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submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by SexUnderSocialism@hexbear.net to c/technology@hexbear.net

Forks of Firefox like LibreWolf and Floorp are about to become more popular.

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[-] JustSo@hexbear.net 95 points 2 days ago

You ever feel like an animal being backed into a corner? Maybe its just me.

[-] Erika3sis@hexbear.net 42 points 2 days ago

Like a little rabbit being backed into a corner by a fox, perhaps? Perhaps even more specifically a fox that is on fire yet refuses to die? A fire fox, if you will?

[-] JustSo@hexbear.net 33 points 2 days ago

I dunno is the little rabbit on the verge of crashing out and turning into the one from The Holy Grail? Cuz if so yeah exactly.

[-] FALGSConaut@hexbear.net 29 points 2 days ago

I miss when Bitcoin and crypto was the dumbass shit twchbros were pushing

[-] Erika3sis@hexbear.net 74 points 2 days ago

The rock: Firefox doubling down on ""AI"" shit

The hard place: Having to say "Floorp" without dying a little inside

[-] KoboldKomrade@hexbear.net 25 points 2 days ago

Floorp sounds like it could be a spinoff/sequel to flubber.

Or at the very least one of the 10 trillion goo based toys that thrived in the early to mid 00s. Floam-like name. (Do kids still get shitty toys that have goopy stuff of a questionable toxicity and that gets dirty or dries out and makes the whole thing kinda mid?)

[-] LeninWeave@hexbear.net 70 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Literally the least competent fucking company on earth, staggering how fucking wrong a management team can be so fucking consistently.

[-] JustSo@hexbear.net 55 points 2 days ago

I thought so too but recently I've realised they're a very competent and highly tuned machine for turning good will into private wealth.

motherfuckers.

[-] MolotovHalfEmpty@hexbear.net 13 points 2 days ago

I mean, they've done some decent stuff, but ultimately it's a tech failson company. Literally exists because it's cheaper for Google to pay Mozilla's bills than it is to pay the fines for having a monopoly.

[-] AssortedBiscuits@hexbear.net 31 points 2 days ago

Mozilla has been controlled opposition for a long time. Sadly, we're stuck with Firefox forks like Librewolf and Zen until a viable non-Chrome non-Firefox web browser comes along.

[-] lilypad@hexbear.net 9 points 2 days ago

Dont hold your breath on a nonfascist web browser, or even a new web browser at all.

The total word count of the W3C specification catalogue is 114 million words at the time of writing.

https://drewdevault.com/2020/03/18/Reckless-limitless-scope.html

Based on Ladybird’s sponsorship terms we can assume that [it] received on the order of $100,000 USD from Cloudflare. I find this odd for a few reasons, in particular because one thing that I know is that [ladybird is] run by fascists.

https://drewdevault.com/2025/09/24/2025-09-24-Cloudflare-and-fascists.html

[-] Chana@hexbear.net 47 points 2 days ago

I refuse to use it until it also mines crypto from my browser and sends it to the most sexually harassy guy ever.

[-] robot_dog_with_gun@hexbear.net 36 points 2 days ago
[-] spectre@hexbear.net 19 points 2 days ago

Fucking lol

[-] LeninWeave@hexbear.net 16 points 2 days ago

Genuinely unbelievable that people ever supported Brave as an alternative to Firefox, or better than Chrome.

[-] BelieveRevolt@hexbear.net 14 points 2 days ago

It always felt astroturfed to me. Like I'm sure there are some true believers now, but back when it started the hype seemed to come out of nowhere.

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[-] bigpharmasutra@hexbear.net 32 points 2 days ago

Don't use bare bones Firefox people. Use a fork with all the dumb bullshit stripped out like Arkenfox, Betterfox, or Librewolf.

I refuse to use a product named Floorp on principle. I'm sorry, I have to draw the line somewhere with these stupid fucking naming conventions. Floorp, Ploopy, Dorfy, just fuck off already.

