Mozilla Decides Against Ads In The New Tab Page

[psychoticmeow]

Accepting money to place an ad-grubbing, anti-privacy shit site like Facebook to a default tabs page is selling an ad in the software. If Mozilla ever started down this road, who can say how far they would go? My guess is next up would have been tracking use of those tiles by default, unless disabled in "data preferences" where I recommend disabling all auto-reporting if privacy is a concern.

Gator was the first vendor of ad-supported software I ever saw, and what I saw sickened me. They spoke of "keeping software free" when they actually kept it worthless, I made it a point to strip all their shit and everything it supported out of those old Pentium II machines I worked on ten years ago.

What Mozilla proposed would have been like a vendor of dumb phones selling them with every speed-dial button programmed for a paying merchant's phone number unless changed by the owner of the phone. I would never have accepted such a phone, even as a freebie. I invoked Gator because so many remember what a disaster they were and I wanted to remind Mozilla just how bad this could get

So the only thing you have against them is a slippery slope and a straw man. Got it, thanks.

[Luke]

Sorry, NO ad-supported software is ever OK with me

So the only thing you have against them is a slippery slope and a straw man. Got it, thanks.

Software either is or is not ad-supported, there is no in-between. It's like crystal meth: once you start who knows where you will stop?

[psychoticmeow]

Software either is or is not ad-supported, there is no in-between. It's like crystal meth: once you start who knows where you will stop?

Here's news: it's already ad-supported. By Google. Shut the fuck up you crackpot.

[Luke]

Can the personal attacks

Here's news: it's already ad-supported. By Google. Shut the fuck up you crackpot.

Sorry, but when you get called out by someone like Phoronix for advertising, it's pretty blatent.
Starting up Firefox does not pop up an ad for Google. The searchbox integration is another problem but is a direct product inclusion as opposed to an advertisement for a product. I've always disabled that "feature," of course. Again: if it were not for browser fingerprinting I would use rekonq for everything, but I'm quite glad Mozilla threw in the towel on those nasty ad tiles. For now, the position I support has won, the corporatist position has lost a battle

[psychoticmeow]

Sorry, but when you get called out by someone like Phoronix for advertising, it's pretty blatent.
Starting up Firefox does not pop up an ad for Google. The searchbox integration is another problem but is a direct product inclusion as opposed to an advertisement for a product.

So what constitutes an advertisement then? Do you have some new definition that you'd like to share with us? Because this is the "Mozilla Firefox Start Page" and to my eyes it contains an advertisement, and has done so for years:

I've always disabled that "feature," of course. Again: if it were not for browser fingerprinting I would use rekonq for everything, but I'm quite glad Mozilla threw in the towel on those nasty ad tiles. For now, the position I support has won, the corporatist position has lost a battle

Your position is rather extreme, and lacks any real reason to support it, and all of the things you say claim about Firefox seem to be demonstrably wrong, or built on straw man arguments. Basically your reasons are ideological, and you should argue for that ideology instead of making bullshit arguments that only undermine your own credibility.

You're exactly as bad as RMS when he explains that Arch Linux is actually Arch GNU/Linux.

[b15hop]

So you'd drop Mozilla if they did a thing they never even said or had plans to do? Useful information that...

noting that you also stated:

So what constitutes an advertisement then? Do you have some new definition that you'd like to share with us? Because this is the "Mozilla Firefox Start Page" and to my eyes it contains an advertisement, and has done so for years:





Your position is rather extreme, and lacks any real reason to support it, and all of the things you say claim about Firefox seem to be demonstrably wrong, or built on straw man arguments. Basically your reasons are ideological, and you should argue for that ideology instead of making bullshit arguments that only undermine your own credibility.

You're exactly as bad as RMS when he explains that Arch Linux is actually Arch GNU/Linux.

So you're saying they never will but yet they do it already. Contradiction much?

[psychoticmeow]

So you're saying they never will but yet they do it already. Contradiction much?

Or not, because I wasn't saying that they'd never advertise, but instead replying to your agreement with this:

From what I understand, Mozilla already receives many millions of dollars from having google as the default search. More than enough for a non-profit web browser. I will drop Mozilla if they force ads on the tab page - and yes a suggested link is still an ad.

The bit in bold is the thing that they never were going to do. Essentially he made up a position out of straw, and then you agreed with him, despite myself and others pointing out that the facts of the matter were not consistent with his position.

[Luke]

Ads in first run/default is forced ads

Or not, because I wasn't saying that they'd never advertise, but instead replying to your agreement with this:



The bit in bold is the thing that they never were going to do. Essentially he made up a position out of straw, and then you agreed with him, despite myself and others pointing out that the facts of the matter were not consistent with his position.

The only people who would NOT be forced to view the ads (sponsored tiles) at least once would be those who already had a .mozilla directory from an older install-and rejected any solicitations to "reset Firefox for a clean experience" as I once saw and rejected after some clock issues. ANYTHING present by default is forced on first run unless you want to edit configuration files by hand prior to first run, or compile from source with the offending code removed.

Some of us do not buy the idea of compromising with things deemed totally unacceptable. Sometimes you have to draw the line and defend it without exception. That's why I dumped Google and Chromium, and kept Firefox pinned at version 26 until this was resolved-and a homophobic former CEO stepped down. Perhaps the adware departed with him?

[b15hop]

The only people who would NOT be forced to view the ads (sponsored tiles) at least once would be those who already had a .mozilla directory from an older install-and rejected any solicitations to "reset Firefox for a clean experience" as I once saw and rejected after some clock issues. ANYTHING present by default is forced on first run unless you want to edit configuration files by hand prior to first run, or compile from source with the offending code removed.

Some of us do not buy the idea of compromising with things deemed totally unacceptable. Sometimes you have to draw the line and defend it without exception. That's why I dumped Google and Chromium, and kept Firefox pinned at version 26 until this was resolved-and a homophobic former CEO stepped down. Perhaps the adware departed with him?

Pretty much agree with you on this.

I'm using Waterfox at the moment, version 28... And I'm considering to find another browser already. I'm watching the direction firefox is heading and I'm not liking it. I refused chromium from the onset due to it's googlecentric favours. Even if it's easy to use and pretty clean, up to date etc....

I like a browser to have 6 main features:

Light weight, ie not bloated
Fast - render web pages fast etc..
Support newer HTML5 standards
No advertising -No favouring towards either google or microsoft. Ie neutral...
Secure
And I like some of my settings like bookmarks able to be saved to cloud (of your own choice)

[b15hop]

It doesn't really matter anyway.

Firefox will start encrypting HTML with EME and the web will go from open source to closed source.

http://news.slashdot.org/story/14/05/14/1744233/how-firefox-will-handle-drm-in-html?utm_source=slashdot&utm_medium=facebook