Cloudflare is now blocking niche browsers.
They just started doing it. Now they decide what software you can run. [1]
BLOCKED: Pale Moon, Falkon, and SeaMonkey
ALLOWED: Chromium, Firefox
WHY: I believe they are purposefully trying to reduce the choices, so you're more likely to use the same browsers, that are more easily fingerprinted. Pale Moon is considered better by some, but.. Once again I am pounding the table that:
a) If you're looking to do unique stuff, you're going to stand-out as unique
b) If you think custom mods and forks is the answer, you're sticking out like a sore thumb, based on what flavors of JavaScript, you're uniquely blocking. So..
c) Plugins, forks, & extensions are not going to change the fundamental nature of web browsers, which is that...
d) The way Chromium & Firefox are structured, is designed to empower the website developer, and not you. But..
e) You will not be able to stop using Web Apps, give it up. It's a dying battle. Instead,
f) Simplified Privacy is a 2nd Linux distro of browsers, to empower you with enough options at the tips of your fingers, (such as different versions of the same browser), to easily and effortlessly overwhelm their surveillance.
If you have not already spent the (less than 10 minutes) reading my Cloudflare Fingerprinting Guide, it's spoon-feeding you the critical information, with easy memes:
[2] https://simplifiedprivacy.com/browser-fingerprints/updated-every-5-minutes.html
[1] News on Blocking Niche Browsers:
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2025/03/04/cloudflare_blocking_niche_browsers/
An easy tip to not be part of that garbage is to use a Firefox fork that is proven and time-tested, harden the you know what out of it, put a few good KNOWN Free Software extensions on it, use a non-Cloudflare DNS solution that's proven and time-tested.
Brave is your only Chromium fork, bar none. Otherwise, forget Chrome.
Harden in this case is just blocking enough types of javascript, which for anything other than Tor's level, is not effective. The more effective the blocking is, the more the sites break down. And using non-Cloudflare DNS is completely irrelevant, you're still going through a site with their A-record pointed to CF. Further, it sounds you're using the same extensions on each fork, which would tie them together.
Is doing different firefox forks better than nothing? Yeah of course. But I wouldn't be grabbing cheerleader pomp-pomps to root for team apathy mozilla
A better solution would be to find a browser that is not a fork of Chrome or Firefox therefore you're not enabling the browser duopoly and ensuring their privacy violations continue.
In an ideal world yes, I agree.
unfortunately this means getting the website developers to support it with their code, as many sites are designed for chromium based browsers. And getting Cloudflare to accept it, which them blocking alternatives started the thread
