Chrome-based browsers highlight the risks of using third-party Firefox-based browsers

And the hits just keep on coming. After buying an ad tech company and working with Facebook to weaken Firefox’ privacy features, Mozilla is now integrating AI chatbots straight into Firefox with the recent release of Firefox 130. People are understandably big mad about this, and as such the calls for switching to alternatives is growing stronger. Considering the only true alternative to Firefox is Chrome and its various skins, those of us looking to send Mozilla a message are kind of relegated to trying out Firefox skins instead.

Switching to what are essentially “Firefox distros” to collectively try and nudge Mozilla back to making more sensible decisions instead of AI hype chasing is an eminently reasonable one. There’s more reasons than just that. Part of the reason I use Firefox-based browsers rather than Chromium browsers is because I want to preserve some choice and diversity in browser engines. The existence of a choice of different Firefox derived browsers may allow space for experimentation in designing better browsers. In Chromium land, Arc has shown that there’s an opportunity for quite radically rethinking how browsers work. Same for Orion in Mac/iOS-land.

This isn’t a detailed review of the different browsers, just a few comments and observations having tried them.
↫ Tom Morris

I have my reservations about using Firefox skins, mostly because no matter what you do, you’re still entirely dependent on the choices Mozilla makes during the development of the venerable browser. If Mozilla keeps deviating from the traditional goals more and more, the amount of work these Firefox skins need to perform to reign the browser back in will start to increase, and who knows if they have the manpower, experience, and skills to do so? More worryingly, will they be able to keep up with Mozilla’s release schedule, including important bugfixes and security patches?

My worries go beyond those basic things, though. Considerably fewer eyes will be going over any code changes these Firefox-based browsers make, and as recent history has shown us, infiltrating a small, understaffed open source project for nefarious purposes is a thing that happens. Another issue to consider is nebulous ownership of such Firefox versions, as are questions around who financially supports such efforts. Your browser is a massively important and crucial piece of software that holds and has access to a lot of your personal data, and you should be particularly careful about who owns your browser.

This is not to say each and every one of them is bad – just that you have to be careful about who you trust. Several Chrome skins, like Brave and Opera, have time and time again shown to be shady, untrustworthy companies pushing crypto bullshit, ripping off websites, have shady owners, and more – don’t use Brave, don’t use Opera – and there’s no guarantees the same won’t happen with Firefox skins riding the wave of unhappiness with Mozilla. Please be mindful.

I don’t have an answer for this issue, either – I just want to caution against throwing the browser out with the bath water and switching to a project you might not know a lot about.