6 ms·

Firefox is a less bad option, even with the recent stupid policy changes they've made. Or there are a bunch of other options that care about privacy (see https

Firefox is a less bad option, even with the recent stupid policy changes they've made. Or there are a bunch of other options that care about privacy (see https://privacytests.org/ https://privacytests.org/). Brave, Librewolf, Arc, Zen, Orion (Kagi's thing). I tried Orion for a few days recently, but it started crashing randomly and felt unstable and slowed down after real-world use (3-6 windows, many many tabs, dev tools, etc). I really wish there was more competition here from the smaller, privacy focused players...but the reality is building a browser is insanely difficult for the modern web.

anonym29 2y ago
Firefox didn't make stupid policy changes. Firefox made policy changes they were legally required to in order to comply with a stupidly-worded California law. And thank WHATWG for making it impossible for indie players to remain compliant with modern standards by turning W3C's eminently reasonable and wholly sufficient specifications into a hulking monstrosity that's simultaneously large enough to be used as a stress test for your mobile browser's rendering engine (seriously. go try to load up 'view-source:https://html.spec.whatwg.org/ https://html.spec.whatwg.org/'. At the time of writing, the HTML for that single-page version is over 98,254 lines composing over 15MB of plain HTML) while simultaneously quite literally being defined as a continuously moving target.
- wtallis 2y ago
  > Firefox didn't make stupid policy changes. Firefox made policy changes they were legally required to in order to comply with a stupidly-worded California law. They had other options, including not collecting and selling user data. The California law is working as intended.
  - anonym29 2y ago
    They're not selling user data in any sense that any ordinary, reasonable person would understand, only in California's excessively broad definition that may technically cover a litany of entirely noncommercial uses, like using opt-in customer metadata to improve their own free product, without distributing it to any third party at all. Businesses like to avoid risk where possible, and Mozilla's lawyers pushed this wording to ensure compliance with the riskiest possible interpretation of California's ambiguous and poorly-worded law.
    - wtallis 2y ago
      > using opt-in customer metadata to improve their own free product, without distributing it to any third party at all. Explain how that qualifies under California's law. The requirement that data be shared to another business or third party seems pretty explicit.
      - anonym29 2y ago
        Sorry for the delay, got rate limited. The Mozilla Corporation sharing user metadata with the Mozilla Foundation to assist with internal decision making may technically meet California's definition of "sale of data" despite constituting absolutely nothing even vaguely resembling what laypeople would consider a "sale of data". Note that the CCPA's "third party" clause is part of an "OR" set, alongside "another business". Mozilla Foundation and Mozilla Corporation are respectively "another business" relative to each one's self, despite not being unrelated third parties. The problem is not that Mozilla is actually selling user data (they're not in the sense that any layperson would understand "selling data" to mean), the problem is the way the California law is worded. As usual, tech-illiterate politicians aren't even competent enough to write laws with the nuance and understanding required to not botch the entirely good and justified intention without pointing a loaded legal gun at the heads of the genuinely innocent. Think along the lines of the CFAA's legal risks to good-faith security researchers¹, or how the DMCA would technically criminalize discussion of how to decode Pig Latin if that was used as a copyrighted media protection technique. ¹ At least up until the Biden administration instructed the DoJ to be more sane and reasonable about this: https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/department-justice-announces-new-policy-charging-cases-under-computer-fraud-and-abuse-act https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/department-justice-a...
