4 ms·

That's the problem with Firefox these days: The management has been so bad that the market share tanked and now market actors can afford to block FF users who a

by Tepix 2y ago

That's the problem with Firefox these days: The management has been so bad that the market share tanked and now market actors can afford to block FF users who are privacy conscious without risking a big outcry. A sign of things to come…

eqvinox 2y ago
I don't think Twitter's policy is a great indicator, though in general I agree it's a bad situation with this quasi-monopoly of Chrome-y browsers.
OutOfHere 2y ago
In fairness, Strict Tracking Protection is not a Firefox problem; it is very clearly a Firefox feature. The problem is the sites. X is not really an important site anyway.
- ranger_danger 2y ago
  I don't think most people in the world would agree with your definition of important. Perhaps you believe that's a good thing anyways. Not sure where I was going with that.
  - SapporoChris 2y ago
    The jury is still out, but there are a lot of articles that are claiming that social media is harmful. Adds stress, harms mood, contributes to anxiety and depression. The threat to privacy is well documented. It's enough for a some people to consider such websites as not important, at least to them.
- CamperBob2 2y ago
  If important people would just quit fucking using it, it wouldn't be an important site. Unfortunately, and astoundingly, nobody has bothered to create anything remotely competitive with Xitter, even at this late date.
  - OhMeadhbh 2y ago
    absolutely. if I quit Twitter, where would I get my Jake Paul and Kim Kardashian updates?
  - b800h 2y ago
    My hypothesis on this is that the zeitgeist has moved on from microblogging. Post Muskification, the whole thing fragmented into Mastodon / X / Threads, and no new leading platform emerged because the kids are all on Tiktok anyway. You can't find your friends on microblogs anymore. Meanwhile, professional conversation has migrated to LinkedIn.
  - filoleg 2y ago
    > If important people would just quit fucking using it, it wouldn't be an important site. Yeah, and if everyone would just agree to pinky swear to never engage in wars again and then fully disarm, we would achieve eternal world peace. All they gotta do is just stop doing those things. Unfortunately, things don’t quite work as simply as the way you imagine they do in the real world.
- chii 2y ago
  > The problem is the sites. no, the problem is that sites can _afford_ to block firefox, because their share is low enough that they can take the hit. What we need to do, as tech evangalists, is to push the marketshare of firefox higher, so that they cannot be ignored by sites, due to significant traffic. This is how the open internet can preserve both privacy and control of the computing environment. if your friends and/or family isn't using firefox (this includes mobile), nag them to switch. If you are a tech support for your extended family, push firefox onto them (and install adblock while you're at it). If you control a company's IT infrastructure, push firefox as the default browser, over chrome. The internet is repeating the microsoft IE days with chrome, but without the shittiness that made chrome a possible barrier breaker (chrome is good enough that most people aren't complaining). "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing"
  - Grimblewald 2y ago
    why force a shit website to allow us to view it? X is a cess pool of miss-information, over-selling, over-hyping, and generally the worst the internet has to offer. At least 4chan wears its degenerate nature on it's sleeve.
    - phailhaus 2y ago
      Nobody's defending X. The point is that it doesn't matter that FF has strict privacy controls if sites can afford to just...not support FF. Its market share will dwindle to zero and privacy will be dead. FWIW it seems like the browser market is shifting away from third party cookies anyways, so I'm not sure this is a huge issue.
      - paulmd 2y ago
        yep this is why cracking open ios was a mistake, especially for the android crowd who’d never be caught dead owning an iPhone anyway. there was barely a slope to begin with, you’ve got chrome in a majority and safari in a minority and then Firefox as a rounding error. Obviously if you crush safari, google is just gonna go mask-off full-manifest-v3 and plenty of other sites would be happy to follow. it was obvious from the start, people were just happy they finally got a legislated “win” to the android/iOS debate. “Don’t be evil” was dead for at least 10 years, and people pay lip service to acknowledging this and then go right on acting like google has their best interests at heart anyway.
- stingraycharles 2y ago
  Yes, but now I can’t convince my family to use Firefox because it makes part of the internet unusable which is a deal breaker to them. Doesn’t matter if it’s the sites that are the problem, Firefox has lost momentum to such a degree that sites don’t care anymore. So they should tread carefully with features like this.
  - auscompgeek 2y ago
    You have to opt-in to turning tracking protection to strict. When you're about to there's a prominent warning that it will likely break some websites. Using Firefox in its default configuration shouldn't break websites.
  - dbg31415 2y ago
    Yup. This is correct. Firefox taking a hard nose approach here makes it impossible to use this on parents / grandparents computers to help keep them safe. I don’t mind losing Twitter… but I can’t speak for others in my family. Just sucks. But on popular sites that run blockers, there should be like a little pop-up that says, “Give me access, and let this dumpster fire burn.”
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - stingraycharles 2y ago
      I think back in the day when DRM was being introduced, Firefox refused to implement it, which caused many people to just switch to Chrome or Internet Explorer. So even when they still had a considerable market share, these kind of stances may actually be detrimental to their user base.
  - Qwertious 2y ago
    Treading carefully is selling out - Mozilla can't win here - they'll be slammed for selling out, or slammed for breaking all the good websites.

by Tepix 2y ago

eqvinox 2y ago

I don't think Twitter's policy is a great indicator, though in general I agree it's a bad situation with this quasi-monopoly of Chrome-y browsers.

