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If you care about privacy, it’s time to try a new web browser

nytimes.com

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Re: If you care about privacy, it’s time to try a new web browser

#41

Post by bejelentkezni »

fastball wrote: post #28
preommr wrote: post #18

This is not the way. If we relegate privacy to fringe browsers like this, we'll lose in the long run. It's not possible to have 0.05% percent of the market, and try and compete with goliaths like Google. So it creates a feedback loop of a browser that people don't really use because it lacks features/popularity. Or/and these companies are also forced to do things like Brave and their in-browser ads. Meanwhile there'l…

Seems like Brave is best of both worlds in this case. It's a Chromium browser with a focus on privacy.

Brave is spyware[1][2].

1. https://spyware.neocities.org/articles/brave.html

2. https://digdeeper.neocities.org/ghost/browsers.html#brave

Re: If you care about privacy, it’s time to try a new web browser

#42

Post by dtx1 »

clairity wrote: post #31
dtx1 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't surprise me at all. The reality is that journalists are just that, journalists. They rarely have any relevant expertise about what they write. Coupled with strict limits on content size enforced by publishers and an audience that often understands even less about the topics discussed you get major errors like these. The amount of text necessary to explain to the average NYT reader what a rendering engine is p…

> "The amount of text necessary to explain to the average NYT reader what a rendering engine is probably more then the allotted text size..." it's not that hard to summarize: a rendering engine transforms html into pixels on the screen. most people will have at least a vague idea of what html and pixels are. there's no further need to dive into the details where that description is less than 100% accurate (e.g., sree…

> most people will have at least a vague idea what html and pixels are. there's no further need to dive into the details where that description is less than 100% accurate (e.g., sreen readers).

I doubt very much the average person on the street has a clear idea what a pixel is, let alone what HTML is. And even your description is so incomplete it's wrong since the safari engine also includes JavaScript execution, media rendering etc. on safari, proving my point: if you try to simplify it for the average reader, your description ends up wrong

Re: If you care about privacy, it’s time to try a new web browser

#43

Post by skinnymuch »

cmeacham98 wrote: post #16
nwienert wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is actually a good thing for the diversity of browser engines and preventing Google from commandeering web standards and “embrace, extend, extinguish”ing them. If Chrome was allowed on iOS be sure Google would dump unlimited money to get people to use it. Websites would further go down the path of only testing on Chrome, and Google would continue stuffing their browser full of oftentimes needless features. And…

> That, and, Safari is miles ahead of any other engine in terms of performance. It’s not even close. How is it fair to make this statement about iOS where no other engine is even allowed? Maybe Chrome(ium) and/or Firefox would be faster than Webkit on iOS if they were actually allowed to develop for it, or maybe Safari would be the best. It's impossible to know because Apple prevents any competition here.

We have MacOS to see this is true to a huge degree there. The related and overlapping iOS wouldn’t change things that much.

Re: If you care about privacy, it’s time to try a new web browser

#44

Post by soulofmischief »

adrianh wrote: post #11

The author was testing these browsers on an iPhone — but neglected to note that Apple actually prevents other browser engines on iOS. So if you use Firefox or Brave on an iPhone, you’re simply using Safari with a different “skin.” This skin can clearly do some content blocking, and it can provide a different browser UI — but it cannot change the fundamental web technologies that are available in the browser. As such,…

No, Chrome is the new IE6. Safari is... still safari.

Re: If you care about privacy, it’s time to try a new web browser

#45

Post by skinnymuch »

fastball wrote: post #28
preommr wrote: post #18

This is not the way. If we relegate privacy to fringe browsers like this, we'll lose in the long run. It's not possible to have 0.05% percent of the market, and try and compete with goliaths like Google. So it creates a feedback loop of a browser that people don't really use because it lacks features/popularity. Or/and these companies are also forced to do things like Brave and their in-browser ads. Meanwhile there'l…

Seems like Brave is best of both worlds in this case. It's a Chromium browser with a focus on privacy.

How can I vouch for the child comment to your comment that is dead? Does any one know? I would like to know if their comment is wrong or not.

I’ve been able to vouch for comments once or twice before.

Re: If you care about privacy, it’s time to try a new web browser

#46

Post by xoa »

unreal6 wrote: post #32
xoa wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As such, Safari is basically the new IE6 — it lags all other modern browsers and prevents websites from taking advantage of nice new features. I strongly disagree with you. The new IE6 is Chrome: overwhelming dominance of the web to the extent that Google can dictate "standards" themselves and users begin to lose the ability to use other browsers because "site works best(only) in Chrome", and I think that having my…

> I don't mind if you simply chose not to serve iOS/Mac/Firefox users at all, though of course most would then take their business elsewhere. I use FF as my daily driver, but as much as I hate to admit it, whatever service I am using is almost always a stronger draw than FF, so I just open it up Chrominium or Brave. Unfortunately, I'm not sure the market for strictly native/browser-agnostic services is large enough t…

>Unfortunately, I'm not sure the market for strictly native/browser-agnostic services is large enough to support most uses.

