29 ms·

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

679 points by whalabi 7y ago

onyva 7y ago
Great news though I do think adblocking should be built into the browser, rather than left to extensions and 3rd party services. The internet should be taken back from AdTech agencies (Google, AdBuddy AKA Brave). Maybe add to the rumored premium version something like Nextdns?
- adangert 7y ago
  If adblocking is left up to the browser than companies who own the browser have a financial incentive to let certian ads from paying companies through, as has been seen by adblock plus, and the proposed built in chrome ad blocking (which would obviously never block Google's own ads for any reason). Conflicts of interest should be separated into different independent organizations. Chrome mobile not allowing extensions and therefore adblockers is a crime. There are different revenue sources other than ads (patreon or crypto micropayments for instance) which might evolve as the next means of payment for the internet and search engines. Google purposefully stopping the growth of new technology in order to grasp at an increasingly shrinking past is hurting the end user and is evil.
  - onyva 7y ago
    I don't see that with Firefox. Google "blocking" ads in Chrome is of course not serious and not something that's done to protect users. Mozilla is not an ad company like Google (or the wanna be new Google, Brave). But I do think it's a core service a browser should offer, both for privacy reasons, but also environmental and esthetics. We've seen the carbon footprint of processing spam mail, I'm sure ads (which nobody wants or even pays attention to) are even worse.
    - Synaesthesia 7y ago
      Mozilla gets a lot of money from its partnership with google. That’s why google search is the default on Firefox. Google probably wouldn’t want them to block all their ads.
      - onyva 7y ago
        I understand that but I do think it should be something Mozilla should offer, even if it’s a premium service only. The web should not be held hostage by AdTech imho, and as a non for profit Mozilla should be able to generate revenue (and before the Mozilla Corp people jump in, for operations and r&d) from essential services centered around online privacy (cloud storage, vpn, dns etc) with like minded 3rd parties.
        jdnenej 7y ago
        Why would anyone pay for Mozilla to do adblocking when they could install an ad blocker for free.
        onyva 7y ago
        Part of a premium package. I would pay for something like NextDNS as part of a NextCloud based storage and apps, for example.
- tannhaeuser 7y ago
  Tracking protection != ad blocking. If browsers would always heuristically filter-out ads, this would make them useless at best, or actually deceptive. See also other comment about incentives of browsers becoming misaligned with users (or indeed Brave which you mentioned yourself).
  - onyva 7y ago
    Ads are not of interest to users. I think their display is a waste of time and resources, as well as the risks associated. How blocking ads make a browser “misaligned” with users? It’s in fact the opposite. Brave is simply, like stated before, a Trojan Horse. Replacing google with another ad broker is not helping anyone. >> Brave browser (Stage 1) is a Trojan Horse for their actual business which is a blockchain-based advertising platform (Stage 2). https://mobile.twitter.com/aral/status/1013047635253526530 https://mobile.twitter.com/aral/status/1013047635253526530
    - tannhaeuser 7y ago
      For better or worse, ads are what finances the vast majority of online content out there. Even HN gets the occasional paid job posting, stripe (or other YC company) promo, etc., and I'm ok with it. For me, the problem isn't ads per se, but tracking and targetted ads which bring privacy invasion, monopolization, and security issues.
      - onyva 7y ago
        Which is not needed. Would love to see Breitbart, YouTube, Facebook and other similar hate-monetization platforms die. We don't have to commit collective social suicide in order to accommodate silicon valley.
    - kbenson 7y ago
      > Ads are not of interest to users. If you think that's true, then your idea of what constitutes an ad is very narrow, to the point it leaves out a large swath of reality. An ad is an informational transaction between an entity offering a good or service and a consumer that may want that service. When done poorly, it's an exchange neither are happy with. When done well, it's an exchange that both are happy with. We're all familiar with poor ads. The perfect ad is likely the signage above a retail space that let's the person looking for it know it's at that location. Even then, for those not looking for that specific store, it could be seen as unwanted (and that's also why a lot of cities limit the size of signage for buildings). You might see this as a distinction without purpose, but I think viewing things completely (and often as a spectrum) helps put into focus the specific problems that we want to combat and let us focus our efforts on things that actually make poegress in those problems, rather than ineffectually attack a symptom. Advertising isn't the problem. Poorly matched advertising is annoying, in effective, and costly. Tracking and profiling of the individual has risencin use to combat this, but has many other negative consequences. If we prevent tracking and profiling, the market will shift to some other way to match advertising, and we'll have less privacy problems (but possibly worse targeted ads). But at least it isn't overly broad and done in a way that doesn't help the real problem, tracking. Do we really want to support something so draconian that even HN's minimal advertising articles, or someone's personal blog that endorses something would fall under those regulations? If not (if for not other reason it wouldn't help anything), we should be careful how we approach this, and target the real problem.
shadykiller 7y ago
Switched to Firefox a few months back. Havn’t missed Chrome at all
- quickthrower2 7y ago
  What about Chrome's F12 debugging? I miss that when I use Firefox.
  - robin_reala 7y ago
    Depends what you’re doing. Firefox’s dev tools are definitely better at CSS debugging for example.
    - tannhaeuser 7y ago
      Indeed. I always wondered why folks praise Chrome devtools which are pretty meh at CSS.
      - iforgotpassword 7y ago
        As a non-webdev to me they look pretty much identical. I only ever need them for a one off static site or some jQuery, or when trying to figure out why some page looks broken.
      - jdnenej 7y ago
        I find the FF Dev tools to be much better but they don't have a way to inspect web sockets which I don't use but if you do.
        robin_reala 7y ago
        Nightly can inspect WebSockets now.
        quickthrower2 7y ago
        Ok I might be suffering from bias due to familiarity. I'll give FF more of a fair shot for debugging.
Proven 7y ago
This is good for those who often install OS and have to install a browser and the adblockers and privacy extensions which gets annoying. MS Edge should do the same. Screw ads.
aussieguy1234 7y ago
these tracking scripts are essentially malware, maybe browser vendors could store hashes of these scripts in the same way an antivirus stores hashes of viruses. Then block the scripts, do a daily update of the latest hashes as they appear. Include an option for expert users to report new scripts.
- jdnenej 7y ago
  Last I saw the Firefox blocker had a domain block list for removing the ad scripts. It's not as effective as other tracker blockers which heuristics but it's less likely to break the page for users.
  - aussieguy1234 7y ago
    if domain blocking because widespread, I wouldn't be surprised if tracking vendors ask their users to self host their scripts
    - icebraining 7y ago
