So I read a bit of Mozilla’s documentation about this feature. It sounds like they’re trying to replace the current practices with something safer. Honestly, my first thought is that this is a good thing for two reasons.
- It’s an attempt to replace cross site tracking methods, which are terrible
- Those of us that fight against ads, tracking, etc. can simple use typical methods to block the api. Methods that were already using (I think)
If both of these are true, then it could be a net positive for the world. Please tell me if I’m wrong!
Sometimes I just get tired of having to fight against software to have it behave in a semi-decent way. The same way you technically “can” run a decent windows installation after removing/disabling/blocking a ton of stuff, I don’t really want a browser that can be trusted after you had to tinker with dozens of settings to just get back to basic non-intrusive behavior.
I said this in another thread on the same topic somewhere else, but considering user tracking as an inevitability that we have to accept means we’ve already lost on that front.
Wow. I 100% agree with you here.
There’s an element of trust when you buy a product. You trust that the product itself isn’t malicious and is intended to help you in some way. E.g. “This food is safely prepared and won’t poison me.” Harvesting user data and advertising really violate that trust.
Though it is worth noting that we don’t buy web browsers. We simply use them for “free“.
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Look, everything is going to disappoint us. Everything runs off a profit motive, and it turns out profit is immoral.
So all browsers except some forks of Firefox are cooked now/soon?
Sad to see Mozilla being managed into the ground, betraying their principles and selling their users.
Honest question, why does the fediverse like firefox so much? This is not a common opinion to have on the internet, but everyone here and on mastodon seems to have it.
Because it is FOSS and responsible for many great contributions to apis that make the web what it is. It has history that goes way back. It has been decently transparent, certainly when compared to its closest competitors. It isn’t Google. It has a massive library of extensions. They aren’t planning to deprecate manifest v2.
Don’t get me wrong, I also like other browsers and I’m looking forward to seeing what comes from the servo reboot. But Firefox is bread and butter and there is often drummed up nonsense about it.
Mozilla also maintains fantastic JS docs
Anyone see the option to turn it off on Android phones?
It’s a desktop only feature, it hasn’t been built into mobile I believe
Is there a list anywhere of this and other settings and features that could/should certainly be changed to better Firefox privacy?
Other than that I’m not sure I’m really going to jump ship. I think I’m getting too old for the “clunkiness” that comes with trying to use third party/self hosted alternatives to replace features that ultimately break the privacy angle, or to add them to barebones privacy focused browsers. Containers and profile/bookmark syncing, for example. But if there’s a list of switches I can flip to turn off the most egregious things, that would be good for today.
Does Firefox explain what measures they’ve taken to protect their aggregation servers? If so, this is a perfectly fine and practical method for privacy preservation
Looks like they are using a Prio based protocol. If they are using Prio2+, I think this article is likely overblown. EDIT: I mixed up my sources - Mozilla tested Prio for telemetry collection. They are using a system called IPA for ads, and I don’t know whether there are formal guarantees for this system
It’s all on Ladybird now.
I’ve tried explaining to the Firefox cult that they do a lot of tracking and telemetry by default but they just hurl insults. Time to leave the cult.
I get a lot of beef for Brave. Any viable alternatives that aren’t derivatives of Chromium or FF but are maintained?
GNOME Web is mostly ok. It breaks on a few sites and doesn’t have easy extension support.
Yeah that was exactly the conclusion I reached since asking 😅
Webkit based browsers like safari and gnome web are your only options if you don’t want derivatives.
