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"Privacy-Preserving" Attribution: Mozilla Disappoints Us yet Again

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Re: "Privacy-Preserving" Attribution: Mozilla Disappoints Us yet Again

#41

Post by subsection1h »

1GZ0 wrote: post #15

Legitimate question here: Is there a legit reason to Firefox over Chrome at this point? I mean, its not performance, its not convenience, and now its not even privacy. At this rate, it looks like Firefox is going to end up just like Chrome, but slower and less fully featured.

1. Chrome/Chromium's performance only recently became acceptable in 2022 when the Chromium team finally added support for tab discarding, many years after Firefox first had this feature. Tab discarding is essential for users who regularly have hundreds of tabs open. The Chromium team has historically not given a fuck about such users.

2. Firefox is vastly more configurable and extensible than Chrome/Chromium. For example, Tree Style Tab and Sidebery are far better for managing hundreds of open tabs than Tabs Outliner, the closest alternative for Chrome/Chromium. This difference, like the one above, is mostly relevant to power users.

Given that 20 years have passed since Firefox was first released, and 99.99% of web users nowadays are casuals who never have more than a couple tabs open and would sooner kill themselves than learn about the many useful ways Firefox can be configured via about:config, user.js, userChrome.css, userContent.css, etc., the answer to your question is probably no.

Re: "Privacy-Preserving" Attribution: Mozilla Disappoints Us yet Again

#42

Post by thomassmith65 »

mod50ack wrote: post #35
zahma wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently installed LibreWolf to separate online lives, but I remain ignorant of what actually distinguishes FF and LW. Also, to which tweaks were you referring?

LibreWolf is essentially a custom build of Firefox with stuff like this disabled or removed.

What distinguishes LibreWolf from Waterfox? Other than not being available for Mac, obviously.

edit: oops, there *is* a LibreWolf Mac port now

Re: "Privacy-Preserving" Attribution: Mozilla Disappoints Us yet Again

#43

Post by illiac786 »

JohnFen wrote: post #39
illiac786 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are focussing on privacy. They just didn’t communicate their approach very well. https://andrewmoore.ca/blog/post/mozilla-ppa/

He's just saying what Mozilla said about it. Perhaps there are people who didn't understand Mozilla's statements, so this is a useful thing. Regardless, I won't be participating in this effort. The advertising world has been so incredibly hostile for so long that I simply can't trust anything related to it.

What’s the alternative for funding all the services we use for free? Paywall everything?

Re: "Privacy-Preserving" Attribution: Mozilla Disappoints Us yet Again

#44

Post by sabbaticaldev »

nubinetwork wrote: post #28
sabbaticaldev wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

without PWA and a terrible service worker support, firefox holds the web behind.

Users don't care if their favourite websites are PWAs.

users don’t care about firefox anymore either

Re: "Privacy-Preserving" Attribution: Mozilla Disappoints Us yet Again

#45

Post by ohmyiv »

thomassmith65 wrote: post #42
mod50ack wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LibreWolf is essentially a custom build of Firefox with stuff like this disabled or removed.

What distinguishes LibreWolf from Waterfox? Other than not being available for Mac, obviously. edit: oops, there *is* a LibreWolf Mac port now

It's been a minute since I've used Librewolf so maybe things changed, but I remember that not being able to sync between devices was the biggest difference. There wasn't an account login option in LW, but there is in Waterfox.

Other than that, I dont remember any real differences. Waterfox has been fine for me because of the sync, but if you don't need account syncing, LW is fine.

Re: "Privacy-Preserving" Attribution: Mozilla Disappoints Us yet Again

#46

Post by JohnFen »

illiac786 wrote: post #43
JohnFen wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's just saying what Mozilla said about it. Perhaps there are people who didn't understand Mozilla's statements, so this is a useful thing. Regardless, I won't be participating in this effort. The advertising world has been so incredibly hostile for so long that I simply can't trust anything related to it.

What’s the alternative for funding all the services we use for free? Paywall everything?

That's a different issue entirely. I don't see why advertising couldn't work without the tracking it brings (the tracking just makes advertising more profitable). If we have to go ad-funded, that would be the more acceptable way.

