this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2024
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[–] [email protected] 194 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (8 children)

This is your daily reminder that Firefox and its derivatives exist and should be used wherever possible if you care about Google not having a monopoly over the internet. There's even a Firefox-based version of Discord called Datcord.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 5 months ago

Firefox is funded by Google and Meta, but its still better than being directly made by Google. There isn't a single good browser right now.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Firefox is the only reasonable alternative to the Chrome monopoly right now, yes, but they too are going bad, we need more alternatives

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Ladybird isn't ready yet but one to keep an eye on.

[–] [email protected] -5 points 5 months ago (3 children)

I doubt Firefox will deprecate third-party cookies is Chrome won't. And now Firefox has included literally ad tracking component into the browser and enabled it for all users by default.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago

Firefox has been blocking third-party cookies since 2019: https://venturebeat.com/business/firefox-enhanced-tracking-protection-blocks-third-party-cookies-by-default/

Apple has been blocking third-party cookies since 2020: https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/24/21192830/apple-safari-intelligent-tracking-privacy-full-third-party-cookie-blocking

It's only Chrome and its derivatives that don't do this.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago

facepalm it's not an "ad tracking component", it's a test of a new API that, if adopted, will let sites opt in to a much less invasive anonymized system for evaluating the effectiveness of their ads, instead of the current crazy amount of personal data they scrape. The data is anonymized in a double blind scheme, and it's already way less data than every ad is grabbing.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Firefox's stance on privacy, like Apple's, is to some extent branding. Arguably it always was. You should still use Firefox (or any other third party browser) if it works for you. Ecosystem diversity matters.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Firefox’s stance on privacy, like Apple’s, is to some extent branding

Some of the recently introduced Privacy related features -

  • Enhanced Tracking Protection
  • Total Cookies protection
  • Browser Fingerprint protection
  • DNS Over HTTPS support
  • Encrypted Client Hello (ECH) support
  • Continued Manifest v2 support
  • Copy URL without tracking parameter
  • Protection against redirect tracking
  • In-Built on-device translation

(Further options to harden Firefox via user.js or via about:config)

[–] [email protected] -1 points 5 months ago (2 children)

... and they're tracking your searches, collecting massive amounts of telemetry, and using pocket that collects and sells your data.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Care to share the proof that Mozilla sells user data to anyone?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

We also share aggregated, non-personal data and related usage information, which does not contain any personal information which can identify you or any other individual user, with third parties, including content providers, website operators, advertisers and publishers.

https://getpocket.com/privacy#sharing

From the pocket privacy policy

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

All of which can be disabled.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 5 months ago

Note: "I don't use Discord/Datcord anymore because of their terrible TOS which Datcord can't protect you from."

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

Thanks I didn't know about Datcord

[–] [email protected] 55 points 5 months ago (3 children)

Absolutely. If you think you can switch when chrome will be completely hostile it will be too late.

The reason they are trying those things in chrome is because the market share of Firefox is currently low. They are counting that you won't have the option to run Firefox anymore, because sites will stop supporting it. Don't let that happen.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 5 months ago

Too late. Lumen5 crashes on Firefox. Google Cloud Console barely loads. I was a Firefox user for YEARS but finally had to uninstall this week. The amount of "Firefox is not supported" warnings and weird issues I was running into every day was getting a tad ridiculous.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Also, Firefox is in a tough situation where they have to purposefully shoot themselves in the foot, because their builtin tracking protection means Firefox usually doesn't show up in a lot of browser usage stats.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

That blocks user agent string? Answer: no it absolutely doesn't

Explain how this comment isn't completely wrong

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

If you use a third-party analytics service such as Google Analytics, as almost all serious parties do (with their nice dashboards and reports), then you'll notice Firefox is severely underrepresented because the request never reaches Google

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

I think that may be true if you set the privacy protection to strict, which is not default.

I wonder if it's underrepresented more so because people who use Firefox are more likely to install privacy centric extensions

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 months ago (2 children)

I didn't think about it, though if that makes it harder to track it (can't they just check the user agent?) could that actually be good, as the sites will never know exactly how many users they will lose, so might be more hesitant to pull the trigger?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago

No, they'll just see the management summary that Firefox occupies less than 0.5% of their users' marketshare and prioritize their budget accordingly.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago

That would be true for competent web developers. Unfortunately, those are a vanishingly small subset.