Oh no! Anyway, Firefox is free, open source software. That means anything it does can be "forked" and used without permission from Mozilla (the permission was granted by their open source license!). So clearly, we just wait until some enterprising dev makes Firefox with no AI, no telemetry, no sponsored content, no data collection, and no bullshit!
oh wait we don't have to wait. Check out Waterfox.
It's a fork of Firefox that's been around for fifteen years and it has two mission statements:
Optional sidebar tab management (now this is a thing in base FF)
Complete removal of every single corporate, partnered, or revenue-generating "feature" of Mozilla Firefox.
I switched over to Waterfox about a year ago, after Firefox removed their promise to never sell your data and justified doing so by saying "well.... it's just mean ol' California that defines what we do as selling your data!". I'd been putting it off for years at that point because surely moving from the Firefox install I'd been migrating forward since Firefox was called Netscape Navigator would be a whole Process™, right?
Wrong. Folks, migrating from Firefox to Waterfox is as easy as typing about:profiles in each browser, clicking the "open folder" buttons, closing the browsers, and copying the files from Firefox's into Waterfox's.
Then when you start Waterfox, everything will be right where you left it in Firefox. And I mean everything. Your addons, their settings, your browser session, your settings (the settings to disable telemetry don't do anything in Waterfox because Waterfox has no telemetry, but the settings carry over!). 100% compatibility, because Waterfox is Firefox, just without the Mozilla Corporation attempting to generate revenue through it. You can even still use Mozilla's own addon repository.
And because Waterfox is also free open-source software, if it ever enshittifies like Firefox does, you can always jump that ship too. The hilariously-named Floorp and privacy-hardened LibreWolf are two of many options out there. But for now, I'm talking about Waterfox. Would you rather use a web browser developed under the leadership of this corporation:
Switch to Waterfox, or Floorp, or (if and only if you can deal with some major tradeoffs of convenience for privacy) LibreWolf. It's all the good of Firefox with none of the Mozilla Corporation. Remember how I said that I swapped after over a decade with Firefox, expecting growing pains? I have experienced absolutely zero issues with Waterfox in that year. And I am what you might call a "power user" - I use extensions and userscripts and edge cases and all the stuff you'd expect to break - none of it has broken.
kianamaiart
theartofmadeline
ellievsbear
origamiaround
blakekathryn