      Self-hosted scripts are less useful for tracking, since a cookie generated on a visit to site A won't be visible when the user visits site B. So if vendors switch to that, it's good news.
iliketosleep 7y ago
It's going to be interesting to see where this ends up. Ads are inevitable, and in some ways beneficial to both content providers and consumers (i.e. revenue can be earned from users without any direct payment). But are invasive forms of tracking such as 3rd party cookies really that necessary? Could websites survive using only contextual advertising without the excessive tracking?
- Fnoord 7y ago
  I don't agree ads are beneficial for users (or "consumers" as you put it). They could be, but you pay with your focus/time. I'd rather pay for the content then, or get a free (demo) version (I regard a RSS feed as such). Tracking, however, is on the long term never beneficial for the users. It is a behemoth of a privacy nightmare. This article is about ad trackers.
  - babuskov 7y ago
    > I'd rather pay for the content then People like you are a minority. Most people expect Internet content to be free.
    - Fnoord 7y ago
      Because there is a lot of paid pulp content. Demo versions of qualitative, paid content will sell itself provided the stack is user-friendly enough. Just like people pay for Netflix. Also, if you price yourself conform US or EU salary don't expect poor countries to buy your product.
  - a_imho 7y ago
    It's something a person would say with a salary depending on ads. Who likes tracking and popups? TV programming butchered? Endless garbage in the mail? Come on.
    - BigJono 7y ago
      I think it's the opposite. We're in a bubble here. It's easy enough for a software engineer to say they'd pay for the content that's on the web when we have the disposable income to do so without even breaking stride. If you ask the average person whether they'd prefer to pay for web content or cop ads and trackers, they'd probably tell you to shove your subscription service or whatever alternative you can come up with up your ass.
jjohansson 7y ago
Does it block all newish variants of the google analytics snippet?
- chinathrow 7y ago
  It does not block Google Analytics per se. It only blocks the cookie being attached to the used tracking pixel. Source: verified on own site in v69. Page views show up fine in GA but the browser displays the new warning shield.
  - jjohansson 7y ago
    Thank you! I guess that means Google’s client ID is lost, so attribution will be muddled. I wonder if each page view is treated as its own single-page session?
Demigod33 7y ago
Let's see whether Google pays less now to be the default search engine in Firefox.
- wstrange 7y ago
  The default search spot is a directed search with intent, so pretty valuable. I think it will be a pragmatic business decision.
Kiro 7y ago
I must be the only person in the world who likes being tracked and getting tailored ads. I've found lots of things I've bought due to ads that were obviously targeted at me specifically.
- oriettaxx 7y ago
  yes, this is an old story, but it has been already solved: strong tailored ads are tailored not on your will, but on the seller's will, who tailor ads to be able to sell to you: so at the end of the story it is not your free will and somebody helping you to pursue it. More deeply you risk to miss what could really be the best for you, for what is the best for somebody else.
someonenice 7y ago
Already lot of sites are not tested on Firefox and many explicitly so [1]. Now the web publishers that rely on ads will have less incentive to support Firefox. They might even actively promote other browsers. Similar to how IE was discouraged by websites explicitly. "This site works best on Chrome" is only what is needed now to reduce the Firefox userbase further. Note - This comment was typed on firefox. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17363721 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17363721
- Fnoord 7y ago
  Given Google Chrome's opposition to adblocking, combined with a ~33% of users using an adblocker, it suggests this trend is going to make Mozilla Firefox more popular; not less. Either way, I regard it as playing hardball.
- jillesvangurp 7y ago
  If you are serving customers and don't want to walk away from sizable percentages of your user base, you test on Chrome, Firefox, IE, Edge (old and the chromium one), Safari, Brave, and maybe even good old Opera. And if you are any good, it would be relatively rare for you to find issues. IE is probably the hardest of these. The reason that still has non trivial amounts of users is because so many websites can't afford to lose access to those users.
- Semaphor 7y ago
  Meanwhile, in Germany, Firefox is at a stable 25-26% (according to statcounter) If you are offering services to us, you probably can’t afford to ignore FF. If you are a German company, that goes double.
  - wutbrodo 7y ago
    Is that true? I'm not speaking morally here, but pragmatically: 25% of German GDP is a little under a trillion dollars, or about 1% of global GDP. I know there are plenty of problems to nitpick with this rough model, eg that developed countries are often targeted first, but even limiting to OECD countries only yields 1.5% of GDP. Europe-wide figures would be more relevant, but it's tough for me to see any company that isn't Germany-specific (or at best, regional) caring much about a fraction of the userbase of a country whose GDP is itself a fraction of potential markets. Now don't get me wrong, businesses that are Germany-only are still pretty massive objectively, but it doesn't seem like that would be enough to move the needle on the way the Web ecosystem develops. German (eg) bank support for FF seems like not much more than a regional technological quirk, like if you found out that Kazakhstan's banks only worked well on IE6
hanniabu 7y ago
A big reason why I stick with Chrome is because Firefox's menu pisses me off how it's this popup box with huge icon rather than Chrome's more traditional list of text. Sounds stupid, but that's a big enough reason for me.
- Hitton 7y ago
  I have never switched to Chrome for similar reason. It doesn't allow tabs under address bar. That said in recent versions Firefox allows to do it only in rather complicated way by editing userChrome.css, but at least it's possible. I'm not very happy with many of recent decisions of Mozilla devs, but there isn't really any decent alternative to switch to.
- Shaddox 7y ago
  It doesn't sound stupid to me. Browser features are so rich and similar nowadays that only the smallest differences swing an user one way or the other. For example I was averse to Firefox for a long time because I didn't like the way scrolling pages felt.
- Grumbledour 7y ago
  I guess it just shows your privacy is not that important to you, which seems always to be the point with many posters here who, while complaining loudly about google, present rather minor reasons why they can't use firefox ever. That being said, while I vaguely remember there being huge icons at some point for a few versions, there aren't any now in my Firefox. Just a normal looking menu with small icons on the left and text on the right. I can't promise this is true for every platform, but maybe you want to take another look.
  - hanniabu 7y ago
    This is like saying that somebody doesn't care about privacy if they don't PGP encrypt all their emails and messages. Convenience is always a factor.
    - Grumbledour 7y ago
m3at 7y ago
Relevant HN thread from yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20866084 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20866084
Hitton 7y ago
Call me cynic and selfish, but I kinda like when people who don't care about their privacy essentially subsidise my browsing on websites that track their users. Now they will have even bigger incentive to invent new tracking mechanism.
