In a swipe at Chrome, Firefox now blocks ad trackers by default • Hacker News Board

Re: In a swipe at Chrome, Firefox now blocks ad trackers by default

#381

Post by oftenwrong » Wed, Sep 04, 2019, 6:51 PM UTC

fouric wrote: post #368

fnord77 wrote: post #351

> The block might appeal to users, but is potentially worrying to publishers Yes, let's have pity on these poor publishers who are relentless infiltrating and measuring our online lives so they can squeeze a few more bucks out of the data grab. Trackers have gotten insidious. I have privacy badger and on one particular news site there were 36 distinct trackers. And somehow they're still getting around the blockers be…

Wired is a (particularly) tracking-reliant publisher, so I'm not particularly surprised that they adopted this tone. I also hope that any sort of tracking-based business model goes extinct. Unfortunately, in the case of online publishing, consumers have repeatedly rejected micropayments (most recently Blendle[1]), which I believe is the only viable alternative. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blendle

I tried loading Wired in a stock Chromium, and it's hard to believe how poor of an experience it is. You have to dismiss multiple overlays. The actual article is only readable in a tiny window formed by sticky elements and ads. Every page or so there is a big ad in the middle of the article. Hundreds of requests flying by in the background.

In my "daily driver" browser (a customised Firefox), nothing loads by default but the HTML. No JS, no CSS, no web fonts, etc. No overlays. The text fills the page, rendered in the font I prefer, in the size that I find easiest to read. No ads. Only a handful of requests. People tell me I'm crazy for rejecting the modern web, but the experience is often superior.

Re: In a swipe at Chrome, Firefox now blocks ad trackers by default

#382

Post by liability » Wed, Sep 04, 2019, 7:01 PM UTC

rifung wrote: post #331

marble-drink wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Diversity" in tech means "we should have programmers with skin colour X or genital configuration Y". But I don't care about people's skin colour or genitals. It turns out people are diverse anyway and that's why not everyone end up in tech.

> It turns out people are diverse anyway and that's why not everyone end up in tech That's true but also ignores the problem that many people drop out of tech due to discrimination or feeling like they don't belong even though they are interested. "While a majority of the men in the study reported that their internship experiences were positive, women’s experiences were much more of a mixed bag, full of ageism, sexis…

It's unclear to me what the relationship is between treating women like people and fat stacks of cash.

It seems to me the former can be done without the latter, which makes me suspect anybody who asks for the latter as though it were a prerequisite for doing the former.

Re: In a swipe at Chrome, Firefox now blocks ad trackers by default

#383

Post by saagarjha » Wed, Sep 04, 2019, 7:07 PM UTC

burtonator wrote: post #328

Serious question. Say I have a site and I want to track users. Do I have to just do this via my own HTTP logs now if I want this working with Firefox? I mean this is how it was done in the bad old days. I have no nefarious intent. I just need to figure out what features my users are using so I can fix them if they're broken. It would be nice to possibly get some sort of explicit opt-in from Firefox. I guess one worka…

> I just need to figure out what features my users are using so I can fix them if they're broken.

Is there a way you can do this without collecting any data, or making it opt-in?

Re: In a swipe at Chrome, Firefox now blocks ad trackers by default

#384

Post by yeahforsureman » Wed, Sep 04, 2019, 7:18 PM UTC

So...when is FF going to get proper site isolation?

Re: In a swipe at Chrome, Firefox now blocks ad trackers by default

#385

Post by jdc » Wed, Sep 04, 2019, 7:26 PM UTC

oarsinsync wrote: post #316

jdc wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can use a generic OSS bug bounty market place, eg. Bounty Source. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_bounty

Which then take 10% off the top for administration of the platform. You cannot avoid funding administration, as that function enables the distribution of the money in the first place.

Of course distribution isn't free, but it can be made very efficient. So it follows that people will shop around.

Re: In a swipe at Chrome, Firefox now blocks ad trackers by default

#386

Post by johnisgood » Wed, Sep 04, 2019, 7:44 PM UTC

guerrilla wrote: post #342

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When everyone has an equal opportunity. "Equal opportunity" is an unattainable goal, like "utopia". It sounds good in the abstract, but "equal opportunity" is such a subjective concept that it's useless for any practical purpose. Every person's life is as much a product of random chance as innate potential, so there's no objective measure of equal opportunity by which a society that enforces equal opportunity could…

It turns out that measuring discrimination and opportinity is a pretty well studied topic. It's mainly the discipline of sociology which quantifies this but there are plenty of other disciplines, such as economics, that do it as well. You can do a Google scholar search to learn more. By the way, targets do not need to be attainable in order to produce (also quantifiable) positive effects.

> It turns out that measuring discrimination and opportinity is a pretty well studied topic.

And measuring skills is not?

Re: In a swipe at Chrome, Firefox now blocks ad trackers by default

#387

Post by jacekm » Wed, Sep 04, 2019, 7:56 PM UTC

fouric wrote: post #368

fnord77 wrote: post #351

> The block might appeal to users, but is potentially worrying to publishers Yes, let's have pity on these poor publishers who are relentless infiltrating and measuring our online lives so they can squeeze a few more bucks out of the data grab. Trackers have gotten insidious. I have privacy badger and on one particular news site there were 36 distinct trackers. And somehow they're still getting around the blockers be…

Wired is a (particularly) tracking-reliant publisher, so I'm not particularly surprised that they adopted this tone. I also hope that any sort of tracking-based business model goes extinct. Unfortunately, in the case of online publishing, consumers have repeatedly rejected micropayments (most recently Blendle[1]), which I believe is the only viable alternative. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blendle

I am yet to see micropayments system that is easy enough. I don't want to look for my credit card or log in to paypal just to transfer $1 to someone. In my opinion the system that Brave is trying to introduce has the greatest potential. If only I could buy Brave tokens instead of "earning" them by watching ads I would have gladly supported my favorite publishers.

