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Bunny fonts – privacy respecting drop-in replacement for Google Fonts

fonts.bunny.net

81–90 of 346 posts

Re: Bunny fonts – privacy respecting drop-in replacement for Google Fonts

#81
I'd suggest stop using 3rd party font hosting altogether and adopt something like Fontsource [1]. That way, no reliance on 3rd parties, full privacy, and full control over font file changes (yeah, apparently, fonts are changed from time to time).

[1] https://fontsource.org

Re: Bunny fonts – privacy respecting drop-in replacement for Google Fonts

#82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we're in a country with better privacy laws Speaking as a European: I think this is a very important topic for us. I don't think Americans and American companies understand how little trust rest of us have for the American government. Working with a company that is not subject to the whims of the American government is a huge privacy win. If a company pitches me a product, they start 1 points ahead if they are base…

How do the laws play out in practice? If bunny.net started storing user agent and IP address information indefinitely, and someone complained, how likely is it enforcement action is actually enacted on them? It seems such a low-impact privacy violation would be a waste of time for a GDPR/etc agency to focus on compared to things like ad companies selling location data.

> How do the laws play out in practice?

I think this is important to consider. In practice, it's difficult to have any recourse with an American company. In Europe it's more expected and common that government and consumer orgs take an active role. Both legal culture and culture-culture (?) are just very different, leading people to preferring to steer clear of this expensive and adversarial (compared to EU climes) environment.

Re: Bunny fonts – privacy respecting drop-in replacement for Google Fonts

#83

This is a great project, but I learned to use a system font stack[0] instead to address latency issues on my sites. I run an e-commerce site and every millisecond in rendering time is potentially a lost sale. It needs to be fast, especially for those on 3G (or 2G?) connections. [0] https://systemfontstack.com/

This is my preferred solution too. It’s really not necessary to use custom fonts to achieve a nice design in most cases.

Except for Android, very poor default fonts.

Re: Bunny fonts – privacy respecting drop-in replacement for Google Fonts

#85
post #31

I find it really strange where some privacy debates have gone wrong, and this is a perfect example. It's basically a form of "don't trust them, better trust us, also we're in a country with better privacy laws". Which is an imperfect solution at best, and given that I have no idea who bunny.net is it's a questionable one at best. If you embed a font hosted somewhere else you expose some of your user data to them. Now…

> we're in a country with better privacy laws Speaking as a European: I think this is a very important topic for us. I don't think Americans and American companies understand how little trust rest of us have for the American government. Working with a company that is not subject to the whims of the American government is a huge privacy win. If a company pitches me a product, they start 1 points ahead if they are base…

is that really a mistrust of US gov and firms or a mistrust of the results of the exportation of US Federalisms?

Re: Bunny fonts – privacy respecting drop-in replacement for Google Fonts

#87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we're in a country with better privacy laws Speaking as a European: I think this is a very important topic for us. I don't think Americans and American companies understand how little trust rest of us have for the American government. Working with a company that is not subject to the whims of the American government is a huge privacy win. If a company pitches me a product, they start 1 points ahead if they are base…

Surely you realize that if a modern sophisticated government wants to see your data, they are going to be able to access it, even if it’s stored in the Netherlands? What threat are you protecting yourself against?

So, with this logic you would host your data in Russia (just to give a random country) ?

Re: Bunny fonts – privacy respecting drop-in replacement for Google Fonts

#89
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://developers.google.com/fonts/faq#:~:text=/google/font... .

The Google Fonts API is designed to limit the collection, storage, and use of end-user data to only what is needed to serve fonts efficiently. Use of Google Fonts API is unauthenticated. The Google Fonts API does not set or log cookies. In other words, data from font serving does not feed into advertising personalization. (Disclosure: I used to work on ads at Google)

The Google Fonts API is designed to limit the collection, storage, and use of end-user data to only what is needed to serve fonts efficiently.

There's an awful lot of weasel words in there.

If it was a simple "The Google Fonts API doesn't collect or store any user data" that would be good. But there's so much hidden language in that one sentence.

- "Designed" — Well, it was designed to do that, but it doesn't. After we're caught, we'll put out a press release saying We Can Do Better™.

- "Limit" - It limits the collection. It doesn't prevent the collection. It doesn't not collect any data. It just collects "limited" data. And "limited" is defined by us and can be revised whenever we want.

- "collection, storage, and use of end-user data" has so many ways to be abused.

- "efficiently" — Efficient for who? Google? Google's advertising department? Google's profiling department? What if there's an inefficient way? What if there's a more efficient way, but it gives Google less data?

All this may seem unkind, but Google has earned the planet's distrust. In the early years, Google didn't believe that reputation matters. It does. And that's why the legal departments of billion-dollar companies like the one I work for don't allow us to use Google products.

Re: Bunny fonts – privacy respecting drop-in replacement for Google Fonts

#90
post #31

I find it really strange where some privacy debates have gone wrong, and this is a perfect example. It's basically a form of "don't trust them, better trust us, also we're in a country with better privacy laws". Which is an imperfect solution at best, and given that I have no idea who bunny.net is it's a questionable one at best. If you embed a font hosted somewhere else you expose some of your user data to them. Now…

> we're in a country with better privacy laws Speaking as a European: I think this is a very important topic for us. I don't think Americans and American companies understand how little trust rest of us have for the American government. Working with a company that is not subject to the whims of the American government is a huge privacy win. If a company pitches me a product, they start 1 points ahead if they are base…

> ... for the American government

or any government, especially our own, for that matter. Some just have a better track record at being bound by the rules they give themselves than others.

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