aldanor 7y ago
Started using Firefox half a year ago because of a single plugin: TreeStyleTab - which lets you keep a tree of your tabs in a sidebar on the left (I tend to keep a hundred or so open all the time). I have no idea how I've lived without it for so long... Since then, Firefox has been gaining some momentum + performance and add tracking, surely not planning to switch back to Chrome/Safari anytime soon.
- _coveredInBees 7y ago
  Yep, I've been using TreeStyleTabs for years and years and it is the single most useful addon I have ever used in my life and is also what will keep me using Firefox over every other browser indefinitely. Every other browser feels like a toy without TST. I'd highly recommend everyone check out TST and give it a whirl. It is especially useful when you are researching something on the web due to how well it supports hierarchical, collapsible tab groupings. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta...
- TheArcane 7y ago
  TST seems to break with my use of multi-account containers - which spawns tabs in different containers depending on the website
FreeHugs 7y ago
As I understand it, they do not block the tracking scripts. What they do is that they do not accept their cookies. This does not change anything for me: 1) I do not keep cookies around anyhow 2) I use umatrix to not run known evil scripts in the first place I am not sure if it changes anything for the average user either. I would assume ad companies already use fingerprinting?
newscracker 7y ago
Those who want a world where Firefox has a higher market share and mind share, please consider doing the following: 1. Evangelize Firefox to people you know any chance you get and show them all the reasons why its better than Chrome (focus on privacy as an important point). Show them how great browsing can be with a few key extensions (like uBlock Origin, Containers, Privacy Possum, etc.). This does not imply that Mozilla is beyond criticism or that Firefox should not be held to a higher standard. 2. If you can, donate money to Mozilla regularly. [1] As of a couple of years ago (IIRC), more than 90% of Mozilla's revenue was from its partnership with Google for being the default search engine in many geographies. As long as this remains true, Google will only tolerate Firefox being a viable competitor while Firefox still remains as small to moderately sized competition (to avoid antitrust action). If/when Firefox gains a much larger piece of the market, Google will (as it has been doing all these years) even more forcefully use its money and marketing muscle on all its properties as well as add more tiny annoyances on its properties to make Firefox seem buggy citing tangential things like "web standards" or "pushing the web forward" and other euphemisms that companies like Google use to crush competition. IMO, there needs to be a lot more individual funding of Mozilla while keeping it accountable to users and as per its own manifesto. The level of competition among browsers right now leaves us all vulnerable. Edit: After seeing a reply to this comment, I did a quick search and found that donating money to Mozilla means donating to the Mozilla Foundation, and that the money may not go to funding Firefox development, which is part of Mozilla Corporation. See this discussion from December 2018 on reddit. [2] It may be desirable for at least part of the donation (as decided by Mozilla Corporation) to go to Firefox development. Does it already happen that way or is there a way to get this result, like in the case of Mozilla Thunderbird where donations go to that project (alone)? [1]: https://donate.mozilla.org https://donate.mozilla.org [2]: https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/a98gmi/donations_to_mozilla_foundation_are_not_used_for/ https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/a98gmi/donations_t...
- 3xblah 7y ago
  "... add more tiny annoyances on its properties to make Firefox seem buggy citing tangential things like "web standards" or "pushing the web forward" and other euphemisms that companies like Google use to crush competition." I must say, it's great to see this brought to light in HN comments. It may be a small minority of users, but clearly some can see through this nonsense. Although, having been a web user before there was Google, I think it is more than just Google that created this atmosphere where some browser is portrayed as being inferior to another. I think it started before Google. Think about the influence of web developers. In the earlier days of the web, they wanted to make money by making websites. To sell those services they needed the web to have more than just basic functionality. They wanted complex browsers loaded with features that could "wow" the user, which enabled marketing and ideally commercial transactions over the web. Why would any web developer be interested in a browser that is not optimised for marketing? Then think about the growth of websites. Today, every company has one, every organization has one. No web developer has to convince anyone anymore that they "need a website". Web developers today probably have better employment prospects than ever before. Many website owners want to make money directly or indirectly from their websites. Often they are sold on the promise of a return from advertising. Would those websites be interested in "supporting" browsers that are not optimised for web marketing? We could create a browser for users that had all the features users needed to retrieve and view information and various media types, but which lacked features that enable easy web marketing, ads, tracking, etc. A browser that catered to users' interests above all others. This is possible. However, what would web developers and commercial websites think of such a browser? Perhaps they would not be interested in designing websites that "worked" with such a browser. For one, they would probably argue that the market share of such a browser is too low to warrant their attention. I have seen this argument made many times on HN. The point of this comment, which I am probably not getting across very well, is to suggest that developers themsleves are in the best position to control the market share of browsers, not users: I have used command line TCP/HTTP clients and text-only browser for many years to retrieve information from the web. It has always worked flawlessly for my purposes and continues to do so. One of the amusing side effects of accessing websites this way is that I see all manner of messaging from web developers on websites that tries to persuade users to use one browser or another, and to make sure some browser feature is enabled. Much of it has become increasingly didactic. Developers increasingly are not asking users to comply, they are telling them they "must" do something, or else. The vast majority of web users follow those instructions. If they are told to use some browser or else a website "will not work", then they will comply. Truthfully, it is almost always still possible to retrieve the information without the preferred browser or without the "necessary" feature. However, most users will follow the path of least resistance. They will do as the web developers tell them to do. Users cannot be expected to simply switch to some other browser that better protects their interests. Not without cooperation from web developers and their clients, website owners.
thorn 7y ago
I would love to if FF could handle Amazon.com without boiling my MBP2013. Is it a bug in FF or just Amazon did not care to optimize their shit? Is there a way to figure out the performance's origin in FF somehow?
- carey 7y ago
  It’s probably https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1574538 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1574538, so you could try Firefox Nightly and see if there’s any improvement.
