1) dismissive attitudes towards other people's problems, attempts to silence others who have issues, downvotes for valid complaints
Stuff like:
> "X is dead get over it!"
>
> "Stop complaining, don't be so negative"
>
> ["Complain about things that can be changed, not about old issues or things that are set in stone."](https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/bkz2qx/i_love_firefox_but_im_starting_to_dislike_the/emkf60m/?context=3)
This sub is a place for anyone and everyone to discuss things related to Firefox. Don't try to control the discussion just because you don't like the topic.
2) Whataboutism: But Chrome does X, and Firefox only does Y!
> ["Chrome got less hate for shipping malware extensions to millions of users. Firefox users just got to see the web WITH ads and they had to copy/paste the passwords"](https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/bkz2qx/i_love_firefox_but_im_starting_to_dislike_the/emke283/?context=3)
> ["Google and Facebook do privacy fiascos and no one jumps ship so fast and Firefox’s makes one small mistake"](https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/bkll55/firefox_i_love_you_3000_everyone_is_allowed_to_do/)
We hold Firefox to a higher standard *because* it should be better. How do you expect it to improve if you're gonna compare it to the worst of the worst?
3) Blind cheerleading, inciting conflict by stirring up browser tribalism, and justifying abusive relationships
> [Blindly Google bashing](https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/bj1kjg/browser_war_google_docs_displays_unsupported/em4qsa9/)
>
> [You must stop using Chrome](https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/2cyk0w/choose_firefox_now_or_later_you_wont_get_a_choice/)
>
> [Browser tribalism](https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/akfzbv/fun_fact_about_firefox_users/)
>
> Abusive relationship: ["If you switch away from Firefox to punish Mozilla, you are actually punishing the open web!"](https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/7kg5sf/if_you_switch_away_from_firefox_to_punish_mozilla/)
Don't you dare try to bully me into using Firefox because of that thing X that you care about very much.
A browser is a tool. Using a tool does not constitute an endorsement of the creator's philosophy, or belonging to their "team". As a user, we choose the best tool for the job and that's it. Using Firefox doesn't mean I like what Mozilla's doing. Using Chrome doesn't mean I want a WebKit monopoly.
This tribal mentality that we're on Firefox's side is just stupid. Do you think people who use nails vs screws fight each other like this? There are no "sides" to this debate because there aren't any teams at all!
You can like a thing and still criticize it and you can hate a thing and still use it because there's no better option. This "you're either with me or against me" attitude is divisive. And just like politics, the way we've turned this into a team sport is toxic. Look at the actual issues at hand, and don't just blindly wave your team's flag around.
There shouldn't be any fight Chrome users and Firefox users, the real battle is between Chrome devs and Firefox devs. If Chrome dominates the web, it's not because I, as a user, didn't "support" Firefox enough (whatever that means), it's because Mozilla failed to draw in more Firefox users.
Criticism is fine, but some of the negative stuff being posted on this sub is truly stupid. For example, I’ve seen a multitude of posts claiming that mozilla did this on purpose to get people to enable studies.
There’s criticism, and then there’s raving lunacy. My only problem is with the latter type of posts.
People who post and/or comment at r/firefox seem to fall into three main categories:
1. Users who legitimately want help to a problem(s) or are asking a question.
2. Fanboys (*Edit: I don’t particularly like this term, but it’s what OP used. Read my follow-up below*.)
3. People who bash Firefox and Mozilla with no remorse, or just trolls.
The first category is absolutely fine; there will be issues from time to time, as with any software, and many of us are here to help.
I definitely think the second is fine; I consider myself a “fanboy” because I basically wholeheartedly agree with Mozilla’s mission, and I truly believe Firefox is the best browser around. There’s such thing as *blind* fanboyism, but I really don’t see that much at all; Mozilla and Firefox are held to crazy high standards.
Trolls have no place, of course. But those who just bash are either mistaken or are way too hard on Mozilla/Firefox. I truly don’t understand how people can’t see or just don’t care how corporations like Google are just using them. But they’ll come and trashtalk here when no one is forcing them to use the software (like Chromium is becoming) even while Mozilla has and is doing some fine work. I just don’t understand it. But then again, I’m a fanboy.
