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Ask HN: With trust in Firefox gone, is Chrome-ish the only option?

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Re: Ask HN: With trust in Firefox gone, is Chrome-ish the only option?

#81

Post by refulgentis »

scarface_74 wrote: post #80
refulgentis wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What causes this phenomenon where the project with significantly less resources is held to a higher standard than the other players? Hm, my lived experience is the inverse, and both seem sort of important to talk about. We've been hearing about Chrome implementing the same privacy protections as Safari as a transgression for years, years, and years, as it was delayed again and again. It was ex-Mozilla people who br…

> We've been hearing about Chrome implementing the same privacy protections as Safari as a transgression for years, years, and years, as it was delayed again and again. Well Apple didn’t turn around and try to push the Topics API.. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Topics_API (Just to be clear. Mozilla is opposed to it too. They are just documenting it and don’t plan to implement the API)

To be clear, I don't think trying to score or rank browser manufacturers on Goodness is an achievable goal. Endless what-abouts are available, with rational arguments available to opposing opinions.

However, I must admit I am intrigued by seeing Topics posited as a stain.

I strongly believe we would have been obviously better off as consumers with topics, than the status quo, a wild west of tracking, but AFAIK, weakly, it could have entrenched incumbents further.*

Selfishly, for my individual interests, I wish Apple had proposed it.

I have a feeling it would have been more dogged in working through it, rather than Google's laissez-faire "oh well! guess we get to keep tracking" when the bottom feeders complained.**

That's probably why it seems unachievable to me to rank on Goodness, opinions abound and they're all reasonable.

* i.e. even if the topics are retrievable via JS by any page, I'd assume there's some clever way for Google to do something strictly superior from an advertiser perspective leveraging some E2E integration, ex. perhaps most pages have to wait till load to get topics, but Google can do a special preflight request given a special HEAD tag, idk

** My weak understanding is this essentially was put on pause/shit-canned after UK competition authorities relayed general concern, and I don't remember Google giving up so easily on anything ever

Re: Ask HN: With trust in Firefox gone, is Chrome-ish the only option?

#82

Post by scarface_74 »

refulgentis wrote: post #81
scarface_74 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We've been hearing about Chrome implementing the same privacy protections as Safari as a transgression for years, years, and years, as it was delayed again and again. Well Apple didn’t turn around and try to push the Topics API.. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Topics_API (Just to be clear. Mozilla is opposed to it too. They are just documenting it and don’t plan to implement the API)

To be clear, I don't think trying to score or rank browser manufacturers on Goodness is an achievable goal. Endless what-abouts are available, with rational arguments available to opposing opinions. However, I must admit I am intrigued by seeing Topics posited as a stain . I strongly believe we would have been obviously better off as consumers with topics, than the status quo, a wild west of tracking, but AFAIK, weak…

I’m opposed to any advertising on the web. Not because of ideology. It just makes the web worse especially on mobile.

Despite the outcry of manifest v3, if I understand it correctly it’s a standardize version of how Apple implements content blocking on the web, similar functionality works well in Safari.

Re: Ask HN: With trust in Firefox gone, is Chrome-ish the only option?

#84

Post by firefax »

worble wrote: post #18

The rhetoric around Firefox is so exhausting. They change some wording while having made no actual technical changes to the browser and the internet is on fire for days calling them the devil incarnate, meanwhile Chrome gutted uBlock and other extensions a week ago and there was barely any noise about it. What causes this phenomenon where the project with significantly less resources is held to a higher standard than…

>The rhetoric around Firefox is so exhausting. They change some wording while having made no actual technical changes to the browser and the internet is on fire for days calling them the devil incarnate

Having worked there, it's concerning, since if you saw the discussions that go on with regard to user data, you'd know they are trying to make sure they word things correctly, not... insert weasel words to grab your data.

Re: Ask HN: With trust in Firefox gone, is Chrome-ish the only option?

#85

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

worble wrote: post #18

The rhetoric around Firefox is so exhausting. They change some wording while having made no actual technical changes to the browser and the internet is on fire for days calling them the devil incarnate, meanwhile Chrome gutted uBlock and other extensions a week ago and there was barely any noise about it. What causes this phenomenon where the project with significantly less resources is held to a higher standard than…

> meanwhile Chrome gutted uBlock and other extensions a week ago and there was barely any noise about it.

At this writing, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43322922 has 962 points and 485 comments, and is the latest in a long line of posts. What are you on about?

> What causes this phenomenon where the project with significantly less resources is held to a higher standard than the other players?

There is the thing where Mozilla explicitly claimed to uphold a higher standard.

Re: Ask HN: With trust in Firefox gone, is Chrome-ish the only option?

#86

Post by [deleted] »

Double_a_92 wrote: post #12
conceptme wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

added new terms of use which are very questionable: https://github.com/mozilla/bedrock/commit/d459addab846d8144b... https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/firefox-news/fi...

I think the conclusion was that they had to remove that for legal reasons, since technically they were already doing something that could be considered selling data.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: With trust in Firefox gone, is Chrome-ish the only option?

#87

Post by cassianoleal »

lukan wrote: post #33
worble wrote: post #18

The rhetoric around Firefox is so exhausting. They change some wording while having made no actual technical changes to the browser and the internet is on fire for days calling them the devil incarnate, meanwhile Chrome gutted uBlock and other extensions a week ago and there was barely any noise about it. What causes this phenomenon where the project with significantly less resources is held to a higher standard than…

Well, no one (sane) has any illusions left about chrome. But FF was supposed to remain the shiny counterexample (despite acting also shady since years).

OP's premise is that "Firefox is gone" and "Chrome is the only option". That suggests Chrome is better than current Firefox.

Personally, even though my trust in Firefox (and especially Mozilla) has been eroding rapidly in recent years, it's still so much greater than what I have for Google and Chrome that it's not even a choice.

Therefore, I agree with GP that this rhetoric is exhausting.

Bringing up the issues with FF and Mozilla is important and deserves attention. This kind of misleading FUD is not and does not.

Re: Ask HN: With trust in Firefox gone, is Chrome-ish the only option?

#88

Post by BrendanEich »

bambax wrote: post #68
bad_user wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> in part fueled by Brendan Eich I don't get why you needed to mention this, when the story became viral before Brendan Eich communicated it. Do you feel that people misunderstood that, in fact, Mozilla does intend to sell user data? Note that I'm still using and advocating for Firefox, I just found this offtopic attack odd.

I thought his attack on Firefox was a little unbecoming, while also forgetting to mention that he's a competitor (and his product is not free). Mozilla is apparently run by corporate drones who made a blunder (as drones do). It happens. They corrected it. No need to attack or dismiss Firefox in general. Firefox is excellent.

Your attacking me on false grounds as if doing so defends what Mozilla did is the only unbecoming thing I can see here.

I'm a founder of Mozilla (not latecomer or looter). The McKinseyites now running it into the ground deserve criticism from me as well as others who see what is going on. If you don't want to see it, keep using Firefox. Their terms and privacy policy changes still stink, they are integrating Anonym, and they're turning things on by default that we at Brave do not.

Try engaging with the substance of the arguments, not attacking the person making them.

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