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

Re: Latest Firefox rolls out Enhanced Tracking Protection 2.0

#441

Post by fauigerzigerk » Thu, Aug 06, 2020, 1:35 PM UTC

rglullis wrote: post #436

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not saying that the status quo is better than all imaginable alternatives. I'm saying it's better than the alternatives that are effective and widely available right now. In my view, the status quo of ad funding is very annoying and somewhat harmful, but it is far less harmful than the app store model, which is pure oppression. That's why I tend to be sceptical of any new scheme that once again puts someone in a…

"Annoying and somewhat harmful" does not even begin to describe the problem of the ad-based economy. It's not that hard to make the argument that the moment that it became normal for websites to rely solely on ads for its revenue was the moment that we subverted a lot of our cultural institutions. It's not that hard to make the argument that the rise of populism and extremist politics is rooted in this "eyeballs is a…

It's always very hard to make the argument that some negative trend in our complex societies is caused by one very specific factor. You could just as well build your case around something else.

Populism and fascism have been a problem for far longer than we have had ad-targeting. That said, I'm not opposed to putting restrictions on what ad networks are allowed to do.

>Again, there is nothing about Brave and its ad network that can not be replicated by any one that decides to compete with them.

Of course not. Others can build search engines and social networks and app stores as well. All of it can be replicated - theoretically. That doesn't change the fact that Google and Facebook and Apple are in an all powerful position to dictate content restrictions and access.

So in order for me to support a any new system, there would have to be an element of deliberate design to prevent that sort of power imbalance. I don't see that Brave has that, but I'm going to look into it more closely as I could easily be wrong.

Re: Latest Firefox rolls out Enhanced Tracking Protection 2.0

#442

Post by gorhill » Thu, Aug 06, 2020, 2:32 PM UTC

yelloworangefog wrote: post #307

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.

I seem to remember reading something about a year ago about uBlock Origin being a security concern (like harvesting user data or something). Am I misremembering?

> Am I misremembering?

Yes.

Re: Latest Firefox rolls out Enhanced Tracking Protection 2.0

#443

Post by rglullis » Thu, Aug 06, 2020, 2:54 PM UTC

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #441

rglullis wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Annoying and somewhat harmful" does not even begin to describe the problem of the ad-based economy. It's not that hard to make the argument that the moment that it became normal for websites to rely solely on ads for its revenue was the moment that we subverted a lot of our cultural institutions. It's not that hard to make the argument that the rise of populism and extremist politics is rooted in this "eyeballs is a…

It's always very hard to make the argument that some negative trend in our complex societies is caused by one very specific factor. You could just as well build your case around something else. Populism and fascism have been a problem for far longer than we have had ad-targeting. That said, I'm not opposed to putting restrictions on what ad networks are allowed to do. >Again, there is nothing about Brave and its ad n…

> You could just as well build your case around something else.

I didn't say that it is the sole reason, but it certainly is one of the reasons and it is something that I have a way to control my input into the system.

> I'm not opposed to putting restrictions on what ad networks are allowed to do.

The problem is not "ad networks". The problem is in ad-funded business models and in PPC/PPP. When the business have the consumers just as a vehicle for delivering eye-balls, business only important metric is "how many eye-balls can we get?" and this is where everything went to shit.

> So in order for me to support a any new system, there would have an element of deliberate design to prevent that sort of power imbalance.

On one side you have an incumbent that is light-years away from having any kind of dominant hand and that you can hedge against an eventual abuse from their side. On the other you have giants that "are in an all powerful position to dictate content restrictions and access" but your only response is "it is annoying and somewhat harmful" and shrug it away? "Oh, I am pessimistic about every alternative that came so far, so let's just keep the existing abusers?"

I don't get this logic at all. It is either a display of apathy or dishonesty.

Re: Latest Firefox rolls out Enhanced Tracking Protection 2.0

#444

Post by winter_blue » Thu, Aug 06, 2020, 3:01 PM UTC

jdashg wrote: post #173

winter_blue wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Thank you for asking! It's pretty awesome to get a reply from someone at Mozilla itself!

I actually never filed a bug report. I didn't think of the slowness as a bug per se. I thought it was just that Firefox was slower.

One thing I should note is that I've been using an ancient Firefox profile. I copy the profile onto new installs, and I've got bookmarks going all the way back to 2008 or 2009 (my bookmarks are organized into 50 or 100 folders). I also have a bunch of extensions.

I typically have well over a hundred tabs. I used to use the extension Tree Style Tabs, and sometime get close to a thousand tabs (with like 5 to 10 windows, with between 100 to 200 tabs per window).