[-] RION@hexbear.net 14 points 2 days ago

Floorp has it for you. You can browse it on floorp

[-] Erika3sis@hexbear.net 10 points 2 days ago

Me making a fork of Floorp that's literally just the exact same code verbatim but with a different name

Though in Floorp's… :dying-inside: … defense… フロープ probably sounds at least slightly less embarrassing to monolingual Japanese ears who'd have different sound associations, more "flow" and "floor" than Floam Flubber Floop's Fooglies.

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[-] aanes_appreciator@hexbear.net 26 points 2 days ago

for context, the new CEO has been general manager of firefox for a couple of years now, and was all-in on the AI shit then too.

I do think Firefox has done some good shit since his appointment, such as holding steadfast on Manifest V2 (which protects ad blockers), mobile web extensions (Which I use to the web without ads on my android!) and rolling out improvements to the UI/UX.

However, Firefox is well behind on API adoption which leaves it looking a bit crap when you're trying to access modern web apps like Photopea only to be told "oh yeah lol this feature isnt supported". AI slop is gonna slow this adoption further if not managed!

[-] chgxvjh@hexbear.net 17 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

I don't think we should have infinite growth in web standards.

Photopea shouldn't be a website.

[-] GrouchyGrouse@hexbear.net 26 points 2 days ago

Mfw I realize this isn’t badposting:

spoilerblob-on-fire

[-] hello_hello@hexbear.net 9 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

like LibreWolf and Floorp are about to become more popular.

neon-fell-for-it-evangelion

These are not "forks" they are third-party reskins of Mozilla's product. They're the equivalent of downloading third party windows ISOs and then claiming that you're not really using Windows or that you're getting the last laugh. Don't use firefox "forks" just use Firefox and turn on the policy templates yourself (because that's what they're doing at the end of the day). Also, are you really trusting a small ring of either 1-3 people to make sure the most crucial program on your computer and in your life works properly?

Stop using Firefox "forks" they are not "forks" they are third-party mods. You will not escape

There is no "fork" of the web browser, it's a software scheme designed to be nigh irreplaceable by anyone who is not a multi-billion dollar capitalist. Ladybird? More like Cloudflare's next hottest investment as they diversify their business portfolio. Servo? Mozilla cuts their funding and they're years and years away from getting where we are right now. Webkit? Tell anyone not using safari to wait a few seconds for webpages to load, or the endless trove of legacy plugins built up from decades to be discarded.

The solution of course, is to reject over complicated web standards and create a base featureset, but with people's lives being dictated by capitalist owned infrastructure that can change and morph instantly at the behest of its owners, there is no solution under capitalism.

[-] Imnecomrade@hexbear.net 7 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

https://www.theverge.com/tech/845216/mozilla-ceo-anthony-enzor-demeo

At some point, though, Enzor-DeMeo will have to tend to Mozilla’s own business. “I do think we need revenue diversification away from Google,” he says, “but I don’t necessarily believe we need revenue diversification away from the browser.” It seems he thinks a combination of subscription revenue, advertising, and maybe a few search and AI placement deals can get that done. He’s also bullish that things like built-in VPN and a privacy service called Monitor can get more people to pay for their browser. He says he could begin to block ad blockers in Firefox and estimates that’d bring in another $150 million, but he doesn’t want to do that. It feels off-mission.

I don't trust this CEO will not block ad blockers some day.

[-] Kefla@hexbear.net 29 points 2 days ago

Holy fuck FUCK OFF I am so fucking sick of this shit and every single goddamn moron who supports AI

I can't fucking stand it

If you defend AI you're dead to me, I don't want anything to do with you, I'm fucking DONE

[-] infuziSporg@hexbear.net 3 points 1 day ago

I do not want to chat with something that spits out perfect Power Paragraphs. I hoped to never see a Power Paragraph again once I left high school. I do not want A and B and C reasons embedded into everything. I do not want a hyper-normative averaged-out response that is always being tweaked to be more sanitized and more habit-forming.

