
It is your moral obligation to use Firefox - boreq
https://0x46.net/thoughts/2019/04/09/use-firefox/
======
jrs95
It's too late. Firefox already has compatibility issues with sites I use
heavily. There's a much better chance I'd use the new Chromium based Edge than
Firefox at this point. And with it's usage share dropping...if moral
superiority is the only thing Firefox has going for it, it's a sinking ship.
Having more contributors/users of Chromium/Blink seems to be a better path
towards a less Google-dominated browser landscape at this point.

~~~
beatgammit
Do you have a list of those sites? I use Firefox as my only browser and I
honestly haven't had to use chrome for anything beyond debugging web stuff on
chrome.

I'm sure Mozilla would be very interested in fixing any issues there are.

However, most of the issues seem to be hard-coding to Chrome's nonstandard
quirks, which is really a sad state of affairs. Do we really want a more cross
platform IE? Because that's what we're getting if everyone jumps to chrome-
based browsers.

~~~
jrs95
Biggest issue for me is Twitch, HBO Now, and to a lesser extent YouTube
although I've noticed issues with any site streaming video. Even on a gigabit
connection and a new $2k desktop, Firefox buffers or the video just goes black
and I have to refresh the page to watch for another 10-15 minutes before it
happens again. Chrome never does this. I can't be the only person that's had
this experience.

I know I also had issues with JavaScript on some sites causing tabs to freeze
that wasn't an issue in Chrome as well, but it's been long enough (6+ months)
I have no idea what those sites even are now.

~~~
stunt
I remember having some similar issues with old versions. But a couple of
versions after their major redesign they are all gone.

There was an issue with Youtube last year and they blamed Youtube for it, but
that is fixed now too.

You can give the latest version a try.

------
dusted
I'm just using firefox because it's the better browser. it's got better
plugins, better settings and better performance (except in cases of google
frameworks like angular, but come on, a webframework that "just so happens" to
perform better on the vendors browser.."

------
Lowkeyloki
Although I also despair the lack of choice in web browsers nowadays (not to
mention certain coworkers of mine who try to spin "standardization" on
Chrome/Chromium as a good thing), I wouldn't go so far as to claim there's
some moral component to one's choice of browser. While I have strong feelings
about this, I can't judge people who choose the path of least resistance when
picking the software they use. Sometimes you want stuff to just work. People's
priorities are their own and not everyone has the luxury of being able to be
different because of their views. Some people just need to get things done.

------
bediger4000
I kind of agree. We can't let a single corporation drive some almost-
universally-used thing like a web browser. I mean, look what an oligopolistic
market did to US car manufacturers. Stifled innovation, downgraded product,
the entire industry almost went under in the mid-to-late 70s.

Look at what happened when Microsoft attained near-universal presence with IE
6. Their innovation stopped, security went straight down the toilet. Of
course, at that point, Microsoft also lost their edge and began losing
mindshare and dominance in emerging technologies, but that's a bit beside this
point.

------
pat2man
No mention of Safari here (or Epiphany on Linux). The latest version of
Intelligent Tracking Prevention 2.1 is pretty good at fingerprint protection.

------
forumer
Morals aside, I agree with the points made regarding key Firefox fumbles at
times when Chrome was making significant inroads. Of course there are many
other mistakes Firefox/Mozilla made that people have also commented on here.
Over the years I saw these mistakes take place and lamented about them often.
I'm just not sure that even if all these mistakes were avoided Chrome wouldn't
still dominate the market, especially in the mobile space - Platform bundling
is a powerful thing! As we know, even a poorly performing browser (like IE)
can get a large market share when it's the default for the masses. I see a lot
of non-technical Windows 10 users browsing away in Edge these days because
it's there and seemingly as a bonus it works well enough for them.

I personally would like to use Firefox exclusively, but I often deal with
equipment that demands Chrome whether it really needs to or not. This is
especially common when it comes to IP video applications.

------
lawrenceyan
Is there any reason why you should use Firefox over Safari in this case then?
How are we defining the "moral superiority" of web browsers here because it
all seems to bit iffy to me. Why not use NetSurf if we're really talking,
something that's actually open source and not only in name like Mozilla does
with Firefox.

~~~
chupa-chups
Safari doesn't support disabling click tracking anymore:

[https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/Safari-link-
tracking.htm...](https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/Safari-link-
tracking.html)

Firefox does this (as well TOR and brave)

~~~
twiceaday
But Safari ITP is wrecking havoc on the ad-tech industry right now.

------
ncmncm
I agree. I have tried Chromium at times, but the weight of Google hegemony
always sends me back.

HOWEVER! I run it in a VM on a Qubes host, with UMatrix add-on and a Google
Analytics blocker. It has no access to a GPU. It crashes, sometimes, hundreds
of times a day. (Most usually this is a tab crashing, but frequently enough
the whole thing goes.) Nothing else on the machine is even slightly unstable.
At the moment, 66 is entirely unable to bring up a Google Maps tab for more
than a half-second; it draws the map, then BOOM.

Frequently it can bring up a page, but then crashes at the first hint of
scrolling.

Looking back, this seems to have started sometime around 60 or 61, and got
really bad around 63 or 64. I really would like to see an end to its crashing.

------
garciagomezluis
Great browser. It has really been improved over the last months.

I think that extension portability is needed in order to compete with the
chromium family.

Why firefox? It is the next major browser (after chrome) in desktop. Promoving
the use of another may lead to the parity in the very long term.