        rstuart4133 2y ago
        @anonym29: a heads up. It appears you are trying to explain why CCPA's does not meet the laypersons definition of "selling data". After reading your explanation I'm none the wiser. Given no one has replied, I suspect that's true for most people. They've just scratched their head and moved on. I was about to do that too, when it dawned you probably have no idea people don't understand what you are saying. Maybe an example would help. Its needs top be something a layman would not consider to be "selling data" but the CCPA defines that way.
- mimasama 2y ago
  Quoting from Mozilla's blog: > The reason we’ve stepped away from making blanket claims that “We never sell your data” is because, in some places, the LEGAL definition of “sale of data” is broad and evolving. As an example, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) defines “sale” as the “selling, renting, releasing, disclosing, disseminating, making available, transferring, or otherwise communicating orally, in writing, or by electronic or other means, a consumer’s personal information by [a] business to another business or a third party” in exchange for “monetary” or “other valuable consideration.” How is the CCPA stupidly-worded when that's what a layman would think "selling data" means? I do wholeheartedly agree with your sentiments about the WHATWG though, as someone who contributed to Pale Moon's development. That web browser cartel should be investigated by the US government for anti-competitive practices as they did with Google and Microsoft.
  - MattPalmer1086 2y ago
    >How is the CCPA stupidly-worded when that's what a layman would think "selling data" means? Because it is the twisty logic that lawyers can apply which is relevant to mitigate legal risk, not what a layman would think. Where I work, our lawyers are convinced that running our code in the cloud to run our service counts as "distribution" under the terms of open source licenses. Because a cloud employee might accidentally look at it or something? Who knows. A lawyer sees legal risk in things you or I don't; they should know I guess!
  - anonym29 2y ago
    Sorry for the delay, got rate limited. The Mozilla Corporation sharing user metadata with the Mozilla Foundation to assist with internal decision making may technically meet California's definition of "sale of data" despite constituting absolutely nothing even vaguely resembling what laypeople would consider a "sale of data". Note that the CCPA's "third party" clause is part of an "OR" set, alongside "another business". Mozilla Foundation and Mozilla Corporation are respectively "another business" relative to each one's self, despite not being unrelated third parties. The problem is not that Mozilla is actually selling user data (they're not in the sense that any layperson would understand "selling data" to mean), the problem is the way the California law is worded. As usual, tech-illiterate politicians aren't even competent enough to write laws with the nuance and understanding required to not botch the entirely good and justified intention without pointing a loaded legal gun at the heads of the genuinely innocent. Think along the lines of the CFAA's legal risks to good-faith security researchers¹, or how the DMCA would technically criminalize discussion of how to decode Pig Latin if that was used as a copyrighted media protection technique. ¹ At least up until the Biden administration instructed the DoJ to be more sane and reasonable about this: https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/department-justice-announces-new-policy-charging-cases-under-computer-fraud-and-abuse-act https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/department-justice-a...
- wruza 2y ago
  >the link Omfg. You fly-scroll it on mobile as fast as you can and the scrollbar barely moves.
DavideNL 2y ago
Note that privacytests.org tests *default* settings. I doubt any privacy conscious people use the default settings… not really relevant it seems to me.
chiefalchemist 2y ago
What about Vivaldi? Isn’t that on iOS better than FF on iOS?

