Bonum Certa Men Certa

Mozilla Firefox Loses 16 Million More Active Monthly Users Between August 15 2022-2023



Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer

According to the latest Firefox Public Data Report statistics, Mozilla has lost about 16 million more Active Monthly Users between August 15th 2022 and August 14th 2023.



Firefox users' activity



Firefox users' activity



192,840,300 minus 176,821,100 equals 16,019,200 less users in a single 12 month period.



On January 28, 2019, Mozilla had 253,877,800 Active Monthly Firefox Users, so if you subtract 176,821,100, they’ve lost 77,056,700.



Yes, over 77 million users lost in 4 years and 7 months. If you average out the loss over this period, then they’ve lost about 1.4 million Firefox users per month, give or take a couple thousand. Per day, that means that over 46,300 people slam Firefox shut and never open it again.



Where do they go?



Well, from the screenshot it may look like I used Firefox to take that picture, but I actually snapped them using LibreWolf on openSUSE Leap 15.5 KDE.



LibreWolf is a fork of Firefox that doesn’t spy on you and is set to privacy-preserving settings from the Tor Uplift Project and to default to not persisting your history or cookies between sessions and to never keep a disk cache. It also comes with ublock-origin, and is fully compatible with WebExtensions from the Firefox Add-Ons, including NoScript and all the other ones you may use.



It blocks fingerprinting vectors like Canvas and WebGL (which is a security hazard) and I’ve disabled WASMs (because those too are a hazard that adds more security issues, and I don’t want the Web platform to have it even if I whitelist a domain in NoScript…I want my bank to work, not shove a binary blob down the hatch).



I’ve also hidden and disabled the Widevine and EME (DRM stuff).



I don’t use Firefox Sync. I enabled (in about:config) password CSV imports and occasionally I just back up my password and bookmarks file to storage I control. Then I go over to SeaMonkey and stomp those with the latest version. It’s some work, but it keeps my information off of Mozilla’s server.



Set up this way, LibreWolf doesn’t spy on you like Firefox does.



It also doesn’t throw garbage in your face.



“Too much garbage in your face? Try space!



With Mozilla quickly running out of Firefox users and resorting to petty harassment of SeaMonkey, it’s anyone’s guess exactly how long before Google totally defunds them.



Most people aren’t very intelligent, so I’d imagine that Mozilla is hemorrhaging users to something even nastier, like Chrome or Edge.



This does not bode well for the future.



At this point I don’t even think Mozilla wants to save themselves.



They’ve abandoned Windows users who could have been a captive audience, even though there’s nothing technical in the way of compiling new builds for these versions of the OS, yet.



Years later, they still won’t fix embarrassing “fake errors” that Microsoft and Google throw Firefox users along with “get our browser instead” spam.



In addition to Mitchell Baker firing Gecko developers by the hundreds and hiring Diversity Inclusion People and folks to write adware (which LibreWolf disables, and SeaMonkey has never had), Mozilla has a long history of serving a a line item on someone’s resume before they go work at a GAFAM company officially.



There’s a good reason to switch from Firefox, even if you pick something else that’s basically Firefox.



We need to protect ourselves from all of this adware and spyware and these binary-only modules and tell Mitchell that “We’re not gonna take it anymore!”.



(My Firefox ESR from openSUSE has had the “profile hardening” applied to it to make it basically like LibreWolf with Firefox branding, but it’s more work than letting someone else maintain it for you.)



Recent Techrights' Posts

Stefano Maffulli and His Microsoft-Funded OSI Staff Are Killing the OSI and Killing "Open Source" (All for Money!)
This is far from over
Techrights Headlines as Semaphore
"If you are hearing this, thank you"
 
Links 01/04/2025: Mass Layoffs at Eidos and "Microsoft Pulls Back on Data Centers" (Demand Lacking); "Racist and Sexist" Slop From Microsoft
Links for the day
Gemini Links 01/04/2025: XKCDpunk and worldclock.py
Links for the day
50 Years of Sabotage and a Gut Punch to Computer Science (and Science in General)
Will we get back to science-based computing rather than cult-like following?
3 Months in 2025, 4 Waves of Mass Layoffs at Microsoft, Now Offices Shut Down Permanently
"A recent visit by the South China Morning Post confirmed that the office was dark, unoccupied, and had its logo removed."
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, March 31, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, March 31, 2025
Links 31/03/2025: China Tensions, Bombs Falling in Myanmar After Earthquake
Links for the day
Gemini Links 31/03/2025: Falling Out of Love With Tech, Sunsetting openSNP
Links for the day
R.T.O. at IBM in Texas and Atlanta (State of Georgia) Expected as "Soft Layoffs" Catalyst This Coming Year
It also sounds like more IBM layoffs are in the making
Law Firms Can Also Lose Their Licence for Clearly Misusing It
The bottom line is, never made the false assumption that because you can pile up SLAPPs in a docket you will not suffer from bad reputation or even get disbarred
Link between institutional abuse, Swiss jurists, Debianism and FSFE
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
LLM Slop Piggybacking News About GNU/Linux and Distorting It
new examples
Links 31/03/2025: Press and Democracy Under Further Attacks in the US, Attitudes Towards Slop Sour
Links for the day
Open Source Initiative (OSI) Privacy Fiasco in Detail: The OSI Does Not Respect Anybody's Privacy
The surveillance mafia that bans dissent or key people (even co-founders) with dissenting views
Gemini Links 31/03/2025: More X-Filesposting and Dreaming in Emacs
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, March 30, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, March 30, 2025
Links 30/03/2025: Security Breaches, Crackdowns on Dissent/Rival Politicians
Links for the day
Gemini Links 30/03/2025: London Soundtrack Festival, Superbloom, gmiCAPTCHA
Links for the day
Phasing Out Vista 10 in Nations Where ~90% of Windows Users Still Rely on It
Recipe for another Microsoft disaster
The Cost of Pursuing the Much-Needed Reform/Shield Against Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPPs)
“It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.”
The LLM Bubble is About to Implode, Gimmicks and Financial Shell Games Cannot Prevent That, Only Delay It
To inflate the bubble MElon is now doing the classic trick of buying from oneself for a fictional value
Links 30/03/2025: Contagious Ideas, Signal Leak, and Squashing Lousy Patents
Links for the day
Links 30/03/2025: "Quantum Randomness" and "F-1 Visa Revoked" in US
Links for the day
Gemini Links 30/03/2025: US as a Threat, Returning to the WWW
Links for the day
Links 30/03/2025: Judge Blocks Dismantling Of VOA, Turkey Arrested Many Journalists
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, March 29, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, March 29, 2025