__b_tom_kasidy 7y ago
Or we can all go to Brave or even better to Tor.
- VistaBrokeMyPC 7y ago
  Tor browsing speed is a catch 22. Not enough users for ample bandwidth - > users think it's too slow and don't use it - > not enough users I've set up a relay myself, so I guess I did my part... But I wish more people would see tor as a private browser, not a gateway to "drugs, CP, and extremism'"
0xfffff 7y ago
love it!
qrbLPHiKpiux 7y ago
I don’t believe any of it will help. https://twitter.com/Shadow0pz/status/1168284101675298816 https://twitter.com/Shadow0pz/status/1168284101675298816
- WilTimSon 7y ago
  Wow, this is terrifying on a whole new level. This kind of invasion isn't anything new but I shudder every time I see it detailed. However, I don't see anything about Firefox there? Should we really automatically presume that Mozilla won't be able to deal with these issues just because other companies couldn't? (Or, let's be honest, didn't bother to/had incentive not to?)
rajangdavis 7y ago
Not sure how profitable it would be, but if Mozilla created a privacy-focused email client, I would consider leaving the Google ecosystem.
- rypskar 7y ago
  Like Mozilla Thunderbird? Like most email clients it blocks loading external resources by default. Or am I missing something?
  - rajangdavis 7y ago
    I meant to say a browser based client but I will look into Thunderbird a bit more. I misunderstood the purpose of Thunderbird - it's marketed as a messaging app, which it is, but I didn't realize it did email as well.
    - jdnenej 7y ago
      I have been using thunderbird for years and didn't even know it did IM. It does a decent job at email and calender stuff.
- feanaro 7y ago
  I presume you actually mean an email service and a web email client?
  - rajangdavis 7y ago
    Yes. Looks like Thunderbird is not quite there yet on the web email client front, but it's worth checking out.
- tr3ndyBEAR 7y ago
  If you mean to say email service, you should look into Proton Mail and Tutanota. They're both great and very privacy focused. Other than that you can check AlternativeTo for other email services: https://alternativeto.net/software/gmail/ https://alternativeto.net/software/gmail/
brianpgordon 7y ago
Ironic- https://i.imgur.com/jBMKcN5.png https://i.imgur.com/jBMKcN5.png
needle0 7y ago
Chromium monoculture is bad, therefore use Firefox. That's pretty much all there really is to it. Everything else is a distraction.
paulcarroty 7y ago
After couple of days with Brave/Chromium testing on my Linux machines, I definitely should say: Firefox is really SLOW, it feels without any benchmarks. So, Mozilla has two ways: 1. Build a really fast browser. 2. Die as Internet Explorer. It's realistic way to handle things. People don't care about privacy in general, browser is too complex to build for privacy/security activists only. Time to focus on business instead promoting services like Pocket & including Google analytics in addons page. Do or die.
- arriu 7y ago
  It's not always Firefox's fault. Some websites literally serve different HTML to Firefox, Google services are a good example.
  - dhimes 7y ago
    I use Chrome for Google properties (GSuite); FF for everything else, including youtube. I find FF works great.
  - kerkeslager 7y ago
    That's true, but as with most things, establishing blame for the problem doesn't actually solve the problem.
- tboyd47 7y ago
  I spend 40 hours a week using web-based applications and I saw no performance difference after switching to Firefox.
tripzilch 7y ago
In a swipe at its users, Chrome doesn't.
kerkeslager 7y ago
Just to be clear, what are we specifically talking about here? Does this mean that `privacy.firstparty.isolate` is now set to true by default?
burtonator 7y ago
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 workaround I could have is to call the analytics APIs on my server directly... Talking to our users their main complaint isn't necessarily that I'm tracking them more that the data is going to Google so maybe the solution is to run mixpanel.
- wccrawford 7y ago
  Yeah, I'd say you have to implement your own tracking system instead of using an off-the-shelf one. Either from your logs, or from code that you write, server- or client-side.
- parliament32 7y ago
  Users have never cared that your site tracks them -- it's pretty well known that every web server ever logs pretty much everything. The problem is with third party tracking: I'm happy that you know what I'm doing on your site, but I'm not interested in you shipping that data to Google, who will then sell it to a few dozen advertisers, who then combine it with other sites' data and build some sort of profile against me.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  > 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?
acd 7y ago
Is the ad tracking also blockad in Firefox mobile?
- chrisjc 7y ago
  From what I understand, Firefox Mobile isn't one thing. On iOS it's safari under the surface. On Android it's a distinct code-base. There might not be the level of control that you speak of in the iOS variant.
fnord77 7y ago
> 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 because I'm getting ads and suggestions correlating to some activity I did on a completely different device. This business model is toxic and I really hope all the companies using it either pivot or go bankrupt.
- fouric 7y ago
  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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blendle
  - liability 7y ago
    Respectable news organizations have traditionally at least played lip service to keeping their journalists/editors separate from their business/advertising people, such that the journalists are free to publish articles that run contrary to the business interests of the paper. (Example: https://www.nytimes.com/editorial-standards/ethical-journalism.html#advertisersMarketingPromotion https://www.nytimes.com/editorial-standards/ethical-journali...) Of course, Wired is not a respectable publication, and this just goes to show that.
  - oftenwrong 7y ago
    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.
johnchristopher 7y ago
Won't publishers just outright block Firefox from displaying their websites and suggests chrome or others for "enhanced and better experience" ? Firefox has a market share small enough that publishers and the ad industry could try to just reduce ff usage with a coordinated campaign.
yeahforsureman 7y ago
So...when is FF going to get proper site isolation?
tracker1 7y ago
Why I hate are when sites tether their interactions to their tracking/analytics system... a failure for the analytics script should not prevent pressing 'Login' from working properly. This one is as much on developers as the ad/tracking scripts. When I've worked for public entities, I always went extra to make sure things worked well for users with ads disabled. Even so far as to make sure ad slots didn't even display the placeholders.
mkonecny 7y ago
Just installed version 69 on my Thinkpad T540p with Debian 9.9. I'm going back to Chrome. Firefox still lags on my machine after all these years. Even with a single tab and on their own initial launch page, scrolling performed a "caterpillar" effect where only the top half scrolled, and the bottom half jumped to catch up a split second later
ljw1001 7y ago
i really wanted to use Firefox, so I switched recently. It lasted about 3 hours. Every time I tried to Google something I got a warning that Google was a dangerous site because of their self-signed certificate (seriously? Google should be on the list of trusted certificate signers, no matter what you think of their business model). Then it asked if I wanted to trust them. I answered yes, repeatedly, yet the error message reappeared over and over again. (really bad). I gave up. A little more competence and I'm on board.

