We will continue to see posts like this till enough users are turned off by them and Firefox will no longer be a viable browser to run as a user or support as a dev. You are comparing the last truly free alternative to a browser built by ad grubby organisation. While a vocal minority keeps doing this the rest of us are happily using it without issues.
You don't like Firefox? Great! Chrome is just a click away. Feel free to enjoy the 'personalised' ad experiences there. Just don't spoil it for the rest of us happy users whose best outcome at this point is a few more ad free years of Firefox before morons like this who don't have big picture in mind end up killing it for good.
Moving away from Fenix does not mean that I no longer believe that advertising is universally harmful for the people who are constantly subjected to it. As I mentioned in my post, I am still a user of Firefox on desktop, and I wouldn't think of browsing the modern web without an adblocker anymore. The problem is that Fenix in its current state is too immature for me to use in a practical, day-to-day manner. That does not mean that Fenix cannot be improved in the future, and I absolutely believe that Mozilla is capable of doing so if they restructure their priorities.
I am concerned about the future of Firefox as much as you are, and that is the reason I wrote this post. I wanted more people to know of Fenix's issues so that it can ultimately become a better browser.
>the last truly free alternative to a browser built by ad grubby organisation
Is it? Considering Mozilla gets most of their money from Google, I find assertions about their independence on very thin ice.
Also, the idea that discussing Firefox's problems is "ruining it for the rest of us" is absurd. People care about Firefox and are being vocal about the problems so that they might get fixed. The people being silent about Firefox's problems are the ones that no longer care and have long since moved on.
Or, bear with me, use a fork of chromium and get google to give you their labor for free while using a piece of software that serves you first and foremost.
The problem with using Chromium/Bromite/whatever Blink-based is that Google is using their engine dominance to dictate Web standards, bypassing the standards bodies. They can add and remove features to suit their business goals and nobody can oppose them.
As long as Mozilla stick to Gecko, they can refuse to implement features they see as harmful and good web developers will simply not use them. If everyone uses Google's engine, there will be no practical reason to not use their shiny new feature, so only ethical/philosophical reasons remain. And we all know how much your average person cares about ethics, don't we?
This is a good point, and one I have considered quite a bit. To me it is the only selling point for Firefox.
But I have to live my life, I have to use my tools, I need my tools to work on my behalf. If your tool sucks so bad that you have to sell it on what amounts to an ideological argument you need to change how you manage the tool. Why can't Mozilla do what they used to do, offer a competitor to google and a proper, working tool that serves the user?
Also on that note, if keeping a competing rendering engine is all you need, apple maintaining a walled garden with Safari playing that role. People have to use safari, unlike Firefox, so that role is filled.
You don't like Firefox? Great! Chrome is just a click away. Feel free to enjoy the 'personalised' ad experiences there. Just don't spoil it for the rest of us happy users whose best outcome at this point is a few more ad free years of Firefox before morons like this who don't have big picture in mind end up killing it for good.