5 ms·

Firefox has consistently been the only browser protecting people from the Facebooks and Googles of the world. There are a few sites that don't work in it, but

by cpurdy 4y ago

Firefox has consistently been the only browser protecting people from the Facebooks and Googles of the world. There are a few sites that don't work in it, but it tends to hew closer to the standards than the proprietary lock-in browsers.

solardev 4y ago
I don't think people really value online privacy all that much. They choose to use Facebook and Google despite everything. And there's always Chromium spinoffs like Brave and Edge with much better compatibility and similar protections. Firefox offers nothing special anymore. And while Google isn't exactly benevolent, Chrome doesn't spam you with ads the way Firefox constantly does with its suggestions and whatever the hell Pocket is.
- orev 4y ago
  Those people probably don’t fully understand how pervasive the tracking is. If they did, they would care. When Apple launched the tracking prompt in iOS, Facebook took out ads warning people how bad it was going to be for them, and the results proved their fears right. When asked, almost everyone chooses “no”, and I suspect many of the “yes”es are misclicks.
  - solardev 4y ago
    My takeaway from that is that people will choose privacy if it doesn't cost them anything and is easy. But if it inconveniences them, whether it's having to click through five menus to disallow cookies or having to use Firefox, most just won't bother. People always say they care if you ask them, but if you look at their behaviors, almost nobody actually does. It's just a nice to have, not a necessity.
    - oarsinsync 4y ago
      > My takeaway from that is that people will choose privacy if it doesn't cost them anything and is easy. Agreeing with the above, an alternative take on the rest is that people will not choose privacy if it is expensive and difficult. This doesn’t mean that it’s not a necessity, just that they can’t afford it and/or can’t work out how to get it. The organisations involved in invading end user privacy employ large numbers of psychologists to deliberately design things that make being privacy-conscious difficult (mentally taxing / expensive / path of most resistance). When the population at large is (unknowingly) fighting against an highly armed adversary, it feels uncharitable to claim that they don’t care. We’re losing a war the vast majority don’t even realise is happening.
      - solardev 4y ago
        I don't know, I think there's also room for people (like me) who understand the tracking going on and are frankly just fine with it. These privacy fears have been around since the 90s, when people were terrified of using their real names online. But they're just not a big deal to many people. Watching Apple and Facebook duke it out was mildly entertaining, but at the end of the day, life went on without much difference. I've had my Google account privacy turned way down for years because I found that recommendations were better when Google knew everything about me. I didn't mind giving Google all that data. What finally stopped me wasn't privacy concerns, but that all my trivial web searches started to leak into a redesigned Google News, leading to it becoming useless. I was sad, because I would rather they have implemented more controls over the feed algorithm rather than force me to turn off history-based recommendations. Guess they're taking a play out of tiktok's book? For a decade, Google has known my precise location at all times, my browsing history, my weight, my heart rate, my emails and texts, my pictures... and you know what? Nothing much has happened. It wasn't a huge positive or negative. Privacy just isn't a big deal day in and day out. Nobody has any today and somehow we're OK...
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
  - Defletter 4y ago
    "If they knew what I know, they'd care like I do." This is an extremely easy main-character mindset to fall into. The truth of the matter is that for a lot of people, perhaps even most, they wouldn't care even if they knew as much as you. For most people, they see how convenient services are, how good they are at recommending products you may want to buy, friends you may want to connect with, videos you may want to watch, etc. They perceive ads as payment for using these services. They see privacy popups and prompts as frustrating interferences. They understand at some level that the companies are doing it deliberately, that they're making handing over your data as easy and convenient as possible and opting out as hard as possible; that those cookie prompts are incredibly obnoxious to coerce you into just clicking "Accept All". But human nature is human nature and people generally prefer the convenience.
    - Lio 4y ago
      ...and yet when given a choice that's not marred in dark patterns or made obnoxiously repetitive they choose overwhelmingly to opt out. That was the whole thrust of what Facebook was objecting too; they didn't want people to have a choice.
      - Defletter 4y ago