679 points by whalabi 7y ago

Great news though I do think adblocking should be built into the browser, rather than left to extensions and 3rd party services. The internet should be taken back from AdTech agencies (Google, AdBuddy AKA Brave). Maybe add to the rumored premium version something like Nextdns?

adangert 7y ago
If adblocking is left up to the browser than companies who own the browser have a financial incentive to let certian ads from paying companies through, as has been seen by adblock plus, and the proposed built in chrome ad blocking (which would obviously never block Google's own ads for any reason). Conflicts of interest should be separated into different independent organizations. Chrome mobile not allowing extensions and therefore adblockers is a crime. There are different revenue sources other than ads (patreon or crypto micropayments for instance) which might evolve as the next means of payment for the internet and search engines. Google purposefully stopping the growth of new technology in order to grasp at an increasingly shrinking past is hurting the end user and is evil.
- onyva 7y ago
  I don't see that with Firefox. Google "blocking" ads in Chrome is of course not serious and not something that's done to protect users. Mozilla is not an ad company like Google (or the wanna be new Google, Brave). But I do think it's a core service a browser should offer, both for privacy reasons, but also environmental and esthetics. We've seen the carbon footprint of processing spam mail, I'm sure ads (which nobody wants or even pays attention to) are even worse.
  - Synaesthesia 7y ago
    Mozilla gets a lot of money from its partnership with google. That’s why google search is the default on Firefox. Google probably wouldn’t want them to block all their ads.
    - onyva 7y ago
      I understand that but I do think it should be something Mozilla should offer, even if it’s a premium service only. The web should not be held hostage by AdTech imho, and as a non for profit Mozilla should be able to generate revenue (and before the Mozilla Corp people jump in, for operations and r&d) from essential services centered around online privacy (cloud storage, vpn, dns etc) with like minded 3rd parties.
      - jdnenej 7y ago
        Why would anyone pay for Mozilla to do adblocking when they could install an ad blocker for free.
        onyva 7y ago
        Part of a premium package. I would pay for something like NextDNS as part of a NextCloud based storage and apps, for example.
tannhaeuser 7y ago
Tracking protection != ad blocking. If browsers would always heuristically filter-out ads, this would make them useless at best, or actually deceptive. See also other comment about incentives of browsers becoming misaligned with users (or indeed Brave which you mentioned yourself).
- onyva 7y ago
  Ads are not of interest to users. I think their display is a waste of time and resources, as well as the risks associated. How blocking ads make a browser “misaligned” with users? It’s in fact the opposite. Brave is simply, like stated before, a Trojan Horse. Replacing google with another ad broker is not helping anyone. >> Brave browser (Stage 1) is a Trojan Horse for their actual business which is a blockchain-based advertising platform (Stage 2). https://mobile.twitter.com/aral/status/1013047635253526530 https://mobile.twitter.com/aral/status/1013047635253526530
  - tannhaeuser 7y ago
    For better or worse, ads are what finances the vast majority of online content out there. Even HN gets the occasional paid job posting, stripe (or other YC company) promo, etc., and I'm ok with it. For me, the problem isn't ads per se, but tracking and targetted ads which bring privacy invasion, monopolization, and security issues.
    - onyva 7y ago
      Which is not needed. Would love to see Breitbart, YouTube, Facebook and other similar hate-monetization platforms die. We don't have to commit collective social suicide in order to accommodate silicon valley.
  - kbenson 7y ago
    > Ads are not of interest to users. If you think that's true, then your idea of what constitutes an ad is very narrow, to the point it leaves out a large swath of reality. An ad is an informational transaction between an entity offering a good or service and a consumer that may want that service. When done poorly, it's an exchange neither are happy with. When done well, it's an exchange that both are happy with. We're all familiar with poor ads. The perfect ad is likely the signage above a retail space that let's the person looking for it know it's at that location. Even then, for those not looking for that specific store, it could be seen as unwanted (and that's also why a lot of cities limit the size of signage for buildings). You might see this as a distinction without purpose, but I think viewing things completely (and often as a spectrum) helps put into focus the specific problems that we want to combat and let us focus our efforts on things that actually make poegress in those problems, rather than ineffectually attack a symptom. Advertising isn't the problem. Poorly matched advertising is annoying, in effective, and costly. Tracking and profiling of the individual has risencin use to combat this, but has many other negative consequences. If we prevent tracking and profiling, the market will shift to some other way to match advertising, and we'll have less privacy problems (but possibly worse targeted ads). But at least it isn't overly broad and done in a way that doesn't help the real problem, tracking. Do we really want to support something so draconian that even HN's minimal advertising articles, or someone's personal blog that endorses something would fall under those regulations? If not (if for not other reason it wouldn't help anything), we should be careful how we approach this, and target the real problem.

shadykiller 7y ago

Switched to Firefox a few months back. Havn’t missed Chrome at all

quickthrower2 7y ago
What about Chrome's F12 debugging? I miss that when I use Firefox.
- robin_reala 7y ago
  Depends what you’re doing. Firefox’s dev tools are definitely better at CSS debugging for example.
  - tannhaeuser 7y ago
    Indeed. I always wondered why folks praise Chrome devtools which are pretty meh at CSS.
    - iforgotpassword 7y ago
      As a non-webdev to me they look pretty much identical. I only ever need them for a one off static site or some jQuery, or when trying to figure out why some page looks broken.
    - jdnenej 7y ago
      I find the FF Dev tools to be much better but they don't have a way to inspect web sockets which I don't use but if you do.
      - robin_reala 7y ago
        Nightly can inspect WebSockets now.
      - quickthrower2 7y ago
        Ok I might be suffering from bias due to familiarity. I'll give FF more of a fair shot for debugging.

