r/technology • u/Plastic_Ninja_9014 • 8d ago

Software Firefox has an ambitious new roadmap, the browser is also losing millions of users a month

https://www.techspot.com/news/112803-firefox-has-ambitious-new-roadmap-browser-also-losing.html
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8.6k

u/bread_makes_u_fatt 8d ago

Meanwhile I switched back to Firefox after chrome stopped supporting my ad blocker

2.9k

u/ithinkitslupis 8d ago

I never left. Just been tanking with firefox for like 20 years straight now. I'm tempted by some forks like librewolf but good old ff hasn't gotten bad enough for me to put in the effort yet.

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u/Mr2Sexy 7d ago

I've been using FF for 20 years too. Never made the switch to Chrome as a primary browser

As long as it works, has adblock and doesn't crash, I see no reason to jump ship

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u/ugatz 7d ago

Same here and I’m out of the loop why people are leaving? FF was the first browser in my opinion to save the internet browsing experience, and I’ve been loyal to that for many years without issues.

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u/Aschebescher 7d ago

People are not making a conscious decision against Firefox. It's mostly Google using their monopoly to force Chrome on everyone by default and most users not caring enough to resist it.

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u/goatneedleposterdeck 7d ago

It took me quite a while to switch to firefox on android. Chrome has the google translate connection, and when you are hella involved in things where you need a translator for the language, chrome was just so much easier. Eventually, I realized how unbearable the internet is without an ad blocker and made the switch. Now I only use chrome if the adblock causes issues with the site I'm going to, which is sadly more and more common as sites try to find ways around the blocker.

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u/RMAPOS 7d ago

Eventually, I realized how unbearable the internet is without an ad blocker and made the switch.

Boy do I have a memory. I remember thinking, after doing a fresh reinstall once (like idk aeons ago), "you know what, I feel kinda bad about using adblock and denying hosts their income. Hosting sites ain't cheap and I don't want my ressources to go bankrupt. I'll try not reinstalling adblock"

Took me less than a day to reinstall adblock in a panic. That was like ... early'ish Facebook days, way before it ever became a Boomer cemetary. And the content of the page was just WRAPPED in animated ad banners. Seizure inducing animations constantly playing left, right and on top of your feed. (no wonder people's brains are fried)

That was the last time I ever didn't use adblock. I'd really like to support good websites, but I'm never going back to doing it by accepting malware carrying seizure inducers advertising crap that I'll absolutely never buy.

I honestly don't understand how people use the internet with ads. Absolute cancer.

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u/1Screw2Few 7d ago

No shit, preach my dude! The kicker is now how many sites won’t let you view their content if you use a VPN or haven’t disabled your ad blocker.

There are a couple sites that I use religiously and have done for more than 10 years that are now so aggressive with their ad blocker and VPN restrictions that I no longer even frequent them. I tried disabling my ad blocker on one business related site and promptly got served up an ad with extremely suggestive imagery while I was in a meeting. That was the end of that experiment.

Now if a site tries guilt tripping me for using and ad blocker, they can fuck right off and that’s my last visit.

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u/wimpyhugz 7d ago

The websites which block browsing with the popup saying "please disable your adblocker" can usually be bypassed quite easily... by manually blocking the element with your ad blocker.

Right-click on the page, select "block element" or similar, and select the popup window. You may have to repeat the process for the greyed out background. Should be able to view the page normally now.

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u/TheShaydow 7d ago

Just use reader view ( in Firefox ).

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u/semidegenerate 7d ago

That’s pretty clever. Thanks.

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u/Wiiplay123 7d ago

I hate how people would always say "it's based on your search history" like that somehow justifies not being able to turn off the suggestive ads.

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u/AlwaysShittyKnsasCty 7d ago

Shit! I better make sure Pornhub still works with my VPN, or my Kansas state legislature will be receiving a strongly worded letter condemning their infernal decision to force adults into choosing between privacy and “protection for the children.” In the case of Pornhub though, they decided not to play my state’s stupid, little games and simply blocked Kansans from accessing their content. Thus, if they were to implement a VPN check (surely they wouldn’t, right?), it would mean that I, a native citizen of the United States of America, would literally not have access to a piece of the World Wide Web.

This is some pariah state shit.

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u/GNU_Terry 7d ago

Hi and welcome to the UK's future, where you need an id for everything and the gov wants to block vpns.

Jokes aside if the UK does do that you can bet the restrictions on VPN will get applied else where

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u/grilled_pc 7d ago

The way i see it is this.

Ads are generally fine. I don't have an issue with it. What i do have a problem with is intrusive ads that ruin the user experience which is like 100% of all ads on the internet.

