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Choose the browser that best suits your privacy needs

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Re: Choose the browser that best suits your privacy needs

#261

Post by prox »

girvo wrote: post #216
dark-star wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is that i wasn't marketing. It was because FF was dog-slow back then and Chrome was (still is) blazingly fast

Most non-technical users don't give a crap about how fast or slow their browser was: if they did, they would've switched from IE to Firefox the first go 'round. To downplay the fact that google advertised Chrome on google.com is to rewrite history, in my opinion.

It’s not rewriting history. Firefox really was a slow browser in that time, especially with lots of tabs open. It was only with the Quantum (?) engine that FF became a lot faster. Webpages loading that bit snappier really was a big deal back then, probably for a lot of developers especially. Google was still riding on the “Do No Evil” vibes till about 2012-2014 I would wager.

Re: Choose the browser that best suits your privacy needs

#262

Post by jona-f »

masfoobar wrote: post #148

I have been a happy Firefox user for 15 years... maybe more. I have seen people use and complain Internet Explorer in my younger days, from version 6 to 7, etc. Even though I mention Firefox to them, they stay with IE. What amazes me is how quick they transitioned to Google Chrome when it released. This was around 2009. It amazes me how quick people jump to something especially when it has a big company behind advert…

I've been a melancholic Firefox user since it was called Netscape...

Tried Brave on my phone, but it managed to generate 90mb of network traffic in 10min where another browser takes 5mb. No idea what it did, I instantly lost trust.

Re: Choose the browser that best suits your privacy needs

#263

Post by zo1 »

jraph wrote: post #51
HenryBemis wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The curse of the default tells us that this will never be a problem. Do you honestly believe that 99% of the Android Firefox users spend time to change the settings on the browser? (change to DDG, block all 3rd party cookies, etc.) I did a quick search on DDG but no meaningful results came up with search engine for firefox on android. Gut feeling tells me 'minimal'. People do like their google remembering stuff. Conv…

To be an Android Firefox user, you already went to the trouble of installing an alternative browser on Android. The motivations to switch browsers might as well be the same as those which will push you to switch search engines. I would totally expect a reasonable number of Android Firefox users, of all apps, to change at least the search engine. (I'm with you on the general case)

Chrome is embedded in Android way more than people realize. It's at a level of what IE was with windows, probably way worse too depending on how you look at it.

Re: Choose the browser that best suits your privacy needs

#264

Post by hackideiomat »

bratwurst3000 wrote: post #196
rrreese wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the browsers themselves, but the extensions that provide tab group functionality - they often have the `Access your data for all web sites` permission. Maybe I trust the developer right now, but one day they may sell their plugin to someone else. Obviously its the same story for uBlock Origin, but I prefer to restrict the number of extensions with these permissions, and its a shame to need an extension for what i…

I don’t think those permission mean that they can collect the data and send it home. I think it means more something like „ accessing all code of website to block scripts“. If the would send data home I would be a bit irritated. Could someone please clarify this ? Because I know some extensions do exactly this . There was a talk from the ccc about this. But is this a Firefox specific problem ? Thanks for responding a…

Its FF specific as in, in chromium you do not need to install them as its a native feature

Re: Choose the browser that best suits your privacy needs

#266

Post by GTP »

OfSanguineFire wrote: post #151
JonathanBeuys wrote: post #33

My problem with Firefox is that a new Firefox windows can only be launched from the same environment (or only from a child process?) from which the first window has been started. Even the same user who started FF cannot launch a new window from a new shell. That constantly interferes with my workflow. Example: Say firefox has been started from the Destop already and now I want to start a new Firefox window from a roo…

Why are you using root terminals in the first place? This has always been considered poor security practice. Consequently, your workflow is a very peculiar one, and while you personally might feel inconvenience, I don’t think that this frustrates many other Firefox users out there.

He's using 'su' to switch to desktopuser, that's not necessarily, and quite likely not, an account with root privileges. 'su' stands for 'switch user', it's not just to become root.

Re: Choose the browser that best suits your privacy needs

#267

Post by zahllos »

izacus wrote: post #58
roydivision wrote: post #25

Mozilla get a lot of funding directly from Google for making Google the default search site [0]. Seems to me that this may be a problem going forward if Mozilla continue to allow ad blockers in Firefox. [0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2023-05-05/why-go...

Yes, attacking the source of revenue that sustains a project is always a sensitive prospect. But then again, what's the alternative for Mozilla? In case of YouTube Premium we've clearly seen that even HN software engineers, demanding six figure pay, will refuse to pay other software companies a few bucks for their engineering work. Where does Mozilla find funding to sustain itself elsewhere?

I'm not a 6 figure HN/SV engineer, don't live in the US.

But that's not the problem. YouTube premium simply isn't worth €168/year to me (I don't use it enough) and they'll still track me anyway wherever other people are using google analytics. I have a newspaper subscription to support local journalism and it is the same deal: the site is full of ads and just as bad as the free stuff, except I can see all the articles.

I use Firefox, though.

Re: Choose the browser that best suits your privacy needs

#268

Post by shiroiuma »

subtra3t wrote: post #175
luc4 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? We're not refusing to "pay other software companies a few bucks for their engineering work", we refuse to give in to the extortion attempts of a greedy multi-billion dollar company. I have and will keep financially supporting software I find useful. However, I do agree that it's questionable whether you can easily replace Google as a source of funding.

So it is "extortion" if you are asked to pay for a service you use? A service that is available for free and is very hardware-intensive, mind you.

If they want to charge for it, they're free to put it completely behind a paywall with accounts requiring sign-in, just like Netflix does.

The problem is they want it both ways: they want to give it out for free, but with annoying ads, but then they get mad when people don't look at the ads.

Where I live, people regularly stand on the street in busy pedestrian areas and hand out free packets of tissues with a piece of paper on top advertising some business. These businesses aren't clamoring for laws or some technical means to force people to look at the ads closely; people routinely take the tissues, toss out the ad, and use the tissues, and it's ok. But according to many, many HN users with stockholm syndrome, not reading these ads closely and just trashing them is somehow "stealing", because that tissue took resources and a factory to make.

Re: Choose the browser that best suits your privacy needs

#269

Post by prox »

pharmakom wrote: post #158
masfoobar wrote: post #148

I have been a happy Firefox user for 15 years... maybe more. I have seen people use and complain Internet Explorer in my younger days, from version 6 to 7, etc. Even though I mention Firefox to them, they stay with IE. What amazes me is how quick they transitioned to Google Chrome when it released. This was around 2009. It amazes me how quick people jump to something especially when it has a big company behind advert…

Some things (e.g. Slack calls) will not work in Firefox. It’s pretty annoying. Personally I still use Firefox.

But if Slack developers would use Firefox, they could support it? Chicken/egg problem?

Re: Choose the browser that best suits your privacy needs

#270

Post by Gareth321 »

nicbou wrote: post #221
8organicbits wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's your wishlist? Browsers feel pretty complete to me in that I can open all the websites I want to open, and atleast with FF I can easily block ads.

Mine is very simple: functional autofill and page translations. In most countries it’s a battle to turn it on. Even then, it’s not so reliable.

This is why I haven’t switched. Language translation support for most languages is completely missing on iOS. They just don’t support translate outside a handful of languages.
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