Earlier quoted context omitted.
The key thing to realize here is that the browser is the "user agent": it is supposed to represent the interests of the user. Now users have pretty diverse interests, so browsers don't always get this entirely right, which is one reason it's important to have a variety of browsers so users can pick one that does represent their interests. What's happening in this case is that the site is doing something that pretty m…
> the browser is the "user agent": it is supposed to represent the interests of the user > it's important to have a variety of browsers so users can pick one that does represent their interests First of all, I'm now terrified of Mozilla/Firefox, because this comment reflects the idea that browsers should be developed as independent ethical entities that represent different groups, in the way special interest groups l…
I'm not sure where "ethical" came into that.
Some users want to have features that allow them to read websites in their preferred fonts. Other users don't care about fonts, but _really_ care about the colors and want high contrast. Still others want to have strong privacy safeguards (think Tor), while a fourth set care about privacy a bit less than that, and a fifth set don't care about privacy at all. These diverse needs might best be served by multiple different browsers that focus on different aspects of the user experience.
I see no reason why a browser that explicitly tries to make the web more usable for people who are red/green colorblind, say, should be a problem, though it seems to me that you do....
> it's dangerous to put the onus of security on everyone but the user
No one is suggesting that. However the reality is that there are maybe at most double-digit numbers of different browsers, maybe hundreds of millions of websites, if you're very generous, and billions of users. You ideally want to enforce security at chokepoints, which is why the browsers do most of the lifting here, then websites, then users.
There have been tons of user education campaigns in the history of the internet. To some extent they've even worked.
> The browser should not become a political toy. It should be simply a tool
Sure, and no one suggested it should be a "political toy". But maybe one user wants a flathead screwdriver and another wants a phillips head. And a third one wants a hammer, or hex wrench.
> This could have been trivially handled by simply asking users how much concern they want to have over their security
Been done, via surveys. The answer is "a lot". And yes, we could just say that if they care then they should be constantly vigilant. But constant vigilance is something people are really bad at (on a hardware level!), compared to computers. So any time we can design systems that don't require constant vigilance from people we probably should. I would go so far as to claim that requiring constant vigilance from people when we don't have to, and then blaming or punishing them when they cannot comply, is simply unethical.
> or providing some mechanism for organizations to easily transition into technology changes at a pace that works for them
This is why browsers have been cooperating at creating things like Lets Encrypt, precisely to provide such a mechanism. The question of timeframes is a complicated one, of course.
> Browsers are completely at fault for handling security so poorly in the first place.
No argument there. This is something browsers have been trying to do better.
> Now it's clear that a mentality of moral superiority and special interests is the cause.
I think you're reading things into what I said that were simply not there.