Comment by sdlkfgj | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sdlkfgj | Hacker News Reader

Mozilla is going on the completely opposite direction of what their supporters (and previous contributors) want them to go.

Yes, they provide mobile browsers, plus a browser with "private mode" (focus) and now this. But on every single one of them, you have the same philosophy of Google Chrome (tm) adopted, of treating the user as a dumb gullible person that should not have access to important settings.

Why would they waste so much effort, and clone all the things people should avoid from Google Chrome?!

For example, any new tech introduced that can be used for browser fingerprinting and user tracking (e.g. canvas, webgl, webrtc, etc) is enabled to every single site by default, just like chrome.

Some you can install extensions (you can't on this and on mozilla focus), some you can fiddle with user-UNfriendly settings in about:config (desktop and full featured android, not focus or this) where you have to guess setting names and cryptic values (what does 2 means in a setting named somethingEnabled?!)

Only on mozilla desktop you can standardize sane settings by importing a user.js file from the dozen of crowdsourced efforts (i recommend the most complete one from https://github.com/pyllyukko/user.js/ ). think about this, there's more then a dozen community led effort to provide sane defaults, not hardcore user optimized settings, sane defaults, for a project that should be open source and the users could have been able to send in patches to have sane defaults in the first place! now, why would those sane defaults everyone want would be denied in the main branch? because mozilla do not represent the users for a long time!

Mozilla is now a corporation that looks for Advertisement companies grants.

> For example, any new tech introduced that can be used for browser fingerprinting and user tracking (e.g. canvas, webgl, webrtc, etc) is enabled to every single site by default, just like chrome.

GeckoView exposes a wide range of privacy (including anti-tracking and anti-fingerprinting) features in a (hopefully) comprehensive API, see https://mozilla.github.io/geckoview/javadoc/mozilla-central/..., and continues expanding its privacy settings.

> Some you can install extensions (you can't on this and on mozilla focus)...

GeckoView also exposes a WebExtension API, see https://mozilla.github.io/geckoview/javadoc/mozilla-central/..., and continues to expand extension support.

> ...some you can fiddle with user-UNfriendly settings in about:config...

You seem to have answered one of your own questions here.

I also have the impression that you might have not commented on the GeckoView library, but on some range of Mozilla products (you named Focus).

> GeckoView exposes a wide range of privacy

that's is a fallacy and you know it!

There are ZERO settings exposed to the end user.

Those settings are exposed to the App embedding geckoviewer. In other words, the privacy settings are in the hands of the actor who benefit from Advertising by tracking the user!

> GeckoView also exposes a WebExtension API

again to the app.

> There are ZERO settings exposed to the end user.

This thread is discussing GeckoView, which exposes extensive privacy settings.

There is a (hopefully growing) amount of apps based on GeckoView, which will make use and/or expose different variations of GeckoView settings to the user, depending on the purpose and target audience of the app.

You might disagree, but, for example, I consider the level of detail in privacy settings provided by Fenix (Nightly) to be a good balance between user control and comprehensibility.

> > GeckoView also exposes a WebExtension API > again to the app.

Again, taking Fenix (Nightly) as an example, the GeckoView WebExtension API is used to provide a growing selection of add-ons, many of which are aimed at the privacy-conscious user, including uBlock Origin, HTTPS Everywhere, NoScript and Privacy Badger.

> For example, any new tech introduced that can be used for browser fingerprinting and user tracking (e.g. canvas, webgl, webrtc, etc) is enabled to every single site by default, just like chrome.

Who would use Firefox if all those things who are disabled? Probably about as many people who still use Slackware. At which point, what exactly would be the point? The web is at least safer place to be with Firefox in its current state than with Chrome and Edge having 99% dominance.

Maybe people who use extensions that disable all that and let them enable those per-site they trust?

If it were truly open source, we would, gasp, have the best of both worlds by making the UI sane and what the end user wants. Not what a few in the inner circle thinks possible in their limited life experience.

Mozilla killed more projects trying to fix firefox than i care to count. icecat i think was the last one. fenned-by-fdroid was killed and resurrected a couple times, last people i know that contributed left when user.js was disabled after a PR from a google engineer was merged "to make fennec better follow android security team recommendations" or something on those lines.

> For example, any new tech introduced that can be used for browser fingerprinting and user tracking (e.g. canvas, webgl, webrtc, etc) is enabled to every single site by default, just like chrome

They even implemented bad web standards which its absence would not break websites, such as hyperlink auditing and reporting API.

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