this post was submitted on 10 Mar 2025
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Glad that I moved to firefox 4 months ago and then to zen browser last week to avoid plugins removal. Haven’t looked back
So, the elephant in the room is Chrome killing ad-blocking.
I think that Firefox (and Firefox forks, like Zen Browser) have low-enough marketshare that websites that depend on ad revenue may just kill support for Firefox if Firefox does permit ad blocking.
https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share
As of February:
Chrome: 66.3%
Safari: 17.99%
Edge: 5.33%
Firefox: 2.62%
The software used to view the Web in 2025 is really mostly under the control of either Google or Apple.
There’s always PiHole to block ads at the network level. It takes some setup and a raspberry pi but it can be one of the cheaper ones. And I’m pretty sure the sites aren’t going to do much more than check the User Agent to get the browser so User Agent Switcher will get around 99% of that.
You could, I suppose, block Firefox in other ways (like maybe checking for some random Chromium feature not yet supported in Firefox) but Firefox isn’t usually far behind Chrome so it would almost take an entire new developer to be effective. And there’s probably ways around that too. (I’m a web developer but have never worked on an ad-supported project and never will so I’m not sure but life finds a way.)
Yep, I have my PiHole running on a Pi2 still.
You're underestimating these websites though. I already run into sites that arbitrarily throw up a "Firefox not supported" gate until I switch user agents. That will only get worse.
I'm still very concerned about Firefox's funding majority coming from Google search, especially after the antitrust shutting it down. https://slashdot.org/story/431592
We're headed for dark times for the open internet.