Post #3994369

2026-07-21 18:34 UTC

An uninformed plan: - Take Tor's base Browser, the one they use as a branding-neutral base (very clever name) for the privacy-focused soft forks Tor Browser and Mullvad Browser (i know, i know - but they already paid for the work, so some good might as well come out of it) - Rebase your soft forks on Base Browser, and benefit from that work - Form a working group to co-manage base browser - Hard-fork from firefox as you reject future rebases in favour of privacy and humanity.

Replies (4)

@sarahjamielewis@mastodon.social 2026-07-21 19:12

By uninformed I mean that I've been thinking about this path for over a year, and I honestly believe it's the only way forward https://mastodon.social/@sarahjamielewis/114088612358750696

Open ##3994539
@necrophcodr@layer8.space 2026-07-21 18:35

@sarahjamielewis@mastodon.social I like the idea except for the part about having to now maintain and fully develop a modern web browser on my own.

Open ##4015522
@james@bne.social 2026-07-21 21:40

@sarahjamielewis@mastodon.social Agreed. My browser of choice is Helium, which is a very basic, de-googled, Chromium. No password manager, no additional random “features”, essentially taking Chromium and stripping large parts of it out. That works very well for me. Something like that, using Firefox’s engine, might work quite well.

Open ##4015528
@librewolf@chaos.social 2026-07-22 10:41

@sarahjamielewis@mastodon.social While it is understandable why TB/MB stable uses ESR via base browser, ESR is a meme. Considering Firefox is already behind in security compared to Chromium, using ESR, which does not receive all the security fixes that the regular release does, makes it worse.

Open ##4015531