OutOfHere 2y ago

In fairness, Strict Tracking Protection is not a Firefox problem; it is very clearly a Firefox feature. The problem is the sites. X is not really an important site anyway.

ranger_danger 2y ago
I don't think most people in the world would agree with your definition of important. Perhaps you believe that's a good thing anyways. Not sure where I was going with that.
- SapporoChris 2y ago
  The jury is still out, but there are a lot of articles that are claiming that social media is harmful. Adds stress, harms mood, contributes to anxiety and depression. The threat to privacy is well documented. It's enough for a some people to consider such websites as not important, at least to them.
CamperBob2 2y ago
If important people would just quit fucking using it, it wouldn't be an important site. Unfortunately, and astoundingly, nobody has bothered to create anything remotely competitive with Xitter, even at this late date.
- OhMeadhbh 2y ago
  absolutely. if I quit Twitter, where would I get my Jake Paul and Kim Kardashian updates?
- b800h 2y ago
  My hypothesis on this is that the zeitgeist has moved on from microblogging. Post Muskification, the whole thing fragmented into Mastodon / X / Threads, and no new leading platform emerged because the kids are all on Tiktok anyway. You can't find your friends on microblogs anymore. Meanwhile, professional conversation has migrated to LinkedIn.
- filoleg 2y ago
  > If important people would just quit fucking using it, it wouldn't be an important site. Yeah, and if everyone would just agree to pinky swear to never engage in wars again and then fully disarm, we would achieve eternal world peace. All they gotta do is just stop doing those things. Unfortunately, things don’t quite work as simply as the way you imagine they do in the real world.
chii 2y ago
> The problem is the sites. no, the problem is that sites can _afford_ to block firefox, because their share is low enough that they can take the hit. What we need to do, as tech evangalists, is to push the marketshare of firefox higher, so that they cannot be ignored by sites, due to significant traffic. This is how the open internet can preserve both privacy and control of the computing environment. if your friends and/or family isn't using firefox (this includes mobile), nag them to switch. If you are a tech support for your extended family, push firefox onto them (and install adblock while you're at it). If you control a company's IT infrastructure, push firefox as the default browser, over chrome. The internet is repeating the microsoft IE days with chrome, but without the shittiness that made chrome a possible barrier breaker (chrome is good enough that most people aren't complaining). "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing"
- Grimblewald 2y ago
  why force a shit website to allow us to view it? X is a cess pool of miss-information, over-selling, over-hyping, and generally the worst the internet has to offer. At least 4chan wears its degenerate nature on it's sleeve.
  - phailhaus 2y ago
    Nobody's defending X. The point is that it doesn't matter that FF has strict privacy controls if sites can afford to just...not support FF. Its market share will dwindle to zero and privacy will be dead. FWIW it seems like the browser market is shifting away from third party cookies anyways, so I'm not sure this is a huge issue.
    - paulmd 2y ago
      yep this is why cracking open ios was a mistake, especially for the android crowd who’d never be caught dead owning an iPhone anyway. there was barely a slope to begin with, you’ve got chrome in a majority and safari in a minority and then Firefox as a rounding error. Obviously if you crush safari, google is just gonna go mask-off full-manifest-v3 and plenty of other sites would be happy to follow. it was obvious from the start, people were just happy they finally got a legislated “win” to the android/iOS debate. “Don’t be evil” was dead for at least 10 years, and people pay lip service to acknowledging this and then go right on acting like google has their best interests at heart anyway.
stingraycharles 2y ago
Yes, but now I can’t convince my family to use Firefox because it makes part of the internet unusable which is a deal breaker to them. Doesn’t matter if it’s the sites that are the problem, Firefox has lost momentum to such a degree that sites don’t care anymore. So they should tread carefully with features like this.
- auscompgeek 2y ago
  You have to opt-in to turning tracking protection to strict. When you're about to there's a prominent warning that it will likely break some websites. Using Firefox in its default configuration shouldn't break websites.
- dbg31415 2y ago
  Yup. This is correct. Firefox taking a hard nose approach here makes it impossible to use this on parents / grandparents computers to help keep them safe. I don’t mind losing Twitter… but I can’t speak for others in my family. Just sucks. But on popular sites that run blockers, there should be like a little pop-up that says, “Give me access, and let this dumpster fire burn.”
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - stingraycharles 2y ago
    I think back in the day when DRM was being introduced, Firefox refused to implement it, which caused many people to just switch to Chrome or Internet Explorer. So even when they still had a considerable market share, these kind of stances may actually be detrimental to their user base.
- Qwertious 2y ago
  Treading carefully is selling out - Mozilla can't win here - they'll be slammed for selling out, or slammed for breaking all the good websites.