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Firefox Fights for You. We keep your data safe, never sold
- fxfan 8y agoLets start with removing pocket and installing unlock origin by default. I'll believe you. And I say this as a loyal user since 2006.,
- ForHackernews 8y agoI honestly do not understand why so many people are angry about Pocket: https://help.getpocket.com/article/1142-firefox-new-tab-recommendations https://help.getpocket.com/article/1142-firefox-new-tab-reco... > Important Note: Neither Mozilla nor Pocket receives a copy of your browser history. The entire process of sorting and filtering which stories you should see happens locally in your copy of Firefox. Do you think they're lying? Do you just hate the idea of any built-in browser integration with proprietary services?
- knob 8y ago> Do you just hate the idea of any built-in browser integration with proprietary services? Yes. I hate the idea of any built-in browser integration with proprietary services.
- ForHackernews 8y agoDo you feel the same way about including Google as the default search engine? If not, why not?
- rayuela 8y agoSwitching to a different default search engine is trivial. Removing pocket not so much...
- SamuelAdams 8y agoAbout:config Pocket.enabled Set to false Seems pretty simple to me.
- GordonS 8y agoTrivial for your average HN user, but "normal" users can't be expected to go poking around in an undiscoverable settings feature that warns them about dragons.
- paulddraper 8y agoExactly. I don't have a problem Google or Pocket defaults. But if I did, Google seems 100x the larger problem.
- Animats 8y agoExactly. I stopped trusting Mozilla when Pocket went in. I just "upgraded" Firefox to make it shut up, and I spent 15 minutes checking the privacy options to see if they were sneaking anything in. I still don't see a way to totally remove "Sync". I don't want the browser talking to any site that's not absolutely necessary to display the page. Period.
- ForHackernews 8y ago> I don't want the browser talking to any site that's not absolutely necessary to display the page. Period. We've probably already lost that war, because almost all sites today include hundreds of kilobytes of extraneous javascript tracking cruft, and blocking it will frequently break the page display. At least Mozilla is trying to help on that front with their privacy tools and container tabs.
- GordonS 8y agoI actually love Pocket, finding it great for organising my many bookmarks - but at the same time, I don't want proprietary services built into Firefox. IMO, Pocket should be an extension, same as any other. Though I wouldn't even mind if the Firefox installer asked if I wanted to install this extension during installation, treating it as a kind of "Mozilla recommended" extension.
- lucideer 8y agoThey're not lying, they're just missing the point. 1. I don't want recommendations, I didn't ask for recommendations. Having it as a feature that can be enabled for pocket-users might be defensible, opt-out isn't. 2. Even if they're somehow keeping your full browser history on your machine for processing (which is an irrelevant point anyway since it's often synced with your Firefox account anyway), the point is they're collecting data on your personal preferences. The raw data isn't the point, the generated metadata representing a personal profile of you is. It's the processing, regardless of where it takes place, that is objectionable in itself. Doing that processing at all in any form is the antithesis of what Mozilla claims they stand for in this article.
- TheRealPomax 8y agoInteresting thesis but, 1. turn them off. Like any other application on the planet, you get some defaults and you turn on/off what you want, yourself, if what you want is different from the default. Settings => Home => Firefox Home Content. There's even a settings shortcut on the new tab view to take you to those settings, so turn it off first and see if you feel better now that you'll never see pocket ever again. 2. No it's not, that makes no sense. Processing your local behaviour, and never sending that information to anyone else, is not "the antithesis of what Mozilla stands for" in the slightest. What do you think happens here? Do you think they're sending that metadata to pocket, which then does _more_ processing on their end to match your preferences to recommendations? Because if so: that's not what happens, and it's time to read up on how pocket recommendations actually work to see if you're upset with them for a legitimate reason or whether you just completely misunderstood how this works.
