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Firefox bullshit removal

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51–60 of 183 posts

Re: Firefox bullshit removal

#51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. Companies should be transparent about the data they collect and how they anonymize it – and should be easily disabled if needed if you need serious privacy, as is possible that some resourceful actor could de-anonymize the information somehow. But this kind of data is not necessarily harmful. People disabling telemetry will often be the same ones complaining about "poorly written applications and company X shou…

Yet organizations went decades making fantastic and ever-improving software without telemetry. What changed? Why would telemetry suddenly become a basic requirement for improvement?

Software is generally a lot more complex these days, and telemetry data is needed to stay competitive and keep improving.

Using Firefox as an example, look at how many improvements they have made over the last 5 years. I'm not here to argue whether we need these feature or if Firefox 2 was the last version of Firefox that we needed. Firefox (or Chrome, or whatever) wouldn't look as great as it does today without lots of data.

Re: Firefox bullshit removal

#52
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Let's disable Javascript too while we are at it. ...as if much of HN's userbase doesn't already do that.

Indeed. I wonder how they can get anything done. (Other than posting on HN itself, that is)

> Indeed. I wonder how they can get anything done. (Other than posting on HN itself, that is)

It's very straightforward. I allow javascript on the sites that I trust to run javascript - in a protected environment. There are tons of ways to do this.

I see how long other's computers take to render simple pages, and I just shake my head.

Re: Firefox bullshit removal

#53
post #8

"These are used by Mozilla to spy on you, and are as such a significant risk to privacy." Wow that's a big claim. Any proofs that the data collected is not anonymous? It sounds a lot like fear-mongering

Yeah. Companies should be transparent about the data they collect and how they anonymize it – and should be easily disabled if needed if you need serious privacy, as is possible that some resourceful actor could de-anonymize the information somehow. But this kind of data is not necessarily harmful. People disabling telemetry will often be the same ones complaining about "poorly written applications and company X shou…

Firefox is not transparent enough? Their privacy policy is pretty straightforward and there's a ton more technical details on the wiki.

Re: Firefox bullshit removal

#54
post #8

"These are used by Mozilla to spy on you, and are as such a significant risk to privacy." Wow that's a big claim. Any proofs that the data collected is not anonymous? It sounds a lot like fear-mongering

Yeah. Companies should be transparent about the data they collect and how they anonymize it – and should be easily disabled if needed if you need serious privacy, as is possible that some resourceful actor could de-anonymize the information somehow. But this kind of data is not necessarily harmful. People disabling telemetry will often be the same ones complaining about "poorly written applications and company X shou…

People disabling telemetry will often be the same ones complaining about "poorly written applications and company X should know better". Well they don't because you disabled telemetry, now the company or organization has no data to improve anything, be it performance, crashes or even UI. Bug reports are not enough.

This is the sort of argument that gets thrown around often, and I disagree completely --- data collection should always be opt-in, not opt-out. Normalising the invasion of privacy and subverting the default expectation thereof is harmful to individual freedom.

Respect the users: let them tell you what they want, when they want, and how they want. Don't paternalistically monitor them or tell them what they should/"really" want.

Re: Firefox bullshit removal

#55

Websockets? Really? Even if they are an ugly hack on top of HTTP, they are too damn useful to be disabled. Let's disable Javascript too while we are at it.

> Let's disable Javascript too while we are at it.

That happened a few years ago.

Re: Firefox bullshit removal

#56
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And another thing -- what's the deal with automobiles? Horses do a perfectly fine job at getting us around.

Shitty analogy. Cars provided demonstrable benefits to users. Telemetry does not.

Just because it's not obvious to the user, doesn't mean it's not going towards bug fixes and other improvements.

Re: Firefox bullshit removal

#58
post #31

I wrote something similar a while back, and it’s in a similar state of not-updated-ness http://fixfirefox.com

> Your connection is not secure > > SEC_ERROR_EXPIRED_CERTIFICATE (expired October 31, 2017) Doesn't make me want to listen to any website claiming to "fix firefox" when they can't even bother to keep their SSL certs up to date.

[deleted]

Re: Firefox bullshit removal

#59
post #8

"These are used by Mozilla to spy on you, and are as such a significant risk to privacy." Wow that's a big claim. Any proofs that the data collected is not anonymous? It sounds a lot like fear-mongering

it's very hard to completely anonymize data... companies have so much data nowadays that they can de-anonymize it more easily.
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