Firefox was always lacking in fingerprinting protection and security. There are reasons to use Firefox (or maybe other Firefox-based browsers) but with the recent changes to their privacy policy and new AI integration, Firefox is becoming less of an ideal choice for those concerned with privacy. Revisiting the Firefox recommendation makes sense, there just doesn’t seem to be an ideal replacement.
I don’t see how it’d be a double standard. Generally speaking, beta software is experimental and not recommended for production use. It shouldn’t be recommended if it is more likely to be prone to instability and security issues. I’m also unsure if DDG’s anti-fingerprinting performance could be reliably tested and compared since we should expect it to change on a whim.
Assuming it’s comparable to Brave (which I’m unsure of), Arkenfox is not quick or easy to set up and seems to have a significant negative impact on usability. If you don’t believe me, go tell all your non-techy friends and family to go set up and use Arkenfox all on their own. I’m rarely successful in getting people to switch from Chrome to Brave so I’m certain Arkenfox cannot fill the same gap as Brave/Firefox in terms of usability.
Even LibreWolf wouldn’t be a good solution as it still downgrades usability and introduces new security issues (according to their FAQ):
Updates usually come within three days from each upstream stable release, at times even the same day.
It should however be noted that LibreWolf does not have auto-update capabilities, and therefore it relies on package managers or users to apply them.
We disable Safe Browsing as we consider it a censorship concern, and we would rather not let Google control another aspect of the internet.
The way I see it, if Firefox is removed, Brave would be the only realistic recommendation most people could use. That’s not to say I strongly object to removing it, I’m only pointing out that there isn’t another browser well suited to fill the void Firefox would leave.