly that they can finally take support back out with little opposition in market share. Perhaps this was the long term plan of creating a web browser in the first place - Google has always been heavily funded through ad revenue.
This change strongly harms most of the people of my generation or younger who use a web browser and know how to install an ad blocker. Installing ad blockers literally takes 3 clicks and improves your experience using a web browser by a massive amount on every single website you visit, with no further interaction required - anyone who complains about them either derives most of their revenue or paycheck through ads in some way, or are being dismissive of something they have not tried or are not educated about. Very few sites break with uBlock Origin installed, and for the sites that have issues disabling it requires just clicking a big "power" button and refreshing the page, saving the fact that the blocker was toggled off for that site indefinitely so that it will work from then on. (This is a pretty rare occurence, though.) The non-ad-blocker web, before blockers existed and up until today without a blocker installed, is a massive nest of scams, tracking, clickbait, and annoyances. Some websites, like news sites, are barely even readable without an ad blocker on because there's more ads on the page than text - and they look perfect, clean, and beautiful with one installed. The straight fact is that the web supported through ads is fucking terrible and alternative revenue streams to advertisements, such as donations, Patreon, and merch stores are much more end-user friendly and more respectful of people's time, intelligence, and mental state.
That doesn't mean that Firefox is a perfect browser. As I mentioned before, it has some scummy stuff in it - for example, by default it uses Google for searches built into the url bar, enables telemetry and geolocation, and makes web connections every time you open it without your input unless heavily configured in a complex about:config page. Fortunately, like how there's Ungoogled Chromium for Chromium, there's LibreWolf for Firefox that strips out all of these features and by default configures Firefox to be more respectful of your privacy and your data. But this also requires some configuration in the opposite direction because it's almost too privacy and freedom focused, with things like DRM content (read: Netflix, HBO Max, other streaming sites) disabled by default, and all cookies and browsing data deleted every time the browser is closed. It's not too bad to get used to this, I have; the worst part is if you're addicted to a browser's built-in password saving feature, that won't be enabled by default here, but it's probably better to use an external password manager instead, and nowadays I just type all my passwords every time and it doesn't bother me too much. But, it does also have benefits over Ungoogled Chromium, like the fact that Chromium absolutely will not allow you to have your New Tab page be a blank page. For some ridiculous reason, I had to install an addon just to have a blank New Tab page that didn't show anyone who opened my browser all of my bookmarks in little bubbles in the center of the window. And obviously, now it'll be capable of ad blocking whereas Chromium-based browsers of all types will not.
I've so far had a great time with LibreWolf, especially since I've mostly eliminated streaming services from my life and I have my own methods of managing passwords which work for me. And again, all the features that LibreWolf takes out (that you would want) are possible to re-enable, with a little bit of finagling. But even people who use just the standard, out-of-the-box Firefox are probably more safe and private than users of Chromium, and especially of users of Chrome. At the end of the day, Firefox is a libre browser and Chrome is not, so there's no way to see what additional tracking is enabled in Chrome. I only used Chromium when it was in the form of Ungoogled Chromium, and I would never, ever use a proprietary browser under any circumstances unless some dumb website at my school required it or something, and I would keep my activity in it isolated to that one task. There's really no reason to use a proprietary browser when Firefox has always done basically the exact same thing (minus Google account integration which is catastrophically harmful to privacy and barely even useful if we're being honest), and I really don't understand why Chrome became so popular to begin with, but here we are. Perhaps normal people out there will be encouraged because of this change to try out Firefox again, and we can move just a bit of the market share away from proprietary web browsing again like the good old days of the 2000s web.
October 1, 2022