Hello guys, today I wanted to talk about a project I deeply care about and I’m actively contributing to, as I believe its good for everyone, including privacy concerned users
Ladybird Browser
This browser comes from the project “SerenityOS”, and has since evolved and separated from it. The founders are Andreas Kling, and Chris Wanstrath. The main goal of this project is to create a browser from scratch, avoiding chromium, gecko, etc. The main keypoints that should be of interest for Privacy Oriented Users are the following:
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Ladybird lead (Andreas Kling) states “We’re not monetizing users, in any way. This is uncharted territory for browsers. So we’re not going to do any default search deals. We’re not going to do cryptocurrencies or try to monetize user data, just sponsorships and donations”
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While** Ladybird will implement current web standards including cookie handling and tracking mechanisms for compatibility**, the browser’s philosophy puts the user in control of these decisions, not the company. The browser won’t have built-in incentives to encourage data collection since it doesn’t profit from it.
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It aims to be “free from advertising’s influence” Ladybird, representing a shift away from the current web ecosystem where users like us are the product. This allows the project to implement privacy features without worrying about harming advertising partners or revenue streams.
As of now, the project has hired several developers with money coming from donations, from partners such as FUTO, Shopify, Cloudflare, among many, and is also seeing lots of volunteer activity on github. So well, if you like the web having more diversity and us having another alternative to google, check them out https://ladybird.org/
I’m excited to see Ladybird developing, but the project accepting money from Cloudflare makes me wary. Between Cloudflare’s man-in-the-middle position in a great deal of web traffic, and their similarly invasive position as a major DNS-over-HTTPS provider, they are not remotely privacy-friendly.
Their website says:
All sponsorships are in the form of unrestricted donations. Board seats and other forms of influence are not for sale.
So Cloudflare and other sponsors don’t get a say which is comforting.
There’s also !Servo@programming.dev browser engine that is being actively developed.
What do companies like Shopify hope to gain from this?
My guess would be to have their business less dependant on Google’s whims and more reliant on actual web standards
I hope they come out with extension support immediately and uBO follows up with compatibility after.
I’m sure they’ll get extension support at some point. They also said they intend to add a built in adblocker
i wish they wouldn’t add a built in adblocker… i just want it to be the most minimal browser engine, and i want to be able to choose the adblocker



Just one more browser, bro