Latest Firefox rolls out Enhanced Tracking Protection 2.0 • Hacker News Board

Re: Latest Firefox rolls out Enhanced Tracking Protection 2.0

#171

Post by shandor » Wed, Aug 05, 2020, 6:38 PM UTC

formerly_proven wrote: post #136

typon wrote: post #130

My friend who works in an adtech company: "Protip: Use Firefox instead of Chrome. We get very little data from Firefox users"

Even less data if you use uBlock Origin and possibly uMatrix (which is very high maintenance, but also reveals the utter insanity of the web). Without an adblocker the internet is such a slow heap of trash that I'd never go back to not using one. This is also one of the main reasons I use my iPhone so little, since it doesn't really have any way to adblock.

> very high maintenance

Reading this, I was actually surprised to find that for some reason or other this has gotten a lot better for me during the 2+ years I've been using uMatrix.

At first it's rather annoying to enable CDNs and stuff for the sites you frequent, but mostly I've started noticing that the sites that break for basically no good reason are the ones that a sane person probably shouldn't visit anyway. So maybe it is just that I've started steering clear of those sites.

Also as a side note, uMatrix is awesome. Many times even on HN I'm surprised to find comments complaining about pop ups or something, and realize that uMatrix silently made my browsing actually tolerable.

Re: Latest Firefox rolls out Enhanced Tracking Protection 2.0

#172

Post by floatingatoll » Wed, Aug 05, 2020, 6:39 PM UTC

DavideNL wrote: post #92

So which version of Firefox will have this feature?

The post says that it's being rolled out gradually on Release channel, so as long as you haven't blocked automatic updates in various ways, you'll get it soon (assuming that the rollout continues without any significant issues being uncovered that halt it).

Presumably if you want to run ahead of that, there's ways to get it early via Beta or Nightly channels, but I don't know what those are.

Re: Latest Firefox rolls out Enhanced Tracking Protection 2.0

#173

Post by jdashg » Wed, Aug 05, 2020, 6:39 PM UTC

winter_blue wrote: post #159

typon wrote: post #130

My friend who works in an adtech company: "Protip: Use Firefox instead of Chrome. We get very little data from Firefox users"

I've gone back and forth between Firefox and Chrome. It's just that Firefox is noticeably slower than Chrome (or at least was about a year ago). Even simply switching between open tabs around what feels like 0.5 seconds , whereas on Chrome, tab switching is instantaneous. I've run Firefox in multi-process mode (since that was an option), but even with it, in general it seems like Firefox gets noticeably slower than C…

Hi! We at Mozilla certainly don't see that! I'm at 815 tabs in this window alone and switching is instantaneous. Did you happen to file a bug report about this atypical behavior?

Re: Latest Firefox rolls out Enhanced Tracking Protection 2.0

#174

Post by chris_st » Wed, Aug 05, 2020, 6:40 PM UTC

formerly_proven wrote: post #136

typon wrote: post #130

My friend who works in an adtech company: "Protip: Use Firefox instead of Chrome. We get very little data from Firefox users"

Even less data if you use uBlock Origin and possibly uMatrix (which is very high maintenance, but also reveals the utter insanity of the web). Without an adblocker the internet is such a slow heap of trash that I'd never go back to not using one. This is also one of the main reasons I use my iPhone so little, since it doesn't really have any way to adblock.

Big fan of NextDNS -- since I installed it on my iPhone, no ads. At all.

Re: Latest Firefox rolls out Enhanced Tracking Protection 2.0

#175

Post by kelnos » Wed, Aug 05, 2020, 6:45 PM UTC

godelski wrote: post #155

nitrogen wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only downside is that product managers who rely on third-party analytics to decide what platforms are relevant will never see Firefox+uBlock users as relevant. I've had to argue this at multiple companies; fortunately at some places multiple developers used uBlock so it wasn't as hard as making the case alone.

> fortunately at some places multiple developers used uBlock so it wasn't as hard as making the case alone. Is adblocking not common? Every tech literate person I know uses an ad blocker. I'd say about 30-40% of millennials I know use them, most using ADB or uBlock Origin. Every time I see someone using a browser with ads I forget what a nightmare the internet is.

Anecdotal, but I've pushed close friends who are reasonably technical to install an ad blocker. Without my urging, they wouldn't have had one at all. When I come across someone who doesn't adblock, it surprises me, but it really shouldn't, as it seems most people don't have an ad blocker.

Re: Latest Firefox rolls out Enhanced Tracking Protection 2.0

#176

Post by ffpip » Wed, Aug 05, 2020, 6:46 PM UTC

shandor wrote: post #171

formerly_proven wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even less data if you use uBlock Origin and possibly uMatrix (which is very high maintenance, but also reveals the utter insanity of the web). Without an adblocker the internet is such a slow heap of trash that I'd never go back to not using one. This is also one of the main reasons I use my iPhone so little, since it doesn't really have any way to adblock.

