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X.com refuses to open with Firefox strict tracking protection enabled

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81–90 of 240 posts

Re: X.com refuses to open with Firefox strict tracking protection enabled

#81
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody's defending X. The point is that it doesn't matter that FF has strict privacy controls if sites can afford to just...not support FF. Its market share will dwindle to zero and privacy will be dead. FWIW it seems like the browser market is shifting away from third party cookies anyways, so I'm not sure this is a huge issue.

yep this is why cracking open ios was a mistake, especially for the android crowd who’d never be caught dead owning an iPhone anyway. there was barely a slope to begin with, you’ve got chrome in a majority and safari in a minority and then Firefox as a rounding error. Obviously if you crush safari, google is just gonna go mask-off full-manifest-v3 and plenty of other sites would be happy to follow. it was obvious fro…

The trouble here is that we're dealing with a concentrated market and neither Google nor Apple are selfless philanthropists. "We need Apple to protect us from Google" only leaves you wondering who will protect you from Apple. What we need is for both companies to be broken into a dozen or more pieces so none of them has market power in anything anymore.

Re: X.com refuses to open with Firefox strict tracking protection enabled

#82
post #73

So I get strict tracking protection and I can't open Twitter, no matter how hard I try? I'm not sure I see the downside.

Twitter is by far the best source of news and analysis currently. Outpaced only in some areas by niche, usually also crowd-sourced, sites like HN. A week ago twitter had pictures and videos from several angles of assasination attempt on Trump when media still reported "an incident." The difference is wild. Ditching twitter is like going back from old-school news tv to a telegraph. Anyway, I have strict tracking prote…

I’m gonna take your words at face value and ask you a question: what do you gain in gettin access to that news a few minutes in advance?

Re: X.com refuses to open with Firefox strict tracking protection enabled

#83
post #14

I'd keep Firefox and ditch the other. No second thoughts at all.

Pretty sure this is sentiment of the crowd here. But I'm not sure if the general public will see it that way.

I doubt the general public uses Firefox with strict tracking turned on (unfortunately)

Re: X.com refuses to open with Firefox strict tracking protection enabled

#84
post #8

Strict tracking in firefox blocks the following: Social media trackers, Cross-site cookies in all windows, Tracking content in all windows, Cryptominers, Known and suspected fingerprinters. I wouldn't wanna use a site that relies on any of the above to function anyway.

Cross site cookies are required for educational content sharing via LTI.

Every time I enable that feature, I have to write essays to client's security team for allowing it.

So frustrating.

Re: X.com refuses to open with Firefox strict tracking protection enabled

#85
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter is by far the best source of news and analysis currently. Outpaced only in some areas by niche, usually also crowd-sourced, sites like HN. A week ago twitter had pictures and videos from several angles of assasination attempt on Trump when media still reported "an incident." The difference is wild. Ditching twitter is like going back from old-school news tv to a telegraph. Anyway, I have strict tracking prote…

I’m gonna take your words at face value and ask you a question: what do you gain in gettin access to that news a few minutes in advance?

First, it was hours. Second, I'm there more for the tpot/schizo/alternative content. Most importantly though, it's not just a couple hours of difference, but the content is different: raw, with live comments (from the people you follow pulled up), memes, etc.

It's the vibe you used to find on usenet and then blogosphere.

Re: X.com refuses to open with Firefox strict tracking protection enabled

#86
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter is by far the best source of news and analysis currently. Outpaced only in some areas by niche, usually also crowd-sourced, sites like HN. A week ago twitter had pictures and videos from several angles of assasination attempt on Trump when media still reported "an incident." The difference is wild. Ditching twitter is like going back from old-school news tv to a telegraph. Anyway, I have strict tracking prote…

I’m gonna take your words at face value and ask you a question: what do you gain in gettin access to that news a few minutes in advance?

Other media is frustrating because it's always heavily filtered, has an agenda, and always talks like a PR release. It's like they're trying to keep some image of a respectable paper and so have to write in that stupid title - subtitle that repeats the title - first paragraph that repeats the subtitle - 30 paragraphs in complete disorder, half of which are a waste of time format

Edit: someone on Twitter obviously also has an agenda, but it's not hidden behind a supposedly impartial image (NYT, etc.), it's just some guy with known credentials posting opinions

Re: X.com refuses to open with Firefox strict tracking protection enabled

#87
post #8

Strict tracking in firefox blocks the following: Social media trackers, Cross-site cookies in all windows, Tracking content in all windows, Cryptominers, Known and suspected fingerprinters. I wouldn't wanna use a site that relies on any of the above to function anyway.

The question is, what's going on here? Is this Firefox blocking some path/subdomain/cookie on x.com because it's used by their tracking widget, but the same is also used by some important part of the site itself, so it's essentially a false positive and Mozilla need to adjust the filter to be more specific? Or is the site detecting the ad blocker and purposely refusing to load?

Twitter loads some javascript file from edgecastcdn.net and twimg.com. The browser blocks these loads because they are from third–party domains which is a big risk. Loading a script from a third party exposes anything secret or private on the page to the third party. Of course twimg.com is _probably_ owned and operated by Twitter, but it could be anyone. They’re not even registered through the same registrar, they have different registrant information, etc, etc. One is reported to be in Arizona, the other in California.

This is exactly how information about you is leaked to advertisers. Maybe the scripts you load from those third–party domains are harmless, or maybe they send everything you see and type back to the third party.

There is javascript on the page that detects the failure and puts up the error message blaming the browser. Really the browser is taking a completely legitimate action, and Twitter could get around it by simply hosting all of their javascript on the same domain that you visit. If you visit x.com it would load javascript from x.com. But if you visit twitter.com, it would load the same javascript files from twitter.com urls instead. Or twitter.com could just redirect you to x.com. Either way, the problem would be solved. But by asking you to turn off strict browsing mode, it enables Twitter to load javascript from real third parties that just want to advertise to you.

Re: X.com refuses to open with Firefox strict tracking protection enabled

#88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but now I can’t convince my family to use Firefox because it makes part of the internet unusable which is a deal breaker to them. Doesn’t matter if it’s the sites that are the problem, Firefox has lost momentum to such a degree that sites don’t care anymore. So they should tread carefully with features like this.

Yup. This is correct. Firefox taking a hard nose approach here makes it impossible to use this on parents / grandparents computers to help keep them safe. I don’t mind losing Twitter… but I can’t speak for others in my family. Just sucks. But on popular sites that run blockers, there should be like a little pop-up that says, “Give me access, and let this dumpster fire burn.”

[deleted]

Re: X.com refuses to open with Firefox strict tracking protection enabled

#89
post #8

Strict tracking in firefox blocks the following: Social media trackers, Cross-site cookies in all windows, Tracking content in all windows, Cryptominers, Known and suspected fingerprinters. I wouldn't wanna use a site that relies on any of the above to function anyway.

Cross site cookies are required for educational content sharing via LTI. Every time I enable that feature, I have to write essays to client's security team for allowing it. So frustrating.

Sorry, what's LTI?

Re: X.com refuses to open with Firefox strict tracking protection enabled

#90
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question is, what's going on here? Is this Firefox blocking some path/subdomain/cookie on x.com because it's used by their tracking widget, but the same is also used by some important part of the site itself, so it's essentially a false positive and Mozilla need to adjust the filter to be more specific? Or is the site detecting the ad blocker and purposely refusing to load?

This is a complete guess, but it could have to do with the twitter.com -> x.com migration. Still trying to load twitter.com assets, which are now third party.

Don't guess. Just read the source code!
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