I deal with a lot of VMs for varying purposes, and it seems frequent that my purpose for opening firefox is derailed by some kind of nag. For example, I frequently get the "you haven't used firefox in a while" in vms that I rarely use firefox and have to go disable the "meta refresh" option in the "about:config".
Now, I've started seeing this one... it's not even one of the passive banners but a full-page stop-the-world w/ semi-transparent background and right-click prevention.
Before I invest too much time trying to figure out how to disable these, or templating profile options en-masse, or the like... I thought I might ask... is there a way I can tell firefox that I only want it to only be a web-browser? i.e. an effective tool and not an attention sink or exciting video-game-like challenge of exploration and closing popups and suggestions while trying to remember why I launched it.
Somewhat relatedly, there is some kind of irony with firefox prominently offering to copy a URL without tracking for other sites, but when it is their own ad (however benign it might seem) that they disable right-clicks and load up on the trackers. The above button links to:
- https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/switching-devices?utm_source=spotlight-default&utm_medium=firefox-desktop&utm_campaign=migration&utm_content=new-device-in-your-future&entrypoint=device-migration-spotlight-experiment-v2&utm_term=aboutwelcome-default-screen&as=u
I would argue this isn't enshittification. They aren't adding ads, they aren't plugging something you have to pay for (at least that I've seen, maybe their VPN service). To me, these are things most common users (read, not us) expect their browser to do now.
So it's a catch 22. Use hyper tech people would like it to remain a techie based browser. But we've seen that that doesn't do well for a company, and it'll become less relevant allowing Chrome to domineer even more. So, the alternative is they try to add features that will attract more people, and then they piss off the techie base. This cycle has been happening since the 90s
You might want to listen to Cory Doctorow's talk on the enshitification on the internet before you apply that word to Firefox.
I dunno if LibreWolf has this pop up, But I've also never even seen this screen in over a decade of using regular Firefox either.
Easiest solution would probably be adding the meta refresh setting to a custom user.js file you can use on new installs.
