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Firefox 57 delays requests to tracking domains

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Re: Firefox 57 delays requests to tracking domains

#51

Post by paulgb »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #47

Isn't it anti-net-neutrality? Is it ok to build it into a major browser? I actually block all the tracking, malware, ads, social networks, fraud, gambling, porn (except a couple of porn sites I like :-)) etc domains I could find information about but this is my personal conscious choice, I have manually installed extensions for this and built the lists. Shouldn't other people do the same themselves too if they choose…

For me, using Firefox is the personal conscious choice you refer to. Their brand is that the browser is on your side, I'm happy to have the defaults set accordingly.

(Edit: I should add that I think you're asking a very valid philosophical question that my opinion as a user of Firefox doesn't fully address)

Re: Firefox 57 delays requests to tracking domains

#53

Post by jherdman »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #47

Isn't it anti-net-neutrality? Is it ok to build it into a major browser? I actually block all the tracking, malware, ads, social networks, fraud, gambling, porn (except a couple of porn sites I like :-)) etc domains I could find information about but this is my personal conscious choice, I have manually installed extensions for this and built the lists. Shouldn't other people do the same themselves too if they choose…

I think you're conflating not shaping traffic at the ISP or Backbone level with something else. The something else in this case is making requests to URLs a consumer of a page may or may not be vetting. If anything it's not treating all contents of a page as equal, and I think that's okay. We already do this with prefetching hints, ordering elements on a page (e.g. styling before scripting), and sometimes consumer driven more invasive approaches (ad blocking, monkey patching sites -- e.g. Reddit Enhancement Suite, etc.). Sure this is pretty heavy handed, but it's quite likely that the other vendors will follow suit (though perhaps with different priority, I doubt Google would do this to their own services).

Re: Firefox 57 delays requests to tracking domains

#54

Post by abalone »

Problem here is Firefox is making big and sometimes wrong assumptions about what these so-called "tracking domains" do. That's not in any W3C spec -- that's Mozilla attaching specific assumptions to specific parts of the Internet. Case in point:

> One example is Google’s Page-Hiding Snippet, which may cause a web page to be blank for whole 4 seconds... Both the analytics.js and the test script are loaded from www.google-analytics.com, a tracking domain, for which we engage the tailing delay.

Clearly if a domain is serving up an A/B test script then it is doing more than tracking.

> Simply said some sites may need to be fixed to be able to adopt this change in scheduling.

I have a problem with the term "fixed" here. Seems like Firefox's assumptions are what's broken here.

Re: Firefox 57 delays requests to tracking domains

#55

Post by ovao »

nasredin wrote: post #35
korethr wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the reason I put that statement in quotes. A tag seemed like it set an unduly negative tone to the rest of the post.

OT. I think we need to standardize the sarcasm tag on the Internet. Not one of those RFC that no one implements, but something concrete, perhaps baked into the HTML standard. (If the W3C include DRM, they can include sarcasm). Or maybe something like ISO, but people ignore them too. /S

There’s actually a special character for this, unfortunately not in Unicode, called SarcMark.

http://www.sarcmark.com

Re: Firefox 57 delays requests to tracking domains

#56

Post by qwerty456127 »

paulgb wrote: post #51
qwerty456127 wrote: post #47

Isn't it anti-net-neutrality? Is it ok to build it into a major browser? I actually block all the tracking, malware, ads, social networks, fraud, gambling, porn (except a couple of porn sites I like :-)) etc domains I could find information about but this is my personal conscious choice, I have manually installed extensions for this and built the lists. Shouldn't other people do the same themselves too if they choose…

For me, using Firefox is the personal conscious choice you refer to. Their brand is that the browser is on your side, I'm happy to have the defaults set accordingly. (Edit: I should add that I think you're asking a very valid philosophical question that my opinion as a user of Firefox doesn't fully address)

From the practical point of view, I am afraid the trackers will respond a way if such a move is made on such a global level. Nobody was fighting AdBlock+ when it was only used by geeks and now as is it has gained so much attention there are a lot of sites that won't work if you use AdBlock+. Introducing te "do-not-track" header was a great idea but it has been completely ruined by major browsers turning it on by default so the trackers have legitimately chosen to ignore it.

Re: Firefox 57 delays requests to tracking domains

#57

Post by ryanisnan »

rotrux wrote: post #44

:[ I'm afraid this might be a "too-little-too-late" attempt to stave-off the downfall of net-neutrality. Net-Neutrality means that the finance of the internet is driven by site-owners receiving funds from advertisers (or from subscriptions...but that seems comparatively negligible) Getting rid of net-neutrality will mean ISPs (despite their common-carrier designation) will control this whole model^...meaning they wil…

I don't think that this feature has anything to do with net neutrality...

Re: Firefox 57 delays requests to tracking domains

#59

Post by rotrux »

Rudism wrote: post #49
rotrux wrote: post #44

:[ I'm afraid this might be a "too-little-too-late" attempt to stave-off the downfall of net-neutrality. Net-Neutrality means that the finance of the internet is driven by site-owners receiving funds from advertisers (or from subscriptions...but that seems comparatively negligible) Getting rid of net-neutrality will mean ISPs (despite their common-carrier designation) will control this whole model^...meaning they wil…

I'm not sure what article you read, but this change in Firefox is simply a change in the timing of requests to certain domains that are known to be for tracking/analytics in an attempt to improve the load time of websites. If anything this move is anti-Net Neutrality since it's prioritizing non-tracking domains over tracking domains as opposed to treating all domains equally.

A good point, although I read the article that this comment-chain is geared towards. Be more forthright with your condescension please ^_^.

The article was put out by mozilla, so of course their stated point is to make everyone's experience better. I'm in marketing, so I tend to ignore a good portion of the text in marketing/PR-blogs such as this one.

Aside from that, I hadn't thought of this. You're right that if anything, this will increase the load-times of companies who rely on advertising revenue. Perhaps it's preparation?

Re: Firefox 57 delays requests to tracking domains

#60

Post by chowells »

Rudism wrote: post #49
rotrux wrote: post #44

:[ I'm afraid this might be a "too-little-too-late" attempt to stave-off the downfall of net-neutrality. Net-Neutrality means that the finance of the internet is driven by site-owners receiving funds from advertisers (or from subscriptions...but that seems comparatively negligible) Getting rid of net-neutrality will mean ISPs (despite their common-carrier designation) will control this whole model^...meaning they wil…

I'm not sure what article you read, but this change in Firefox is simply a change in the timing of requests to certain domains that are known to be for tracking/analytics in an attempt to improve the load time of websites. If anything this move is anti-Net Neutrality since it's prioritizing non-tracking domains over tracking domains as opposed to treating all domains equally.

It cannot possibly be anti-net-neutrality, because it is an action being taken by the user agent, not a transport.
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