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Oh, come on. I did raise a stink over closed-source DRM, I raised a stink not just over Firefox adding it, I raised a stink over the entire web standards proce

Oh, come on. I did raise a stink over closed-source DRM, I raised a stink not just over Firefox adding it, I raised a stink over the entire web standards process. I have raised stinks about telemetry and advertising within Firefox. I've raised stinks about Pocket being purchased and not Open Sourced, and then integrated into the browser by default. I've raised stink about a lot of things. Nevertheless, it is still objectively true that Mozilla Firefox is the best mainstream browser right now for privacy, and anyone who argues otherwise is either not looking at the bigger picture or hasn't done much research into how companies do the majority of their tracking online. The privacy problems that Mozilla has had have objectively less impact on people's everyday privacy than Chromium's hobbled extension support. The ability to turn on anti-fingerprinting features uplifted from Tor is more important than whether or not Google search is enabled by default. Container-extensions are more practically impactful on everyday privacy than Pocket is. I am literally complaining about and criticizing Mozilla right now, and yet the immediate reaction is to jump on the one positive thing I said and act like I'm somehow ignoring Mozilla's other issues. I'm not ignoring those issues, but the "Mozilla is corrupt and no better than Google" meme is similarly completely ridiculous. Every single other browser on the market including DeGoogled Chromium and Safari are hobbled in ways that make them worse for privacy, and overall Mozilla still as a company has a better track record on fighting for privacy and building privacy-preserving tools than Google/Microsoft/Brave -- at least it has a better track record in the ways that matter. It is so frustrating to try and have a constructive conversation about real missteps that Mozilla is making when people view anything less than a complete condemnation of the company like that means they're being put on a pedestal. Mozilla isn't perfect, and it's clumsy and sometimes does outright bad stuff, and that is still consistent with them being one of the better corporate privacy advocates on the Internet.

jacquesm 5y ago
> It is so frustrating to try and have a constructive conversation about real missteps that Mozilla is making when people view anything less than a complete condemnation of the company like it's holding them on a pedestal. Check the title. It is absolutely on topic. Mozilla is doing this to themselves, each and every one of those is an unforced error. If your mission really is a free and open as well as privacy respecting web you don't invite the largest privacy violator on the planet to the table to have a say. Just like you don't invite serial killers and druglords to your panel on how to combat crime.
- danShumway 5y ago
  > If your mission really is a free and open as well as privacy respecting web you don't invite the largest privacy violator on the planet to the table to have a say. If you're trying to insinuate that working with Google or Facebook on this issue means that Mozilla fundamentally doesn't care about privacy, that is a ridiculous, fantastical claim that requires closing your eyes to years of work from the company. I am right here criticizing Mozilla for partnering with Facebook, they should not be doing that. It's irresponsible and harmful. Nevertheless, Firefox is objectively the most private consumer-grade browser on the market, including Brave and DeGoogled Chromium. Nevertheless, Mozilla has done more to push web privacy forward than the majority of people on this site myself included, and more to push web privacy forward than the entirety of the rest of the browser market. Even if you are on topic, there's nothing constructive about jumping onto every Mozilla thread arguing that Mozilla is the same as Google when they're very clearly not. It's unproductive because I shouldn't even need to be wasting my time defending a company that I came here to criticize. It makes it harder to fix real problems when all of them are equated and treated as being identically severe, and when the conclusion everyone draws from every problem is "use something based on Chrome and give up on the entire effort".
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    A Mozilla that fundamentally cared about privacy would have made none of these decisions. I've grown increasingly cynical over the last couple of years that this is just another marketing ploy, it sounds good and keeps us in but you have to wonder whether it is really true given their decisions to date. The 'years of work from the company' are fantastic, but should not give them a pass in the present, given that the last couple of years most of that goodwill has been burned.
    - sneak 5y ago
      Additionally, it seems like it would be practically zero up front cost for Mozilla to provide a no-telemetry, no-google, no-pocket, no-ads, no-sync, no-experiments, no-privacy-compromise alternative build as a one-click option for people who actually want a privacy-focused browser. Instead, we have to download the normal "product-manager-ized" one and turn off a bunch of intrusive stuff we never really wanted in a browser. They don't do this, though. I speculate (without any direct knowledge of the situation) that this is because they believe that the majority of their users would opt for this build instead, and they would lose "insights" (and of course revenue). Someone, somewhere, is prioritizing "line go up and to the right" over embodying the fundamental ethos of a privacy-focused company. If you ship private software, there is of course no line.
sneak 5y ago
> Every single other browser on the market including DeGoogled Chromium and Safari are hobbled in ways that make them worse for privacy I'm curious about why you believe this about Ungoogled Chromium, as I had concluded the opposite after researching.
- danShumway 5y ago
  This is a great question, and it gets to the heart of practical privacy online. DeGoogled Chromium does actually have less telemetry problems than Firefox, so it's really easy for DeGoogled Chromium proponents to say that it's the most private. The issue is that DeGoogled Chromium is Chromium, and Chromium is a less privacy-capable browser engine than Firefox. That could be a longer conversation, but the short versions: - Chromium lacks a number of privacy features that Firefox has, including some anti-fingerprinting options that can be enabled through `about:config`, and container support, which is a really big deal for isolating site data and avoiding correlating user sessions on websites like Github/Youtube/etc... with incidental visits to those sites. - Chromium's extension API is hobbled, particularly in a couple of areas that Ublock Origin cares about. The wiki goes into more detail on this[0]. ---- The mistake is in looking at the small amount of (admittedly bad) data-leakage that Firefox does have and being so worried about that information being sent to Google/Cloudflare that you pick a browser that is less good at keeping you private on every other site you visit, including visits to Google/Cloudflare pages. Thinking practically about this stuff is just a really hard thing to learn to do, at least it is for me. Maybe other people are magically good at it. But I regularly find that it's helpful for me to sit down and think through my privacy goals more tangibly in the form of "how much data is X actually leaking, what should my priorities be based on the volume/nature?" A lot of people worry about privacy problems in the wrong order. DeGoogled Chromium does have better defaults than Firefox in multiple areas. It's just that the privacy benefits from those changes don't outweigh a crippled Ublock Origin install. [0]: https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-best-on-Firefox https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/wiki/uBlock-Or...
  - 6equj5 5y ago
    >anti-fingerprinting options that can be enabled through `about:config` For reference: `privacy.resistFingerprinting`

