can we recognize the difference between civilians (people) and armed participants in conflict (military) in this discussion?
War isn't supposed to be, and never has been, fair.
Firefox removed Yandex search option
221–230 of 414 posts
Re: Firefox removed Yandex search option
#222Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yandex is hardly a politically neutral web service, though
A neutral web browser is not one that only lets me access politically neutral websites (all five of them), but one that doesn't care what I look at. In fact, the few times that I've used Yandex were because it is not politically neutral. I was curious whether the results for some queries look different when they're not being filtered through the lens of the American empire. That use case should make Yandex more relev…
It's the Russian-language news service that was crippled. First, they were forced to only use officially licensed media sources, then they were forced to add lots of junk “newspapers” chain-posting the propaganda, and so on, and so on. So the headlines on top of the search page have been total crap for years.
The search results are mostly affected by the usual blacklists: DMCA notices for pirate sites, right-to-be-forgotten requests, government blocked pages (supposedly based on client location). Note that this list is not complete. For example, western services silently ban sites presumably “used to share child porn, based on informed opinion” of this or that group that might not even have a legal right to force anyone to do anything. How informed is that opinion? If you look at what Russian censorship agency does in the same regard, you can only call them utterly mad. You can be sure it's not the only case when someone has a backdoor that lets them hide stuff “for the public good”. Remember those stories about third world grunts cleaning Facebook from “NSFW content”, and making first world users feel comfy there? The results of their work are probably shared between corporations, too, and applied in some way.
Re: Firefox removed Yandex search option
#223Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hard to pass up $500M/yr
Just for the record, what is it that Google is paying them $500M/yr to do? I haven't installed Firefox for while, is Google the default search engine or something? edit: Upon more searching, I find passages like this: >in 2020, Mozilla Corporation’s revenue was $466 million from its search partnerships (largely driven by its search deal with Google), subscriptions and advertising revenue. [0] as well as a fine from F…
Google pays Mozilla to exist. I wouldn't be surprised if other browsers get either checks or favors for existing. All of this is to make Google not seem like the monopoly it is.
Re: Firefox removed Yandex search option
#224Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can't you just manually put yandex search in? Seems like an odd place to be putting a red line.
Yes but they keep doing these "small" things, that individually don't cross any lines but do add up over time.
I feel like this is a weird attitude to have toward an open-source software project. "Sure, developers added 900 performance improvements / new features / bug fixes this quarter to a browser I get to use for free, but they also did 2 non-critical things I don't really care for so now I oppose this software."
I do think it would have been _better_ if Firefox made the set of included-by-default search providers something that gets merged into your profile, so that future removals only affect new installations / new profiles (and existing users who happen to use that engine don't have to go out of their way to re-add them after an update). I don't really care _which_ search engine definitions come with a browser out-of-the-box, as long as they're easy to customize.
Re: Firefox removed Yandex search option
#225Earlier quoted context omitted.
Whataboutism. I did not agree with the Iraq war but it doesn't justify the current conflict. The US political system did also make an eventual course correction on Iraq. Eg. Republicans lost the congress in 2006 mostly as a result of that. George W. Bush was term limited out of office. The next proposed unnecessary invasions will probably be greeted by politicians not wanting to repeat Iraq. That is slow progress but…
So if there are Russians who don't agree with the war (there are) and if Russia eventually makes a course correction (it will) then they're off the hook, right?
Personally, I would say so, yes.
And I know lots of Russians against this war. I've been to Russia. My kids are half Russian. I am optimistic for future Russian opportunities to "course correct".
Re: Firefox removed Yandex search option
#226I’ve been using yandex as my open-source/public/spam-heavy email provider for a handful of years. Ignoring the current conflict, the yandex product is pretty good. Their search is, IMO, second only to Google, at least for technical queries. Edit: probably going to just buy a domain and protonmail as a contingency plan, though. Don’t want to lose access.
Sadly, search quality for “the rest of the world” has been neglected for years, and it's a miracle yandex.com still works. Mail is one of the services that is kept up to date, with translations and stuff, and it's nice. As for the global issues, a) Iron curtain for the Internet (i. e. absolutely everything not working properly) would be a sure way to get every commoner, currently soothed with entertainment, on the st…
Aren't Facebook, Instagram and TikTok already banned or crippled in Russia? That pretty much is the "internet" for most people.
Re: Firefox removed Yandex search option
#227Here's a workaround to add an arbitrary non-blessed search engine as the default (i.e. what the omnibar points to): https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/add-or-remove-search-en... Be aware that in Firefox, the "Search Bar" is a distinct widget from the "Address Bar" (omnibar/"awesomebar"). If it's missing or you can't find it, here's the docs for that UX flow: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/customize-firefox-co…
The Omnibar is Chromium/Chrome specific. The Firefox address bar is also known as the awesomebar, but has never been known as the omnibar.
https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/a-little-something-aweso...
Re: Firefox removed Yandex search option
#228Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Because I do not condone that move. Thank you for your answer. Could you elaborate on it? Is it a software freedom question to you? Or perhaps a free speech one?
I agree with the grandparent comment. And it is because of separation of concerns. You can put it in the same basket as freedom of speech, but it's a bit different. A browser is a browser. It does not have to promote a moral view. In fact it has to provide ways to find information. Not to limit purposefully ways to find information.
It sounds like your issue is not that the browser is promoting a moral view but rather that it’s promoting one in conflict with the moral view you think it should be promoting.
Re: Firefox removed Yandex search option
#229Let me repeat Firefox vision: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/VisionStatement#Product_vis... > Discover, experience and connect with apps, websites and people on your own terms, everywhere. Why do you not give people choice on their own terms, everywhere?
People can use whatever search engine they want - how is that not on their own terms?
Re: Firefox removed Yandex search option
#230Firefox was going off the rails for a while now. Notice, the worse they become the more they will indulge in politics, censorship, emotional blackmail instead of doing their jobs: building a better browser.
I don't understand this claim. If Mozilla is so awful at developing Firefox, why isn't anyone forking it? Open source is not an empty slogan