How to combat creeping firefox enshitification?
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:
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
Yeah also I think we should be careful about calling anything we find annoying Enshittification, otherwise we'll dilute the concept and it loses all meaning. I see this happening with hyperbole all the time, for example one of the strongest words in the dictionary "hate" have almost no meaning as people use it for even the mildest dislikes instead of utilizing a richer vocabulary. Let's reserve Enshittification for Xitter and friends.
Fully agree. Enshittification is when a company's greed gets so intense that it purposely makes it's product worse for short term gains over the quality and long term sustainability of it.
Reddit shittified by forcing all users off third party apps for now reason. Same with twitter. Google is currently doing it to get short term ad revenue and in return is making search useless.
Firefox here is just adding new features and letting us know about it. Huge difference, they don't deserve the term.
That's why it would be nice if there was just a "go away and stop showing helpful tips" button when you first start up a fresh browser install.
But then how do you handle the very users who would need it in 5-8 months clicking that option reflexively?
The same way video games handle it when you skip the tutorial.
Oh, show a main menu on opening each and every time (and a few creator credits screens before that of course) where you can select that you want to start over new including all the popups instead of where you left of?
Yeah that sounds like a brilliant idea! :o
Make it a key combo that shows it or something like that.
Exactly, this is genuinely adding useful features. For users. Sure there are niche cases like the OP frequently using VMs that end up leaving each browser in a very deprecated state, but this very behavior of the browser is useful to a normal user that just hasn't used the browser for a while.
Perhaps we need a new word for this sort of thing. Popupification? Appsplaining? Encruftening?
Onboarding?
That doesn't really capture the feeling of a sincere and cheerful "Welcome aboard!" delivered by clown in a business suit to an old salt who hasn't left the ship in six months.
Hand-holding? Condescension?