I get why people are complaining, frankly Mozilla really fucked up so it makes sense to complain. But it seems like there’s a lot of users complaining that Mozilla decided to become modern, and those complains are just worthless. There’s lots of people that seem to think Firefox should both use the old XUL addon system and not need to be signed by Mozilla. So basically there’s people who think that addons should have the ability to completely control your browser and they shouldn’t need to be signed by a central authority, so basically they want addons to be insanely insecure. I’ve also seen people suggest Mozilla just shouldn’t have studies or telemetry at all, so basically they want to slow down development speed significantly just because they don’t even like the idea of being able to opt into these things. Sorry but Firefox needs to be a fast, secure, modern browser, and if that interferes with your addons so be it. Give legitimate criticism like that you can’t opt out of the addon signing thing or that Mozilla should make it more clear what studies do, but don’t complain that Firefox is becoming modern
Almost everything you said in your post is wrong. If you care about the open web, it makes sense to use a browser made by an organization that supports the open web, like Firefox. If you are concerned about Google having a monopoly over web development, then it makes sense to not use Chrome/Chrome forks and use other browsers, etc.
It honestly just sounds like you’re trying to justify your decision to sell out your privacy/contribute to a monopoly by using Chrome, and don’t like that people (rightfully) criticized you for it.
> > “XUL is dead get over it!”
They still don’t realize how much damage such statements do to Firefox. XUL addons was the great competitive advantage Firefox had against Chrome. When they killed it on Firefox they immediately paved an easy way of transition to Chrome, for hundreds of thousands of users who lost their unique-to-Firefox functionality.
1. It just gets old. The people here have largely gotten over it, and the people that keep posting about it are the ones that are using Firefox 56 or 52 or Waterfox or Pale Moon and I guess they hope Mozilla will bring back legacy add-ons and welcome them back into the fold.
I just don’t see that happening, but it sure as hell gets tiresome when the same old requests come up for support for a browser that has no support, and arguments that we got over a literal year ago.
2. I don’t think it is wrong to point out differences, but I would agree that just because someone else does something worse doesn’t mean that doing a lesser version of it is somehow good.
3. Look, if you use a Chromium based browser, you may claim that you don’t want a monopoly situation, but that is the effect. That isn’t a justification for an “abusive relationship”, it is a justification to advocate for what you want to see in Firefox in bugzilla, and if you fail there, in Waterfox.
Or just putting in the work to get the changes mainlined.
I think that there is a lot of effort in making this community super antagonistic for no good reason when people could just make their arguments calmly on the public bug trackers.
We all want Firefox to be good (well, most) – but a lot of people seem to be more focused on complaining than filing good bug reports and interacting directly with developers to make reasoned arguments.
If they fall flat, make your arguments to a good fork – I am coming around to Waterfox, and I hope it can maintain the browser quality at a high level.
I wholeheartedly reject this message.
get used to it, a lot of firefox users are: “just learned GOOGLE mishandles my INFORMATION and SPIES ON ME… i’m done with this… im switching to THE ONLY privacy oriented browser… FIREFOX… huh? iridium? never heard of it. brave? yeah, it’s pretty brave of me to make the switch. did you know the green padlock means your traffic is secure?”
obviously there’s smart people who are prone to this as well, much like there’s smart people who somehow worship apple despite their colossal faults. however, you’re at fault too, as you’re on a board dedicated to a product. imagine if you went to r/burgerking and said their food is shit, you’d get a lot of pissed off fans (and a lot of service crew who’d probably laugh and agree)
unfortunately mental weaklings are strawmanning your post, by trying to say you’re supporting the morons who say that it was done to force people to enable studies. this is a very common tactic amongst brand drones, as it’s a cheap way to make you appear bad. check out apple’s forums or macrumors (granted macrumors is far less bad than apple’s boards)
the “real” battle is users who choose to be privacy conscious and support consumer-friendly practices vs users who submit to intrusive bullshit and practices which hurt the user. it’s not “one brand” vs “that other brand”, you (and everybody) should be campaigning for better practices and not just settling because one company “isn’t as bad”. you’re looking at two sides, there’s more options than just firefox and chrome. you don’t *need* to pick one or the other just because they are the only two big ones.