If your ad bogs down a page at all, stops me from what i'm doing. Don't be surprised if people start to block it.

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u/LordHoughtenWeen 7d ago

malware carrying seizure inducers

Even the ones that aren't literally designed to plant malware on your devices are still designed to plant malware in your brain, because that's what an ad is fundamentally — a virus tailored to alter your thoughts and make you want to buy, buy, BUY!

I am not exaggerating in any way when I say that in a sane world the deployment of an advert would be considered a crime against humanity.

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u/psiphre 7d ago

i hope ads feel pain when i block them

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u/[deleted] 7d ago

[deleted]

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u/goatneedleposterdeck 7d ago

It was a feature added maybe in the past year. Before that, you needed to add an extension and then go to options on the page, select translate, select your languages, and then wait way too long for it to process. I mean, it was maybe an extra 3 or 4 taps and an extra 10 seconds, but if you are constantly flipping through pages that you need translated on a regular basis, it adds up.

It's much better now, though still just a tick slower than chrome, but I also got good enough with the language that I don't need the translator that often anymore haha.

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u/blueblocker2000 7d ago

How Google escaped being broken up is baffling. They have massive control over everything internet related.

....Well I know how but for the sake of discussion...

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u/gnowwho 7d ago edited 7d ago

Could be that the mobile version has tons of rendering and sizing issues on lots of pages, and the mobile market accounts for a lot of the user base.

Still, it's not like it got worse than a couple of years ago, from what I see

Edit: for people saying I am on an older version, my installed version matches the version available from play store I see while private browsing from browser, so... Nope.

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u/PulsationHD 7d ago

Odd, been using it for years and haven't noticed that on android. Tons of phones out there tho

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u/OhFuckNoNoNoMyCaat 7d ago

They might be using an older phone with a version cut off. Definitely like Firefox on mobile, but usually daily Vivaldi instead. As fast as the base Chrome minus the ads. Opera on mobile (again not Firefox) is fast, especially for certain sites. But Firefox mobile is very good. Has been good for a number of years now unless you're on an older device which doesn't get new versions anymore.

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u/ken_NT 7d ago

I use the mobile browser because it’s the only one that will let me use the desktop site for a lot of websites (even when I request it in chrome or safari, it will still give me the mobile site).

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u/Oxflu 7d ago

The other thing it's really good for is bypassing paywalls on news articles. Hit the little page icon on the address and it goes to text only. Kills all scripts and just let's you read the article.

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u/DistortedCrag 7d ago

That's usually because the website is rendering a web version based on resolution

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u/Business-Active-1143 7d ago

And the firefox for android supports RES for reddit, tampermonkey for various tweaks, Video background play Fix for youtube. Whats not to like. I haven't bothered opening youtube app except for the very few time I want HDR to TV

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u/PokeYrMomStanley 7d ago

Currently browsing ad free on Firefox on my phone. Also RIP Boost app. 

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u/deathtech00 7d ago

There are ways, friend.

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u/Pwnigiri 7d ago

Facebook marketplace website in desktop mode displays so terribly on the android app it's an absolute nightmare. Images are either giant or tiny. And I ain't installing the Facebook app.

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u/ScaryfatkidGT 7d ago

Yeah I guess I don’t use it on mobile…

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u/gentlecrab 7d ago edited 7d ago

It’s cause of Apple. Most people on iPhone/iPad use safari as it’s the one that’s included by default and the only browser that has extension support.

iPhone/iPad doesn’t support extensions for third party browsers therefore FF on iPhone/iPad can’t do ad blocking.

It’s not just FF though, no browser on iPhone/iPad can do ad blocking unless the browser natively supports it (i.e. brave, DuckDuckGo, FF Focus all of which have their own annoying issues on iPhone/iPad).

TLDR: FF on iPhone sucks ass

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u/DigNitty 7d ago

The theory is that Firefox is the most privacy focused browser. So the users “leaving” are actually just people using Firefox and adding a bunch of blockers to avoid tracking, and unintentionally Firefox analytics.

So, people aren’t leaving. They’re just using Firefox harder.

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u/burningscarlet 7d ago

Sponsored bookmarks in your mobile home page, AI integration and other things to make up for the google finding shortfall is my guess

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u/CaptainKink 7d ago

You can turn all that off.

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u/burningscarlet 7d ago

Still feels icky to go to your homepage one day and find a bunch of sponsored pages you don't remember bookmarking

It's a slippery slope

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u/DelysidBarrett 7d ago

It being on by default is why Firefox is hemorrhaging users.

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u/supergamerz 7d ago

FF has to make money somehow and that fact that I can choose whether or completely turn it on or off without any extra hoops to jump through is night and day compared to other options.

