8 ms·

Per the article, this is irrelevant. The case being made is that the figure seen by the government falling under 2%, which it is getting close to, will trigger

Per the article, this is irrelevant. The case being made is that the figure seen by the government falling under 2%, which it is getting close to, will trigger a chain-reaction of consequences that will dramatically hurt Firefox, and it's not clear if Mozilla, the organization, could weather that. It doesn't particularly matter whether or not the figure is accurate in that context. Maybe that can be fixed easily by having Firefox contextually relax tracking a bit or by having the government change how they perform the tracking, but the status quo is not really sustainable. And that's really all the article is saying at the end of the day.

PawgerZ 3y ago
2% is still 7 million people
account42 3y ago
> it's not clear if Mozilla, the organization, could weather that. It would be best for the future of Firefox if they don't.
robin_reala 3y ago
USDS aren’t idiots, and if they haven’t realised this yet then maybe this post will focus attention. They want to support every citizen it’s reasonable to support (or at least I did when I was working for GOV.UK) and dropping support from a lack of knowledge shouldn’t be on the agenda.
- dblohm7 3y ago
  Some of the USDS people are even ex-Mozilla!
- Miraste 3y ago
  GOV.UK is dramatically more competent than USDS, are they not? I admit I'm not terribly familiar, but I wouldn't want to depend on the agency behind the Department of Education and VA websites for anything. I've seen the VA site, in particular, do serious harm to the people it's meant to serve.
  - mardifoufs 3y ago
    I don't think the USDS makes all or even most of the current federal gov websites.
    - Miraste 3y ago
      No, they don't. But they did create the VA site: https://www.usds.gov/projects/va-dot-gov https://www.usds.gov/projects/va-dot-gov And they're involved with the Department of Education, although I couldn't find out exactly what they built.
      - mardifoufs 3y ago
        Oof, that sucks to hear. I had a hard time believing they'd be behind that website seeing that I often hear complaints about it. :(
      - llimllib 3y ago
        the va site is vast, to say any one team created the VA site would not be even close to correct. They did help change over the old va.gov to the new va.gov (which was built as vets.gov), which imo has been a huge improvement. (There are still many, many problems with the VA and its website. Just saying that 1. the new va.gov is a big improvement and 2. the USDS is far from being a single point of responsibility for it, or even _the_ major point of responsibility)
    - boris-ning-usds 3y ago
      USDS certainly does not. The guiding principle at the time from what I remembered is to try to set "some standard" for all federal government websites to strive to because there were none. We also helped with design and infrastructure support for ssa.gov (launched earlier this year) with a contractor team to try to boil down 60,000 pages to ~30 pages that people tend to use. // opinions of a former USDS, no longer with the team
  - boris-ning-usds 3y ago
    Hi! Can you elaborate on what in particular on the VA site that causes serious harm to the people it's meant to serve? I'm happy to bring it to the team or if you don't feel comfortable with stating it here, please bring it up to the open source website for va.gov. https://github.com/department-of-veterans-affairs/vets-website https://github.com/department-of-veterans-affairs/vets-websi...
- Chabsff 3y ago
  Sure, but the government HAS to make that determination in a data-driven way. It cannot be based on anything subjective, for what should be obvious reasons. On top of that, said lack of knowledge is a stated goal of all privacy-focused browsers. GA-blindness is an implementation detail of these policies. Any method the government could use to accurately track that information is effectively a bug in need of fixing from the POV of the browser's developers. The most practical answer is, as was posted by someone else here, the government spec'ing to a standard instead of a set of browsers, which it really should be doing in the first place. The mere fact that the current setup means that the government accidentally makes and/or breaks winners in that space is justification enough.
  - TheCoelacanth 3y ago
    Server-side tracking of user agent strings should still be possible.
    - john-radio 3y ago