Re: In a swipe at Chrome, Firefox now blocks ad trackers by default

#388

Post by RobertRoberts » Wed, Sep 04, 2019, 7:56 PM UTC

Ensorceled wrote: post #357

RobertRoberts wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks, that was the comment I recalled. You seemed to imply that Mozilla was being up front about where the money was being spent. Do you have any documentation on the budget inside Mozilla? Because I think this would solve the issue of transparency for many people here. If only a tiny fraction of the money went to social programs, maybe more people wouldn't care. But if it's a significant portion, then maybe they a…

https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/about/public-records/ As a foundation (charity/NFP) its records are, by law, very transparent. Any issue of transparency has been invented.

Thanks for the link. Since I am not an accountant, I don't think I could look at this paperwork and determine how their budget works.

Is anyone here an accountant? Or know of a summary online somewhere by an accountant? The tax paperwork for the company I work at is many hundreds of pages (if not thousands), and I know I could not determine from that paperwork how the money is spent. I'd need actual access to internal books, and even then I'd likely not be able to tell.

It seems some budget clarity is in their annual reports:

>"In addition to building products and technology, Mozilla also invests in people and organizations around the world who share its mission."

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/annualreport/2017/

Who are they supporting?

Some real numbers from this page:

>In 2017, Mozilla spent $966,365 on its agenda-setting work.

>In 2017, Mozilla spent $2,733,016 to support our mobilization work.

>In 2017, Mozilla spent $13,256,720 to support the Mozilla Leadership Program.

This last bit is suspicious, mainly because it's the same technique used by IKEA to avoid millions in taxes and in this circumstances is a bit scam-like. (trademark royalties)

>$10.1M of this revenue came from the proceeds from Firefox, which are transferred from Mozilla Corporation to Mozilla Foundation through a trademark royalty agreement.

So here's a clear statement that $10.1 million dollars is moved away from Firefox development and put into the Mozilla Foundation.

Why this is really odd is because Mozilla Corp is owned by Mozilla Foundation. Why is the parent organization taking funding from the corporation it's supposed to be supporting?

So, it seems that many people are right about Mozilla being clear about where their money is going, but no one seems to be stating they truly understand where that is. This seems like three car monty with donations to Firefox.

Re: In a swipe at Chrome, Firefox now blocks ad trackers by default

#389

Post by martin_a » Wed, Sep 04, 2019, 7:56 PM UTC

jshowa3 wrote: post #363

martin_a wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are made up reasons. If you have a solid definition of what is needed and what not, this is no problem at all.

Please tell me, how is server dying, need immediate replacement "made up"? How is a flood disaster in organizational building "made up"? Sure, I made them up on a whim, but they're based on real scenarios that restricted funding may not cover.

Sorry if I was misunderstandable.

What I mean is that those limitations are made up. You just have to clearly state what you want to do with the money and that will fix those problems. Obviously restricted funds are nothing that is set up in 5 minutes, but I would expect that somebody really thinks about that.

And if you state that up to 10% of the restricted funds might also be used for any other projects of Mozilla, that might be okay.

Something like "your fund will be used for maintaining the infrastructure necessary to provide downloads of the latest binaries" would also be totally fine for me in terms of "buy a new server for this whenever you need it", be it a flooding or just the old server dying. But that obviously does not cover putting money into whatever shiny project is prioritized right now and might die in a year or less.

Otherwise you'll have a cash cow project that finances everything else. While that might be nice for one side, the other side would love to know that their funds are used to improve the already good product.

Re: In a swipe at Chrome, Firefox now blocks ad trackers by default

#390

Post by johnisgood » Wed, Sep 04, 2019, 7:56 PM UTC

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #264

hgoel wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't explicitly choosing based on their race also making the same assumptions? That there aren't enough minority candidates, and thus they need to explicitly force more of them in? After all, why would there be any bias if selections were completely merit based (that is, blind to race and sex) unless the pools being drawn from were themselves biased? The best way to get around biases in the hiring process obviously…

Its sophistry, to say "to combat race bias, you are using race bias! That's just as bad!" Of course one is in service to bigotry, and the other to equality. That makes them pretty different. If you're driving down the road, and your car pulls slightly to the right, you steer slightly to the left to compensate. Sure, we'd all like a car that steers straight. But it doesn't. So we steer slightly to one side.

I do not understand your analogy. Are you implying that we cannot be unbiased? I do agree with that, however, what is this diversity thing, fighting over biases or preferences (sides)? I do not understand how one side is bigotry, and the other is equality. It seems like it is just a matter of POV. When you are steering to the left, the right is in service of bigotry, and when you are steering to the right, the left is in service of bigotry. Additionally, according to your analogy, it seems like that everyone - including the people who say they prefer "equality" - is actually not steering straight, just to a different side.

It would be great if the people who preach we should not discriminate based on ethnicity, religion, and so forth would actually stop doing that, and start paying more attention to skills, which is actually more relevant to the job. It seems like that they do not wish (or at the very least do not, regardless of intent) to stop discriminating, they just steer to a different side.