Proven 7y ago

This is good for those who often install OS and have to install a browser and the adblockers and privacy extensions which gets annoying. MS Edge should do the same. Screw ads.

aussieguy1234 7y ago

these tracking scripts are essentially malware, maybe browser vendors could store hashes of these scripts in the same way an antivirus stores hashes of viruses. Then block the scripts, do a daily update of the latest hashes as they appear. Include an option for expert users to report new scripts.

jdnenej 7y ago
Last I saw the Firefox blocker had a domain block list for removing the ad scripts. It's not as effective as other tracker blockers which heuristics but it's less likely to break the page for users.
- aussieguy1234 7y ago
  if domain blocking because widespread, I wouldn't be surprised if tracking vendors ask their users to self host their scripts
  - icebraining 7y ago
    Self-hosted scripts are less useful for tracking, since a cookie generated on a visit to site A won't be visible when the user visits site B. So if vendors switch to that, it's good news.

iliketosleep 7y ago

It's going to be interesting to see where this ends up. Ads are inevitable, and in some ways beneficial to both content providers and consumers (i.e. revenue can be earned from users without any direct payment). But are invasive forms of tracking such as 3rd party cookies really that necessary? Could websites survive using only contextual advertising without the excessive tracking?

Fnoord 7y ago
I don't agree ads are beneficial for users (or "consumers" as you put it). They could be, but you pay with your focus/time. I'd rather pay for the content then, or get a free (demo) version (I regard a RSS feed as such). Tracking, however, is on the long term never beneficial for the users. It is a behemoth of a privacy nightmare. This article is about ad trackers.
- babuskov 7y ago
  > I'd rather pay for the content then People like you are a minority. Most people expect Internet content to be free.
  - Fnoord 7y ago
    Because there is a lot of paid pulp content. Demo versions of qualitative, paid content will sell itself provided the stack is user-friendly enough. Just like people pay for Netflix. Also, if you price yourself conform US or EU salary don't expect poor countries to buy your product.
- a_imho 7y ago
  It's something a person would say with a salary depending on ads. Who likes tracking and popups? TV programming butchered? Endless garbage in the mail? Come on.
  - BigJono 7y ago
    I think it's the opposite. We're in a bubble here. It's easy enough for a software engineer to say they'd pay for the content that's on the web when we have the disposable income to do so without even breaking stride. If you ask the average person whether they'd prefer to pay for web content or cop ads and trackers, they'd probably tell you to shove your subscription service or whatever alternative you can come up with up your ass.

jjohansson 7y ago

Does it block all newish variants of the google analytics snippet?

chinathrow 7y ago
It does not block Google Analytics per se. It only blocks the cookie being attached to the used tracking pixel. Source: verified on own site in v69. Page views show up fine in GA but the browser displays the new warning shield.
- jjohansson 7y ago
  Thank you! I guess that means Google’s client ID is lost, so attribution will be muddled. I wonder if each page view is treated as its own single-page session?

Demigod33 7y ago

Let's see whether Google pays less now to be the default search engine in Firefox.

wstrange 7y ago
The default search spot is a directed search with intent, so pretty valuable. I think it will be a pragmatic business decision.

Kiro 7y ago

I must be the only person in the world who likes being tracked and getting tailored ads. I've found lots of things I've bought due to ads that were obviously targeted at me specifically.

oriettaxx 7y ago
yes, this is an old story, but it has been already solved: strong tailored ads are tailored not on your will, but on the seller's will, who tailor ads to be able to sell to you: so at the end of the story it is not your free will and somebody helping you to pursue it. More deeply you risk to miss what could really be the best for you, for what is the best for somebody else.

someonenice 7y ago

Already lot of sites are not tested on Firefox and many explicitly so [1]. Now the web publishers that rely on ads will have less incentive to support Firefox. They might even actively promote other browsers. Similar to how IE was discouraged by websites explicitly. "This site works best on Chrome" is only what is needed now to reduce the Firefox userbase further. Note - This comment was typed on firefox. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17363721 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17363721

Fnoord 7y ago
Given Google Chrome's opposition to adblocking, combined with a ~33% of users using an adblocker, it suggests this trend is going to make Mozilla Firefox more popular; not less. Either way, I regard it as playing hardball.
jillesvangurp 7y ago
If you are serving customers and don't want to walk away from sizable percentages of your user base, you test on Chrome, Firefox, IE, Edge (old and the chromium one), Safari, Brave, and maybe even good old Opera. And if you are any good, it would be relatively rare for you to find issues. IE is probably the hardest of these. The reason that still has non trivial amounts of users is because so many websites can't afford to lose access to those users.
Semaphor 7y ago
Meanwhile, in Germany, Firefox is at a stable 25-26% (according to statcounter) If you are offering services to us, you probably can’t afford to ignore FF. If you are a German company, that goes double.
- wutbrodo 7y ago
  Is that true? I'm not speaking morally here, but pragmatically: 25% of German GDP is a little under a trillion dollars, or about 1% of global GDP. I know there are plenty of problems to nitpick with this rough model, eg that developed countries are often targeted first, but even limiting to OECD countries only yields 1.5% of GDP. Europe-wide figures would be more relevant, but it's tough for me to see any company that isn't Germany-specific (or at best, regional) caring much about a fraction of the userbase of a country whose GDP is itself a fraction of potential markets. Now don't get me wrong, businesses that are Germany-only are still pretty massive objectively, but it doesn't seem like that would be enough to move the needle on the way the Web ecosystem develops. German (eg) bank support for FF seems like not much more than a regional technological quirk, like if you found out that Kazakhstan's banks only worked well on IE6

hanniabu 7y ago

A big reason why I stick with Chrome is because Firefox's menu pisses me off how it's this popup box with huge icon rather than Chrome's more traditional list of text. Sounds stupid, but that's a big enough reason for me.

Hitton 7y ago
I have never switched to Chrome for similar reason. It doesn't allow tabs under address bar. That said in recent versions Firefox allows to do it only in rather complicated way by editing userChrome.css, but at least it's possible. I'm not very happy with many of recent decisions of Mozilla devs, but there isn't really any decent alternative to switch to.
Shaddox 7y ago
It doesn't sound stupid to me. Browser features are so rich and similar nowadays that only the smallest differences swing an user one way or the other. For example I was averse to Firefox for a long time because I didn't like the way scrolling pages felt.
Grumbledour 7y ago
I guess it just shows your privacy is not that important to you, which seems always to be the point with many posters here who, while complaining loudly about google, present rather minor reasons why they can't use firefox ever. That being said, while I vaguely remember there being huge icons at some point for a few versions, there aren't any now in my Firefox. Just a normal looking menu with small icons on the left and text on the right. I can't promise this is true for every platform, but maybe you want to take another look.
- hanniabu 7y ago
  This is like saying that somebody doesn't care about privacy if they don't PGP encrypt all their emails and messages. Convenience is always a factor.
  - Grumbledour 7y ago

m3at 7y ago

Relevant HN thread from yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20866084 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20866084

Hitton 7y ago

Call me cynic and selfish, but I kinda like when people who don't care about their privacy essentially subsidise my browsing on websites that track their users. Now they will have even bigger incentive to invent new tracking mechanism.

aldanor 7y ago

Started using Firefox half a year ago because of a single plugin: TreeStyleTab - which lets you keep a tree of your tabs in a sidebar on the left (I tend to keep a hundred or so open all the time). I have no idea how I've lived without it for so long... Since then, Firefox has been gaining some momentum + performance and add tracking, surely not planning to switch back to Chrome/Safari anytime soon.