      Yeah, I think the root comment of this thread is talking out of his ass. Third-party trackers are not needed, and wouldn't make sense to use, to discern browser market share; browsers self-report their identity and operating system unless specifically configured not to. For example, my User-Agent string in my GET request to retrieve Hacker News is: "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.15; rv:120.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/120.0".
    - OkayPhysicist 3y ago
      Except we should be pushing for the elimination of user agent strings, too. They just end up being used as a lazy way for lazy developers to not test for capabilities. The most recent example I've run into is Snapchat's web client: It reject's Firefox purely by user agent string, but then works perfectly in Firefox if you just have your browser lie.
      - andrepd 3y ago
        That's the sort of this that should be illegal for anticompetitive reasons.
- jddj 3y ago
  I get unsupported browser warnings on my country's government portal when I use Firefox. I think it's been the case for a good 10 years. It works fine, of course
- nvm0n2 3y ago
  The 2% rule USDS use is taken directly from GDS (gov.uk), so that isn't what your old employer's policy is at all. They have to define reasonable, after all.
  - robin_reala 3y ago
    That part of the article was just wrong, to be fair (I used to be head of the front-end community at GDS and helped set things like browser support schedules). Our default approach was to add up all browser share (yes, based on GA, but this was a while ago) until we got to 99%, then removed the browsers that were left over. So typically we wouldn’t consider dropping a browser version until it was less than 0.4% usage. You can use a colleague’s client-side tool to test this approach: http://edds.github.io/browser-matrix/ http://edds.github.io/browser-matrix/ (assuming it still works). The browser support is currently listed at https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/technology/designing-for-different-browsers-and-devices#browsers-to-test-in-from-june-2022 https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/technology/designing-for-d... . The mention of 2% is specific to IE11, so I guess this was special-cased at some point.
    - nvm0n2 3y ago
      I stand corrected, thank you.
stcredzero 3y ago
Per the article, this is irrelevant. The case being made is that the figure seen by the government falling under 2%, which it is getting close to So, the default position of the government is, "If we can't surveil you, we can't help you?" (Or taken the other way, you want us to help you? Let us surveil you!) This seems to be how it works out in practice, just because of favorable economics in mass surveillance. Example: RFID and license plate readers for toll collection. Various registrations with government agencies are another example.
pas 3y ago
Well, if the world including whatever governments, institutions, groups, interests, companies, FOSS projects, OS distros, etc... all want to depend only on Chromium, then fine. If Mozilla can't even play this card, then they should really just shut down. Or, maybe, like Wikpedia, they should stop begging for more-more-more, and spend what they get wisely. Not to mention, they could simply start bug bounties and/or crowdfunding for actual deliverables and/or services (ie. a security team). And if all this fails, then it fails. Maybe we'll simply get a Firemium or Chromefox/fix whatever the name. A fork where adblock works.
beanjuiceII 3y ago
I work in govt tech, we already internally do not care about FF support at all and only really look to chrome based browsers (chrome edge mostly) and safari. Many people don't even know what it is anymore, seems like time killed this browser too. Mozilla spending too much time/money and other crap over the years
- djvdq 3y ago
  US gov't supporting monopoly instead of fighting it? I'm not surprised.
- traviswt 3y ago
  > Mozilla spending too much time/money and other crap over the years It seems like a pretty bit conflict of interest when the #1 money source for Firefox comes from Firefox's only real competitor.
  - sitzkrieg 3y ago
    yea things have seriously gone downhill since chrome took off in 2010
- riversflow 3y ago
  What does a government site need that you can't do on firefox? Honestly this is disenfranchising, you should consider the ethics of what you are proscribing for the populace. I should have a right to choose a browser that respects my privacy from a PC.
  - hammyhavoc 3y ago
    ... there's plenty of privacy-respecting Chromium-derivative browsers...
  - insanitybit 3y ago
    It's clearly not about what is needed, it's about what is tested. And spending resources on a browser that appears to have 2% of the market is not going to be a high priority.

