Mozilla says it has no plans to enable DNS-over-HTTPS by default in Firefox in the UK, after ISPs and the UK government criticize its support of the protocol
But there's nothing stopping users from enabling the DNS-over-HTTPS feature in Firefox on their own, though. Tweets: @zackwhittaker , @maxtemkin , @firefox , @leonardjfrench , @campuscodi , and @liampomfret Tweets: Zack Whittaker / @zackwhittaker : New: Mozilla was branded an “internet villain” for introducing DNS-over-HTTPS, which will make internet browsing far more private and secure.In typical fashion, it was the ISPs shrieking, “won't somebody think of the children?” https://techcrunch.com/... Max Temkin / @maxtemkin : I stopped using Google Chrome after this Washington Post article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ... I've been very happy with Firefox, which is implementing DNS-over-HTTPS even in the face of enormous industry pressure: https://www.zdnet.com/... I definitely recommend you make the switch. @firefox : Well here's one way to know we're fighting the good fight. https://twitter.com/... SendBachelorsAndComeHeavilyArmed / @leonardjfrench : “By planning to support DNS-over-HTTPS, Mozilla is throwing a monkey wrench in many ISPs' ability to sniff on customers' traffic and filter traffic for government-mandated “bad sites."" https://www.zdnet.com/... Catalin Cimpanu / @campuscodi : Mozilla: No plans to enable DNS-over-HTTPS by default in the UKBut there's nothing stopping users from enabling the DNS-over-HTTPS feature in Firefox on their own, though.https://www.zdnet.com/ ... https://twitter.com/... Dr Liam Pomfret / @liampomfret : Make sure to enable DNS-over-HTTPS (DoH) in your browser if you haven't already. In Firefox, you'll find the option under Options => General => Network Settings. https://www.zdnet.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
This is the UK counterpoint to Mozilla's encrypted-DNS push elsewhere. Months later, Firefox would begin rolling out DoH by default for US-based users explicitly to thwart snooping ISPs — so the protocol itself was never in doubt inside Mozilla; what changed here is jurisdictional. In the UK, ISPs and the government attacked the feature directly, and Mozilla chose not to fight.
The pressure campaign wasn't unique to Britain either: that same year Mozilla went to Washington to urge Congress to reject ISPs' lobbying against encrypted DNS in Firefox and Chrome, accusing the campaign of using Google as a boogeyman. The UK episode shows where that lobbying worked — a market where the access providers had the regulator's ear.
First-order effects
- UK Firefox users stay on their ISP's resolvers by default, keeping domain lookups visible to the access provider unless they manually flip on DoH themselves — an option Mozilla explicitly leaves open.
- UK ISPs keep both the visibility and the operational control over Firefox traffic resolution that their US counterparts were about to lose, without having to change any infrastructure.
Second-order effects
- Mozilla's rollout becomes explicitly jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction: the US default proceeds while the UK waits, forcing the company to maintain two privacy postures for one product and inviting the question of which governments get a veto next.
- Browser rivals face the same fork — Chrome is already named in the US lobbying fight — so each vendor must now decide per-market whether encrypted DNS is a shipping default or a negotiating position with national ISPs.
Third-order effects
- If access-provider objections can stall defaults in some countries but not others, encrypted DNS adoption stops being a technical rollout and becomes a regulatory negotiation, with the browser-to-ISP power balance settled country by country rather than by the IETF-style standards process.
- The manual-opt-in escape hatch points toward a split internet: privacy-conscious users who self-configure get ISP-independent resolution while the default population remains observable, entrenching a two-tier privacy baseline across markets.
The trend: Encrypted DNS is turning from a uniform browser upgrade into a geopolitically negotiated deployment, where national ISPs and governments can veto defaults market by market.