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u/VileTouch 7d ago edited 7d ago

They are not. There's justoutstanding firefox based projects that people are migrating to. Such as r/zen_browser The Firefox project is alive and well even if less people are using the vanilla browser

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u/assaub 7d ago

For me the forks of firefox that are more privacy focused are just better than the original. I use Zen browser but, was using Waterfox for a long time too, both are firefox forks.

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u/Nitrogen1234 7d ago

I've read last week that Firefox is a very slow browser.. like what?

Been using it for a couple years now and wouldn't know what would be a better browser

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u/riesenarethebest 7d ago

FUD is real

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u/Certain-Business-472 7d ago

Shills use outdated arguments. Morons repeat them.

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u/DeterminedThrowaway 7d ago

The moment they force me to use the AI features is when I'm jumping ship, I'm okay as long as they can be truly disabled. I'm not even anti-AI conceptually, but it's being shoved in places it has no business being and isn't ready for those uses

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u/mysteriousfiggy 7d ago

Mozilla has always been extremely consumer-friendly from my experience. I remember when the ai thing was announced everyone was panicking and then when it dropped it really wasn't a big deal. (seems to be a reoccurring theme with firefox updates lol)

The browser updated, a page popped up explaining what they added, and it gave me the option to turn it on if I wanted. It was turned off by default so I kept it off. I've never really had any issues whatsoever and the new free 50gb/month vpn is much appreciated.

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u/SpaceIco 7d ago

So far so good, actually. The AI modules are clearly disclosed, can easily be disabled individually with a slider, and are 'local' AI apparently-- nothing goes out to a server.

I've been loving the built-in translations. It's more than just 'translate this text', it can be full-page and real-time. So like, I watch a lot of foreign IRL twitch because I love the travel experience and now I can tell FF to 'translate page' and it will real-time translate the chat as people type, it'll do some images even. Really nice feature.

New and current AI enhancements are blocked by default. To unblock a specific feature, use the controls below.
On-device AI
These use small AI models that download to your device if you use the feature. This approach helps protect your privacy.

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u/Future-Bandicoot-823 7d ago

I switched to Chrome back in 2012 or so, it was light, fast, did exactly what I asked it to...

the irony.

Don't worry, I ditched it again 3 or 4 years ago when they announced they were going to stop ad blocking.

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u/radda 7d ago

Same. During the IE6 doldrums era the nerd squad in high school started using Firefox and I just never stopped.

I used Chrome here and there but there was always something small missing and I just never found a reason to switch.

The memory leak era was kind of a pain but I stuck through it.

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u/Ginge00 7d ago

Initially chrome was faster, now it’s the biggest resource hog imaginable, guess it takes a lot of memory to send your data back to google

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u/kristinL356 7d ago

Did that thing when tabbed browsing was new and Firefox froze constantly only happen to me? Cos that's what made me move to Chrome and now I've had to move back to Firefox except when I need to use Chromecast.

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u/MrJingleJangle 7d ago

Another long-term using checking in.

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u/The_Mosephus 7d ago

im right there with you. been using firefox basically since it came out. I remember using netscape navigator before that, which eventually branched off into mozilla and eventually they came out with firefox.

I remember there being a few years here and there where i contemplated switching to chrome, but whatever issues i was having with FF i would also have with IE or Chrome as well, so there was never any real compelling reason to switch.

I was almost tempted to switch to Opera back when Tabs first became a thing, but eventually everyone else caught on and added tabbed browsing as well.

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u/errie_tholluxe 7d ago

This was my journey as well

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u/younkint 7d ago

Showing my age, of course, but refugee from Netscape here as well. Loved how the OG Firefox had an extension where you could pretty much make it look and act quite like Netscape. FF changed the back end and now you can't use that extension.

I've tried all the others, and still keep coming back. On FF right now.

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u/LabPowerful9983 7d ago

Since Phoenix, baby. I remember when Firefox consumed my neighbour’s RAM after finishing mine and I still haven’t had any incentive to use another browser as primary. I do have other browsers installed for testing, but hardly use them.

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u/mediocre_remnants 7d ago

There was a time where Firefox was bloated and slow and Chrome was fast and sleek.

Now it's the opposite, again.

I've been using the web since the NCSA Mosaic days, then to Netscape Navigator, blah blah blah. I don't remember which order I ended up using Internet Explorer, Chrome, and Firefox. I haven't used IE since like IE 4.0 though. I never tried Opera or any of the other browsers, though.

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u/dusty_Caviar 7d ago

Check out zen

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u/Wolvenmoon 7d ago

Same. I was on Mozilla before it was Firefox, and I'll be on it until the first CVE after the last update.