jacquesm 5y ago

> It is so frustrating to try and have a constructive conversation about real missteps that Mozilla is making when people view anything less than a complete condemnation of the company like it's holding them on a pedestal. Check the title. It is absolutely on topic. Mozilla is doing this to themselves, each and every one of those is an unforced error. If your mission really is a free and open as well as privacy respecting web you don't invite the largest privacy violator on the planet to the table to have a say. Just like you don't invite serial killers and druglords to your panel on how to combat crime.

danShumway 5y ago
> If your mission really is a free and open as well as privacy respecting web you don't invite the largest privacy violator on the planet to the table to have a say. If you're trying to insinuate that working with Google or Facebook on this issue means that Mozilla fundamentally doesn't care about privacy, that is a ridiculous, fantastical claim that requires closing your eyes to years of work from the company. I am right here criticizing Mozilla for partnering with Facebook, they should not be doing that. It's irresponsible and harmful. Nevertheless, Firefox is objectively the most private consumer-grade browser on the market, including Brave and DeGoogled Chromium. Nevertheless, Mozilla has done more to push web privacy forward than the majority of people on this site myself included, and more to push web privacy forward than the entirety of the rest of the browser market. Even if you are on topic, there's nothing constructive about jumping onto every Mozilla thread arguing that Mozilla is the same as Google when they're very clearly not. It's unproductive because I shouldn't even need to be wasting my time defending a company that I came here to criticize. It makes it harder to fix real problems when all of them are equated and treated as being identically severe, and when the conclusion everyone draws from every problem is "use something based on Chrome and give up on the entire effort".
- jacquesm 5y ago
  A Mozilla that fundamentally cared about privacy would have made none of these decisions. I've grown increasingly cynical over the last couple of years that this is just another marketing ploy, it sounds good and keeps us in but you have to wonder whether it is really true given their decisions to date. The 'years of work from the company' are fantastic, but should not give them a pass in the present, given that the last couple of years most of that goodwill has been burned.
  - sneak 5y ago
    Additionally, it seems like it would be practically zero up front cost for Mozilla to provide a no-telemetry, no-google, no-pocket, no-ads, no-sync, no-experiments, no-privacy-compromise alternative build as a one-click option for people who actually want a privacy-focused browser. Instead, we have to download the normal "product-manager-ized" one and turn off a bunch of intrusive stuff we never really wanted in a browser. They don't do this, though. I speculate (without any direct knowledge of the situation) that this is because they believe that the majority of their users would opt for this build instead, and they would lose "insights" (and of course revenue). Someone, somewhere, is prioritizing "line go up and to the right" over embodying the fundamental ethos of a privacy-focused company. If you ship private software, there is of course no line.

sneak 5y ago

> Every single other browser on the market including DeGoogled Chromium and Safari are hobbled in ways that make them worse for privacy I'm curious about why you believe this about Ungoogled Chromium, as I had concluded the opposite after researching.

danShumway 5y ago
This is a great question, and it gets to the heart of practical privacy online. DeGoogled Chromium does actually have less telemetry problems than Firefox, so it's really easy for DeGoogled Chromium proponents to say that it's the most private. The issue is that DeGoogled Chromium is Chromium, and Chromium is a less privacy-capable browser engine than Firefox. That could be a longer conversation, but the short versions: - Chromium lacks a number of privacy features that Firefox has, including some anti-fingerprinting options that can be enabled through `about:config`, and container support, which is a really big deal for isolating site data and avoiding correlating user sessions on websites like Github/Youtube/etc... with incidental visits to those sites. - Chromium's extension API is hobbled, particularly in a couple of areas that Ublock Origin cares about. The wiki goes into more detail on this[0]. ---- The mistake is in looking at the small amount of (admittedly bad) data-leakage that Firefox does have and being so worried about that information being sent to Google/Cloudflare that you pick a browser that is less good at keeping you private on every other site you visit, including visits to Google/Cloudflare pages. Thinking practically about this stuff is just a really hard thing to learn to do, at least it is for me. Maybe other people are magically good at it. But I regularly find that it's helpful for me to sit down and think through my privacy goals more tangibly in the form of "how much data is X actually leaking, what should my priorities be based on the volume/nature?" A lot of people worry about privacy problems in the wrong order. DeGoogled Chromium does have better defaults than Firefox in multiple areas. It's just that the privacy benefits from those changes don't outweigh a crippled Ublock Origin install. [0]: https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-best-on-Firefox https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/wiki/uBlock-Or...
- 6equj5 5y ago
  >anti-fingerprinting options that can be enabled through `about:config` For reference: `privacy.resistFingerprinting`