_coveredInBees 7y ago
Yep, I've been using TreeStyleTabs for years and years and it is the single most useful addon I have ever used in my life and is also what will keep me using Firefox over every other browser indefinitely. Every other browser feels like a toy without TST. I'd highly recommend everyone check out TST and give it a whirl. It is especially useful when you are researching something on the web due to how well it supports hierarchical, collapsible tab groupings. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta...
TheArcane 7y ago
TST seems to break with my use of multi-account containers - which spawns tabs in different containers depending on the website

FreeHugs 7y ago

As I understand it, they do not block the tracking scripts. What they do is that they do not accept their cookies. This does not change anything for me: 1) I do not keep cookies around anyhow 2) I use umatrix to not run known evil scripts in the first place I am not sure if it changes anything for the average user either. I would assume ad companies already use fingerprinting?

newscracker 7y ago

Those who want a world where Firefox has a higher market share and mind share, please consider doing the following: 1. Evangelize Firefox to people you know any chance you get and show them all the reasons why its better than Chrome (focus on privacy as an important point). Show them how great browsing can be with a few key extensions (like uBlock Origin, Containers, Privacy Possum, etc.). This does not imply that Mozilla is beyond criticism or that Firefox should not be held to a higher standard. 2. If you can, donate money to Mozilla regularly. [1] As of a couple of years ago (IIRC), more than 90% of Mozilla's revenue was from its partnership with Google for being the default search engine in many geographies. As long as this remains true, Google will only tolerate Firefox being a viable competitor while Firefox still remains as small to moderately sized competition (to avoid antitrust action). If/when Firefox gains a much larger piece of the market, Google will (as it has been doing all these years) even more forcefully use its money and marketing muscle on all its properties as well as add more tiny annoyances on its properties to make Firefox seem buggy citing tangential things like "web standards" or "pushing the web forward" and other euphemisms that companies like Google use to crush competition. IMO, there needs to be a lot more individual funding of Mozilla while keeping it accountable to users and as per its own manifesto. The level of competition among browsers right now leaves us all vulnerable. Edit: After seeing a reply to this comment, I did a quick search and found that donating money to Mozilla means donating to the Mozilla Foundation, and that the money may not go to funding Firefox development, which is part of Mozilla Corporation. See this discussion from December 2018 on reddit. [2] It may be desirable for at least part of the donation (as decided by Mozilla Corporation) to go to Firefox development. Does it already happen that way or is there a way to get this result, like in the case of Mozilla Thunderbird where donations go to that project (alone)? [1]: https://donate.mozilla.org https://donate.mozilla.org [2]: https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/a98gmi/donations_to_mozilla_foundation_are_not_used_for/ https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/a98gmi/donations_t...

3xblah 7y ago
"... add more tiny annoyances on its properties to make Firefox seem buggy citing tangential things like "web standards" or "pushing the web forward" and other euphemisms that companies like Google use to crush competition." I must say, it's great to see this brought to light in HN comments. It may be a small minority of users, but clearly some can see through this nonsense. Although, having been a web user before there was Google, I think it is more than just Google that created this atmosphere where some browser is portrayed as being inferior to another. I think it started before Google. Think about the influence of web developers. In the earlier days of the web, they wanted to make money by making websites. To sell those services they needed the web to have more than just basic functionality. They wanted complex browsers loaded with features that could "wow" the user, which enabled marketing and ideally commercial transactions over the web. Why would any web developer be interested in a browser that is not optimised for marketing? Then think about the growth of websites. Today, every company has one, every organization has one. No web developer has to convince anyone anymore that they "need a website". Web developers today probably have better employment prospects than ever before. Many website owners want to make money directly or indirectly from their websites. Often they are sold on the promise of a return from advertising. Would those websites be interested in "supporting" browsers that are not optimised for web marketing? We could create a browser for users that had all the features users needed to retrieve and view information and various media types, but which lacked features that enable easy web marketing, ads, tracking, etc. A browser that catered to users' interests above all others. This is possible. However, what would web developers and commercial websites think of such a browser? Perhaps they would not be interested in designing websites that "worked" with such a browser. For one, they would probably argue that the market share of such a browser is too low to warrant their attention. I have seen this argument made many times on HN. The point of this comment, which I am probably not getting across very well, is to suggest that developers themsleves are in the best position to control the market share of browsers, not users: I have used command line TCP/HTTP clients and text-only browser for many years to retrieve information from the web. It has always worked flawlessly for my purposes and continues to do so. One of the amusing side effects of accessing websites this way is that I see all manner of messaging from web developers on websites that tries to persuade users to use one browser or another, and to make sure some browser feature is enabled. Much of it has become increasingly didactic. Developers increasingly are not asking users to comply, they are telling them they "must" do something, or else. The vast majority of web users follow those instructions. If they are told to use some browser or else a website "will not work", then they will comply. Truthfully, it is almost always still possible to retrieve the information without the preferred browser or without the "necessary" feature. However, most users will follow the path of least resistance. They will do as the web developers tell them to do. Users cannot be expected to simply switch to some other browser that better protects their interests. Not without cooperation from web developers and their clients, website owners.

thorn 7y ago

I would love to if FF could handle Amazon.com without boiling my MBP2013. Is it a bug in FF or just Amazon did not care to optimize their shit? Is there a way to figure out the performance's origin in FF somehow?

carey 7y ago
It’s probably https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1574538 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1574538, so you could try Firefox Nightly and see if there’s any improvement.

__b_tom_kasidy 7y ago

Or we can all go to Brave or even better to Tor.