I signed up for reddit just to deal with the three big bugs effecting FF this weekend – addons we all know about, nightly was also broken, and also, localised (ie, not US) nightlies.
I got lots of helpful replies including help from devs and mods.
I also got a request for help with the localisation bug downvoted with no reason. Fortunately a dev helped with the answer.
The reason I had to make an account just for this drama, was because I avoid reddit like the plague because the place is full of this stuff you are simultaneously complaining about and contributing to.
Your issue is nothing to do with FF or this community, it’s a reddit thing.
I think there needs to be a /r/FirefoxOpinionsAndRants and /r/FirefoxDupes and there would have been like 5 posts here all weekend.
I’m hanging around a little while to help pass on some of the help I’ve been given and pay it forward, then I am the fuck outta here.
Spamming with the same issue over and over again is not ok.
There is nothing wrong to be a Fan Boy… I like Firefox \[ And hate chrome\], thus I use Firefox and have joined this sub-reddit.
Criticisms, problem solving is fine … but criticisms should not go to the point of ridiculing. If you don’t like Firefox, just don’t use it.
\[Downvote this comment as much as u like, I have 100 k to spare\]
Some things must die in order for innovation to happen. They had their (multiple) chances over the years. They crapped on our heads at each one of them. Just let it die now. Out of the vacuum something new and better will appear. I feel sorry for the people who donated to this. I still can’t understand how an old version like mine (54.0) is affected by this “verification” problem. That’s how much they dropped the ball.
SHUT UP AND EAT CAKE /s
Yeah this sub has turned into apple-like circlejerk. I unsubbed a year ago when those tendencies became apparent and only came here to see how people deal with Uncle Mozilla having a backdoor way of disabling the functionality of their browsers. Unsurprisingly, it’s still full of fanboys and white knights here.
If this drama has taught me anything it’s that anyone with a graphical flare with strange logos on this sub is the worst kind of militant fan boy and should just be ignored immediately.
I absolutely hate what happened to addons and I think there’s no excuse for it. It put people at risk and resulted in information loss. I think we need real alternatives to Firefox. With that said, using Chrome isn’t about browser engines. It’s about using a browser made by a company that profits by selling your data. Chromium and all the forks have been found to contact Google servers as well. Firefox is most definitely the lesser evil in comparison.
>A browser is a tool. Using a tool does not constitute an endorsement of the creator’s philosophy, or belonging to their “team”. As a user, we choose the best tool for the job and that’s it. Using Firefox doesn’t mean I like what Mozilla’s doing. Using Chrome doesn’t mean I want a WebKit monopoly.
Stop pretending software is apolitical.
firefox took away user control, against our will. now that lack of control fucked them. it wouldnt be that bad if it was an honest mistake. all the bile comes from the fact this is a result of them pursuing a path nobody wanted them to and them being bloody minded about it. so theres an element of satisfaction, their arrogance and complacency did this, not an innocent error
hear, hear
Your criticisms will all due respect are rubbish.
1- No one supporting Mozilla is saying that people’s issues are not valid and dismissing them. At least not what I have read at all.
2- I said much the same thing as /u/kickass_turing – Chrome has had way more problems with their extensions. And that’s not even counting all of Google’s other sins… like tax evasion.
3- Most supports of FF/Mozilla, myself included, focus on the positive reasons for using Firefox. It has a much better desktop interface for example, scrolling tabs, is fully customisable, and has just way more useful built-in features compared to Chrome.
Mozilla and open web, cool story. Better ban some more things you find “problematic”.
> it’s because Mozilla failed to draw in more Firefox users
Absolutely. They once had >25% market share, Firefox was big news in the early days, especially Firefox 3. Over the years FF became plagued with performance and memory issues (as well as bizzare UI changes over the years), while Chrome, the new browser, was way snappier. I remember trying to jump ship a few times, but it was always the lack of addons on Chrome that stopped me. Naturally, Mozilla just decided to nuke the whole addon ecosystem. Now, instead of focusing on providing good, functional software they are just focusing on marketing to privacy-concerned users.
