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I cannot believe how much Hacker News equivocates: A browser made by an Ad Tech company that aims to lock down and control the web. And a browser made by a no

I cannot believe how much Hacker News equivocates: A browser made by an Ad Tech company that aims to lock down and control the web. And a browser made by a nonprofit that occasionally makes a minor mistep. You cannot seriously compare the remote attestation DRM, manifest v3 changes, to, what ? the Mr. Robot ad that was tacky? the pocket integration that's pointless and annoying but otherwise harmless? Seriously, y'alls double standards are insane and focuses so much towards how bad it was that Brendan Eich got kicked out that it comes off as extremely political

TylerE 3y ago
I honestly don’t give an fuck about drm or attestatuon. There are only so many things one can find time to care about, and neither makes my list.
- spencerflem 3y ago
  Yeah, I'd understand not caring. That's a pretty common and reasonable take, though I'd hope a tech website like this would be more pro-privacy. But actively caring about browser companies, and choosing Chrome because Mozilla "sold out" when they added pocket is a pretty wild take imo.
  - TylerE 3y ago
    Privacy… eh. I care… somewhat. I’ll do things I personally consider reasonable, but I think that, say, the people who completely clear browser state every 5 minutes are barmy (and also probably much more exposed than they think they are - the very act of trying to not Leak anything makes them stand out, if anything).
    - spencerflem 3y ago
      Yeah that's a pretty reasonable take tbh. I do all that, but I'm fully aware its silly and probably counterproductive. & hey, if you prefer Chrome because you find it more usable or performant that's a perfectly good reason I'm mostly upset at the people in this thread (presumably not you) who seem to be against Firefox for ideological reasons which seems completely backwards to me
      - shrimp_emoji 3y ago
        Pretty reasonable to support the erosion of privacy and foster a "I have nothing to hide, and if you act like you do you're probably guilty lmao" culture along with an Orwellian monopolistic grip on the foremost medium of information exchange of this and probably the next century because of your personal apathy. :) #justreasonablethings
        spencerflem 3y ago
        Hey, I'm pretty big into privacy myself. Firefox all the way, 100%. Totally feel you that it's awful. As much as I'd love it though, I don't think it's reasonably to expect everyone else to care as much as we do. There's plenty of other issues that matter too that I'm glad other people are out there caring about on my behalf. Eg. I know being vegan is better but its a big annoying change and I haven't been able to do it yet. I'm mostly concerned with all the rhetroic here that's trying to paint firefox as unsympathetic when they are clearly the people fighting on our side. If you don't personally care enough to switch to FF, or use Graphene OS, or run Linux etc. I get that, but pleeease don't also try to discourage other people too, y'know? (& ofc the real solution is through policy and getting an American version of GDPR/California Privacy act, getting courts to stop the NSA etc. Being preachy online is counterproductive to getting broad support and the mission overall imo)
- alyandon 3y ago
  I already get pop ups from my insurance company (a major one I might add) that FF is not a supported browser when I log into their website. I assume that one day I'll be told to use Edge or Chrome and not allowed to log in at all. I'm not a privacy fanatic and I don't really care if my browser supports proprietary DRM so that I'm able to watch shows on streaming platforms. However, I see a lot of potential for the remote attestation mechanism proposed by Google to give companies an easy way to enforce "We support this set of browsers on this set of operating systems" and effectively cut off support for Linux and browsers that aren't popular Chromium variants. That doesn't mean I can't go and switch companies but that requires a lot of effort on my part to do so.
account42 3y ago
Firefox is NOT made by a nonprofit, that's the problem. It's made by a for profit corporation using the shell of a noprofit to claim legitimacy. This for proffit Mozilla Corp is primarily funded by an ad tech company and has itself dabbled in ads multiple times, contrary to the interests of the userbase that the nonprofit should be looking out for. These aren't minor misteps but repeated deliberate decisions to ignore user preferences.
- boomboomsubban 3y ago
  The Mozilla Corporation is a for profit company completely owned by the nonprofit the Mozilla Foundation. Originally there was just the nonprofit, but that caused tax issues with the money generated from the search deal, and after paying a few million to the IRS they switched to the current setup. I don't think it's fair to claim the nonprofit side only exists to "claim legitimacy." All of their revenue goes back into the corporation or the foundation.
  - jlokier 3y ago
    I agree with boomboomsubban above. This a very common arrangement used by charities to enable a commercial process that funds the charity. For example, high street charity shops may be part of the commercial sub-entity so that their accounts are processed like a normal company, but 100% of their profits become donations to fund the parent charity's activities, called the charitable purpose(s). If they didn't separate into a parent charity with a commercial sub-entity, all of the activities of the sub-entity would be subject to charity auditing, accounting and purpose rules, which in practice would make it difficult to run a shop competitively, or alternatively the parent could not have charity status and the shop profit would be subject to tax instead of all being directed to the audited, charitable purpose(s). In Mozilla's case, if it was a tax-exempt non-profit without a commercial sub-entity giving 100% of profits to its parent, it would not be able to take Google funding as a trade in exchange for making Google the default search engine without losing its tax-exempt status, and it might not be able to pay its software engineers a competitive market rate, even if it needs to do that to compete. It would be able to take donations (not as a trade in exchange for something, just as a donation), but that wouldn't be enough to develop a competitive browser.

