Latest Firefox Brings Privacy Protections Front and Center • Hacker News Board

Re: Latest Firefox Brings Privacy Protections Front and Center

#101

Post by inetknght » Tue, Oct 22, 2019, 4:27 PM UTC

zelly wrote: post #42

lukebitts wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are those technical reasons?

JavaScript engine optimization Devtools Every benchmark: https://arewefastyet.com/linux64/overview?numDays=365 Anecdotally, Firefox uses a lot more CPU, memory, and battery. Makes sense since the JS engine is so much worse. In this era the browser is just a VM for JavaScript.

Javascript is a terrible language and many users actively fight it by turning it off.

Those users don't typically show up in whatever javascript-based metrics you're looking at. I don't think you'd care, either. You're literally building an echo chamber and then yelling into it that it's the best echo chamber.

Chrome is neither the "best" nor the "worst" javascript VM, nor is Firefox. Chrome is simply the most prolific. And that has nothing to do with Chrome's javascript implementation and everything to do with Google pushing hard for users and developers to switch to Chrome by putting it in front of their faces as much and often as possible. Everything from default-homepage being defaulted to Google.com, to that home page then asking users to switch to Chrome, and even "open sourcing" the engine and pushing for games and "competitors" to utilize it.

I have yet to find Firefox use more CPU, memory, or battery than Chrome. Of course I don't go around with Javascript turned on with every website either.

Given that so many websites utilize Google-based services it makes me wonder just how much of the "more CPU, more memory, and more battery" is also just "more of the same underhanded tactics from Google". Google already demonstrably does that for other products; why leave out third parties' websites from the shenanigans?

Re: Latest Firefox Brings Privacy Protections Front and Center

#102

Post by floatboth » Tue, Oct 22, 2019, 4:29 PM UTC

bn7t wrote: post #11

ropiwqefjnpoa wrote: post #4

So, FireFox or Brave? I'm currently using Brave and very happy with it.

There are good reasons not to use brave: - received venture capital from Peter Thiel (Chairman of Palantir) - BAT tokens aren't backed by any real value - https://jlelse.blog/posts/ditch-chrome/ More reasons: https://twitter.com/corbindavenport/status/11341432093896663...

IIRC they even collected the tokens on behalf of sites that didn't sign up, creating a quite weird and rather unethical "you basically have to sign up now" situation for publishers.

Re: Latest Firefox Brings Privacy Protections Front and Center

#103

Post by floatboth » Tue, Oct 22, 2019, 4:30 PM UTC

Vinnl wrote: post #99

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #21

The downside of all of this is that I feel like sites are now intentionally being designed to break if this kind of stuff is blocked. I used to be able to use Firefox Focus (which has tracking protection built-in) to pay most of my bills. This was convenient because I would just open up the one site in FFF, pay the bill, and then close it, with all browsing history automatically deleted. In the past month about 3 of…

Not usable on mobile, but one extension you might be interested in is Trash Panda: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/trash-bear/ Whenever I see a link to a website I suspect of siphoning off all my data (usually news websites), I right-click it and select "Open in new Trash Container". Do my thing, then close the tab, and all cookies and such for that site are cleared. It's almost like a Firefox Focus ta…

Or you could go all in with Multi-Account + Temporary containers :)

Re: Latest Firefox Brings Privacy Protections Front and Center

#104

Post by LinuxBender » Tue, Oct 22, 2019, 4:37 PM UTC

zaarn wrote: post #5

dajonker wrote: post #2

I see one risk for Firefox: if they block all trackers, e.g. Google Analytics, then it would appear to people viewing browser statistics in Google Analytics that no-one is using Firefox, and thus the developers will be told they don't need to test anything on Firefox.

Nobody looks at logs anymore? Strange, those are very useful. Google Analytics isn't the only analytics tool and as blockers have become more prevalent relying on GA as your sole source of truth is becoming increasingly desperate to worship Google. Ideally you run a simple analytics tool alongside that is lightweight and doesn't get blocked (ie, privacy friendly) as well as running a log analyzer on your apache/webse…

> Nobody looks at logs anymore?

Nope. It blew my mind as well. I used to work for a company that spent about 70 million per quarter on advertising and they most certainly wanted every .. last .. access log .. line. They would scrutinize the way I did log rotation to ensure nothing was lost.

At my current gig, the web marketing team didn't even know what access logs were. I don't think they left out a single tracker on the site.

Re: Latest Firefox Brings Privacy Protections Front and Center

#105

Post by coldpie » Tue, Oct 22, 2019, 4:37 PM UTC

sp332 wrote: post #54

lprd wrote: post #25

This is great! On another note, I'm wondering when I can remove uBlock Origin?

uBO relies on 3rd-party filter lists to know what to block. The most popular of these is Easylist, which is not well-maintained and doesn't have a good appeal process. I don't think Firefox should build this in unless they're going to support the maintenance of a high-quality filter list with a transparent add/remove process.