I complained about RSS being killed on favor of Pocket and all I got were lousy downvotes. It’s like fanboys don’t even care about an open web to begin with.
Hey you forgot the “FF is free so you cannot complain” argument that fanboys *love* throwing around. By their logic we shouldn’t praise FF either because it’s free so we don’t have any obligation to defend it.
This sub was a massive shitshow for the past days. Your baiting post doesn’t really help.
wtf is happening in this sub
Excellent post and fully agree. Someone provides fair criticism should never be downvoted, IMO.
It reminds me a bit of posts on /r/apple. Not as bad lately but at times you can’t have anything that would be looked at as being critical.
Imagine caring this much about what either side says on a subreddit, from people you’ll never meet and will have no bearing on your life.
All this post does is throw more fuel on the fire of REEEE. Both sides are doing it, and both sides are silly.
You don’t have to justify your usage to anyone except those paying your salary.
I love how you still need to fiddle with css to get a true vertical tab experience.
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show\_bug.cgi?id=1332447](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1332447)
I subscribed after addon-ocalypse for future positive FF updates but, yeah, my first impression hasn’t been that great. I hope things become more positive next week when the latest massive Facebook data breach gets people back on the privacy train.
A post with one of the highest upvote counts that I’ve seen in a while in this sub and the award of 3 gold should say something by itself about the post’s subject matter.
What he says has been ongoing for a long time.
>Do you think people who use nails vs screws fight each other like this?
Ohmigod don’t even tell me you’re one of those hammering heathens
This is a GIF of me sitting in a large chair with a bucket of popcorn in my lap eating it by the handful and swinging my feet cause the chair is so big.
OP, I’m with you completely.
I love Firefox. I was there right at the start (or, well, 0.6, anyway, which is near enough), and will forever appreciate what its developers did in bringing us this software. At the time, the internet was rubbish. Browser and web tech had stalled completely – from the beginning up to 2004, the most exciting development we had was Flash, which rapidly became Flash adverts which used so much CPU power that they rendered a system unusable. Firefox is something which I credit as being instrumental in bringing the internet into the modern era, and for that, it and its developers will always have a special place in my heart.
As a browser these days though, I only have it installed so I have an alternative to Chrome, in case I need a clean session for something. Every now and then I do try it as a new main browser, but it’s never compelling enough to keep me.
It’s not just that it doesn’t obviously surpass Chrome in any way. It’s that it’s actively more problematic, even for as little as I use it, as Chrome. In the past few months, for instance, I found that Firefox was using 100% of one core after restoring the system from Sleep, for no obvious reason. Why? I’ve no idea. I only ever it for a single tab on a single browser instance at most these days. But, still, there’s Firefox, needlessly slowing my system, running up my electric bill, making my fans spin up, all because of its modern standards of QC. This weekend’s issue with plugins was another major issue which made FF unusable, and further tainted my, and everyone else’s, impression of the product.
Firefox has fallen immensely in popularity. At one point, it was the world’s leader. Now, what’s its marketshare at? 6%. This week’s debacle will likely knock it down further still. It’s fucked, to put it frankly.
Mozilla’s management is squarely to blame for its failure. They deserve criticism. Pretending that they’re doing things right and that it’s the user’s fault for doing things wrong (“Use a fork!”) is top-tier cognitive dissonance. As a user, I just want something that’s good, and that works. They’re not providing me with that. I’m not a critic, because I don’t care enough about Firefox either way anymore, but yourself, and those of you who are, you guys are absolutely spot on. They need to listen to you. Anyone stupid and sycophantic enough to dismiss you and your criticisms in favour of absolute obsequity to Mozilla’s management’s decision-making (“it’s set in stone!”) is a fool.
What an original post!
Yep I’ve been downvoted to hell here for pointing out issues with Firefox.. Better make sure nobody finds out the browser isn’t 100% perfect!
reddit’s toxic, get over it duh
This happens with any group and it kinda the biggest problem with things like Reddit.
These threads have run their course and is verging on a civil war on this sub-reddit.
Locking the threads to preserve the peace. New threads will be closed.
Also, a reminder: This is not an official Firefox community.