anonym29 2y ago

Firefox didn't make stupid policy changes. Firefox made policy changes they were legally required to in order to comply with a stupidly-worded California law. And thank WHATWG for making it impossible for indie players to remain compliant with modern standards by turning W3C's eminently reasonable and wholly sufficient specifications into a hulking monstrosity that's simultaneously large enough to be used as a stress test for your mobile browser's rendering engine (seriously. go try to load up 'view-source:https://html.spec.whatwg.org/ https://html.spec.whatwg.org/'. At the time of writing, the HTML for that single-page version is over 98,254 lines composing over 15MB of plain HTML) while simultaneously quite literally being defined as a continuously moving target.

wtallis 2y ago
> Firefox didn't make stupid policy changes. Firefox made policy changes they were legally required to in order to comply with a stupidly-worded California law. They had other options, including not collecting and selling user data. The California law is working as intended.
- anonym29 2y ago
  They're not selling user data in any sense that any ordinary, reasonable person would understand, only in California's excessively broad definition that may technically cover a litany of entirely noncommercial uses, like using opt-in customer metadata to improve their own free product, without distributing it to any third party at all. Businesses like to avoid risk where possible, and Mozilla's lawyers pushed this wording to ensure compliance with the riskiest possible interpretation of California's ambiguous and poorly-worded law.
  - wtallis 2y ago
    > using opt-in customer metadata to improve their own free product, without distributing it to any third party at all. Explain how that qualifies under California's law. The requirement that data be shared to another business or third party seems pretty explicit.
    - anonym29 2y ago
      Sorry for the delay, got rate limited. The Mozilla Corporation sharing user metadata with the Mozilla Foundation to assist with internal decision making may technically meet California's definition of "sale of data" despite constituting absolutely nothing even vaguely resembling what laypeople would consider a "sale of data". Note that the CCPA's "third party" clause is part of an "OR" set, alongside "another business". Mozilla Foundation and Mozilla Corporation are respectively "another business" relative to each one's self, despite not being unrelated third parties. The problem is not that Mozilla is actually selling user data (they're not in the sense that any layperson would understand "selling data" to mean), the problem is the way the California law is worded. As usual, tech-illiterate politicians aren't even competent enough to write laws with the nuance and understanding required to not botch the entirely good and justified intention without pointing a loaded legal gun at the heads of the genuinely innocent. Think along the lines of the CFAA's legal risks to good-faith security researchers¹, or how the DMCA would technically criminalize discussion of how to decode Pig Latin if that was used as a copyrighted media protection technique. ¹ At least up until the Biden administration instructed the DoJ to be more sane and reasonable about this: https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/department-justice-announces-new-policy-charging-cases-under-computer-fraud-and-abuse-act https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/department-justice-a...
      - rstuart4133 2y ago
        @anonym29: a heads up. It appears you are trying to explain why CCPA's does not meet the laypersons definition of "selling data". After reading your explanation I'm none the wiser. Given no one has replied, I suspect that's true for most people. They've just scratched their head and moved on. I was about to do that too, when it dawned you probably have no idea people don't understand what you are saying. Maybe an example would help. Its needs top be something a layman would not consider to be "selling data" but the CCPA defines that way.
mimasama 2y ago
Quoting from Mozilla's blog: > The reason we’ve stepped away from making blanket claims that “We never sell your data” is because, in some places, the LEGAL definition of “sale of data” is broad and evolving. As an example, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) defines “sale” as the “selling, renting, releasing, disclosing, disseminating, making available, transferring, or otherwise communicating orally, in writing, or by electronic or other means, a consumer’s personal information by [a] business to another business or a third party” in exchange for “monetary” or “other valuable consideration.” How is the CCPA stupidly-worded when that's what a layman would think "selling data" means? I do wholeheartedly agree with your sentiments about the WHATWG though, as someone who contributed to Pale Moon's development. That web browser cartel should be investigated by the US government for anti-competitive practices as they did with Google and Microsoft.
- MattPalmer1086 2y ago
  >How is the CCPA stupidly-worded when that's what a layman would think "selling data" means? Because it is the twisty logic that lawyers can apply which is relevant to mitigate legal risk, not what a layman would think. Where I work, our lawyers are convinced that running our code in the cloud to run our service counts as "distribution" under the terms of open source licenses. Because a cloud employee might accidentally look at it or something? Who knows. A lawyer sees legal risk in things you or I don't; they should know I guess!
- anonym29 2y ago
  Sorry for the delay, got rate limited. The Mozilla Corporation sharing user metadata with the Mozilla Foundation to assist with internal decision making may technically meet California's definition of "sale of data" despite constituting absolutely nothing even vaguely resembling what laypeople would consider a "sale of data". Note that the CCPA's "third party" clause is part of an "OR" set, alongside "another business". Mozilla Foundation and Mozilla Corporation are respectively "another business" relative to each one's self, despite not being unrelated third parties. The problem is not that Mozilla is actually selling user data (they're not in the sense that any layperson would understand "selling data" to mean), the problem is the way the California law is worded. As usual, tech-illiterate politicians aren't even competent enough to write laws with the nuance and understanding required to not botch the entirely good and justified intention without pointing a loaded legal gun at the heads of the genuinely innocent. Think along the lines of the CFAA's legal risks to good-faith security researchers¹, or how the DMCA would technically criminalize discussion of how to decode Pig Latin if that was used as a copyrighted media protection technique. ¹ At least up until the Biden administration instructed the DoJ to be more sane and reasonable about this: https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/department-justice-announces-new-policy-charging-cases-under-computer-fraud-and-abuse-act https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/department-justice-a...
wruza 2y ago
>the link Omfg. You fly-scroll it on mobile as fast as you can and the scrollbar barely moves.

DavideNL 2y ago

Note that privacytests.org tests *default* settings. I doubt any privacy conscious people use the default settings… not really relevant it seems to me.

chiefalchemist 2y ago

What about Vivaldi? Isn’t that on iOS better than FF on iOS?