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For advertising, Firefox now collects user data by default

heise.de

171–180 of 523 posts

Re: For advertising, Firefox now collects user data by default

#171
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s clear in retrospect that we should have communicated more on this one What isn’t clear, in retrospect or otherwise, is why companies/apps/services need to keep learning this lesson. The user outcry was utterly predictable from even before the first web article was out. The fact that no one with decision power at Mozilla saw it coming is worrying: either they have zero understanding of people’s concerns for pri…

Who's to say this "my bad, we'll do better next time" isn't part of the playbook?

Once you start assuming that every apology is fake and in bad faith, the world quickly goes to shit.

I'm not saying its impossible for apologies to be in bad faith, just that if it becomes impossible to apologize and move on after making a mistake, it becomes impossible to do anything productive.

Re: For advertising, Firefox now collects user data by default

#172

Firefox mobile also won't let me into about:config. So I guess that's the end. Opera? Other recommendations?

Elinks via Termux? /jk For those that don't know, Elinks is a text only terminal browser.

While the jokes is appreciated, I'm also half-serious in considering just using Links/Elinks or w3m and just use whatever is the default browser on my OS for those cases where I need to book ticket or do banking.

I'm sadly falling out of love with the web. So much fun and enjoyment have left the web in the past 20 years and I don't enjoy or to some extend even benefit from the modern hellscape of modern commercial web.

Re: For advertising, Firefox now collects user data by default

#173

Enough of this waiting for virtuous entities to address legitimate concerns of the public. The "ad industry" is a cancer and we need legal protection against this "industry". The solution is political not technical and definitely can not be left to "the market". Haven't you had enough?

How would that legal "protection" work in practice? What would it protect against? Who would it protect?

What you say sounds reasonable. And I'm not trying to say "well, it's impossible because of some current status quo", because we could change that.

What I'm trying to say is that we need this "industry" to work out the practicalities. Otherwise we are "protected" in a same way the GDPR protects us against 3rd part trackers (you don't need a cookie banner if you don't allow 3rd parties to track your users. Yet here we are...)

Re: For advertising, Firefox now collects user data by default

#174

What's dumb is that Firefox is not the freedom browser people think it is. Mozilla is a crappy organization. Firefox has extension signing, it's as restrictive as installing apps on iOS where only approved apps can be installed, without a setting to easily disable it. Mozilla can also remotely install extensions by default (opt out) called "experiments" or something. Their anti-tracking is purposefully weak because o…

>And Mozilla leadership is associated with radical left politics, just as an extra. Do you have proof for this? I'd be curious. I also fail to see how is that related to the collecting data by default thing. Is that a leftist thing now?

Personally i'd rather judge people by the things they do (or fail to do), not who they are associated with.

Re: For advertising, Firefox now collects user data by default

#175
post #79

Do you guys like or trust Vivaldi?

I've been looking at it and they are fortunately very open about how they are funded (search engines and bookmarks). Opera was my browser of choice, back in the days of Presto, so I trust the Vivaldi CEO/CTO who also ran Opera. My main annoyance with Vivaldi is that it's Chromium based, I really don't like the idea of a monoculture of rendering engines.

Re: For advertising, Firefox now collects user data by default

#176
post #17

The CTO of Mozilla just posted on /r/firefox about this: https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/1e43w7v/a_word_abo...

TL;DR: sorry, we're not sorry. we will go ahead with it and explain it to you better why it's a good thing in your interest.

Re: For advertising, Firefox now collects user data by default

#177
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s clear in retrospect that we should have communicated more on this one What isn’t clear, in retrospect or otherwise, is why companies/apps/services need to keep learning this lesson. The user outcry was utterly predictable from even before the first web article was out. The fact that no one with decision power at Mozilla saw it coming is worrying: either they have zero understanding of people’s concerns for pri…

> The fact that no one with decision power at Mozilla saw it coming is worrying: either they have zero understanding of people’s concerns for privacy or they don’t care. Or the third option: they feel the tradeoff of HN & co's criticism style is not a big deal in the end. Criticism of Mozilla in general is very warranted right now, but the way(s) in which everyone is doing so just feels very out of touch with the act…

> the ad industry is not going away

That's the start of full blown stockholm syndrome.

No data is ever fully anonymous, don't pretend otherwise. So no data should be send at all.

Re: For advertising, Firefox now collects user data by default

#178
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DRM on a website = no search engine can scan the website = no users = the DRM website dies.

If the DRM is coming from Google, I'm sure they'll take that into consideration when designing it. Feels ripe for an anti-trust lawsuit, but IANAL so who knows.

EU would destroy them.

Re: For advertising, Firefox now collects user data by default

#179
post #173

Enough of this waiting for virtuous entities to address legitimate concerns of the public. The "ad industry" is a cancer and we need legal protection against this "industry". The solution is political not technical and definitely can not be left to "the market". Haven't you had enough?

How would that legal "protection" work in practice? What would it protect against? Who would it protect? What you say sounds reasonable. And I'm not trying to say "well, it's impossible because of some current status quo", because we could change that. What I'm trying to say is that we need this "industry" to work out the practicalities. Otherwise we are "protected" in a same way the GDPR protects us against 3rd part…

Legal: “it’s forbidden to target ads at specific users”

Done.

Re: For advertising, Firefox now collects user data by default

#180
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't hold your breath. It takes ages to develop a browser that's as fast as Firefox. CSS and JS are no joke.

Maybe it's time to move away from whole html/css/js, http and browsers? Let's build something that is Ad resistant from the start. Something that uses native technologies. Edit: We need something that does not need backing of large corporations or huge funding to access the web. Internet was always simple. We have become over dependent on browsers and http stack.

Or just don't access any content that is funded by advertising. The nonprofit web still exists. But for all content that's not someone's spare time passion project, someone's gotta foot the bill.
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