        Sure, but that's not the same thing: people overwhelmingly choosing to opt out when presented with a binary yes/no prompt is not the same thing as caring as much as you about privacy. Those people aren't going to start campaigning for privacy regulation because they opted out of Facebook's additional tracking. I generally refer to this as the "Don't Send" principle, if you remember those old Windows errors.
    - autoexec 4y ago
      > They perceive ads as payment for using these services. The problem is that they've been tricked into thinking 'ads' are the cost that they pay. The reality is that they'll be paying for the rest of their lives in ways they never thought were possible and with no way to back out. The more people start to learn about how the data they've surrendered for a tiny bit of convenience is, and has been, being used against them they'll slowly come to realize that they've been ripped off and had no idea what they were giving up. They'll discover that they were lied to when they were told the services they enjoy couldn't exist without that sacrifice. By the time most of them catch on it'll be to late, but they'll certainly care then.
  - PenguinCoder 4y ago
    The average person _does not_ care in the slightest. I have family and friends I have explained the tracking to, with proof, sources, up to date recent news, etc. I've explained how and why those companies and applications work, including apps like TikTok. Invariably the answer has been "So what?" and even "I don't have a problem with targeted ads, they're more relevant and good!". Or "I don't care if it's spying on me, everything is. It's fun". PEOPLE in general do not care, even if they claim to know about the tracking.
    - mindslight 4y ago
      People in general are animals that do not reason abstractly, but rather react emotionally. I've had conversations with family members that were already coming into the conversation caring about being "tracked by GPS satellites", and I've tried to explain that it's mostly software on your phone doing the tracking, and that there are ways to mitigate much of it. Rather than seeing that I share their concern, work with technology, and perhaps they could pick up some tips for me, I just got othered for not mirroring their party line of being helplessly attacked. So no, abstractly trying to tell people they're being continually surveilled and trying to get them to care is not a useful indicator. Even if you could obtain and present the contents of their permanent records in a shocking way, there's a good chance they'd just react to the overwhelmingness with cognitive dissonance.
    - ever1337 4y ago
      I have had nearly the opposite experience, for what it's worth. Long conversations with non-technical family members about the pervasiveness of tracking and surveillance. A lot of them share my hatred for social media platforms and identify the 'correct' (in my opinion) issues with these platforms (pseudo-quantification of opinion via like buttons instead of nuanced interactions, mercurial algorithms tailored to individuals destroying any sense of shared reality, etc.). Of course, none of them will actually take the leap and leave these platforms as I have, but I think people are willing to actually recognize these issues. Just depends on who they are. Maybe if you're talking with people you could talk about how this surveillance isn't just used for ads, that the data collected by advertisers is purchased by law enforcement agencies to circumvent legal requirements for warrants, that the police (in the US) with zero oversight can track your every movement via these databases, in open contravention of the spirit of the laws that "regulate" them. Also, I think that the corpo line that surveillance results in "better" ads is simply untrue. I've heard so many people complain about irrelevant ads being served to them. I think there is a growing group of people who feel insulted by the shallow way they are typecast by these ads. A family member who is a carpenter who gets advertised consumerist "manly" products comes to mind. Because ultimately they are not serving you what you want, they are serving you what you are statistically most likely to click on. And at least most people I have asked, have never even clicked on an Instagram or Facebook ad. So the ads presented to "you" are really being presented to a consumerist ad-clicker alternate reality version of you, it is a fundamental disconnect. I think the value advertisers gain from increased "engagement" on ads is increasingly being paid for in the form of alienation of the kinds of people who will simply never respond to this kind of advertising.
- xtiansimon 4y ago
  > “I don't think people really value online privacy all that much.” I’m not far from this position, because on the face of it, privacy is only a claim proven false with the loss of privacy. Meanwhile, I still use Facebook to check on my family, etc.
- olyjohn 4y ago
  What are you talking about? Google spams you to use Chrome every time you visit their website. Literally the most used website in the world, tells you to use Chrome any time you're not using Chrome.