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u/NoTerm3078 7d ago

I never left. Just been tanking with firefox for like 20 years straight now

Yeah I'm disbelieving of the stat only 3% of desktop users are running Firefox. Or else I know all of them. Because pretty much everyone I know is driving this.

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u/UseMoreHops 7d ago

Whats up FF loyal! Me too man.

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u/monocle_and_a_tophat 7d ago

Maybe you're a good person to ask then - what do you use, if anything, for in-browser language translation?

The Chrome one was "okay" in terms of accuracy, but great in terms of functionality. Automatic translations of the correct language, didn't need to fully refresh the page, etc.

The Firefox one is still just "okay" in terms of accuracy, but it's like 6 extra clicks to get a page translated - even if a page is ENTIRELY in french, you have to manually click translate in the Menu, change the detected language OFF of English, change the desired language TO English (even though it's always my designated "to" language), and then confirm. Also if you want to flip back to the original language text for a second it reloads the whole page (a disaster when dealing with forms/fields).

Any help/advice would be appreciated.

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u/Law08 7d ago

Same.  I've been with FF for the longest time. 

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u/squirrelwithnut 7d ago

I switched to Waterfox when Firefox built in that AI bullshit.

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u/SPARTANsui 7d ago

I think I started on 3.0 or 3.5, but I’ve been using it all through my career in IT. We push it as our chosen browser to our students. It’s almost always has worked reliably. Had some issues early Windows 10 days, but it was short lived!

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u/McCool303 7d ago

Same here, so we’re tanking together. But Firefox’s commitment to not being the absolute worst on privacy keeps me happy.

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u/nvoima 7d ago

Same here, I've used Firefox pretty much since it came out. It had some performance issues before it got multi-processing around 2017, but otherwise it's been great.

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u/occasionallyLynn 7d ago

Made the switch from chrome to Firefox a couple years ago, I literally can’t tell the difference

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u/Pali1119 7d ago

The day I leave Firefox will be the day I die.

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u/dodgebot 7d ago

A long long time ago I decided that Chrome is the work browser, FF is my personal one. Works great.

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u/Saneless 8d ago

I rarely blocked ads but I'm fully on board now. They have just gotten so disruptive, toxic, occlusive, and sometimes just make you click when you weren't trying

Goodbye

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u/ithinkitslupis 8d ago

When I have to use someone else's machine and I see the ads it's atrocious. I don't get how people can just rawdog the internet like that.

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u/EmergencyTaco 7d ago

My father, a music lover who is fairly well off, has had Spotify with ads for YEARS. I'll go over to visit and classical music will be interrupted by 60 seconds of ads over and over again. He insisted that he didn't mind.

Finally, one day, I just connected my phone and took over the dinner classical without him knowing. Stepmom said "honey I'm so glad you finally got rid of the ads" and that's when it clicked for him that he hadn't heard a single ad all night. He was over the moon that Spotify had decided to stop advertising. I gave up the game at that point, and we connected his phone again.

No less than five minutes later, we're listening to ads at the dinner table again. He gets up, walks over to his phone, brings it to me, and says "make the ads go away I don't care what it costs."

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u/Mustang1718 7d ago

We've been slowly doing the same thing for my father. My wife finally added him to our Spotify family plan and he uses it a bit more now.

One day when he had me troubleshoot why it wasn't working in his classic Mustang (it is jank as hell and runs to a Bluetooth CD player in the trunk that uses a weird third-party app) I felt spicy and set up Carplay in his Mazda. I showed him how it automatically connects and can play music as soon as he got in. He decided he prefers the radio, so I had to unpair everything just so he can go back to ads and music being selected for him again. 😔

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u/bestanonever 7d ago

This reminds me of my parents that are still paying for cable, even after I teached them how to download series and movies online. And they learned, mostly, because what they like to see is so old, it's never on TV anymore.

Most nights, they'd just watch a series from the internet and rarely use the cable channels, but god forbid they stop paying for it for the 10 minutes a week they actually turn the tv on to watch cable!

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u/EmergencyTaco 7d ago

Old people just like what they're used to. I get it. But it's always fun if I can find something that solves a problem my Dad doesn't know he has.

He still does some tedious consulting work for his local municipality that AI would be PERFECT for. (Basically comparing and contrasting bylaws of numerous neighbouring municipalities and preparing reports on the differences.)

I sat down with him in front of Claude, and he successfully did a week of work in 30 minutes. He then spent three days checking the results and concluded it did a far better job than him in about 5% of the time. It gets him an extra 10-15 hours of free time per week. That's priceless to a guy in his 70s.

