In a swipe at Chrome, Firefox now blocks ad trackers by default • Hacker News Board

Re: In a swipe at Chrome, Firefox now blocks ad trackers by default

#341

Post by wccrawford » Wed, Sep 04, 2019, 4:09 PM UTC

burtonator wrote: post #328

Serious question. Say I have a site and I want to track users. Do I have to just do this via my own HTTP logs now if I want this working with Firefox? I mean this is how it was done in the bad old days. I have no nefarious intent. I just need to figure out what features my users are using so I can fix them if they're broken. It would be nice to possibly get some sort of explicit opt-in from Firefox. I guess one worka…

Yeah, I'd say you have to implement your own tracking system instead of using an off-the-shelf one. Either from your logs, or from code that you write, server- or client-side.

Re: In a swipe at Chrome, Firefox now blocks ad trackers by default

#342

Post by guerrilla » Wed, Sep 04, 2019, 4:13 PM UTC

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #327

guerrilla wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How do you slice and dice and at what point do you say it is done? When everyone has an equal opportunity. You should be able to derive the rest of the answers to your questions from that.

> When everyone has an equal opportunity. "Equal opportunity" is an unattainable goal, like "utopia". It sounds good in the abstract, but "equal opportunity" is such a subjective concept that it's useless for any practical purpose. Every person's life is as much a product of random chance as innate potential, so there's no objective measure of equal opportunity by which a society that enforces equal opportunity could…

It turns out that measuring discrimination and opportinity is a pretty well studied topic. It's mainly the discipline of sociology which quantifies this but there are plenty of other disciplines, such as economics, that do it as well. You can do a Google scholar search to learn more.

By the way, targets do not need to be attainable in order to produce (also quantifiable) positive effects.

Re: In a swipe at Chrome, Firefox now blocks ad trackers by default

#343

Post by wutbrodo » Wed, Sep 04, 2019, 4:13 PM UTC

iamnotacrook wrote: post #168

nightfly wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't convey to site owners /why/ you left. You need to tell them. From their perspective they'll just see an even lower percentage of Firefox users and maybe make even less effort to support it.

As an ex-customer why would I care? Do you know how many sites there are on the internet? I'm sure browser support will come up in a meeting at some point if they ever consider increasing sales. I left an online bank because it was too slow on Firefox, and some of the pages didn't render properly. It's trivial moving between banks (you get a cash reward in some cases). I don't want the bad sites fixed; our interests…

The GP comment in this thread specifically calls out doing something as the only way to effect "positive change". It's a little bizarre to respond to someone pointing out that that action won't have the intended effect with "what do I care about changing anything?" It's a valid opinion, but not the conversation anyone on this subthread is having.

Re: In a swipe at Chrome, Firefox now blocks ad trackers by default

#344

Post by icelancer » Wed, Sep 04, 2019, 4:16 PM UTC

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #242

hgoel wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lack of diversity isn't in and of itself a sign of a lack of meritocracy, and nor is simply increasing diversity a sign of meritocracy. It's misguided to think that by manually ensuring diversity (eg. By hiring someone for simply being a qualified minority rather than necessarily the best candidate) is pushing for meritocracy. If diversity programs were interested in maintaining meritocracy while increasing diversi…

That's the usual line, that assume no qualified minority candidates exist . Which is, at root, a biased assumption already. E.g. Stanford (used to) vigorously recruited qualified minority candidates to help improve diversity on campus.

And in doing so, forced Asians and Asian-Americans to attain higher test scores than a comparable white person to get into their programs. Diversity in action.

Re: In a swipe at Chrome, Firefox now blocks ad trackers by default

#345

Post by TeMPOraL » Wed, Sep 04, 2019, 4:21 PM UTC

wutbrodo wrote: post #326

TeMPOraL wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Donations have a nice way of revealing value misalignment between the donating and receiving party. Like e.g. I'd like to donate to Firefox, maaaybe Thunderbird, but not Pocket or diversity campaigns. Money is technically fungible, but that works only if it's enough of unassigned money - if N dollars get donated "for Firefox" and then Firefox development receives less than N dollars, I'd feel cheated as a "for Firefo…

"Defeatist and unfair" are bizarre ways to describe it, but I'm not sure how the earmarking process would work: what would prevent Firefox from ostensibly allocating your dollars as donated to Firefox and shifted unconstrained dollars from Firefox to another initiative, with your donation ending up funding non-FF activities relative to the counterfactual? Barring the narrow case where they have more FF-only donations…

To some extent it is, if they have other sources of money. Yes, if there's $N in the donations "for Firefox only" and the budget they planned to give Firefox based on other sources is $X, X > N, then they could keep the budget at $X and move the now free $N to other purposes.

But it can be made more complicated by that, depending on the organizational policies, levels of transparency, and funding methods. If, for example, they have an internal fund labeled "for Firefox", I'd expect $N in donations to go there, and would be pissed if less money appeared. Alternatively, if they were running a funding model of "$X for Firefox + money from donations", then I'd be pissed if Firefox was getting less than $X + $N (this would be equivalent to the recent "companies are stealing tips" dramas of share economy).

It's worth noting that charities handling multiple causes usually solve this by creating separate accounts for donating to each cause.

This ultimately can get as complex as Mozilla would like, but Mozilla has also a perfectly valid option of not allowing donations for specific purposes at all, and I think it's fine if they do that. Donors have no right to force Mozilla to implement earmarking if they don't want to.

Re: In a swipe at Chrome, Firefox now blocks ad trackers by default

#346

Post by godelski » Wed, Sep 04, 2019, 4:23 PM UTC

mikro2nd wrote: post #283

green-eclipse wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My hunch is that maybe 0.1% to 1% of people truly care about privacy. People love to talk about it and sound shocked about lack of privacy. But when it comes to actually changing behavior based on privacy, very few people actually do.