VistaBrokeMyPC 7y ago
Tor browsing speed is a catch 22. Not enough users for ample bandwidth - > users think it's too slow and don't use it - > not enough users I've set up a relay myself, so I guess I did my part... But I wish more people would see tor as a private browser, not a gateway to "drugs, CP, and extremism'"

0xfffff 7y ago

love it!

qrbLPHiKpiux 7y ago

I don’t believe any of it will help. https://twitter.com/Shadow0pz/status/1168284101675298816 https://twitter.com/Shadow0pz/status/1168284101675298816

WilTimSon 7y ago
Wow, this is terrifying on a whole new level. This kind of invasion isn't anything new but I shudder every time I see it detailed. However, I don't see anything about Firefox there? Should we really automatically presume that Mozilla won't be able to deal with these issues just because other companies couldn't? (Or, let's be honest, didn't bother to/had incentive not to?)

rajangdavis 7y ago

Not sure how profitable it would be, but if Mozilla created a privacy-focused email client, I would consider leaving the Google ecosystem.

rypskar 7y ago
Like Mozilla Thunderbird? Like most email clients it blocks loading external resources by default. Or am I missing something?
- rajangdavis 7y ago
  I meant to say a browser based client but I will look into Thunderbird a bit more. I misunderstood the purpose of Thunderbird - it's marketed as a messaging app, which it is, but I didn't realize it did email as well.
  - jdnenej 7y ago
    I have been using thunderbird for years and didn't even know it did IM. It does a decent job at email and calender stuff.
feanaro 7y ago
I presume you actually mean an email service and a web email client?
- rajangdavis 7y ago
  Yes. Looks like Thunderbird is not quite there yet on the web email client front, but it's worth checking out.
tr3ndyBEAR 7y ago
If you mean to say email service, you should look into Proton Mail and Tutanota. They're both great and very privacy focused. Other than that you can check AlternativeTo for other email services: https://alternativeto.net/software/gmail/ https://alternativeto.net/software/gmail/

brianpgordon 7y ago

Ironic- https://i.imgur.com/jBMKcN5.png https://i.imgur.com/jBMKcN5.png

needle0 7y ago

Chromium monoculture is bad, therefore use Firefox. That's pretty much all there really is to it. Everything else is a distraction.

paulcarroty 7y ago

After couple of days with Brave/Chromium testing on my Linux machines, I definitely should say: Firefox is really SLOW, it feels without any benchmarks. So, Mozilla has two ways: 1. Build a really fast browser. 2. Die as Internet Explorer. It's realistic way to handle things. People don't care about privacy in general, browser is too complex to build for privacy/security activists only. Time to focus on business instead promoting services like Pocket & including Google analytics in addons page. Do or die.

arriu 7y ago
It's not always Firefox's fault. Some websites literally serve different HTML to Firefox, Google services are a good example.
- dhimes 7y ago
  I use Chrome for Google properties (GSuite); FF for everything else, including youtube. I find FF works great.
- kerkeslager 7y ago
  That's true, but as with most things, establishing blame for the problem doesn't actually solve the problem.
tboyd47 7y ago
I spend 40 hours a week using web-based applications and I saw no performance difference after switching to Firefox.

tripzilch 7y ago

In a swipe at its users, Chrome doesn't.

kerkeslager 7y ago

Just to be clear, what are we specifically talking about here? Does this mean that `privacy.firstparty.isolate` is now set to true by default?

burtonator 7y ago

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 workaround I could have is to call the analytics APIs on my server directly... Talking to our users their main complaint isn't necessarily that I'm tracking them more that the data is going to Google so maybe the solution is to run mixpanel.

wccrawford 7y ago
Yeah, I'd say you have to implement your own tracking system instead of using an off-the-shelf one. Either from your logs, or from code that you write, server- or client-side.
parliament32 7y ago
Users have never cared that your site tracks them -- it's pretty well known that every web server ever logs pretty much everything. The problem is with third party tracking: I'm happy that you know what I'm doing on your site, but I'm not interested in you shipping that data to Google, who will then sell it to a few dozen advertisers, who then combine it with other sites' data and build some sort of profile against me.
saagarjha 7y ago
> 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?

acd 7y ago

Is the ad tracking also blockad in Firefox mobile?

chrisjc 7y ago
From what I understand, Firefox Mobile isn't one thing. On iOS it's safari under the surface. On Android it's a distinct code-base. There might not be the level of control that you speak of in the iOS variant.

fnord77 7y ago

> 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 because I'm getting ads and suggestions correlating to some activity I did on a completely different device. This business model is toxic and I really hope all the companies using it either pivot or go bankrupt.

fouric 7y ago
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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blendle
- liability 7y ago
  Respectable news organizations have traditionally at least played lip service to keeping their journalists/editors separate from their business/advertising people, such that the journalists are free to publish articles that run contrary to the business interests of the paper. (Example: https://www.nytimes.com/editorial-standards/ethical-journalism.html#advertisersMarketingPromotion https://www.nytimes.com/editorial-standards/ethical-journali...) Of course, Wired is not a respectable publication, and this just goes to show that.
- oftenwrong 7y ago
  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.

johnchristopher 7y ago

Won't publishers just outright block Firefox from displaying their websites and suggests chrome or others for "enhanced and better experience" ? Firefox has a market share small enough that publishers and the ad industry could try to just reduce ff usage with a coordinated campaign.

yeahforsureman 7y ago

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

tracker1 7y ago

Why I hate are when sites tether their interactions to their tracking/analytics system... a failure for the analytics script should not prevent pressing 'Login' from working properly. This one is as much on developers as the ad/tracking scripts. When I've worked for public entities, I always went extra to make sure things worked well for users with ads disabled. Even so far as to make sure ad slots didn't even display the placeholders.

mkonecny 7y ago

Just installed version 69 on my Thinkpad T540p with Debian 9.9. I'm going back to Chrome. Firefox still lags on my machine after all these years. Even with a single tab and on their own initial launch page, scrolling performed a "caterpillar" effect where only the top half scrolled, and the bottom half jumped to catch up a split second later

ljw1001 7y ago

i really wanted to use Firefox, so I switched recently. It lasted about 3 hours. Every time I tried to Google something I got a warning that Google was a dangerous site because of their self-signed certificate (seriously? Google should be on the list of trusted certificate signers, no matter what you think of their business model). Then it asked if I wanted to trust them. I answered yes, repeatedly, yet the error message reappeared over and over again. (really bad). I gave up. A little more competence and I'm on board.