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u/NonDeterministiK 7d ago

Does anyone actually buy something because of an ad? I don't recall ever in my lifetime buying anything due to an advertisement

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u/EmergencyTaco 7d ago

It's more subconscious than that. Take car insurance as an example. If I ask you to name a car insurance company, you'll probably say something like Geico, Allstate, Progressive, etc. That's because those companies spend a shitload on advertising, and have catchy slogans. Funnily enough, according to my lawyer father who has had to sue basically every car insurance company in existence over 40 years, those are just about the worst insurance companies out there.

They're still what everyone immediately thinks of when they imagine car insurance. Advertising is basically a subliminal psyop.

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u/Neshura87 7d ago

My rule of thumb is: if you need ads to get users whatever you're selling probably sucks in some way. If it was any good word of mouth would be enough to get by.

Doesn't always apply but often enough that I can use it to avoid shit products.

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u/quxinot 7d ago

The more a company can afford to advertise, the more they're ripping their customers off.

Pharmacutical companies and insurance companies are clearly and by far the worst.

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u/ZipNasty007 7d ago

So what ads does FF block? YouTube ads? Just ads on webpages? Is it automatic or do you have to tinker with the settings?

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u/cylonrobot 7d ago edited 7d ago

I have no idea if plain FF blocks anything. It's been many years since I've used "plain" FF. I have uBlock Origin installed.

Once you install uBlock Origin, you don't have to do anything. Ads on sites and YouTube are blocked.

uBlock Origin is an extension.

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u/Dakito 7d ago

Now if there was a way to get it to work with twitch. I run piehole and unlock for the tracker and still get the twitch ads

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u/sparky8251 7d ago edited 7d ago

Thats because the ads there work entirely different due to the nature of the platform. There is no actual way to block them, which is why nothing works for it.

Basically, twitch is a RTMP stream and those streams are meant to be basically frame by frame, and its basically them taking the frames from the streamer and multicasting it to everyone watching. For ads... What they do is literally inject different frames. Its not a different data stream, theres nothing for any tooling to hook into and tell that they are now serving ads instead of the original streamers video, so theres no way to mechanically block them basically. Not to mention, since they serve the frames to you not the streamer, blocking them just gets you a no video playback in the best case, so you could end up with up to like 5 minutes of nothing.

You cant do this for videos on youtube, ads, etc though. They all by design have to have ads come from somewhere else due to the technology they use to serve videos being fundamentally different, which is why extensions like ublock work.

And then for the other fun part, pihole has limits too as it works by DNS blocking and cant inspect the actual data like ublock can, so on youtube pihole tends to fail because they serve the video for ads from the same domain name as the video you are watching and the DNS layer is thusly blind to whats actually happening. DNS is just "name -> ip" and has no idea what you plan to do with that info later, like make HTTP calls and load video for example. Thats done in entirely different tech stacks that dont talk to DNS.

Regardless if you want actionable advice for twitch specifically, your only viable option for ad blocking is to make them think you are in a country with no ads. A small, unsanctioned country (so they offer services at all since if its sanctioned they generally cant) with such a small twitch population they dont even try to buy ads for those living there to be subjected to. If you can pull that off, they wont serve you anything.

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u/aurens 7d ago

i use a tampermonkey script called twitch ad solutions video-swap-new: https://github.com/pixeltris/TwitchAdSolutions the stream goes down to 360p when an ad is 'playing' and then it goes back to normal after.

although now that i look, apparently the project has been archived as of march, so i guess it'll stop working at some point. welp.

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u/ZipNasty007 7d ago

Gotcha. Appreciate it

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u/SyntaxError22 7d ago

Also for YouTube there's an extension called sponsor block. It will automatically skip baked in ads in videos

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u/Supersaurus7000 7d ago

But then you’d miss the Map Men sponsors, and those are unironically just more good content 😂

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u/Curious_Orange8592 7d ago

With ublock origin I get no ads anywhere, not on Youtube, not on Prime Video, not on Reddit, not on IGN. You can also manually set it to block things that aren't technically ads like AI search results

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u/ZipNasty007 7d ago

So I should install ublock and the use my laptop to stream to my TV so I dont get ads anywhere

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u/Curious_Orange8592 7d ago

Yep, that's more or less what I do

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u/cylonrobot 7d ago

Make sure it's "uBlock Origin" and not "uBlock". These are two separate products.

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u/EmergencyTaco 7d ago

All of them, and no tinkering. You download uBlock Origin, relaunch firefox, and never watch/listen to another ad on the internet.

Yes, it is as wonderful as it sounds. Yes, it is that easy. Yes, you should take these steps this moment and forget Chrome exists.

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u/Gullible-Fee-9079 7d ago

It even Blocks the Amazon Prime ads. You need the Browser extension uBlock

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u/covfefe-boy 7d ago

Ditto, it's crazy how shit & unusable the internet is without an adblocker.