> The most popular of these is Easylist, which is not well-maintained

I've never had a problem with a website that was solved by turning off Easylist. I also almost never see ads. So it seems high quality to me. What problems have you had?

Re: Latest Firefox Brings Privacy Protections Front and Center

#106

Post by snazz » Tue, Oct 22, 2019, 4:38 PM UTC

jakemal wrote: post #41

thrwn_frthr_awy wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like a risk for using Google Analytics to me. If your analytics suite isn’t representative of your site’s traffic and users, maybe you should look for a more ethical platform/solution?

Are there more ethical platforms that don't get blocked by default for Firefox users?

While nowhere near as complete as GA, Cloudflare’s built-in analytics are really useful and require nothing added to the client. The country level geolocation is interesting to look at.

Re: Latest Firefox Brings Privacy Protections Front and Center

#107

Post by c3534l » Tue, Oct 22, 2019, 4:39 PM UTC

elcomet wrote: post #90

c3534l wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I looked up some DevOps stuff on reddit through a proxy with adblockers in private mode and all of a sudden my front page was filled with posts about depression, men asking advice about how to talk to women, and advice about getting a job and moving out of your parents house. These were based on sessions cookies, but I was still kinda offended it pegged me as a sad loser just because I wanted to know more about NGINX…

Are you sure those weren't just regular ads without any personalization ? This seem like the kind of ad which is very broad and could fit most men (how to talk to woman, how to get a job, ...)

Yes, because I closed my private window and reopened it to see if it made a difference. They also had regional stuff from where my vpn is located.

Re: Latest Firefox Brings Privacy Protections Front and Center

#108

Post by sp332 » Tue, Oct 22, 2019, 4:45 PM UTC

coldpie wrote: post #105

sp332 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

uBO relies on 3rd-party filter lists to know what to block. The most popular of these is Easylist, which is not well-maintained and doesn't have a good appeal process. I don't think Firefox should build this in unless they're going to support the maintenance of a high-quality filter list with a transparent add/remove process.

> The most popular of these is Easylist, which is not well-maintained I've never had a problem with a website that was solved by turning off Easylist. I also almost never see ads. So it seems high quality to me. What problems have you had?

Here's an example. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/07/i-updated-my-crusty-... Ars Technica has certain posts, clearly marked with a header and everything, that include Amazon affiliate links. Easylist has a specific list of sites, mostly tech sites, which are not allowed to use Amazon affiliate links. It's not a general ban on affiliate links, and blocking them this way simply removes the text from the middle of a sentence. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/07/i-updated-my-crusty-... and the response from the maintainers https://github.com/easylist/easylist/issues/3524

[Edit: previous general discussion about EasyList https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20593563 ]

Re: Latest Firefox Brings Privacy Protections Front and Center

#109

Post by coldpie » Tue, Oct 22, 2019, 4:48 PM UTC

sp332 wrote: post #108

coldpie wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The most popular of these is Easylist, which is not well-maintained I've never had a problem with a website that was solved by turning off Easylist. I also almost never see ads. So it seems high quality to me. What problems have you had?

Here's an example. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/07/i-updated-my-crusty-... Ars Technica has certain posts, clearly marked with a header and everything, that include Amazon affiliate links. Easylist has a specific list of sites, mostly tech sites, which are not allowed to use Amazon affiliate links. It's not a general ban on affiliate links, and blocking them this way simply removes the text from the middle of…

Wow yeah, that does look pretty terrible. Going to sub to that issue, thanks for the link.

Re: Latest Firefox Brings Privacy Protections Front and Center

#110

Post by daedalus_j » Tue, Oct 22, 2019, 4:48 PM UTC

Zenbit_UX wrote: post #83

sucrose wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So it's possible that by using a VPN, you're seeing ads recommended for other people using the same VPN?

Yes, that is exactly what happens when you use a VPN. Only services like primevideo and Netflix bother to detect VPNs and force you to get off, 99% of the web treats you like a regular user, but with an insane diversity of interests.

That's becoming less and less true.

For example, the wiki.debian.org blocks users of (at least) privateinternetaccess VPN. (You get a 403 forbidden. This doesn't happen when I use my personal VPN routed out through a VPS provider, only through PIA.)

I have encountered this with various other sites as well, both outright blocks and degraded experience.

Frustrating. Although I don't really trust VPN providers, I trust my ISP even less, and a VPN helps me get by some of their more heavy handed shaping.