Wow, that’s awesome! I was very sad without the clickbait articles. I was staring at Firefox thinking “i wish it had a cluttered start page with clickbait articles and sponsored content like MS Edge” - and then with this new update the devs nailed it! Thanks!
That’s really perfect!
Maybe more people will join me in thinking that the best thing to do is to set browser.newtabpage.enabled=false and otherwise fiddle with the settings until it just shows you nothing but a blank page in a nice colour when you open a new tab or window.
I just have an empty new tab page. There is no need to use about:config to set this setting. The Firefox > Settings > Home the homepage for new windows or new tabs separately. At least the recent activity for Visited pages is useful for new window. I highly recommend to Sponsored Shortcuts, which is an alternative term for advertisement. Or just turn off the Firefox Home for newtabs by setting it to Blank Page.
Sponsored Shortcuts, which is an alternative term for advertisement
That’s simply incorrect, Sponsored Shortcuts work differently than ads, in the later you’re tracked and your PII gathered.
I wasn’t talking about the technical implementation or differences in how they are handled, but more of a personal judgement. To me every Sponsored link is an advertisement, everywhere, not only in Firefox.
This is part of my new setup ritual right along uBlock, DDG, and more. Shame that this is the best choice we have for a browser.
Just turn them off in settings. Lots of options there, no need to sod around with configs and what have you.
Just turn them off?
It has to be one of the easiest things I’ve ever turned off. It’s not like I’m mucking with registry settings, it’s literally a toggle
Ot let people opt-in if it is truly something great to have. Why put something on one wants there to “let people turn it off”?
Because they want to make money with that and if it’s opt in they might as well not put it in at all.
For the “just turn it off” folk, you know what’s even better than that? Not having ads at all in the first place.
“just turn it off” until they update firefox and add in new spyware/adware tucked away in about:config you won’t notice until all your data has been mined
That’s a bit slippery, but they sure are abusing our trust in the brand for this one.
then get people to do a monthly donation to mozilla and thunderbird…
You think I want to financially support Mozilla with that blackmailers logic? Support qtwebengine devs, qtwebkit devs, netsurf devs, or gtkwebkit devs; or anyone that doesn’t stick malware in their open source browser for profit.
malware
absolutely bonkers
As is turning Firefox into a subscription service!
I wouldn’t mind a paid premium that came with some cool themes or something of that nature, but this path ends with enshittification and nothing else.
At Firefox > Settings > Home turn off Sponsored Shortcuts.
Update? Hasn’t stuff like this always been there?
It changed my setting from disabled to enabled after the update
That’s not cool at all.
deleted by creator
Takes 3 seconds to turn all that off, doesn’t even make you leave the page. I turn everything off but recents for new hires at my work and disable data sharing.
Sure but we all know that 99% of people don’t change defaults.
Also, waiting for those updates that “accidentally” revert to the default
Idk what to say. Internet browsers are a sorry fucken lot right now. Maybe try using Librewolf?
deleted by creator
omg i cannot state how much i hate the widgets bar, it’s like they designed it on purpose to show ads&clickbait
They did. It ibky has weather so you allow location.
Are you paying for firefox or getting it for free? From where do you think they get money to pay salaries other expenses?
you might say oh but chrome is also free but its not, you just pay with your privacy
From where do you think they get money to pay salaries other expenses?
Mostly google, actually.
And its a scary thing.
no matter how many down votes I get, I still insist that firefox should be self dependant as long as it doesnt come at cost of violating my privacy
im pretty sure the whole point of firefox is you dont do that.
i have the feeling that a feature like this makes a very little money that compared to the millions that google gives to be the default is a drop in the ocean
probably this won’t be enough to even pay the CEO salary
Let them find a better way to finance development than Google search. I’ll just go downstream to Librewolf. It’s a win/win.
Finally some dumb tracked advertising again!
Haha, LibreWolf and Floorp go brrr
Or you could use mullvad browser which is kind of the same thing. And not need to deal with this.
