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Mozilla’s plan to fix internet privacy

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Re: Mozilla’s plan to fix internet privacy

#211

Post by JohnFen »

throwaway8291 wrote: post #3

I'm using Firefox for years, after Chrome started to ask me for a login (at around version 40). Never looked back. One day I woke up to a chart showing browser market share of FF at around 4%, which surprised me - as I thought many people would understand the implications and directions. Maybe I'm too optimistic. Update: Loved chrome, used it for years, I also love most Chrome engineering and all the innovation they…

> I woke up to a chart showing browser market share of FF at around 4%

I've used and loved Firefox from before it was called Firefox. I really, really, really want to like the modern Firefox, but I just can't. I find it limiting and irritating. So, sadly, I don't. I don't use Chrome either, though.

Re: Mozilla’s plan to fix internet privacy

#212

Post by sciurus »

RabbiPires wrote: post #7

All this talk about openness and freedom, and Mozilla's builds still ship with the proprietary Pocket extension by default. I really hope they don't have to rely on the revenue from Pocket at some point. Not only that, but it also connects to Google's SafeBrowsing servers. Is that required by their search engine contract with Google? Shouldn't be turned on by default.

> proprietary Pocket extension

FWIW, I believe all the Pocket client code is open source.

Re: Mozilla’s plan to fix internet privacy

#214

Post by toxican »

Causality1 wrote: post #154
smichel17 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I interpreted the comment to mean, they run old FF (with extensions) alongside chrome (incompatible), because they don't want to run two versions of FF. I don't quite understand this either, but it makes more sense than the other interpretation, I think.

Bingo. DownThemAll is something I would describe as "mission-critical". I had trouble getting two different versions of Firefox to not interfere with one another in odd ways such as everything running fine until I open a file with Firefox as the associated program and one version would open but have all the settings from the other version and Portable Firefox refusing to save settings or extensions at all. Using Chro…

FWIW, DownloadThemAll works fine on current Firefox. I used it a few weeks back to grab a bunch of SNES roms from an open directory without issue. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/downthemall/

Re: Mozilla’s plan to fix internet privacy

#215

Post by [deleted] »

SXX wrote: post #185
move-on-by wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One day I woke up to a chart showing browser market share of FF at around 4%, which surprised me - as I thought many people would understand the implications and directions. Its certainly low, but I also think FF usage is under reported due to built-in tracker blocking. For reference, FF uses the level 1 disconnect.me block list, which blocks StatCounter scrips from loading on 3rd party sites [1]. [1] https://githu…

> Its certainly low, but I also think FF usage is under reported due to built-in tracker blocking. Of course it's not perfect source, but CloudFlare for instance have client detection purely by SSL handshake fingerprint and it's show 6-7% for Firefox: https://malcolm.cloudflare.com/ Long ago Wikimedia also had own statistics that was pretty much relevant, but I guess it's discontinued.

[deleted]

Re: Mozilla’s plan to fix internet privacy

#216

Post by nsomaru »

gfody wrote: post #142

Using uMatrix really raised my awareness of how bad things are - spyTech is utterly everywhere. I still take the time to micromanage my matrix every time I encounter a new site and it’s ridiculous how long it can take to get a random infested page back to an acceptable level of usability.

uMatrix is better than nothing but I want more micromanagement. I want to be able to block on a per script basis because some sites will load 49 scripts from some other domain and only 1 or 2 will actually be needed to make the page work properly.

Re: Mozilla’s plan to fix internet privacy

#217

Post by jamienicol »

dependenttypes wrote: post #207

How ironic. Firefox is the browser that calls home the most on the first run https://twitter.com/jonathansampson/status/11658588961766604... They also disabled the ability for extensions to work on mozilla pages and things like about:addons by default, where mozilla uses google analytics. They add new tracking crap on the browser in every release, so you are at a loss what to disable first in about:config as the onli…

What is the relevance of "number of calls home on first run"? Surely the contents of said calls, and over an extended time period, is a much more important measurement?

Re: Mozilla’s plan to fix internet privacy

#218

Post by K0SM0S »

SXX wrote: post #185
move-on-by wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One day I woke up to a chart showing browser market share of FF at around 4%, which surprised me - as I thought many people would understand the implications and directions. Its certainly low, but I also think FF usage is under reported due to built-in tracker blocking. For reference, FF uses the level 1 disconnect.me block list, which blocks StatCounter scrips from loading on 3rd party sites [1]. [1] https://githu…

> Its certainly low, but I also think FF usage is under reported due to built-in tracker blocking. Of course it's not perfect source, but CloudFlare for instance have client detection purely by SSL handshake fingerprint and it's show 6-7% for Firefox: https://malcolm.cloudflare.com/ Long ago Wikimedia also had own statistics that was pretty much relevant, but I guess it's discontinued.

These numbers do seem in line with the propensity an average user has to switch default apps. I often compare this to how many people out of 100 bother to change their shoelaces on day 1. I'd wager less than 1, due to the friction of effort, configuration and learning curve, whereas the original usually just looks "nice", more "in place", "fitting" the decorum. Big icon is sitting there already.

Thus it's useful to consider market shares for all end-user internet-browsing devices, wherein x86 today is dwarfed by mobile and general ARM. The fact is you can pretty much correlate browser market share¹ with OS market share (which I guess retrospectively validates the anti-trust case against MS in the 90s).

- IE dominance throughout the x86 era (until early 2010s),

- then stratospheric rise of Chrome as Android took over 80-90% market share on mobile and probably 3-4x as many devices as Windows. Chrome took over everything else.

- Safari steady around 5%, about half of Apple's market share in both x86 and mobile (as low as half is surprising to me: since all iOS devices use Safari, the discrepancy between Apple's market share and Safari's must come from x86 MacOS, and I would have expected much more people to use default Safari on that OS, especially given its battery optimizations, compounded by Chrome's relative cost in RAM etc).

- Firefox is at an all-time low (still second though). Given the current trend of OS makers to expand into "ecosystems" (multiple devices/OS + cloud services), I don't find it surprising: mainstream users are more and more entrenched in the more-or-less walled "gardens" of each variety.

Clearly, Google is winning that game as of 2020 in terms of numbers, but Apple is winning too within its own (much smaller but more profitable!) userspace / customer base. MS is but failing so far, TBC, but meh it's Chromium underneath.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=es9DNe0l0Qo

Re: Mozilla’s plan to fix internet privacy

#219

Post by dependenttypes »

jamienicol wrote: post #217
dependenttypes wrote: post #207

How ironic. Firefox is the browser that calls home the most on the first run https://twitter.com/jonathansampson/status/11658588961766604... They also disabled the ability for extensions to work on mozilla pages and things like about:addons by default, where mozilla uses google analytics. They add new tracking crap on the browser in every release, so you are at a loss what to disable first in about:config as the onli…

What is the relevance of "number of calls home on first run"? Surely the contents of said calls, and over an extended time period, is a much more important measurement?

I think that the number of calls home on first run is more important because you don't get an option to disable them.

Re: Mozilla’s plan to fix internet privacy

#220

Post by PopeRigby »

MikusR wrote: post #173
thawaway1837 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know they own Pocket right? Pocket is basically their version of Read Later, etc...And it’s completely optional whether you want to use it or not. So I’m not sure I understand this complaint. Mozilla’s first integration of Pocket was poorly done, and rightfully raised complaints. But since they have purchased it, a lot of those complaints have been resolved.

And they promised to open source it. They didn't.

They're working on it https://github.com/Pocket
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