- lucideer 8y ago1. my objection was to it being opt-out. "Turn it off" is not a valid solution to that. I'm wondering if you read my comment fully? And it's not just me. You're saying that Mozilla is expecting all users to opt-out to protect themselves... from Mozilla itself. By Mozilla claims to be protecting those users... 2. you say it's not the antithesis of what they stand for but you've given no reasoning. Why is Mozilla compiling a personal profile of my browsing preferences not the antithesis of what they stand for? What have I said that isn't in line with the technicalities of how Pocket works? Does Pocket not compile a personal profile of my browsing preferences? I'm sorry, I normally try to avoid combative tone on hn, but you've written quite a substantive comment all of which simply states that the points in my comment are incorrect with no reasoning behind those statements. It's not really logically cohesive...
- doe88 8y agoDon't like Pocket, don't use it. I personally find it convenient, I'm not at the point I consider everything I browse equally sensitive. There are pages I don't consider being particularly sensitive I want to read later without cluttering my tabs. I really understand peoples wanting to protect everything, it's a valid choice, but I'm not there yet personally, thus for me Pocket is useful.
- fxfan 8y agoI don't hate pocket. I like it! I just don't think it is in sync with their posturing.
- wwweston 8y ago"Who's that guy?" "That's Tron, he fights for the users." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kcgosLwPDE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kcgosLwPDE
- drharby 8y agoThat dialogue is gold.
- pferde 8y agoDear Mozilla, you have no business having my data in the first place. If you're promising to keep my data safe, things have already gone wrong.
- tombuben 8y agoExcept they actually provide useful features like Firefox Sync. If you opt into that service it is impossible for them to provide it to you withouth having your data on their servers.
- craftyguy 8y agoThey should be transparent about what data they have. There are options like "Allow Firefox to send technical and interaction data to Mozilla" and "Allow Firefox to send backlogged crash reports on your behalf" in Firefox, I don't recall if they are enabled by default when you install the browser but I seem to recall that at least one of them is. These options have nothing to do with the Sync feature.
- FooBarWidget 8y agoThey are transparent. Have a look at their privacy policy: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox/ It's simple, human-readable language, not even legalese.
- pferde 8y agoI understand that. Those features are not useful at all to me, that's why I said "my" data.
- ubercow13 8y agoThen you wouldn't sign in to sync. They wouldn't have your data. What was your point again?
- FooBarWidget 8y ago
- jchw 8y agoThey've been blasting the PR far and wide on social media but did they ever address their recent 'experiment?'
- onetimemanytime 8y agoFirst of all, what data do you have and why do you have it?
- FooBarWidget 8y agoYou could just check out their privacy policy you know: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox/ It's literally linked from just below the "Download Firefox" button and in the page footer.
- throwaway2048 8y agoNever sold, just given away, see the cliqz debacle. https://www.ghacks.net/2017/10/06/mozilla-to-launch-firefox-cliqz-experiment-with-data-collecting/ https://www.ghacks.net/2017/10/06/mozilla-to-launch-firefox-...
- vnw 8y agoBefore the apologists roll in: Cliqz GmbH is a media and advertising company, and Firefox DOES NOT own Cliqz GmbH, they just own a bit of it (officially they are a "minority investor"). The Mozilla Corporation sent private data of its users without their permission to a third party ad company. It's despicable and unforgivable.
- rcw4256 8y ago"You decide what to share and when." That's demonstrably false. Disabling telemetry resulted in the collection of meta-telemetry, in violation of users' explicitly expressed decision to not allow collection of telemetry. https://www.ghacks.net/2018/09/21/mozilla-wants-to-estimate-firefoxs-telemetry-off-population/ https://www.ghacks.net/2018/09/21/mozilla-wants-to-estimate-...
- some_random 8y agoWhat a meaningless statement.
- orcdork 8y agoFor 1% of the users opting out of telemetry. And anonymized. And also the data not being telemetry related. Technicaly correct, but pretending that this is mozilla going against the spirit of "decide what to share and when" is at best stretching it, and worst case willingly misrepresenting the case.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- dcbadacd 8y agoIt literally went against the spirit of "decide what to share and when" if I check "never" and it does.
- vnw 8y agoYour decision to show ads to your users this last week without their consent was the last straw for me. And believe me, I've stood A LOT from you. My relationship with you has been practically abusive. Farewell Mozilla, it's been real.