I do not want something with limitless encyclopedic knowledge to talk to. I do not think that increases my humanity. If I wanted to look something up in an encyclopedia I would do just that. I do not think that more data is automatically better.

I do not want something that I can substitute for in-person social contacts. I do not want something that responds consistently with cloying adulation. I do not want assistance from digital programming to sound at all like a human. I do not want an AI boyfriend/girlfriend. I was not impressed or excited by Cleverbot, I was too repulsed by the premise of Her to watch it, and I have no interest in any media about falling in love or even having a human conversation with a personality that runs on a computer processor.

I do not want more and more extensive hardware just to keep up with a living standard. I do not want to need exponentially more computing power to filter through exponentially larger mounds of content just to get the same quality search results from 10 years ago. I do not want to give more and more of my attention away to freshly-minted trillion-dollar oligopolies. I do not want to require a limitlessly increasing amount of electrical power to go about my life. I do not want to generate billions of data points. I do not want to be subsumed into a sea of data. I do not want to aggressively burn through the planet's limited fossil fuel reserves, accelerating habitat loss and climate change, to take a long shot at some millenarian techno-utopia.

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[-] SoyViking@hexbear.net 31 points 2 days ago

I don't want a "modern AI browser". I want a browser that works without any bloat and bullshit.

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[-] BigWeed@hexbear.net 35 points 2 days ago

I think browser companies see the impending doom of the web as we know it. With Sam Alman peddling the weird eye scanning orb that completely de-anonymized you from the internet (world.org). The bots that openai are championing will ruin the internet through sheer volume of garbage once they reach a commodifiable scale. Then you have openai making all sorts of backroom deals so their technology is the only technology that can run unencumbered, challenging cloudflare's market power of effectively middlemanning the internet, by moving it to a browser level. We already have new search engine optimization startups for businesses but its for LLMs which is inherently non-human. AI browsers won't improve our experience, we're getting them because the web is transitioning to something that isn't for humans, its for bots to navigate so you can buy a new airfrier with the least friction.

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[-] Dort_Owl@hexbear.net 34 points 2 days ago

Idiots who don't realise that the only reason people liked them is because they promised not to do this corporate shit

[-] MolotovHalfEmpty@hexbear.net 18 points 2 days ago

Mozilla is basically just a shell corporation for Google that allows Google to avoid anti-competition penalties. Like 80-90% of Mozilla revenue is just Google's money. So they do what they're told. Failson tech company.

[-] miz@hexbear.net 11 points 2 days ago

well hey I guess maybe I'll just stop browsing the web

[-] mendiCAN@hexbear.net 13 points 2 days ago

cmon over to librewolf ff lovers! i been on it months and often forget it's not the 'fox.

[-] gayspacemarxist@hexbear.net 8 points 2 days ago
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[-] take_five_moments@hexbear.net 24 points 2 days ago
[-] Tetragrade@leminal.space 19 points 2 days ago

It's been fun.

[-] i_drink_bleach@hexbear.net 25 points 2 days ago

Fuuuuuuuuck! Firefox has been my go-to for over a decade. Now wtf am I supposed to do? I hate this timeline.

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[-] Beaver@hexbear.net 25 points 2 days ago

yes-honey-left

I just wanna browse some websites

[-] sewer_rat_420@hexbear.net 21 points 2 days ago

At some point I think I'm going to need to stop using the internet entirely

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[-] roux@hexbear.net 9 points 2 days ago

I hope the FF forks are able to strip out this AI shit. I'm using Floorp and it has it in the sidebar.

[-] thefunkycomitatus@hexbear.net 17 points 2 days ago

Everything is computer and you will be happy

[-] comrade_pibb@hexbear.net 21 points 2 days ago
[-] drinkinglakewater@hexbear.net 20 points 2 days ago

Step down and put the buzzwords away old man peppino-shotgun

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this post was submitted on 17 Dec 2025
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