Also, Firefox was slow on every laptop I used, but not on my desktop. I have a desktop that's fast by 2015 standards. It's got a i7-5280K, 32 GB RAM quad-channel, etc. The few laptops I've had have had far slower CPUs (the fastest one being an 8th Gen Intel i7 "U" processor). While on my desktop, I might average 700 tabs, on my laptop I try to have under 200 tabs.

I've always been on the newest versions of Firefox. For my laptops, I was on Aurora / the Developer Edition. On my desktop (which has an Ubuntu-based Linux distro), I'm on Firefox nightly.

Not sure if all of that info helps. I haven't investigated too much into what's happening. The most probably culprit might be my ancient Firefox profile. Perhaps, if I go back into Firefox with a fresh profile, it'll be a lot faster.

Re: Latest Firefox rolls out Enhanced Tracking Protection 2.0

#445

Post by psteinweber » Thu, Aug 06, 2020, 3:10 PM UTC

colordrops wrote: post #52

Off topic, but every time I see an article like this I load up Firefox and try it out to see how it has progressed. I inevitably stop using it, and this time I decided to introspect and see why. It turns out that it's mouse wheel scrolling doesn't feel as snappy as other browsers, and for some reason it bothers me a lot. I'm going to try changing the scroll wheel settings and see if I can stick with it.

Exactly my story. Had this with my retina MBP from 2015 and couldn't understand how this is supposed to be usable.

Tried everything, even resetting the OS.

Have a new MPB since Monday, tried Firefox again, no issues at all.

Re: Latest Firefox rolls out Enhanced Tracking Protection 2.0

#446

Post by ragnese » Thu, Aug 06, 2020, 3:15 PM UTC

m463 wrote: post #66

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.

I use umatrix to block stuff and a side effect is that EVERYTHING is much faster. Some sites routinely load hundreds of items from dozens of third-party servers, so this shouldn't be surprising.

Everyone who is quasi-technical should be using uMatrix. I'm a privacy nut, but I don't think you even have to be much of one to appreciate the value that something like uMatrix provides.

On the other hand, everyone keeps saying that it speeds up their browsing experience, but anecdotally, I'm not sure I experience the same thing.

I do have a couple of other addons that are likely clouding this judgment. Not to mention my specific machine, network connection, sites I typically browse, etc, etc.

But is it possible that processing the requests for things to strip, and then updating uMatrix's UI elements is causing more overhead than just letting the assets load (which may even be cached)?

Not to mention that if I do encounter a broken site and I decide to try to make it work, I end up refreshing it 5 or so times before getting it minimally functional. The time spent doing that surely outweighs the time of just letting it load.

But I'm not saying to abandon uMatrix. Just that I use it for privacy, not performance or convenience.

Re: Latest Firefox rolls out Enhanced Tracking Protection 2.0

#447

Post by clairity » Thu, Aug 06, 2020, 3:31 PM UTC

shostack wrote: post #413

clairity wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it seems the objection is to unearned affiliate revenue (for any purchases at amazon for some period just for visiting wirecutter), not earned affiliate revenue (by clicking on a product you intend to buy), which is consistent and fair.

What you described sounds like cookie stuffing and is almost certainly prohibited by Amazon and any competently run affiliate network/program.

yup, that's it. i couldn't recall the name for the practice, so thanks for that!

Re: Latest Firefox rolls out Enhanced Tracking Protection 2.0

#448

Post by kroltan » Thu, Aug 06, 2020, 4:50 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…

Yes, it is a software company. And I personally agree with you, I'm just stating that not everyone does (to my eternal frustration, perhaps, but I can't impose that on others)

Re: Latest Firefox rolls out Enhanced Tracking Protection 2.0

#449

Post by heavyset_go » Thu, Aug 06, 2020, 4:53 PM UTC

jimmaswell wrote: post #326

catalogia wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disable it then, just because you're apathetic to such matters doesn't mean the application should assume everybody is. >inconvenience It's seriously doubtful you or any other user will notice any negative ramifications from third party cookies being deleted, because there basically are none.

We'll notice the inconvenience when more services get paywalled due to not being able to make enough ad money.

Well, it certainly seems like you care, so which is it? Do you care or not care?

Re: Latest Firefox rolls out Enhanced Tracking Protection 2.0

#450

Post by heavyset_go » Thu, Aug 06, 2020, 4:57 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.

Last year, I was on a Zoom call where I shared my screen, and several web developers asked if I "seriously still use Firefox" as if I was stuck in 2005.