TylerE 3y ago

I honestly don’t give an fuck about drm or attestatuon. There are only so many things one can find time to care about, and neither makes my list.

spencerflem 3y ago
Yeah, I'd understand not caring. That's a pretty common and reasonable take, though I'd hope a tech website like this would be more pro-privacy. But actively caring about browser companies, and choosing Chrome because Mozilla "sold out" when they added pocket is a pretty wild take imo.
- TylerE 3y ago
  Privacy… eh. I care… somewhat. I’ll do things I personally consider reasonable, but I think that, say, the people who completely clear browser state every 5 minutes are barmy (and also probably much more exposed than they think they are - the very act of trying to not Leak anything makes them stand out, if anything).
  - spencerflem 3y ago
    Yeah that's a pretty reasonable take tbh. I do all that, but I'm fully aware its silly and probably counterproductive. & hey, if you prefer Chrome because you find it more usable or performant that's a perfectly good reason I'm mostly upset at the people in this thread (presumably not you) who seem to be against Firefox for ideological reasons which seems completely backwards to me
    - shrimp_emoji 3y ago
      Pretty reasonable to support the erosion of privacy and foster a "I have nothing to hide, and if you act like you do you're probably guilty lmao" culture along with an Orwellian monopolistic grip on the foremost medium of information exchange of this and probably the next century because of your personal apathy. :) #justreasonablethings
      - spencerflem 3y ago
        Hey, I'm pretty big into privacy myself. Firefox all the way, 100%. Totally feel you that it's awful. As much as I'd love it though, I don't think it's reasonably to expect everyone else to care as much as we do. There's plenty of other issues that matter too that I'm glad other people are out there caring about on my behalf. Eg. I know being vegan is better but its a big annoying change and I haven't been able to do it yet. I'm mostly concerned with all the rhetroic here that's trying to paint firefox as unsympathetic when they are clearly the people fighting on our side. If you don't personally care enough to switch to FF, or use Graphene OS, or run Linux etc. I get that, but pleeease don't also try to discourage other people too, y'know? (& ofc the real solution is through policy and getting an American version of GDPR/California Privacy act, getting courts to stop the NSA etc. Being preachy online is counterproductive to getting broad support and the mission overall imo)
alyandon 3y ago
I already get pop ups from my insurance company (a major one I might add) that FF is not a supported browser when I log into their website. I assume that one day I'll be told to use Edge or Chrome and not allowed to log in at all. I'm not a privacy fanatic and I don't really care if my browser supports proprietary DRM so that I'm able to watch shows on streaming platforms. However, I see a lot of potential for the remote attestation mechanism proposed by Google to give companies an easy way to enforce "We support this set of browsers on this set of operating systems" and effectively cut off support for Linux and browsers that aren't popular Chromium variants. That doesn't mean I can't go and switch companies but that requires a lot of effort on my part to do so.

account42 3y ago

Firefox is NOT made by a nonprofit, that's the problem. It's made by a for profit corporation using the shell of a noprofit to claim legitimacy. This for proffit Mozilla Corp is primarily funded by an ad tech company and has itself dabbled in ads multiple times, contrary to the interests of the userbase that the nonprofit should be looking out for. These aren't minor misteps but repeated deliberate decisions to ignore user preferences.

boomboomsubban 3y ago
The Mozilla Corporation is a for profit company completely owned by the nonprofit the Mozilla Foundation. Originally there was just the nonprofit, but that caused tax issues with the money generated from the search deal, and after paying a few million to the IRS they switched to the current setup. I don't think it's fair to claim the nonprofit side only exists to "claim legitimacy." All of their revenue goes back into the corporation or the foundation.
- jlokier 3y ago
  I agree with boomboomsubban above. This a very common arrangement used by charities to enable a commercial process that funds the charity. For example, high street charity shops may be part of the commercial sub-entity so that their accounts are processed like a normal company, but 100% of their profits become donations to fund the parent charity's activities, called the charitable purpose(s). If they didn't separate into a parent charity with a commercial sub-entity, all of the activities of the sub-entity would be subject to charity auditing, accounting and purpose rules, which in practice would make it difficult to run a shop competitively, or alternatively the parent could not have charity status and the shop profit would be subject to tax instead of all being directed to the audited, charitable purpose(s). In Mozilla's case, if it was a tax-exempt non-profit without a commercial sub-entity giving 100% of profits to its parent, it would not be able to take Google funding as a trade in exchange for making Google the default search engine without losing its tax-exempt status, and it might not be able to pay its software engineers a competitive market rate, even if it needs to do that to compete. It would be able to take donations (not as a trade in exchange for something, just as a donation), but that wouldn't be enough to develop a competitive browser.