Hacktivis

He's using a custom browser, apparently: https://hacktivis.me/projects/badwolf

This might be unpopular, but I don't think Mozilla's behavior is inherently good[1]. And even if it has, I don't think it should be used as a litmus test for other corporate behavior. Every company should stand on its own against scrutiny. [1] "The Mozilla Foundation has no members" https://hacktivis.me/articles/mozilla-foundation-has-no-members

Was it developed at all? I'm not seeing any business logic in the repo: https://hacktivis.me/git/litepub.social/files.html

For context and history about Soapbox: it originated from the Gab.com's frontend, and is developed by Alex Gleason, an infamous transphobe/alt-right dude. His involvement in Pleroma made many of its developers leave the project, e.g.: https://hacktivis.me/articles/Update%20on%20Pleroma%20Maintainance & he excessively whined about it: https://blog.alexgleason.me/pleroma-is-dead/

just disable javascript. i use badwolf[0] for quick paywalled articles. [0] https://hacktivis.me/projects/badwolf

There is also badwolf https://hacktivis.me/projects/badwolf (again based on webkit)

I would advise against soapbox actually. The developer got kicked off the Pleroma project after badgering other maintainers[1] (which he admits to doing) for reverting a technical decision he forced through after it was deemed to be not very useful to the project and encouraged bad practices (the fediverse uses a protocol called WebFinger to find other users, the developer wanted to add a bunch of alternate endpoints to avoid having to use WebFinger for his personal frontend). He also had a history of more bad technical decisions to make Pleroma's backend cause problems with with the rest of the fediverse if the rest of the fediverse doesn't use his custom frontend and insulting developers who pushed back on that decision[2]. Better maintenance seems like a really dubious claim when the lead maintainer is this unwilling to co-operate with the existence of other tooling and openly insults anyone disagreeing with his technical decisions. There's also a couple of PR reasons to not want to associate with him, but those are largely off-topic. The rest of the Pleroma project by contrast is fairly stable and it's developer team has been nothing but polite when it comes to handling support issues. [1]: https://blog.alexgleason.me/pleroma-is-dead/ [2]: https://hacktivis.me/articles/Update%20on%20Pleroma%20Maintainance

Note: This may not matter for everybody, but Soapbox is built and maintained by far-right trolls who were ostracized from the rest of the network for their hatred of trans people and "the transgender ideology" (their words). Additionally, even within the Pleroma project (which evolved out of *chan culture and often acts as a refuge for those shunned by other parts of the fediverse), Alex has alienated all of the other major maintainers, and pissed them off enough that he eventually ended up banned from the project entirely (if I remember correctly): https://hacktivis.me/articles/Update%20on%20Pleroma%20Maintainance. (Note: I have some small involvement with the maintenance of Mastodon, mostly in an advisory role these days, and I'm speaking up because I've witnessed the effects of Gleason's behavior first hand. Think carefully before you throw your lot in with him and his, he has a long history of burning his bridges)