by cpurdy 4y ago

solardev 4y ago

I don't think people really value online privacy all that much. They choose to use Facebook and Google despite everything. And there's always Chromium spinoffs like Brave and Edge with much better compatibility and similar protections. Firefox offers nothing special anymore. And while Google isn't exactly benevolent, Chrome doesn't spam you with ads the way Firefox constantly does with its suggestions and whatever the hell Pocket is.

orev 4y ago
Those people probably don’t fully understand how pervasive the tracking is. If they did, they would care. When Apple launched the tracking prompt in iOS, Facebook took out ads warning people how bad it was going to be for them, and the results proved their fears right. When asked, almost everyone chooses “no”, and I suspect many of the “yes”es are misclicks.
- solardev 4y ago
  My takeaway from that is that people will choose privacy if it doesn't cost them anything and is easy. But if it inconveniences them, whether it's having to click through five menus to disallow cookies or having to use Firefox, most just won't bother. People always say they care if you ask them, but if you look at their behaviors, almost nobody actually does. It's just a nice to have, not a necessity.
  - oarsinsync 4y ago
    > My takeaway from that is that people will choose privacy if it doesn't cost them anything and is easy. Agreeing with the above, an alternative take on the rest is that people will not choose privacy if it is expensive and difficult. This doesn’t mean that it’s not a necessity, just that they can’t afford it and/or can’t work out how to get it. The organisations involved in invading end user privacy employ large numbers of psychologists to deliberately design things that make being privacy-conscious difficult (mentally taxing / expensive / path of most resistance). When the population at large is (unknowingly) fighting against an highly armed adversary, it feels uncharitable to claim that they don’t care. We’re losing a war the vast majority don’t even realise is happening.
    - solardev 4y ago
      I don't know, I think there's also room for people (like me) who understand the tracking going on and are frankly just fine with it. These privacy fears have been around since the 90s, when people were terrified of using their real names online. But they're just not a big deal to many people. Watching Apple and Facebook duke it out was mildly entertaining, but at the end of the day, life went on without much difference. I've had my Google account privacy turned way down for years because I found that recommendations were better when Google knew everything about me. I didn't mind giving Google all that data. What finally stopped me wasn't privacy concerns, but that all my trivial web searches started to leak into a redesigned Google News, leading to it becoming useless. I was sad, because I would rather they have implemented more controls over the feed algorithm rather than force me to turn off history-based recommendations. Guess they're taking a play out of tiktok's book? For a decade, Google has known my precise location at all times, my browsing history, my weight, my heart rate, my emails and texts, my pictures... and you know what? Nothing much has happened. It wasn't a huge positive or negative. Privacy just isn't a big deal day in and day out. Nobody has any today and somehow we're OK...
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
- Defletter 4y ago
  "If they knew what I know, they'd care like I do." This is an extremely easy main-character mindset to fall into. The truth of the matter is that for a lot of people, perhaps even most, they wouldn't care even if they knew as much as you. For most people, they see how convenient services are, how good they are at recommending products you may want to buy, friends you may want to connect with, videos you may want to watch, etc. They perceive ads as payment for using these services. They see privacy popups and prompts as frustrating interferences. They understand at some level that the companies are doing it deliberately, that they're making handing over your data as easy and convenient as possible and opting out as hard as possible; that those cookie prompts are incredibly obnoxious to coerce you into just clicking "Accept All". But human nature is human nature and people generally prefer the convenience.
  - Lio 4y ago
    ...and yet when given a choice that's not marred in dark patterns or made obnoxiously repetitive they choose overwhelmingly to opt out. That was the whole thrust of what Facebook was objecting too; they didn't want people to have a choice.
    - Defletter 4y ago
      Sure, but that's not the same thing: people overwhelmingly choosing to opt out when presented with a binary yes/no prompt is not the same thing as caring as much as you about privacy. Those people aren't going to start campaigning for privacy regulation because they opted out of Facebook's additional tracking. I generally refer to this as the "Don't Send" principle, if you remember those old Windows errors.
