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For advertising, Firefox now collects user data by default

heise.de

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

#311

Post by LunaSea »

remedan wrote: post #142
qwertox wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most users just accept the defaults they’re given, and framing the issue as one of individual responsibility is a great way to mollify savvy users while ensuring that most peoples’ privacy remains compromised. Cookie banners are a good example of where this thinking ends up. The problem we currently have with cookie banners is thanks to the browser vendors not caring about it. An API could exist which a page can qu…

This was already tried with the Do Not Track header. Websites simply ignore it. They don't want an easy way to get the user's preference. Because they know that most users would set it to decline tracking. Sites would rather annoy every visitor for the chance that they click 'accept'.

Users also don't want to pay to access content.

So I guess that both the user and the site can't get what they want and we should scrap the internet.

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

#313

Post by closewith »

Barrin92 wrote: post #294
freeone3000 wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or they could just not do this shit. Completely refuse to help your enemies. Actually support their users.

Firefox has 3% market share. Completely refusing to engage with your enemies only works when you have the actual guns to back that attitude up. If you refuse to engage with the ad industry they just ignore you. Oh and the company that owns a large part of the world's ad industry and owns the browser that has 65% market share also pays like 90% of your bills. I mean, what's step two of your glorious plan to charge fis…

Firefox playing their game makes Firefox completely redundant. The advertisers get your data either way, so why not use Chrome?

Firefox compromising heralds its own irrelevance.

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

#314

Post by acdha »

rc_mob wrote: post #253
southernplaces7 wrote: post #232

One of the few things about Firefox that made me attempt to tolerate its repeatedly slow, shitty performance and tendency to slow my whole device down, was the privacy angle. With that gone, why bother? Might as well use Chrome. At least it's light and fairly quick.

Eh? Chrome is famously bulky and a memory hog

Firefox’s reputation got hit a decade or so ago by performance problems in popular extensions like AdBlock Plus, and it was common to see people mistake switching to a new browser as the reason for the speed up because the initial performance would be notably better before they loaded the new one up with extensions, too.

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

#315

Post by closewith »

arepublicadoceu wrote: post #193
Klonoar wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Or the third option: they feel the tradeoff of HN & co's criticism style is not a big deal in the end. Well, right now, with their dwindling market cap, I feel like their only userbase is HN & co's type of user. They repeatedly failed to increase their user base with non privacy conscious adjacent communities. So antagonizing the ONLY folks that go through the trouble of installing a non default browser to have a w…

I wonder what the market share in that segment is? From my experience, startup types almost exclusively use Chrome or Safari. Firefox doesn't even register with most devs.

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

#316

Post by beepbooptheory »

freeone3000 wrote: post #258
mightyham wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether you agree or disagree with what the Mozilla foundation does, it seems fairly matter of fact to say that they are pursuing liberal policies and that posts from the leadership, like the couple below, employ a good bit of leftist rhetoric. https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/first-steps-toward-lasti... https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/leadership/mozilla-racia...

Seems like standard centre-left to me: no issues with current ideas of capital or governance structures at all!

Getting people to identify corporate PR speak with "radical leftist rhetoric" is perhaps one of the most darkly genius angles of the conservative culture war in recent memory.

Who even read these dumb company blogs before this?

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

#317

Post by itscrush »

MrAlex94 wrote: post #110
ranguna wrote: post #42

https://librewolf.net/ And fallback to Firefox when things don't work. Which is usually on sketchy websites, websites that have heavy bot protection and fingerprinting or ones that use gpu APIs.

A few criticisms of LibreWolf: * There is no legal entity behind the project. Should anything ever happen with the project (it can happen, even if unlikely), there are no legal ramifications. * The binaries aren't signed. Yes, code signing is a bit of a racket, but there is some merit in it. * There is no auto-update mechanism. Might not seem like a big deal, but IMO it is, especially on Windows where you're recommen…

Have you spent time with Waterfox as an alternative or have some thoughts when comparing against Librefox?

In app update prompts work for me, they have a TOS / Legal Entity it seems. They broke away from Startpage in recentish years.

Plenty of feature trade offs to compare though with Librefox.

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

#318

Post by closewith »

cqqxo4zV46cp wrote: post #116
Klonoar wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

[flagged]

This comment shows such a lack of context of the history of Firefox that I wonder if it's trolling?

Firefox exists and reached its peak because of the people that idealogically cared about the Web and interoperable,security, privacy, etc who contributed to and advocated for Firefox.

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

#319

Post by belorn »

alabhyajindal wrote: post #284

Greeted by a cookie banner in a different language when I open. I swear cookie banners are the biggest problem facing the internet. We need to do something about this!

EU created a task force in 2021 to address the cookie banner, which gave a report last year that basically said that all current form of cookie banners are practically not legal in terms of giving consent.

As with this kind of regulations, we now have to wait for the law suits to target a few select large companies, then the courts to reconfirm that the regulations says what it says, and then appeals, and then finally the large companies will pay a large fine and then comply, followed then by the industry in large.

Delay, delay and then delay some more has been the response from the data collection industry for the past 10 years. Same for right to repair regulations and smartphones.

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

#320

Post by throw10920 »

temporarely wrote: post #162

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?

Please don't engage in this blatant political activism and flamebait here. This is anti-intellectual and not what I want to see on HN.

I agree that something needs to be done about the ad industry and rampant data collection, but your emotionally manipulative comments are not it, and actively make it harder to discuss solutions to the problem.

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