I guess "strictly" is debatable, but the point here is that the market for at least somewhat browser agnostic services includes, well, the entirety of iOS at the least. Precisely because there is no "choice", which means big services/developers can't force a choice on us either. If I browse somewhere on my iPhone, I won't be told "go install Chrome" because a I can't (or rather, it'd make no difference because an iOS browser is still the same engine so like "iOS Firefox", "iOS Chrome" is mainly a skin). Sometimes I may see a "better in the app" which I don't mind if it's dismissible because if it's somewhere I actually like, well, maybe I really will try their app. And while iOS users aren't remotely the majority of the global market by user count, they tend to punch above their weight in spending; they aren't a random sample of the population. It's a not insignificant market to entirely forego.

Different people will have different services they depend on and different views of the web in turn, so YMMV, but at least for me that seems to have been enough. I completely uninstalled both Chrome and Chromium, and between Safari and Firefox on Mac and FF on FreeBSD or Ubuntu I haven't encountered anything critical that was non-functional. Apple has effective collectivized the buying power of a picky subset of people. That's definitely not always good, but nor is it always bad. I think at this point a lot of us are making a conscious choice to join that ecosystem, and those of us unhappy with some of it handle it by keeping our main computing environment mixed up.

Re: If you care about privacy, it’s time to try a new web browser

#47

Post by buzzert »

franklyt wrote: post #13
adrianh wrote: post #11

The author was testing these browsers on an iPhone — but neglected to note that Apple actually prevents other browser engines on iOS. So if you use Firefox or Brave on an iPhone, you’re simply using Safari with a different “skin.” This skin can clearly do some content blocking, and it can provide a different browser UI — but it cannot change the fundamental web technologies that are available in the browser. As such,…

I can’t believe this was overlooked by a prestigious publication.

Hard to believe anyone still thinks of the NYT as “prestigious” these days.

Re: If you care about privacy, it’s time to try a new web browser

#48

Post by geofft »

dtx1 wrote: post #25
geofft wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure that's relevant for privacy - for privacy, the specific thing you need is content blocking, right? I agree it's important for functionality and the general health of the web as a platform, but those don't seem to be the point of the article.

Not really. If your rendering engines does the spying for you than blocking other tracking and adware still leaves you without real privacy. Coupled with a lack of fingerprinting protection, simple content blocking may not even be enough to reasonably protect you from third party trackers.

Is the rendering engine doing the spying for you?

This article seems like it's focusing on websites spying on you, and I don't think anyone (either this article or elsewhere) has made a serious allegation that WebKit does actually spy on you. It would be pretty newsworthy if it did!

Re: If you care about privacy, it’s time to try a new web browser

#49

Post by clairity »

dtx1 wrote: post #42
clairity wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "The amount of text necessary to explain to the average NYT reader what a rendering engine is probably more then the allotted text size..." it's not that hard to summarize: a rendering engine transforms html into pixels on the screen. most people will have at least a vague idea of what html and pixels are. there's no further need to dive into the details where that description is less than 100% accurate (e.g., sree…

> most people will have at least a vague idea what html and pixels are. there's no further need to dive into the details where that description is less than 100% accurate (e.g., sreen readers). I doubt very much the average person on the street has a clear idea what a pixel is, let alone what HTML is. And even your description is so incomplete it's wrong since the safari engine also includes JavaScript execution, med…

yes, i said vague idea, not clear idea.

but none of that stuff matters for reaching a reasonable conclusion. we don't need to know how a transmission works to reason about speed and acceleration, only that it converts power from the engine into velocity somehow. the whole purpose of abstraction is to take advantage of such decouplings within a brain limited in how much information it can hold in working memory in any one instant.

Re: If you care about privacy, it’s time to try a new web browser

#50

Post by davidf18 »

unreal6 wrote: post #32
xoa wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As such, Safari is basically the new IE6 — it lags all other modern browsers and prevents websites from taking advantage of nice new features. I strongly disagree with you. The new IE6 is Chrome: overwhelming dominance of the web to the extent that Google can dictate "standards" themselves and users begin to lose the ability to use other browsers because "site works best(only) in Chrome", and I think that having my…

> I don't mind if you simply chose not to serve iOS/Mac/Firefox users at all, though of course most would then take their business elsewhere. I use FF as my daily driver, but as much as I hate to admit it, whatever service I am using is almost always a stronger draw than FF, so I just open it up Chrominium or Brave. Unfortunately, I'm not sure the market for strictly native/browser-agnostic services is large enough t…

The NYT article should simply have recommended using 1blocker which works with safari for users that have Mac laptops and iPhones, which I am guessing is perhaps the majority of readers.

I have been using 1blocker for several years and it seems to work well enough.

On the Mac laptops safari is the best browser for most people including NYT readers because it has the best battery life.

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