They may or may not care about privacy, but they do love an internet that's largely ad-free. Most of them never knew it was possible, but I love to see how wide their eyes get when they see it. "Holy hells! you mean I don't have to look at all that crap?"

I'd argue that most people don't know privacy is possible too. I think the lack of concern is more lack of awareness. People are really freaked out when they think Facebook is listening to their conversations. Lots of people have the "how could they possible know that" story. That's a great starting point to talk about ML and how powerful data is.

In fact there's a sibling comment to yours asking what privacy difference there is between Alexa and a smart phone. And here we are on one of the most tech focused places on the internet! If everyone here doesn't know the difference, how is the average person?

Re: In a swipe at Chrome, Firefox now blocks ad trackers by default

#347

Post by wutbrodo » Wed, Sep 04, 2019, 4:27 PM UTC

Semaphor wrote: post #89

someonenice wrote: post #35

Already lot of sites are not tested on Firefox and many explicitly so [1]. Now the web publishers that rely on ads will have less incentive to support Firefox. They might even actively promote other browsers. Similar to how IE was discouraged by websites explicitly. "This site works best on Chrome" is only what is needed now to reduce the Firefox userbase further. Note - This comment was typed on firefox. [1] https:/…

Meanwhile, in Germany, Firefox is at a stable 25-26% (according to statcounter) If you are offering services to us, you probably can’t afford to ignore FF. If you are a German company, that goes double.

Is that true? I'm not speaking morally here, but pragmatically: 25% of German GDP is a little under a trillion dollars, or about 1% of global GDP. I know there are plenty of problems to nitpick with this rough model, eg that developed countries are often targeted first, but even limiting to OECD countries only yields 1.5% of GDP.

Europe-wide figures would be more relevant, but it's tough for me to see any company that isn't Germany-specific (or at best, regional) caring much about a fraction of the userbase of a country whose GDP is itself a fraction of potential markets.

Now don't get me wrong, businesses that are Germany-only are still pretty massive objectively, but it doesn't seem like that would be enough to move the needle on the way the Web ecosystem develops. German (eg) bank support for FF seems like not much more than a regional technological quirk, like if you found out that Kazakhstan's banks only worked well on IE6

Re: In a swipe at Chrome, Firefox now blocks ad trackers by default

#348

Post by lrem » Wed, Sep 04, 2019, 4:28 PM UTC

tannhaeuser wrote: post #53

lrem wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work at Google, but use Firefox for all my private things... Except when I run into a page that's broken in Firefox. And except when I need developer tools. And except when I need the browser to translate sites for me. And except when I'm shopping, as Google does a good enough job with payment details. And except Google properties, because who knows what weird HTTP 3.7 will Chrome use to save some ocean boiling?

That's great that you come out and openly say you're using FF for privacy! > page that's broken in FF I don't know any, and have used FF for as long as it exists. Could you give an example (or better yet, tell Mozilla via FF's built-in feedback)? > developer tools FF's devtools are far superior to Chrome's IMO for core web tech such as CSS debugging (Chrome is better for JavaScript debugging and profiling, that I'll…

Where have I said it's for privacy? Google is actually pretty good for privacy, as seen from the inside. I'm using it for private things at work to not entangle between corp and private and at home for consistency. I also have been using Firefox way longer than Chrome.

Re: In a swipe at Chrome, Firefox now blocks ad trackers by default

#349

Post by Miraste » Wed, Sep 04, 2019, 4:31 PM UTC

iamnotacrook wrote: post #160

a254613e wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To offer a bit of an opposite view here on HN: I give firefox a shot from time to time. I switch all devices to it, and then I use it exclusively all the time. My most recent attempt failed few days ago, after a bit more than a month with it. Firefox performance just doesn't feel the same as chrome, from constant small freezes, to using 100% CPU pretty often. And just overall experience on some platforms - especially…

"Firefox performance just doesn't feel the same as chrome, from constant small freezes, to using 100% CPU pretty often" I don't get those problems, but even if I did, it would be well worth it as opposed to seeing ads all the time. If Google wanted me to uninstall Firefox forever and use Chrome they'd allow for plug-ins for Chrome (on Android). While they don't I'll simply never switch. I have no idea how people tole…

I use Firefox on my non-Android devices, but sadly I have found that Android Firefox is so slow and clunky that even without ads it's less usable than Chrome with ads. Mozilla knows this, too: they have a total rewrite in beta right now, and it's great, but it doesn't support plugins yet.

Re: In a swipe at Chrome, Firefox now blocks ad trackers by default

#350

Post by EpicEng » Wed, Sep 04, 2019, 4:43 PM UTC

iamnotacrook wrote: post #160

a254613e wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To offer a bit of an opposite view here on HN: I give firefox a shot from time to time. I switch all devices to it, and then I use it exclusively all the time. My most recent attempt failed few days ago, after a bit more than a month with it. Firefox performance just doesn't feel the same as chrome, from constant small freezes, to using 100% CPU pretty often. And just overall experience on some platforms - especially…

"Firefox performance just doesn't feel the same as chrome, from constant small freezes, to using 100% CPU pretty often" I don't get those problems, but even if I did, it would be well worth it as opposed to seeing ads all the time. If Google wanted me to uninstall Firefox forever and use Chrome they'd allow for plug-ins for Chrome (on Android). While they don't I'll simply never switch. I have no idea how people tole…

I get constant, intermittent stutters when scrolling on FF. On three devices. Sorry, I just want a browser that works. I don't imagine this is a problem for everyone, but I can find reports of it and no fix.