this post was submitted on 24 May 2024
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How to combat creeping firefox enshitification? (lemmy.sdf.org)
submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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I deal with a lot of VMs for varying purposes, and it seems frequent that my purpose for opening firefox is derailed by some kind of nag. For example, I frequently get the "you haven't used firefox in a while" in vms that I rarely use firefox and have to go disable the "meta refresh" option in the "about:config".

Now, I've started seeing this one... it's not even one of the passive banners but a full-page stop-the-world w/ semi-transparent background and right-click prevention.

Before I invest too much time trying to figure out how to disable these, or templating profile options en-masse, or the like... I thought I might ask... is there a way I can tell firefox that I only want it to only be a web-browser? i.e. an effective tool and not an attention sink or exciting video-game-like challenge of exploration and closing popups and suggestions while trying to remember why I launched it.

Somewhat relatedly, there is some kind of irony with firefox prominently offering to copy a URL without tracking for other sites, but when it is their own ad (however benign it might seem) that they disable right-clicks and load up on the trackers. The above button links to:

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[–] [email protected] 106 points 5 months ago (4 children)

I would argue this isn't enshittification. They aren't adding ads, they aren't plugging something you have to pay for (at least that I've seen, maybe their VPN service). To me, these are things most common users (read, not us) expect their browser to do now.

So it's a catch 22. Use hyper tech people would like it to remain a techie based browser. But we've seen that that doesn't do well for a company, and it'll become less relevant allowing Chrome to domineer even more. So, the alternative is they try to add features that will attract more people, and then they piss off the techie base. This cycle has been happening since the 90s

[–] [email protected] 34 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Yeah also I think we should be careful about calling anything we find annoying Enshittification, otherwise we'll dilute the concept and it loses all meaning. I see this happening with hyperbole all the time, for example one of the strongest words in the dictionary "hate" have almost no meaning as people use it for even the mildest dislikes. Let's reserve Enshittification for Xitter and friends.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 5 months ago

Fully agree. Enshittification is when a company's greed gets so intense that it purposely makes it's product worse for short term gains over the quality and long term sustainability of it.

Reddit shittified by forcing all users off third party apps for now reason. Same with twitter. Google is currently doing it to get short term ad revenue and in return is making search useless.

Firefox here is just adding new features and letting us know about it. Huge difference, they don't deserve the term.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 5 months ago (1 children)

That's why it would be nice if there was just a "go away and stop showing helpful tips" button when you first start up a fresh browser install.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 5 months ago (2 children)

But then how do you handle the very users who would need it in 5-8 months clicking that option reflexively?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

The same way video games handle it when you skip the tutorial.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Oh, show a main menu on opening each and every time (and a few creator credits screens before that of course) where you can select that you want to start over new including all the popups instead of where you left of?

Yeah that sounds like a brilliant idea! :o

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Make it a key combo that shows it or something like that.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 5 months ago

Exactly, this is genuinely adding useful features. For users. Sure there are niche cases like the OP frequently using VMs that end up leaving each browser in a very deprecated state, but this very behavior of the browser is useful to a normal user that just hasn't used the browser for a while.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Perhaps we need a new word for this sort of thing. Popupification? Appsplaining? Encruftening?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Onboarding?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

That doesn't really capture the feeling of a sincere and cheerful "Welcome aboard!" delivered by clown in a business suit to an old salt who hasn't left the ship in six months.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 5 months ago

Hand-holding? Condescension?

[–] [email protected] 25 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I dunno if LibreWolf has this pop up, But I've also never even seen this screen in over a decade of using regular Firefox either.

Easiest solution would probably be adding the meta refresh setting to a custom user.js file you can use on new installs.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago

Yeah I have never seen it either

[–] [email protected] 22 points 5 months ago

You might want to listen to Cory Doctorow's talk on the enshitification on the internet before you apply that word to Firefox.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 5 months ago

You know, there is a lot that is to blame for why Firefox doesn't get the market share that it needs, but I would blame a part on its community as well. I have never seen a community that is so reluctant to any change or basically any features being added to a product than the Firefox community.

Firefox developers:

Look! To try and make the browser easier to use for new users, we have added a pop-up remind you that hey, Firefox sync is an awesome feature of this browser. Because feature discoverability is hard.

The Firefox community five seconds later:

E N S H I T I F I C A T I O N

Mozilla isn't perfect. Far from it. I have a lot of things to say about them and features that were never added or removed years ago that I'm still pissed off about and will continue to complain about until it is resolved, like fucking PWAs for example.

But damn, being a Firefox developer sounds really hard. Like, trying to please a bunch of people who are always complaining about the state of this browser, but also will, without fail, always complain every time you change or add features sounds fucking exhausting.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 5 months ago

Is this just referring to the firefox sync feature? I love being able to access tabs from my laptop on my phone and vice versa.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago

I think you want the override flag and a handcrafted override.ini file https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/CommandLineOptions#-override_.2Fpath.2Fto.2Foverride.ini

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Would running Firefox headless work for your use case?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

Good point, they'd never see another nag screen.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

On Linux you can configure Firefox with the json and for Windows you can use Group Policy. You can then turn off all the junk and customize it.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

That sounds fantastic, but I don't know of this json file to which you refer...

$ rpm -ql firefox | grep json
/usr/lib64/firefox/gmp-clearkey/0.1/manifest.json

...or the specific modifications to make.

Would you happen to have a link with more information? Maybe a guide or relevant docs?

[–] [email protected] -2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Mullvad browser works wonderfully at just being a web browser with no configuration needed

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I wouldn't expect that most people would be fine with no browsing history and always forgetting cookies. Mullvad browser is Tor browser without Tor integration, and similarly, to me at least, it is a special tool for the occasion with special up and downsides

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

Sure. But maybe the person using a browser across a bunch of VMs would want that behavior.