Mozilla Firefox Begins Showing Ads in New Tab Pages

[The AchieVer]

There’s a lot going on in the browser world these days, and after Microsoft announced it’s moving to Chromium for its very own Microsoft Edge, Mozilla is also making silent changes that do not sit well with its users.

The latest version of the browser has started displaying ads in new tab pages, with early reports confirming this happens on all supported desktop platforms.

As reported by users on reddit (via TechDows), a small popup that shows up at the bottom of the screen includes a link to Booking.com.

“Ready to schedule that next family reunion? Here’s a thank you from Firefox. Book your next hotel stay on Booking.com today and get a free $20 Amazon gift card. Happy Holidays from Firefox! (Restriction apply.)” the message reads.

Clicking the “Find a Hotel” button takes users to Booking.com.

You can disable the feature from settings

At this point, it looks like these messages only show up occasionally and only for a specific set of users, so there’s also a chance that Mozilla is also conducting a limited experiment. We haven’t been able to reproduce this behavior on old and new installations of Firefox 64.

Officially, Mozilla calls these adds “snippets” and the company allows users to disable them from the settings screen of the browser. You can head over to Preferences > Home > Snippets to turn them off.

Mozilla hasn’t released a statement on whether the company is just running an experiment or this is expected behavior in Firefox 64.

Nevertheless, it goes without saying that users aren’t happy with ads showing up in the browser, and although they are allowed to disable the feature, the simple fact that it comes enabled may cause more frustration in the existing user community.

More official information from Mozilla engineers should be provided in the coming days after the holidays.

 

source

[Karlston]

Firefox with ads on New Tab Page

 

Reports indicate that the Firefox browser displays advertisement on the browser's New Tab Page to some users of the browser.

 

A thread on Reddit offers some details: a user reported that Firefox was displaying an advertisement at the bottom of the New Tab Page.

 

It reads:

Ready to schedule that next family reunion? Here's a thank you from Firefox. Book your next hotel stay on Booking.com today and get a free $20 Amazon gifr card. Happy Holidays from Firefox! (Restrictions apply).

The attached "find a hotel" button loads the Booking.com website.

 

screenshot by https://www.reddit.com/user/ijustwantanfingname

The advertisement is powered by Firefox's Snippet functionality. The Snippet Service of Firefox is "intended to assemble and deliver content snippets" in Firefox.

 

Snippets may highlight new features of Firefox, offer seasonal greetings, or suggest other Mozilla projects to users of the browser.

 

The ads appear to be limited to certain geographical regions, e.g. the United States, at the time of writing. Reports indicate that the advertisement is displayed in release versions of the web browser.

Criticism

Advertisement in web browsers is a controversial topic; most browsers don't display native ads. Mozilla tried ads several times in Firefox in the past, e.g. in the form of sponsored tiles, and it backfired each time.

 

One issue that Firefox users may have with this new form of advertisement is that it comes totally unexpected. The Snippet feature has the following description in the options: updates from Mozilla and Firefox.

 

Ads are not mentioned; while it is possible that Mozilla forgot to update the description, it could be seen as deceptive by users of the browser.

 

As an organization that values privacy and choice, Mozilla is held to a higher standard than Google or Microsoft. One of the things that Mozilla needs to get right, and has not in the past, is that it needs to be very open and upfront about these kind of things.

 

Not highlighting that a particular feature could be used to display advertisement in the browser is the opposite of that.

Disabling snippets

 

Firefox users may disable snippets in the web browser in the following way:

1. Load about:preferences#home in the browser's address bar.
2. Remove the checkmark from Snippets.

Closing Words

Mozilla needs to rethink its strategy in regards to advertisement in Firefox; the browser needs a toggle to disable advertisement entirely in the browser and better descriptions for preferences and options that may display ads.

 

The way advertisement is integrated in the browser right now is detrimental as it erodes trust in Mozilla.

 

Source: Firefox with ads on New Tab Page (gHacks - Martin Brinkmann)

[Bizarre™]

For me, Firefox died the moment it killed classic addons

[hey]

Yeh yeh.  Dudes advertise with their shirts and hats now'days. It's all about the might buck, other finer things be damned.  No surprise here and it's disabled easily in settings.

[Karlston]

2 hours ago, Bizarre™ said:

For me, Firefox died the moment it killed classic addons

 

I thought so too and stayed on 56.x for a long time after the 57 Web Extension nonsense rolled out, IMO way too early.

 

But now, I've found enough Web Extensions and CSS stuff to replace all the functionality that 57 and several later versions was missing.

 

The main addons I missed were Classic Theme Restorer, AdBlock Plus (and Element Hiding Helper) , and NoScript. NoScript WE works fine, uBlock Origin replaced AdBlock Plus (and its companion Element Hiding Helper), and Aris (CTR's author) released  CustomCSSforFx to replace much of CTR's functionality.

[DKT27]

Topics merged.

 

While I might disagree with the move, I wonder if doing so makes them not much reliant on Google there.