Comment by rightbyte
1 year ago
It is really unfortunate.
My Firefox install lately added links to what could be considered not so nice sites for grandmas like amazon.com and hotels.com to the start screen.
It is quite clear they see it as their program not mine program.
I dunno for how long I will stick to using the least worst alternative. To go for custom builds would be giving up on Mozilla.
edit: Toned down language
>scam sites like amazon.com
Since when is Amazon a scam site?
I don't like em' either, but hyperbole doesn't help.
For what it's worth, it can be removed in about 4 seconds.
Considering how hard it is to avoid dodgy counterfeit merchandise in certain product categories, that seems like an apt description.
https://www.onlyamazingseller.com/us.html
7 replies →
> For what it's worth, it can be removed in about 4 seconds.
Sure, but why should anyone have to?
Look, I hate ads as much as the next person.
But Firefox also needs to generate money somehow, right? A small advert to amazon/hotels/whatever that can be removed basically permanently with a small change in the settings is about the best balance I can think of.
If you donate to Mozilla, I have more sympathy for you. Perhaps they could make it so that if you have a Firefox account linked to a donation that they remove this, or something.
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It's hardly hyperbole at this point:
- Letting sellers replace listings with completely different products while keeping the ratings.
- Not providing any way to filter dodgy chinese sellers that spam search results with duplicates of the same cheap shit.
- Comingling inventory so that even if you take care to select a trustworthy seller you might get stuff from a dodgy one.
And no, being able to remove the scam ads is not good enough.
Amazon has been a scam site for years.
Counterfeit products sold by Amazon.
Most reviews are purchased.
Stolen product pages.
Product pages where the reviews are for totally different products
If you report any of these things to Amazon, they do nothing about it.
Scam site was probably not very precise.
They have enshittified, and they don't have a quality anti-abuse team so many items, while not directly fraudulent are fraud-u-lish.
Commingled inventory means you can't expect the item you get to be the item you ordered because there is no supply chain integrity.
Honestly, after typing that out, I don't think scam was as wrong as it first seemed. I frequently feel deceived when using amazon.
Amazon doesn't even particularly care whether the items they sell are even legal in the country where they sell them.
FRS radios for example. Fine in the USA, not fine in Australia where those frequencies are used for public safety radio systems, and where they are illegal to possess because they don't comply with the applicable EMC standards.
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That is debatable if that is hyperbole but I might be moving the discussion a bit too much off topic so ye maybe more neutral language would have been preferable.
Use LibreWolf. It's just firebox rebuilt and released with better defaults (no suggestions/spying)
Yeah, it's annoying, but also nothing particularly new I believe. There seem to be two types of garbage links added by default:
1. "Sponsored shortcuts" that can be "easily" turned off in `about:preferences#home`
2. I guess "non-sponsored" shortcuts? I believe they pointed to Facebook, eBay, and something else (Pinterest maybe). Those have to be removed/"blocked" individually. I think they end up in `browser.newtabpage.blocked` after doing so.
I don't like that this is a thing I have to do whenever I set up a new Firefox install. It's not often, to be fair, but it still sucks nonetheless.
Ye that feels like trying to unmess a Windows install.
I have like 6 Firefox installs I need to do this on. And then they add the next thing to block in 2 years.
I think the old premade bookmarks are as far as you can go with these kind of things. Takes like 2s to remove and you know how instinctivly.