this post was submitted on 21 Jan 2024
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Data is Beautiful
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How is Firefox that high?
How? Firefox 121 has that score because it "failed" on 86 of the 143 tests, you can see which tests if you go to the source.
As someone already commented, Firefox actually lets a bunch of things through and has telemetry. But it can be hardened and it is (IMO) the best browser all-in-all.
But it is not perfect.
Please note (AGAIN) that 1 test (1 point) here is NOT equal to all other tests. But I have no way to weigh one test against another, there are 143 tests (points) to consider. I thought it was obvious but for some reason people chose not to read the description, or misunderstood it. Sorry if it wasn't clear enough.
I appreciate your effort in doing the work and putting the chart together :)
You fairly disclosed how it was all generated, but sadly not everyone will read that. A lot of people are going to look at that chart and their conclusion will be "Wow, Firefox is like a tenth as private as Brave!" - which you and I both know is not a true statement at all.
Even if people did read it, things get saved and shared out of context all the time, and before you know it this chart is going to pop up in some Discord argument as evidence for why Firefox sucks just as much as Chrome, completely divorced from your comments or any reference of where the data came from - the source website URL isn't part of the image either.
I guess that's the danger of visualisations. Data Viz can paint a complex picture clearly in an instant, we just have to make sure its painting the right one.
The tables in the source shows why.
There are many things measured in those tables around preventing URL tracking, cookies, and storing data in session storage etc which none of the mainstream browsers are doing, including Firefox.
Some of them are decisions made for good reason, because although preventing them would improve privacy it would also massively impact usability, and so only the most all-in privacy-focused browsers are doing that.
OP themselves notes that they have weighted each 'check' as a 1 and each 'cross' as a 0 in calculating the size of the bars in the chart, without consideration of how relatively important or not those features are against other.
Personally I believe the approach to generating the chart is flawed and does not give a fair measure of browser privacy.
Tor too, that's even more surprising.
Because it's a Brave ad.
It certainly is not.
Even though it's not, it certainly looks like one. It's what your readers perceive that matters. I write a little blog about family life in a local newspaper. I write the content before it is published, but after publication, the text belongs to the readers. I have no possibility of altering the content after reading the comments and understanding what the people think the text is expressing. It wouldn't matter, anyway, as none will come back later to read the updated version and almost everyone will read it in the first few hours after publication. Editing after publication is futile. This is just to underpin that, explaining a graph on a different website is bonkers, as only data analysts will actually follow the link to understand the data behind the graph. "Normal" people will take the graph as is and jump to the most obvious conclusion: "Librewolf, Mullvad, Brave, Chromium are all better than Firefox, and Chrome is the worst!". Or even better, "Ah, a list of browsers. Chrome seems to be the best one. Cool! scroll". Those are the ones that didn't even comment or up- or downvote the post. You won't ever know who or how many those people are. The best approach might indeed be to delete the post, build yourself some data visualization knowledge, and come back with an improved graph. Also, even though you say it's impossible to weigh the individual points in the tests, this might still be something you have to do to get your message across, whatever that might be. It involves work. You'll be ok. Making mistakes like this and posting them publicly is what will give you the information you need to improve.
Thanks for your feedback - and no worries about it being too long :)