It isn't. The naming is just unfortunate; privacy cultists typically associate free/libre software with the notion of privacy.

The term "privacy cultists" does not advance any reasonable argument or point.

Sorry you found it unsubstantial. I mean to express distaste for people who tend to loosely throw the terms "privacy" and "security" around, especially when recommending laundry lists of configuration options, patches, extensions, etc. There is often little to no regard for threat modeling and pragmatism. Take "gHacks/pyllyukko base is kept up to date" for example - these batch tweaks and their effects are hard to understand and apply for the average user, and unfortunately tend to break the mainstream web.

I view projects like these as temporary bandages that pacify users (those technical enough to even be able to use them) in the now to ignore the larger and more fundamental issues at hand. Upstream should adopt reasonably sane defaults, because whack-a-mole with complex software simply isn't sustainable and the projects in question will become less effective over time as maintainership wanes. With regards to further hardening options, there really needs to be better upstream documentation, education, and accessibility. When that is realized in the free/libre browsers with the majority market share, then I am optimistic that the mainstream web will heal in accomodation.

> I mean to express distaste for people who tend to loosely throw the terms "privacy" and "security" around, especially when recommending laundry lists of configuration options, patches, extensions, etc.

This is a much, much more useful description. And I'd agree. Usability is a critical part of privacy and security, and recommendations for tools that cater exclusively to advanced users (whether the tool developers realize that or not) can do more harm than good.

Not just recommendations for advanced tools, but the unfortunate reality that they are currently necessary means. I reiterate - this functionality must be made upstream, accessible, and visible.

I find that "upstream" might be at odds with security/privacy, both in terms of funding and data collection (benign reasons being debug/crash data collection as well as "what and how do people use this")

It does seed the mental exploration of what a privacy cult would actually be and do.

I suspect they zealously protect their privacy, but because their cult is considered "weird" in some parts, they do it on the down-low.

I assume it is in the context of “libre software”. More generally, privacy is consisered to be essential to the concept of individual freedom.

That's what I thought, but apparently it isn't as they're recommending all sorts of proprietary extensions (like Browser Plugs Privacy Firewall).

Check IceCat instead for a more free/libre Firefox.

Icecat has issues with so many sites because it wants you to block no free JavaScript. If you use it as intended, the internet isn't the same and is it even more private since there are fewer extensions?

I like how brave bakes in the settings by default

Mozilla makes money with a bunch of stuff, like Pocket for instance.

You can throw out crap like that and presto: libre as in free beer.

There is LibreOffice a fork from Open Office. It's pretty good actually.

yeeah, and? that wasn't about privacy, it was about freedom ("libre")!

"Freedom" in terms of software doesn't mean privacy, but freedom to run, modify, and redistribute software: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

Agreed here, the two should never be conflated.

You could make a totally open-source, libre-licensed DRM enforcement framework -- any user willing to dig through it could probably modify and defuse it, but out of the box, it would be an example of free software which aims to defeat freedom.

If they want to go French: privée-fox

Naming is hard. This is possibly a nod to LibreSSL as a fork name :)

Naming is indeed hard, but this name doesn't make sense.