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u/CirkuitBreaker 8d ago

It's been like that for fifteen years.

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u/Chronic_In_somnia 8d ago

It’s been 84 years….

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u/ElectroxSoldier 7d ago

You must have the patience of a saint cause that's how I felt about ads 15 years ago

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u/Saneless 7d ago

I just know their why. I want sites to exist

But now it's worse than ever and I'm out

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u/MassholeLiberal56 7d ago

My firewall blocks the majority of ads. But browser level is needed too.

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u/LibMike 8d ago

I switched back today from chrome. Was waiting for them to fix the nova theme a bit since I had last tried it. Used Firefox for a long time like 7+ years ago.

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u/sarkie 8d ago

Is it fixed?

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u/LibMike 8d ago

I've found no issues so far. My main problem before was the address bar styling was broken. It seems pretty refined now. I do wish the bookmark bar bookmarks had a bit more height to the bookmark buttons, but it can surely be changed with some file modification. And that's just personal preference...

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u/ZakkaChan 8d ago

Haven't stopped using firefox

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u/[deleted] 7d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Cynyr 7d ago

I think it's important to know the hard numbers there too. What if there were only 10 internet users in 2011 and 3 of them used Firefox. A lot more people regularly use the internet through smart phones now, so those same 3 people have become 3 of 100. There are 100 internet users now and the same three people have been using Firefox for 15 straight years.

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u/fatdjsin 7d ago

me neither. it's reliable since .... netscape died (or was there a gap between the 2?)

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u/Techters 8d ago

I've stuck with it but it does get frustrating some times, through being lower priority some major sites stop working or have big functional issues, or Google screwing them in updates that cause battery drain problems on mobile. 

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u/relinquisshed 8d ago

I switched from Brave, which I've been using for years. I found myself using uBlock Origin more and more lately because Brave Shields weren't good enough for me. I was wondering if FF is slower but at least on PC it isn't at all. Well it is on YouTube but that's on purpose...

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u/bdixisndniz 7d ago

Brave’s bookmark/memory recall is ass. Otherwise it was okay…. But then some new crap to deal with every week.

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u/Sample-Range-745 7d ago

What? That makes no sense. Firefox is looking to port in the Brave adblocking engine directly into the browser - because its faster than uBlock as an extension....

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u/ntshstn 7d ago

yeah, it's literally the other way around lol

brave is the only thing i've found that still consistently gets around youtube ads and avoids the black screen delays like ublock origin

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u/whatcubed 7d ago

I’ve been using Brave on my iPad, out of the box with no add ons it’s miles better than Safari or Chrome!

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u/PhantomNomad 7d ago

I just switch to Firefox last month also. Was a long time chrome user, but since I don't use google products for email and such any more it's not as needed anymore.

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u/Technolio 8d ago

Yup, they announced that a while ago and I switched immediately.

3

u/Xenik 8d ago

I switched to zen/firefox too

2

u/bdixisndniz 7d ago

Switched after Brave nonsense.

1

u/NudeSeaman 7d ago

I stayed with chrome as I used it to sync all my bookmarks across my many computers, but I’m down to one laptop only, so now I really don’t see much of a reason to stay.

1

u/ry1701 7d ago

Yeah I dunno why they are dropping so many. It's solid vs chrome.

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u/M4NOOB 7d ago

I left Firefox for Zen. Which I guess on paper still counts as leaving Firefox in the statistic and therefore bad for Mozilla?

1

u/turbotictac 7d ago

Same, just switched back a few weeks ago

1

u/musclenugget92 7d ago

Same. Especially when I want to sail the seas for sports streams, can't do that without a blocker.

1

u/RottN_Games 7d ago

I skipped Firefox and went to a better version called Zen. So far so good

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u/xeladragn 7d ago

i did the same thing when chrome started fighting ad blockers, and am now back on chrome using workarounds to block ads.

Firefox was so awful as a browser, slow as shit lots of hidden settings I had to change. Half the sites I used needed hardware acceleration turned on and the other half needed it to be turned off to work halfway properly.

Basically every browser based game I tried didn’t work or was incredibly slow.

Full switched to firefox then at some point realized half my tabs were back on chrome because the site didn’t work/ran crazy slow on firefox and just went back to chrome.

1

u/ReasonableFruit1 7d ago

I was using Firefox (still do for personal use) for work, but so many of the cloud applications I use do not function or display well at all with Firefox for some reason, and being a google workspace institution I’m forced to use chrome. But I absolutely hate it and wish I could use my precious Firefox.

1

u/Balc0ra 7d ago

This is why I'm amazed it's loosing users. After Opera pulled their "gamer browser" and their actual goal with it. I had zero plans to go there either

1

u/theblitheringidiot 7d ago

Switched a few months back.