PawgerZ 3y ago

2% is still 7 million people

account42 3y ago

> it's not clear if Mozilla, the organization, could weather that. It would be best for the future of Firefox if they don't.

robin_reala 3y ago

USDS aren’t idiots, and if they haven’t realised this yet then maybe this post will focus attention. They want to support every citizen it’s reasonable to support (or at least I did when I was working for GOV.UK) and dropping support from a lack of knowledge shouldn’t be on the agenda.

dblohm7 3y ago
Some of the USDS people are even ex-Mozilla!
Miraste 3y ago
GOV.UK is dramatically more competent than USDS, are they not? I admit I'm not terribly familiar, but I wouldn't want to depend on the agency behind the Department of Education and VA websites for anything. I've seen the VA site, in particular, do serious harm to the people it's meant to serve.
- mardifoufs 3y ago
  I don't think the USDS makes all or even most of the current federal gov websites.
  - Miraste 3y ago
    No, they don't. But they did create the VA site: https://www.usds.gov/projects/va-dot-gov https://www.usds.gov/projects/va-dot-gov And they're involved with the Department of Education, although I couldn't find out exactly what they built.
    - mardifoufs 3y ago
      Oof, that sucks to hear. I had a hard time believing they'd be behind that website seeing that I often hear complaints about it. :(
    - llimllib 3y ago
      the va site is vast, to say any one team created the VA site would not be even close to correct. They did help change over the old va.gov to the new va.gov (which was built as vets.gov), which imo has been a huge improvement. (There are still many, many problems with the VA and its website. Just saying that 1. the new va.gov is a big improvement and 2. the USDS is far from being a single point of responsibility for it, or even _the_ major point of responsibility)
  - boris-ning-usds 3y ago
    USDS certainly does not. The guiding principle at the time from what I remembered is to try to set "some standard" for all federal government websites to strive to because there were none. We also helped with design and infrastructure support for ssa.gov (launched earlier this year) with a contractor team to try to boil down 60,000 pages to ~30 pages that people tend to use. // opinions of a former USDS, no longer with the team
- boris-ning-usds 3y ago
  Hi! Can you elaborate on what in particular on the VA site that causes serious harm to the people it's meant to serve? I'm happy to bring it to the team or if you don't feel comfortable with stating it here, please bring it up to the open source website for va.gov. https://github.com/department-of-veterans-affairs/vets-website https://github.com/department-of-veterans-affairs/vets-websi...
Chabsff 3y ago
Sure, but the government HAS to make that determination in a data-driven way. It cannot be based on anything subjective, for what should be obvious reasons. On top of that, said lack of knowledge is a stated goal of all privacy-focused browsers. GA-blindness is an implementation detail of these policies. Any method the government could use to accurately track that information is effectively a bug in need of fixing from the POV of the browser's developers. The most practical answer is, as was posted by someone else here, the government spec'ing to a standard instead of a set of browsers, which it really should be doing in the first place. The mere fact that the current setup means that the government accidentally makes and/or breaks winners in that space is justification enough.
- TheCoelacanth 3y ago
  Server-side tracking of user agent strings should still be possible.
  - john-radio 3y ago
    Yeah, I think the root comment of this thread is talking out of his ass. Third-party trackers are not needed, and wouldn't make sense to use, to discern browser market share; browsers self-report their identity and operating system unless specifically configured not to. For example, my User-Agent string in my GET request to retrieve Hacker News is: "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.15; rv:120.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/120.0".
  - OkayPhysicist 3y ago
    Except we should be pushing for the elimination of user agent strings, too. They just end up being used as a lazy way for lazy developers to not test for capabilities. The most recent example I've run into is Snapchat's web client: It reject's Firefox purely by user agent string, but then works perfectly in Firefox if you just have your browser lie.
    - andrepd 3y ago
      That's the sort of this that should be illegal for anticompetitive reasons.
jddj 3y ago
I get unsupported browser warnings on my country's government portal when I use Firefox. I think it's been the case for a good 10 years. It works fine, of course
nvm0n2 3y ago
The 2% rule USDS use is taken directly from GDS (gov.uk), so that isn't what your old employer's policy is at all. They have to define reasonable, after all.
- robin_reala 3y ago
  That part of the article was just wrong, to be fair (I used to be head of the front-end community at GDS and helped set things like browser support schedules). Our default approach was to add up all browser share (yes, based on GA, but this was a while ago) until we got to 99%, then removed the browsers that were left over. So typically we wouldn’t consider dropping a browser version until it was less than 0.4% usage. You can use a colleague’s client-side tool to test this approach: http://edds.github.io/browser-matrix/ http://edds.github.io/browser-matrix/ (assuming it still works). The browser support is currently listed at https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/technology/designing-for-different-browsers-and-devices#browsers-to-test-in-from-june-2022 https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/technology/designing-for-d... . The mention of 2% is specific to IE11, so I guess this was special-cased at some point.
  - nvm0n2 3y ago
    I stand corrected, thank you.

stcredzero 3y ago

Per the article, this is irrelevant. The case being made is that the figure seen by the government falling under 2%, which it is getting close to So, the default position of the government is, "If we can't surveil you, we can't help you?" (Or taken the other way, you want us to help you? Let us surveil you!) This seems to be how it works out in practice, just because of favorable economics in mass surveillance. Example: RFID and license plate readers for toll collection. Various registrations with government agencies are another example.

pas 3y ago

Well, if the world including whatever governments, institutions, groups, interests, companies, FOSS projects, OS distros, etc... all want to depend only on Chromium, then fine. If Mozilla can't even play this card, then they should really just shut down. Or, maybe, like Wikpedia, they should stop begging for more-more-more, and spend what they get wisely. Not to mention, they could simply start bug bounties and/or crowdfunding for actual deliverables and/or services (ie. a security team). And if all this fails, then it fails. Maybe we'll simply get a Firemium or Chromefox/fix whatever the name. A fork where adblock works.

beanjuiceII 3y ago

I work in govt tech, we already internally do not care about FF support at all and only really look to chrome based browsers (chrome edge mostly) and safari. Many people don't even know what it is anymore, seems like time killed this browser too. Mozilla spending too much time/money and other crap over the years

djvdq 3y ago
US gov't supporting monopoly instead of fighting it? I'm not surprised.
traviswt 3y ago
> Mozilla spending too much time/money and other crap over the years It seems like a pretty bit conflict of interest when the #1 money source for Firefox comes from Firefox's only real competitor.
- sitzkrieg 3y ago
  yea things have seriously gone downhill since chrome took off in 2010
riversflow 3y ago
What does a government site need that you can't do on firefox? Honestly this is disenfranchising, you should consider the ethics of what you are proscribing for the populace. I should have a right to choose a browser that respects my privacy from a PC.
- hammyhavoc 3y ago
  ... there's plenty of privacy-respecting Chromium-derivative browsers...
- insanitybit 3y ago
  It's clearly not about what is needed, it's about what is tested. And spending resources on a browser that appears to have 2% of the market is not going to be a high priority.