- skyfaller 8y agoWhere on earth are you going? Chrome? There are no other independent browser engines left besides Firefox, web browsers are a duopoly now and if you think Google is better on data collection and ads than Mozilla, I have a bridge to sell you.
- throwaway2048 8y ago"a least they aren't as bad as Google and Chrome" is far from glowing praise.
- K2L8M11N2 8y agoThere's ungoogled-chromium, with every single telemetry code path patched out.
- jkollross 8y agoChrome isn't the only other option. There are tons of browsers that are more respectful of user privacy than Firefox: - Firefox (but fixed with settings that are hidden from the user for some reason) - IceCat, Waterfox, Pale Moon, etc. - Ungoogled Chromium, Iridium, Qutebrowser, etc. Mozilla's actions (Cliqz spyware integration, ads in the browser, Google analytics in the browser, locked enabled telemetry, etc.) show that their "commitment" to user privacy is just marketing.
- ForHackernews 8y ago> tons of browsers So...some minor derivatives of Firefox, plus some hacked-on versions of Chromium. What are you going to do if Firefox goes away?
- phendrenad2 8y ago
- k__ 8y agoI liked the new fast Firefox until I tried the macOS version with Gmail. :(
- ForHackernews 8y agoDoes anyone else find it strange that threads on Mozilla articles submitted to HN are filled with privacy-absolutists while articles about Google/Chromium are disproportionately commented on by Google apologists? Are there two radically divergent subsets of HN users who hardly comment on articles about the other major browser?
- oth001 8y agoCould possibly be brigading by Google (or whoever).
- ForHackernews 8y agoMaybe? I'm not that conspiracy-minded, but it's weird comparing the comments in this thread, to say, this one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18595069 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18595069
- echotangowhisky 8y agoI think the difference is how they position themselves. Mozilla claims to fight for you and keep your data safe, Google claims to be an advertising company. It would be like if McDonald's sold an "all beef burger" that contained no actual beef, or if the Impossible Burger was found to contain any beef at all.
- ERD0L 8y agoI would use FF if they had a decent Mac app. Still no TouchBar support, weak cpu and ram management, no native zoom like chrome implemented
- agumonkey 8y agoThis era of data business is such a mental papercut..
- Farradfahren 8y agoyet
- peterwwillis 8y agoMozilla bragging to me about how they're defending me on the web is like Smith & Wesson telling me they're keeping me safe from guns. It also seems like the height of hypocrisy to complain about data privacy when people use almost exclusively free services online. Somebody has to pay for it all, and since users refuse to do so, advertising has to. It's simple math: if you don't pay for content, your data will be monetized to pay for it. If all use of private data on the web was somehow regulated into oblivion, the web would collapse, because there'd be no money to pay for it.
- zzzcpan 8y agoInvasive advertisement doesn't fund most of the web, it only funds some thousands of top websites and I bet most of them can exist without invasive tracking and banners. There are still brand deals and content advertising and other forms of non banner advertisement, not to mention non advertising business models. And most websites can't exist on advertising revenue anyway and are funded some other way.
- peterwwillis 8y agoThere's no question of whether a business can exist without targeted advertising ("invasive" advertising). But they're definitely going to use it whenever feasible, because it's the most efficient form, possibly more than direct marketing. The ways a business can make money online are A) partnerships, B) advertising, C) goods/services, D) subscriptions, or E) community. The last two are dwarfed by the first three, which depend on advertising. Even if you're a B2B, you still need marketing to get new clients, which almost invariably includes some kind of advertising. So the majority of websites people visit are still paid for with some form of marketing. It may be indirect, such as by affiliate, partnership, selling of private data, etc, or it may be direct, such as with advertisements and spam/newsletters. The user is still going to pay for it, one way or another. If they're not paying via a subscription or donation, they're paying through their use as a marketing target. (And often, via both!)
- casper345 8y agoThe convenience of Chrome extensions that I use daily is a major hesitation from me switching to any browser.