  - autoexec 4y ago
    > They perceive ads as payment for using these services. The problem is that they've been tricked into thinking 'ads' are the cost that they pay. The reality is that they'll be paying for the rest of their lives in ways they never thought were possible and with no way to back out. The more people start to learn about how the data they've surrendered for a tiny bit of convenience is, and has been, being used against them they'll slowly come to realize that they've been ripped off and had no idea what they were giving up. They'll discover that they were lied to when they were told the services they enjoy couldn't exist without that sacrifice. By the time most of them catch on it'll be to late, but they'll certainly care then.
- PenguinCoder 4y ago
  The average person _does not_ care in the slightest. I have family and friends I have explained the tracking to, with proof, sources, up to date recent news, etc. I've explained how and why those companies and applications work, including apps like TikTok. Invariably the answer has been "So what?" and even "I don't have a problem with targeted ads, they're more relevant and good!". Or "I don't care if it's spying on me, everything is. It's fun". PEOPLE in general do not care, even if they claim to know about the tracking.
  - mindslight 4y ago
    People in general are animals that do not reason abstractly, but rather react emotionally. I've had conversations with family members that were already coming into the conversation caring about being "tracked by GPS satellites", and I've tried to explain that it's mostly software on your phone doing the tracking, and that there are ways to mitigate much of it. Rather than seeing that I share their concern, work with technology, and perhaps they could pick up some tips for me, I just got othered for not mirroring their party line of being helplessly attacked. So no, abstractly trying to tell people they're being continually surveilled and trying to get them to care is not a useful indicator. Even if you could obtain and present the contents of their permanent records in a shocking way, there's a good chance they'd just react to the overwhelmingness with cognitive dissonance.
  - ever1337 4y ago
    I have had nearly the opposite experience, for what it's worth. Long conversations with non-technical family members about the pervasiveness of tracking and surveillance. A lot of them share my hatred for social media platforms and identify the 'correct' (in my opinion) issues with these platforms (pseudo-quantification of opinion via like buttons instead of nuanced interactions, mercurial algorithms tailored to individuals destroying any sense of shared reality, etc.). Of course, none of them will actually take the leap and leave these platforms as I have, but I think people are willing to actually recognize these issues. Just depends on who they are. Maybe if you're talking with people you could talk about how this surveillance isn't just used for ads, that the data collected by advertisers is purchased by law enforcement agencies to circumvent legal requirements for warrants, that the police (in the US) with zero oversight can track your every movement via these databases, in open contravention of the spirit of the laws that "regulate" them. Also, I think that the corpo line that surveillance results in "better" ads is simply untrue. I've heard so many people complain about irrelevant ads being served to them. I think there is a growing group of people who feel insulted by the shallow way they are typecast by these ads. A family member who is a carpenter who gets advertised consumerist "manly" products comes to mind. Because ultimately they are not serving you what you want, they are serving you what you are statistically most likely to click on. And at least most people I have asked, have never even clicked on an Instagram or Facebook ad. So the ads presented to "you" are really being presented to a consumerist ad-clicker alternate reality version of you, it is a fundamental disconnect. I think the value advertisers gain from increased "engagement" on ads is increasingly being paid for in the form of alienation of the kinds of people who will simply never respond to this kind of advertising.
xtiansimon 4y ago
> “I don't think people really value online privacy all that much.” I’m not far from this position, because on the face of it, privacy is only a claim proven false with the loss of privacy. Meanwhile, I still use Facebook to check on my family, etc.
olyjohn 4y ago
What are you talking about? Google spams you to use Chrome every time you visit their website. Literally the most used website in the world, tells you to use Chrome any time you're not using Chrome.