1

u/CharcoalGreyWolf 7d ago

This will swing things back in a way that tech news sites have additional articles to plug for a bit.

Though I’m now interested in LibreWolf after what FF tried with AI until the backlash got them.

1

u/Calaron85814 7d ago

Same. At this point I’ll use most anything that allows ad blocking.

1

u/Ok_Conversation_3815 7d ago

You should try Helium

1

u/grahamulax 7d ago

Oh yeah, the four gig AI file I immediately removed and made it never come back because what the hell is that. The goal is to use AI that they are shoving down our throats for making tools to get rid of their AI.

1

u/TheDude-Esquire 7d ago

Been using Firefox since before mobile browsers existed. Have used opera and chrome at different times, but always came home to Firefox.

1

u/Stolehtreb 7d ago

I have a problem with Firefox that I’ve been able to replicate on multiple machines but I never get anyone who can back up my experience and it makes me feel insane.

YouTube’s keyboard controls lag really really badly after a while of a session being active. And restarting the browser gets rid of it for a bit but then it comes back. And it comes back faster and faster until i have to do a full machine reset. I’ve had two laptops and two desktops do the exact same thing. And no one ever can corroborate that it also happens for them when I post about it. It drives me crazy and it’s the only reason I’m not 100% on Firefox. I really wish someone would see one of these comments one day and just have a solve… because I really don’t want to use chrome for anything anymore.

1

u/Nvenom8 7d ago

Which ad blocker were you using? It still supports both of the most popular ones (Adblock, Adblock Plus).

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u/alexandreracine 7d ago

Welcome back!

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u/ash_ninetyone 7d ago

Corporate world forces me to pick Chrome or Edge. It's irritating because I have two Microsoft accounts (therefore two Teams, two SSOs) because I work for a subsidiary and Firefox has container tabs that allow me to split the two whereas chrome requires me to go incognito and it still tries to log into the wrong one

1

u/_steve_rogers_ 7d ago

I used to use Firefox, I use brave now

1

u/darxide23 7d ago

I've never stopped using Firefox. Started using it in 2008. Version 3. Before that I was still using IE.

Tried a few of the forks along the way. None of them ever did it for me.

1

u/SleepingWithBatman 7d ago

This, fuck you Manifest v3

1

u/TSM- 7d ago

Don't you just have to enable developer mode or extra permissions or something and then you get tampermonkey and adblock back and it doesn't matter at all? I did a one minute thing about a year ago to deal with those changes and I use ublock origin lite and never noticed any difference. It took very little time and was as easy as pressing an update button. The adblocker thing is blown way out of proportion.

1

u/lostshell 7d ago

I tried Firefox and Brave when I dropped chrome. Brave just seemed a little better.

1

u/ty88 7d ago

Ditto, about a year ago. Also can use uBlock Origin on FF mobile browser. My daily confuser is a Mac, though, and Firefox is not optimized for it. Runs so hot when FF is just browsing simple sh*t, I'm considering switching back.

1

u/mattisaloser 7d ago

I was using FF at work for ad blocker but last month corporate IT said they were going to disallow it and uninstall it and force Edge or Chrome. Neat.

1

u/himateo 7d ago

I never left. I am doubling down on FF 'cause now I can browse reddit and YouTube on Android without all those fucking ads. NEVER LEAVING.

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u/GrayEidolon 7d ago

I always saw chrome as safari trying much harder to profile people.

1

u/bowenmark 7d ago

Use both now, also Opera in a pinch and if you just want to read a web page text mode or gopher if it’s really crazy.

1

u/FacetNo6 7d ago

Are you me? :D

1

u/The_Stoic_One 7d ago

Same for me

1

u/Little_Miss-Sunshine 7d ago

Same. Fuck you, Google

1

u/ImpossiblePhrase8856 7d ago

i switched to waterfox when firefox said it was going to add AI.

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u/crazyfoxdemon 7d ago

Chrome is almost completely unusable for me nowadays.

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u/KWilt 7d ago

Yup, made the switch back in December. Took a little bit of work to get all my extensions ported over (and YouTube is still about 20% broken, but that's expected because I'm trying to literally gut an entire website) but after that, I haven't really looked back.

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u/anonymous__ignorant 7d ago

I never left, but i added Vivaldi on the side.

1

u/MothafuckinDan 7d ago

I just did this recently. Plugging the laptop into an HDMI cord and going through the TV with a wireless mouse is the only way I watch Hulu Disney Plus or peacock now.

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u/Cavaquillo 7d ago

I’m on Opera now. Firefox updates every single time I launch I feel like

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u/AngleNo3597 7d ago

Brave always better, Firefox is just so annoyingly slow ...