However, I don't think that advertising is critical to providing free services. It's only important if you want to build a huge business doing it, or have something extremely fancy. In those cases, I don't see what's wrong (and I see plenty right) with doing in exchange for money.

Also, there were plenty of free services before advertising wormed its way into the web, and there still are ad-free free services now.

The ad world wants you to think that they're an essential online component, of course, but I am far from convinced that's actually true.

All that said, ignoring whether or not online advertising is a positive, the online ad industry itself is an extreme negative. We'd be much better off if it ceased to exist and was replaced by companies that don't treat people in such a contemptible way.

Re: "Privacy-Preserving" Attribution: Mozilla Disappoints Us yet Again

#47

Post by illiac786 »

JohnFen wrote: post #46
illiac786 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s the alternative for funding all the services we use for free? Paywall everything?

That's a different issue entirely. I don't see why advertising couldn't work without the tracking it brings (the tracking just makes advertising more profitable). If we have to go ad-funded, that would be the more acceptable way. However, I don't think that advertising is critical to providing free services. It's only important if you want to build a huge business doing it, or have something extremely fancy. In those…

Ok, non-tracking ads. So, until tracking ads stop existing, these will continue to bring in significantly less money.

It is extremely valuable to know which users are interested in your product. Advertisers want this.

This product from Mozilla can be seen as a step in this direction, leveling the field at a “less tracking” level…

At the moment, non-tracking ads bring much less money in hence much more content must be paywalled, it’s mechanical. It’s not like everyone with a site is putting up advertisements for fun.

Re: "Privacy-Preserving" Attribution: Mozilla Disappoints Us yet Again

#48

Post by JohnFen »

illiac786 wrote: post #47
JohnFen wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a different issue entirely. I don't see why advertising couldn't work without the tracking it brings (the tracking just makes advertising more profitable). If we have to go ad-funded, that would be the more acceptable way. However, I don't think that advertising is critical to providing free services. It's only important if you want to build a huge business doing it, or have something extremely fancy. In those…

Ok, non-tracking ads. So, until tracking ads stop existing, these will continue to bring in significantly less money. It is extremely valuable to know which users are interested in your product. Advertisers want this. This product from Mozilla can be seen as a step in this direction, leveling the field at a “less tracking” level… At the moment, non-tracking ads bring much less money in hence much more content must be…

Yes, I fully understand the reason for tracking: profit maximization. Isn't it interesting, though, that enormous swaths of the advertising world manage to be profitable without engaging in tracking (because it's not possible, but that's beside the point)?

> This product from Mozilla can be seen as a step in this direction, leveling the field at a “less tracking” level…

Sure, that's a reasonable view. It's certainly Mozilla's. My view, though, is that it instantly transforms the browser away from being a "user agent". It means that instead of an ad company tracking me, my browser is, which means that the browser itself has become an agent for others rather than for me.

It's just moving the tracking out of the hands of ad companies directly and into the browser. You could argue that's better, but it's still tracking me. It puts the browser into a position where it is adversarial.

That, at heart, is why I will be sure this stays disabled. To do otherwise means that I can't really trust the browser and will make the web even smaller for me than it has already become.

Re: "Privacy-Preserving" Attribution: Mozilla Disappoints Us yet Again

#50

Post by autoexec »

JohnFen wrote: post #46
illiac786 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s the alternative for funding all the services we use for free? Paywall everything?

That's a different issue entirely. I don't see why advertising couldn't work without the tracking it brings (the tracking just makes advertising more profitable). If we have to go ad-funded, that would be the more acceptable way. However, I don't think that advertising is critical to providing free services. It's only important if you want to build a huge business doing it, or have something extremely fancy. In those…

> However, I don't think that advertising is critical to providing free services.

This is certainly the case for open source software, including internet browsers. In the case of Firefox in particular, people have long been asking for the ability to help support development directly through donations and Mozilla has refused.

> the online ad industry itself is an extreme negative. We'd be much better off if it ceased to exist and was replaced by companies that don't treat people in such a contemptible way.

I fully agree here too. Surveillance capitalism especially causes a lot of harms that persist long after an ad is shown or a product is purchased. The ad industry will never stop wanting more data, more control, and more money. It's up to us to say that enough is enough.

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