They loophole it by not “hosting” anything other than text. Link to something and someone else is accountable right? Just ignore that data is data and any image or video can be expressed as a sequence of “text” :)

App suite isn’t corporation.

The for-profit corporation attached to the open source project is the failure. The linux kernel isn’t attached to Linux Corporation, ffmpeg isn’t attached to FFmpeg Corporation. Android is attached to Google Corporation, but Google Corporation already existed and had massive revenue streams before making Android, thus Android as an open source OS doesn’t need to drive revenue (of course, they put their greedy tentacles into Android with stuff like the Play Store and Gemini).

Mozilla Corporation shouldn’t exist. That’s not to say Firefox (or Linux, or ffmpeg, etc) developers shouldn’t have avenues to make money. But it should only be developers making money, not a holding corporation parasitizing the one (two if you count Thunderbird) meaningful project undertaken by “Mozilla”. The project gets a lot more sustainable when all you need to do is ensure that actual contributors to the software development are paid fairly for that actual work.

A CEO can decide what Firefox does (and in ways that inevitably influence the FOSS Mozcorpless forks). No CEO can decide what Linux does.

“it’s easier than you think” is one thing that’s very helpful to show to people that don’t already know about using free software without tracking and such, but when it’s “it’s easier than you think, just spend hundreds of dollars and replace your device” I’d say the barrier to entry is the cost more than the skill.

Aren’t there phones like the Nothing that already have fully FOSS android implementations pre-installed? That’s the peak “easy” - just buy a new product! So saying installing Lineage is “easy” to someone who very likely can only do so after buying a new product is burying the lede.

If you’re buying a new one, whatever fits your budget and is compatible with Lineage/Graphene.

The only times I’ve personally been forced off of a Samsung phone (though I’ve mostly had flagships) wasn’t due to any day-to-day degradation in user experience. It was stuff like switching USA carriers or my carrier blacklisting devices with 3g. My current S22 Ultra is three years old, going on four, and aside from needing to use adb and shizuku to have a semblance of control I once had with root there’s nothing wrong with it. My previous phone was only replaced because it became incompatible with my ATT phone service in the US. The Note 9, which was four years-ish old when ATT decided 3g+4g wasn’t good enough and deactivated any SIM i put in the thing. If not for that arbitrary carrier-made decision, I can’t think of many things that 9 couldn’t do that the S22U can.

My next phone won’t be a purchase I make until I absolutely need to make it, and at that point it’ll exclusively be a pick from degooglable unlockable models. I’ll probably choose based on hardware like an SD slot, removable battery, and stylus if any of those are available. Or maybe linux phones will be a thing at that point and I’ll be looking at those.

$300 plus shipping and taxes. In your region. And a whole lot more than $0, which is the cost of staying on someone’s old phone. when someone’s buying a new phone already, considering its compatibility with Lineage or Graphene is something that should be on more people’s radar, I agree. But switching from googled vendor’d Android to fully open Android isn’t a pure skill issue like switching from Chrome to Firefox (/Waterfox/librewolf) or Windows to Linux is. “I’d switch but it’s too hard” is a much smaller reason than “I’d switch but it’s too expensive” is.

Someone’s five year old phone is just as likely to be a five year old Samsung/etc with a locked bootloader.

Of course it is. But that doesn’t change that for very many users, the difficulty of the install process isn’t anywhere close to a limiting factor.

Doesn’t matter how easy it is when step zero is “spend $500+ on a new phone because you’re currently using a Samsung or other device with a locked bootloader”

Remember, even cheaper phones (that actually work with your carrier) get marked up. Taxes, shipping, accessories like a case. Being able to afford a new device is nice and Lineage/Graphene make a good case for which new device you should buy, but someone’s five year old phone still works.

I see this take a lot, usually revolving around “doing your part” to keep that tiny sliver of Firefox usage up in siteside metrics. Decide what’s right for your case, but know that Waterfox and Firefox broadcast the same browser user agent so using WF doesn’t take away “market share” from FF. The only thing using FF instead of WF does to “support firefox” is giving Mozilla Corp your data to “not sell, california just calls it selling” and your clicks on its built-in ads - if you’re turning all that stuff off by hand it’s the same as running WF.

From what I can see, this doesn’t need privilege escalation. Just for the user to grant it screen reader privileges, which many users aren’t conditioned to see as the giant flashing red alarm bell it is.

Malware is like fishing. Bait a million hooks and throw them out there, something’s gonna bite and get hooked even if 999,999 lines never even get tugged.

After about a year with the browser, I’ll cheerlead it in every thread about Mozilla Corp getting in bed with another ad company or pushing anti-features “that you can toggle off so it’s fine!” into the browser. All the benefits of Firefox as a platform and code base, with no corporation that could profit from you in any way involved. No mandatory ToS, no account, no nothin’. Just a tool for browsing the web, with the full ecosystem of extensions made for Firefox.

Any gecko-based fork will have everything good about FF (including the addon store) and none of the Mozilla corporation. Waterfox for a seamless de-mozilla’d fork (and nothing else) or Librewolf for extra hardened privacy and fingerprint resistance (plus daily annoyances that come with that).

I switched from FF to WF about a year ago. Copied over my profile folder in its entirety. Didn’t do anything else. Everything worked exactly as if I’d just updated FF.

The person is saying that they’ve replaced web browsing with playing a cash grab mobile game through two VPNs. On Lemmy. Are we really that far gone? Replaced Firefox with Raid Shadow Legends is “worryingly realistic”?

If you’re comfortable with your current privacy settings (no desire for LW’s hardened approach) and just want to ditch Mozilla corp, Waterfox is the fork for you.

It definitely works that way for Waterfox. LibreWolf has very stringent privacy-focused defaults (like disabling form autofill and purging history and cache on every browser close), so unless you want to manually find all those settings and about:configs you’ll be overwriting with a migrated FF profile folder you’re kinda defeating the main purpose of using LW over WF. Same for if you were gonna disable the potentially “annoying” privacy defaults in LW.

Yes, “essentially firefox but without mozilla corporation or data harvesting / ad partners” is exactly what you’d want to use instead of firefox. Waterfox in particular is so “essentially” firefox that it is firefox. Copy over your profile folder. Click the blue icon instead of the orange one. Congratulations, you are migrated and never have to worry about sponsors or ai in your browser again. Waterfox doesn’t even have telemetry to opt out of.

LibreWolf is very privacy focused and hardened by default in ways that impact convenience. Waterfox on the other hand? I’d say switching to that is easier than turning off all the shit you’d have to turn off in a fresh FF install. You copy the profile folder into the spot where WF stores its profiles, and you’re done. All your everything is intact. History, cache, bookmarks, cookies, extensions, login sessions, settings (though your opt-out settings for garbage like homepage sponsored links or AI don’t do anything anymore because there’s nothing to opt out of).

I’d been using Firefox since it was Netscape Navigator. One toggle too many got me on Waterfox a few months ago. I have noticed absolutely no difference in my heavily customized browsing experience from the change, other than not having to go menu diving to turn off the new data harvesting anti-feature of the month.

Switching to de-Mozilla’d Firefox (Waterfox) is as simple as copying your profile folder from FF to WF. Everything transfers over, and I mean everything. No mozilla corp, no opting out of shit in menus at all.

Any chance for a self-hostable containerized version? I’d love to be able to spin up my own local instance on my homeserver.

I don’t pay for a domain and don’t intend to start doing so. Using “someone else’s server” removes the only reason I’d want to use element/matrix/whatever else.