Hacker News Reader

Comment by pmurt7 | Hacker News Reader

We need to collectively switch to Firefox and Brave.

Correction: they never injected ads, but they do remove ads and replace them with "attention tokens", which is an opt-out system for publishers. See also https://tech.hindustantimes.com/tech/news/this-popular-brows.... In short, please look into the questionable aspects of Brave.

Brave is perhaps the most ethically challenged browser out there. Hopefully they have stopped doing this, but they were injecting their own ads instead of what the publisher put on their website.

Is it Brave that uses BAT? You're being downvoted but weren't they collecting BAT for sites whose owners had never signed up, and presumably keeping it if the owner didn't claim it?

Right, that's what I was thinking of. They created an opt-out system for publishers.

The reader can guess how Brave expects to make money with a free browser that is handing out BAT :-)

This makes sense to me. If you make the system opt in, publishers aren't going to give a fuck because like 0.01% of their users browse on Brave. And that means users aren't protected because sites that were already okay selling their users out are still going to do it. So you have to make it opt out so that users are protected by default. Idk just seems like the incentives are nicely aligned here: the user-centric option also happens to be the one that benefits the browser vendor. Isn't that what we want?

I think some have issue with them collecting monies on behalf of an organisation who has made no indication they are interested in participating. If my site gets 1000 BAT in payments which sit there because I decided I don't want to take part, what happens if I say to Brave I never intend to take part? Do they give those BAT back? Site visitors may have had the impression they were paying for my content while Brave is pocketing it.

Personally I reserve judgement, but I see why some look at it this way.

I can see that. Perhaps there's social a fix somewhere around messaging or something. Ultimately it's not Brave that's doing this to site owners, it's the users who install Brave for Brave's feature set. I think the elephant here is that it's not really up to site owners to say whether users can use ad blockers or not or which browser they should use. If I install an ad blocker as a user, that's my choice. So installing Brave, essentially an add-blocker-as-a-browser doesn't seem like the thing that site owners should be able to opt out of at all. Allowing publishers to opt-out feels like a tactical compromise.

Of course sites can block requests based on Brave's user-agent string if their business depends deeply on ad revenue and they consider users with ad blockers to be abusing their service. That's their prerogative if this really irks them and it's worth losing the users. On the flip side if this becomes popular enough then site owners see real money on the table and they'll opt in to picking it up. That seems like an easy fix for them. If I was a site contemplating either blocking content to users with ad blockers or allowing cooperative users to opt into a more private client-side ad experience which still gives me the opportunity to collect revenue for their traffic, I'm pretty sure I'd choose the cooperative approach.

They never injected ads. If you enable Brave Rewards, you do get notification/pop over ads and rewarded a small amount of BAT, which can get redistributed to content creators or sites. If you don’t , all this is disabled.

Soon publishers will be allowed to run Brave ads on their website (and earn money), but users will be able to disable these ads anytime. So Brave is building a web experience where users can choose to enable ads or not (and if they do they will earn crypto).

I switched to FF years ago. I used to root my Android phones but I'm getting too old (read; jaded) to care now, Firefox means that with uBlock I _still_ never see ads on my phone. I pay for apps I want to use, and I don't use apps which don't have an alternative to ad-supported, with one exception being Twitter and "Promoted" tweets, which I can spot and skip in a blink.

If you want to have fun with Twitter ads, block the advertiser whenever you see them. After two weeks or so you start to get really.. different stuff.

I've been using twitter since 2009 and do this religiously, I have literally thousands of corporate accounts blocked. My ads at this point are incredibly niche, bordering on surreal. Sometimes I will retweet them just because they're so absurd.

Any highlights?

Can you elaborate? I'm not sure if this is something I would prefer to current ads, or something I would want to avoid.

Back when I used to use Twitter is found it funny. I used to get cranks and hustlers with the occasional “Why is this random personal tweet promoted?” experience mixed in.

Once you block out the "big advertisers", you get advertisements from smaller companies or even individuals.

That actually sounds like something is working within AdTech! How can that possibly be?

A good lie is based in truth!

Howso?

(Not on Twitter, can't run the experiment myself.)

When you say "block", do you mean Twitter block the account which is the Advertiser?

