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Mozilla’s plan to fix internet privacy

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Re: Mozilla’s plan to fix internet privacy

#281

Post by h91wka »

Vinnl wrote: post #274
ninkendo wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are we sure about this? I mean I mostly agree that telemetry is different, but how can we be sure Mozilla isn't sharing their telemetry information with ad networks to help fingerprint you? It seems the only way to be truly sure is if we could verify the browser sent no information at all, right? Or else it's just about trust, same as any other browser.

It's mostly about trust, but we have more reasons to trust Mozilla than other browser vendors - they consist of a community of people who care about their values, they've staked their reputation on those values, they are transparent, they're a legal non-profit, etc. Their financial statements are also public, and I don't think any income from ad networks has been found there.

> More reasons to trust Mozilla?

I think Cliqz incident and Shield Studies AR Game incident prove that you can trust Mozilla as much as any other huge corp.

Re: Mozilla’s plan to fix internet privacy

#282

Post by prepend »

hvis wrote: post #65
prepend wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not perfect, but I like it better than the alternatives (selling user data, non profit). Technically the browser is nice, but there’s something nice about a for profit org whose incentives are aligned with mine. For now, I use a FireFox for similar reasons, but I like Brave’s mode for the web better than the “bad ad” model that google and Facebook push. I used to like Opera for similar reasons.

What could one find disgreeable in a company being a non-profit?

I am a big proponent for non-profit but I think they can be risky if they are dependent on donors, especially a few donors.

Mozilla Foundation has google as it’s biggest revenue source [0], so if Google ever decides to change this it will cripple the org.

I think this would be different if revenue came from many donors so this risk would be lower.

I use FireFox and support Mozilla, but it’s challenging to donate to FireFox as Mozilla runs quite a few projects.

Nobody is perfect, but non-profits have risks like any organization.

[0] was yahoo for a while, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Foundation

Re: Mozilla’s plan to fix internet privacy

#283

Post by h91wka »

Vinnl wrote: post #117
h91wka wrote: post #105

It's funny how Mozilla preaches privacy, but if you open `about:config' and count 1) parameters that include word "telemetry" 2) everything that looks like a unique token 3) "mozilla.org" URLs you'll see that the sum is steadily going up with every release. It leaves me under impression that Mozilla is trying to follow Facebook and Google. Lately they removed setting to use a custom page for the new tabs, leaving onl…

And none of that is used to influence elections or make you buy stuff you don't want.

And why do you think this whole "interest based" business exists?

Re: Mozilla’s plan to fix internet privacy

#284

Post by hvis »

luckylion wrote: post #273
hvis wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a difficult problem. Unless a majority-marketshare browser does that as well (and we know that Chrome certainly won't), a lot of websites might choose to block all Firefox users instead. And perhaps you and I know how to disable an ad blocker selectively. An average user might simply see problems with websites and uninstall Firefox as "not working", tanking its marketshare even more. So Google doesn't necessaril…

True, though I think that would be a short (and just!) war that would get us to a much better place: hiding the type of user agent you're using from the site means less finger printing opportunities. It very much could lead to the opposite too. "Oh hey, the web works when you're using Firefox". My mother has become a missionary (for adblockers, not firefox) since she's once witnessed how websites look on a friend's P…

> hiding the type of user agent you're using from the site means less finger printing opportunities

There are other (maybe a bit more complex) ways to tell what browser you're using, and whether you block ads.

> I've never seen a quality site that tried to block me for using an adblock

...yet. This is starting to change, and a lot of websites still have ads as their main source of revenue. Either that, or subscriptions, and the latter (for online newspapers, for example) is taking off very slowly.

Again, our usage patterns are in the minority, so whatever tough choices we might want to make are not necessarily to everyone's benefit right now.

At least in theory, I support the Better Ads initiative by Adblock Plus. Even though I've mostly been using uBlock Origin lately...

Re: Mozilla’s plan to fix internet privacy

#285

Post by Causality1 »

toxican wrote: post #214
Causality1 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

Hey that's fantastic, thanks for the info. I'd given up hope.

Re: Mozilla’s plan to fix internet privacy

#286

Post by Vinnl »

h91wka wrote: post #281
Vinnl wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's mostly about trust, but we have more reasons to trust Mozilla than other browser vendors - they consist of a community of people who care about their values, they've staked their reputation on those values, they are transparent, they're a legal non-profit, etc. Their financial statements are also public, and I don't think any income from ad networks has been found there.

> More reasons to trust Mozilla? I think Cliqz incident and Shield Studies AR Game incident prove that you can trust Mozilla as much as any other huge corp.

And I think putting those at the same level as Google's and Microsoft's shenanigans, especially considering the other properties I mentioned and how they influenced how those incidents were dealt with, is grossly exaggerating.

Re: Mozilla’s plan to fix internet privacy

#288

Post by h91wka »

Vinnl wrote: post #286
h91wka wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> More reasons to trust Mozilla? I think Cliqz incident and Shield Studies AR Game incident prove that you can trust Mozilla as much as any other huge corp.

And I think putting those at the same level as Google's and Microsoft's shenanigans, especially considering the other properties I mentioned and how they influenced how those incidents were dealt with, is grossly exaggerating.

1) Aforementioned companies don't market themselves as "privacy-centered" 2) If you re-read the original post, you'll notice that I was talking about trends. Increasingly aggressive telemetry and "interest-based" features is a relatively recent trend in Firefox, so give it some time before comparing it with megacorps that developed such stuff for years.

Re: Mozilla’s plan to fix internet privacy

#289

Post by luckylion »

hvis wrote: post #284
luckylion wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, though I think that would be a short (and just!) war that would get us to a much better place: hiding the type of user agent you're using from the site means less finger printing opportunities. It very much could lead to the opposite too. "Oh hey, the web works when you're using Firefox". My mother has become a missionary (for adblockers, not firefox) since she's once witnessed how websites look on a friend's P…

> hiding the type of user agent you're using from the site means less finger printing opportunities There are other (maybe a bit more complex) ways to tell what browser you're using, and whether you block ads. > I've never seen a quality site that tried to block me for using an adblock ...yet. This is starting to change, and a lot of websites still have ads as their main source of revenue. Either that, or subscriptio…

> There are other (maybe a bit more complex) ways to tell what browser you're using, and whether you block ads.

Yes, and doing so will escalate the arms race. I believe that browsers will come out as the winners, and that's a good thing for privacy.

> This is starting to change, and a lot of websites still have ads as their main source of revenue.

Sure, but then again, most sites I see on a daily basis in Google are pure shit - made only to display ads, with the same content that is also on a million other pages, slightly rewritten so Google considers it unique. Nothing of value will be lost if the all burn up and go away.

I'm sure you're right, there will be unforeseen consequences, but I feel like appeasing the adtech industry by not stopping their surveillance is not going to be helpful.

Better Ads focuses only on perception: A flashy, dumb static banner is bad, a stalking text-ad that sends information back to its creepy owner where it is then correlated with MasterCard payment data, your location, the interests of your friends etc and saves all of that into a shadowy profile that follows you around is fine, because it's text only and is labeled "advertisement". I can't decide whether it was just an extortionist cash-grab or a smart way to redirect the attention from the actual problem to the surface problem ("it's bright, and it's animated").

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