I believe LibreWolf’s defaults are too strict and slow down adoption. Most options are either : all or nothing. No in-between.
Sadly, I believe the default settings are too strict and will slow down adoption by the mass, which would in term bring a better anonymity set.
It’s not a great alternative to Firefox because LibreWolf is just not usable for the daily user: no DRM, no cookies, no history, websites that break… The browser should let the user choose:
- Maximum compatibility (more tracking)
- Mid-option (like a modded firefox but without the annoyances like cookies not being stored, having a fixed size, or forced light-mode/timezone)
- Best privacy (pretty much the current mode)
I find myself forced to edit the default settings which is a huge privacy/fingerprinting risk. If we create ‘settings groups’, yes, the privacy will be hurt, but at least we will be more in each group.
What do you think about this?
Counterpoint: LibreWolf’s defaults are one of its main selling points.
Then it’ll never truly rise, if it’s for really a really small niche
Not everything is meant to. It was made for a specific purpose and works for that purpose.
It seems to be doing just fine to me.
Yep. It doesn’t even have auto updates so unless you actively use a package manager, people are likely going to miss security updates anyway.
I don’t think it’s meant to be a mass adoption browser. It fills a niche and it fills it pretty well.
I think the defaults are extreme and also use LW as a no telemetry/ads FF replacement, but I understand the vision. I’m fine with LW having the defaults it has, they can be easily turned off and I’d rather start with extreme privacy and just change what I need than the other way around where I could be leaving privacy options on the table.
It’s specifically forked to be the most privacy respecting non-Tor browser out there. The extreme privacy is the point of it. I’m not sure what it is you want but its not LW - and thats fine, use another fork instead.
I think you’re missing the point of this browser. This is not a browser designed for masses.
Librewolf’s defaults are sane. Masses don’t care about privacy anyway, they just use Chrome.
I don’t care about adoption line go up, and I agree with Mozilla’s founder that adding DRM to Firefox was Mozilla’s original sin.
At the end of the day, I just want a better for privacy browser than Firefox and Brave, without having to fight with it so it works the way I want it to
The defaults and strict options just makes me feel like it’s not a user-friendly browser. It doesn’t let me have the browser I want to use, but rather someone else’s vision of the browser
Yes, it is someone else’s vision of a browser, and evidently wasn’t made for users like you. As the saying goes, what do you want for nothing, your money back?
That’s why I use Waterfox as my main browser and LibreWolf as my secondary for quick searches and things I want to be separated.
Seems nice, but them using Bing and getting paid for it is… a bit counter intuitive… no tracking, except if it gives us a bit of money
A bit like firefox… oh well
Why don’t you create the exact browser you want, publish it, and then listen to people like you complain that it’s not the exact browser they want? 😂 Seriously, it takes like a few seconds to tweak the user settings w/r/t search engines.
Off-topic. I’m just saying I have trust issues on the proposed fork because of the deal they have with Microsoft, which I think is more than valid.
I’d like to have a browser I can feel comfortable using and also feel comfortable recommending it to less tech people. Sadly right now there’s no perfect option. We should always aim for the ideal tool, don’t you think?
And seriously, you’re using the « do it yourself if you’re not happy »? Nice way to stop a discussion without any arguments. Do better.
You know… Firefox is also still there.
I know, but it has tracking and data collection by default. Having a Firefox fork without that by default could be good
Does it really?
So far all the freakout has been due to changes to its terms of service. There’s been no changes to the codebase that add any data collection.
I’m not talking about the ToS thing. Firefox has been gradually collecting data, mainly telemetry, in a pseudo anonymous way or saying they are fully anonymous, but without providing any way to disable it easily. The provided opt-out check doesn’t remove all the telemetry checks, like the different pings being sent occasionally, telling them which version of Firefox you’re using for their analytics and usage stats.
The more Firefox grows, the more data they collect. It’s been like that for quite some time. Mozilla is a fake non-profit, higher-ups get paid a shit ton, and almost all their income comes from Google being the default search engine.