> very high maintenance Reading this, I was actually surprised to find that for some reason or other this has gotten a lot better for me during the 2+ years I've been using uMatrix. At first it's rather annoying to enable CDNs and stuff for the sites you frequent, but mostly I've started noticing that the sites that break for basically no good reason are the ones that a sane person probably shouldn't visit anyway. So…

I love uMatrix. It removes all annoyances like customer support popups, chat bots, basically anything other than the main domain.

It is high maintainance, only if you visit many new sites every day. For a single site/domain, set it once and go.

There are built in 'recipes' allowing YT embeds, twitter embeds, google capthas if a site wants it.

Once you globally whitelist CDN's (cloudflare and others), it's enough. For popular sites (reddit, YT, twitter use the Recipes)

Re: Latest Firefox rolls out Enhanced Tracking Protection 2.0

#177

Post by kelnos » Wed, Aug 05, 2020, 6:47 PM UTC

godelski wrote: post #170

kroltan wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not everywhere, I'd say it's common within specific crowds. At my company people are either don't know about them, or actually fundamentally disagree with their purpose. (No, it's not an AdTech company, before anyone asks)

But is it a software company? I can understand the disagreement, but with the state of things it is just atrocious. I'd be fine if things weren't so invasive and were clearly ads. Pop ups, pop unders, dark patterns to cause clicks, flashy images on text pages, malware injection, 10x page load times, etc are all reasons why I personally can't stand it. It just feels like they are trying to trick me into seeing their p…

> I don't think most people minds ads

Is that true? I despise ads and the entire advertising industry. I would wear special glasses that would block billboards from my vision if they existed. I pay extra for the ad-free version of Hulu. When I'm at someone's house and they have cable and the TV is on, I find ad breaks incredibly jarring.

Am I just an extreme outlier? It would make me sad for humanity if that was the case. Not minding blatant emotional manipulation in your face all day seems... not great.

Re: Latest Firefox rolls out Enhanced Tracking Protection 2.0

#178

Post by ffpip » Wed, Aug 05, 2020, 6:48 PM UTC

Santosh83 wrote: post #121

mancerayder wrote: post #104

I'm happy to see stuff like this. I'd be even happier if the tricks to get video to play were somehow canceled. I have adblocker and video blockers, but somehow, news sites have a video that plays. If I scroll off the page, the video pops out into the lower right hand of the page and resumes playing, even if the big version of the video at the top of the page was stopped /paused (which it is by default), and it needs…

Indeed am seeing more and more sites that somehow get their videos to autoplay even though I have that explicitly disabled in Firefox settings. I thought user agents had ultimate control over 'mere bytes' sent over the wire but somehow these sites manage to trick the browser and override user preferences.

If a tag is attached to the Video, Firefox stops it.

Sites are loading videos in frames (looking at you Reddit) and in GIFs (news sites)

Re: Latest Firefox rolls out Enhanced Tracking Protection 2.0

#179

Post by Shorel » Wed, Aug 05, 2020, 6:48 PM UTC

winter_blue wrote: post #159

typon wrote: post #130

My friend who works in an adtech company: "Protip: Use Firefox instead of Chrome. We get very little data from Firefox users"

I've gone back and forth between Firefox and Chrome. It's just that Firefox is noticeably slower than Chrome (or at least was about a year ago). Even simply switching between open tabs around what feels like 0.5 seconds , whereas on Chrome, tab switching is instantaneous. I've run Firefox in multi-process mode (since that was an option), but even with it, in general it seems like Firefox gets noticeably slower than C…

My computer is far from new (it only has 16GB of DDR3) and the switching of tabs in Firefox is instantaneous. With the disclaimer that I only have 17 tabs open.

I am replying only because I think your comment can be misleading to other readers of HN.

Re: Latest Firefox rolls out Enhanced Tracking Protection 2.0

#180

Post by typon » Wed, Aug 05, 2020, 6:48 PM UTC

mitchdoogle wrote: post #31

tdhz77 wrote: post #23

I keep encouraging people to use Firefox over the others. My efforts keep failing. Mozilla’s focus on privacy is important and should be to others. People have been burned in the past and are willing to give up privacy for something that just works. The irony.

Do people think Firefox doesn't work? I've noticed zero difference between using Firefox and Chrome and I've used both daily for five years or so.

NetflixParty is the only extension that I actually use that isn't on Firefox. I wish someone made a clone. I wonder if there's something technical preventing that from happening.