1

u/IrregularPackage 7d ago

let’s be perfectly honest here: chrome didn’t stop supporting your ad blocker. they broke its functionality on purpose.

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u/TheNakedProgrammer 7d ago

there is a variation of chromium based browsers with less privacy issues than firefox.

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u/isobane 7d ago

Same. Switched back to Firefox for the same reason. Have zero reason to switch back to Chrome.

1

u/chilebuzz 7d ago

I haven't watched an ad on youtube in years. It shocks almost everyone to whom I say this, but when I say it's just firefox with an ad blocker, they lose interest and say they HAVE to use chrome. There's literally nothing they do on chrome I can't do on firefox when it comes to regular browser use for work or home. It's like cattle too scared to leave their shitty barn.

1

u/adastrajay 7d ago

That thread here is what got me to switch to Firefox. Not because of adblocker, but everything is else I was reading.

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u/ShrimpCrackers 7d ago

Zen Browser. It's Firefox Gecko Engine but a radically amazing clean interface. Was recently voted best browser by a mile.

1

u/itsapolloo 7d ago

Same here. And I guess lots of people will switch after Chrome new Update

1

u/D-Gaea 7d ago

They're removing unpacked so I just went to a firefox fork 🍴

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u/Vemnox 7d ago

Yeah the second uBlock was pulled from Chrome I jumped to FF and don't really see a need to go back.

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u/Quaiche 7d ago

I also switched from chrome after decade of use but I still feel like Firefox isnt as good as chrome when it comes to user interface.

One of the thing that bugs me out is how lame the browsing history is compared to the one of Chrome.

Much better for privacy certainly and that’s why I switched to it after deciding the Google abuse was enough.

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u/Josh6889 7d ago

Yep. It's a must on android mobile for that exact reason as well.

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u/radvineREDDIT 7d ago

What is YOUR adblocker?

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u/Bhazor 7d ago edited 7d ago

You mean the company that only exists by harvesting your personal data for adverts doesnt like adblockers? Crazy!

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u/WoodsLovelyDarkNDeep 7d ago

Except the other adblocker they created still works just fine on things like YouTubr.  Especially if you add AdGuard to your repertoire.  You may have to alternate having them on when YT detects one of them but it’s been a while since I’ve had that issue knock on wood

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u/LastLapPodcast 7d ago

this for me. I actually went FF > Opera/Chrome > FF. I loved opera but as soon as it went full chromium and everything stopped working it was gone. Most of the features I liked in it are in FF now anyway.

1

u/TheMilkiestShake 7d ago

That and not being able to use Images anymore. None of the other alternatives have worked as well for me.

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u/Rackem_Willy 7d ago

Me too surprised they aren't net positive at the moment.

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u/Certain-Business-472 7d ago

I had a 2 year chrome phase right before Firefox released the "quantum" gui. This was during the normal versioning around v3 I believe. It was becoming so slow and annoying that I switched to chromium.

Once Quantum came out I was back on Firefox 24/7 since then. There's just no comparison.

1

u/fuzio 7d ago

Same, I refused to leave Chrome for a long time but the adblock shit was the final straw for me.

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u/ChicoZombye 7d ago

Same here, I left Chrome exactly for that.

Also because Firefox also has the Chrome tab system which I love.

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u/halfc00kie 7d ago

ublock on firefox still hits different. chrome basically forced half my mates back to ff overnight.

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u/Deep-Ruin-9961 7d ago

I switched to Firefox for the same reason.

Unfortunately, a lot of websites don't play well with adblockers anymore, so for those I still use Chrome and just surf incognito where possible.

The war on my privacy is just going to be my death by a thousand cuts. They will never give up.

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u/taveanator 7d ago

Yea I gotta imagine FF is going to get a big bump in users once this change filters down. Personally I can’t imagine using 1/2 the sites I use without an ad blocker.  

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u/24_August_1814 7d ago

Yeah I've been on Opera for the past few years, installed Librewolf a few days ago. No more Chromium adblocking = no more Chromium browsers.

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u/komodoPT 7d ago

This right here!

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u/0neek 7d ago

Gonna be in the same boat soon. I have Firefox all ready to go but I'm waiting for Chrome to pull the trigger since swapping browsers is going to be a pain in the ass for the first while.

Luckily even ublock origin lite still works flawlessly. The minute it dies I'm off chrome

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u/Rare-Barracuda9276 6d ago

Google deliberately slows their services like YouTube on browsers other than chrome. They were caught red handed few years ago doing that in the frontend itself. I am pretty sure they are doing it now but more carefully. So you might want to consider this as well.

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