~~~
orev
What is needed in extension portability? You can use Firefox Sync to sync
extensions between devices.

------
ohiovr
Actual paying users would be better than millions of users that just want to
complain. At this point with so much immorality online, what browser you use
is just a matter of taste.

~~~
flukus
I was a paying user (at least a donated to them) before they started breaking
extensions, putting tracking in, putting DRM in, rewriting things in rust and
working on crap like webasm that will make the web even more user hostile.

At this point paying them to literally do nothing all do would give me a
better return on investment than the direction they're heading.

~~~
ohiovr
I would not at all balk at paying for software that works and doesn't churn
everything every 2 years. That was the main appeal to me of MacOS. There is a
threshold of crappy changes to abandonment and Microsoft crossed it and Apple
just mismanaged it.

Firefox doesn't bother me so much that I hate it yet. But I got to wonder if
the only voices that matter were the users that actually paid for it, I would
imagine the paying users would be mostly happy. That seems to be the case for
commercial software that offers free beer wares on the side like Unity3D.

------
PHGamer
lol firefox. i wouldnt hate the guys if they had stuck to their guns on DRM
and didnt kick the guy because he made a religious donation.

~~~
Lowkeyloki
Calling it a "religious" donation is pretty reductive IMHO.

~~~
beatgammit
It was still none of their business what he uses his personal funds for. From
what I could tell, he kept his personal views very separate from his
professional work.

However, it's water under the bridge and Mozilla is fine. I don't think that
fiasco contributed in any meaningful way to Firefox's loss of market share.

------
webwanderings
FF was also behind in using auto update the software without user interaction.
That was a big change from user’s perspective (who didn’t much care that a
certain service was also always running behind the scenes).

~~~
marssaxman
That was a plus from my point of view. I don't _want_ my machine getting
independent opinions about how to manage itself; it's my machine, after all.

------
skybrian
"With every year it is more likely that one day you will not be able to create
a website using the technologies of your choosing and you will not be able to
make it behave as you see fit. Others will make those decisions for you."

This is already how it is for almost everyone and it's... fine? I don't know
about the rest of you, but I can't even be bothered to keep up with emerging
web standards, let alone make any decisions about them.

~~~
c22
Fortunately you still have the option of not keeping up with modern web
standards and just writing some html 3.2 into a text file.

------
msla
I'll use it when they bring back RSS functionality, make it possible for me to
configure its UI like I could before, and stop tracking me by default. I'm
sick of updates stealing functionality from me, and I'll use qutebrowser or
something similar until Firefox is no longer run by people intent on
destroying the software.

------
mariushn
The most important advantage of Firefox for me is being able to run extensions
on mobile

------
austhrow743
Poor title. The content doesn't try to defend it unless you accept "the web as
it is now/has been is morally right" as a truism.

------
WalterGR
If it’s a moral obligation, can I mention a problem on a forum without being
asked for my bug report or my patch?

Or am I both morally obligated to use the software and either open tickets for
any issue I mention or fix those problems myself?

~~~
beatgammit
You're not morally obligated to open bug reports, just encouraged. That's the
way things get fixed with Firefox, and if you want that, then learning how to
do it is a big help.

If you don't want to, feel free to ignore that recommendation.

------
RickJWagner
No, thanks.

I don't like being told what my moral obligation is. I'll figure that out for
myself, thank you.

------
Avamander
Make GPU acceleration work, 1080p YouTube videos play under Linux and I'll
consider it.

~~~
nacs
I've been playing 1080p (and higher, like 1440p) Youtube videos on Linux
without issues.

~~~
Avamander
If you have the CPU power to waste then maybe yeah, it plays, but it's not
possible with my hardware.

~~~
nacs
My video is definitely hardware (GPU) accelerated. If you don’t have working
hardware acceleration in Firefox for videos/WebGL, there’s something wrong
with your setup, it’s not a FF problem.

I and many others in this thread have no issue with this in FF.

~~~
Avamander
"It works on my machine", really?!

There's nothing wrong with my setup, there are numerous issues open on FF
Issue tracker about this s __*.

------
fxbl0i
It is Mozilla Corporation's leadership moral obligation to resign for their
privacy scandals and mismanagement of Firefox.

~~~
sdinsn
> their privacy scandals and mismanagement of Firefox

Explain further? Haven't heard of these

~~~
panda888888
Here's a good start (the Pocket integration debacle):
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9876016](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9876016)

~~~
ctnb
Personally, I wouldn't consider it Mozilla Corporation's moral obligation to
resign over including an add-on by default, that can be disabled.

~~~
panda888888
I agree that there isn't/wasn't a need for them to resign.

Just wanted to provide some historical context.

------
chupa-chups
No it is not. Why?

\- Browser fingerprinting protection? Nope

\- No ads on start page? Nope

\- Https everywhere? Nope

\- Ad block? Nope

If you want to support firefox, download TOR browser.

Else, use brave. But please don't support further degradation of privacy in
the web.

~~~
chupa-chups
I'd like to correct myself: the new nightly build from Firefox _supports_
browser fingerprinting protection:

[https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2019/04/09/protectio...](https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2019/04/09/protections-
against-fingerprinting-and-cryptocurrency-mining-available-in-firefox-nightly-
and-beta/)

And thanks for downvoting the original comment despite valid concerns and a
link to the TOR browser.

~~~
sdinsn
> No ads on start page? Nope

You can set your own startpage

> Ad block? Nope

You can easily add an extension for ad block.