Block the account whose tweet is being promoted, and/or the account promoting it (sometimes there will be tiny text saying "promoted by"). You'll never see tweets from that brand again, whether promoted or unpromoted.

After a few weeks of this you'll get some pretty strange tweets from really obscure brands. You will however still regularly see promoted tweets from financial services companies, because there are apparently an infinite number of them.

Yes, so that Twitter in their algorithm figures out that you can't consume this particular ad, it finds others. The more you block, the smaller the pool of advertisers is.

Nice, I have a new Twitter game to play, thanks.

For Android I can also recommend Bromite. It's Chromium-based with a built-in ad blocker and focus on anti-fingerprinting.

https://www.bromite.org/

Thanks for the suggestion.

I currently see no reason to switch from FF which I use everywhere and benefit from Sync. Hopefully someone else will find it of interest.

Anyhing like this for ios that is chromium based

Same, but I use twitter mobile in FF and ad block. I'd prefer a subscription option to ads and an app that's all up in my shit.

I have a few apps that I just use the mobile web version. The bonus is that there is no app collecting gps and lists of installed apps and such, though, in theory, the new permissions help with that.

I finally made the total switch to FF last year and it's fine; the stuff got imported from Chrome correctly. Containers are a good bonus. I keep a copy of Chrome at hand but I used it maybe once a month or two to test some random website, that's all. There is no single reason to remain on Chrome for me, I just regret it took me so long. No crashes, no noticeable performance differences, no quirks. I'm very grateful Firefox exists.

Edge is a good alternative when you _need_ a chrome browser.

To Firefox only. Switching to Brave does not improve the Chromium engine hegemony.

Why does it matter if the underlying engine is shared amongst multiple browsers?

Because as it is now Chrome (read: Google) can dictate how the web works and they do. If you use a Chromium based browser everything just works and happy people doesnt often complain or see the problems. So using something Chromium based makes you part of the problem. Apple isn't much better though so there aren't many options left...

What prevents forks of chromium from sharing amongst each other? I don't think google can gatekeep to the extent you seem to be implying. I'm pretty sure Brave and Opera and MS Edge can share changes they've made amongst each other without going through the original repository first.

Nothing stops them sharing but they aren't big enough (and in some cases not interested in) changing the web standards.

Think about it like in this oversimplified/stupid example: A "fix" or change is implemented in Chromium. In the long run (intended or otherwise) it turns out it moves pixels slightly differently than the way Firefox does it. If almost all your visitors use Chrome you have to design your site to be perfect in chrome and you might do so in Firefox. Now you have sites that look as intended in Chrome but maybe look as it should in Firefox. This make Firefox users use Chrome more.

Now Brave et. al. is part of the problem, helping drive the only real competition out of market (and killing their only way out should they some day need to change engine).

In extremely complex code this is very hard to not be a part of and a company like Brave is way too small to fork Chromium for long if at all.

You underestimate how much of effort and money it takes to maintain fork of a browser. Chromium is project as big as Linux kernel (if not larger), but it's primary developed by Google emplyees so they have huge influence on direction of the project.

Because it creates a web that is not meant to work following a standard but to work on only one engine.

What this means is that this engine becomes the de facto standard of the web and this standard is controlled by the main contributor of the engine.

Every browser is now constrained by Google's own decision about what should the web be. Sure, they could technically disagree by forking WebKit/Blink, but since websites are made to work with Blink, a disagreement means being incompatible with such websites.

Arguably the engine SHOULD be the standard. The W3C and WHATWG have never been able to reliably document, much less enforce, standards. Add in ECMAScript variances and all the other newfangled web APIs and it's a losing proposition. The standards bodies never could keep up with the pace of innovation. Might as well let the code BE the standard.

That's already the way it works in the real world... the standards are irrelevant and ignored, only caniuse and browserslist actually matter. Like it or not, Blink is the new IE6, and its marketshare is only increasing.

Ideally it would be something not controlled by Google but by an independent third party (hand Blink over to Mozilla, deprecate Gecko?), but good luck with that.

Maybe this system wouldn't be as ideologically pure as building compatible renderers to a set standard, but it would result in far better developer and end-user experiences as the web quickly standardizes to a single renderer. The world simply does not need 10 different ways to display HTML with 90% compatibility.

Yes but its giving too much power to one actor only. What if Google decides to stop supporting an architecture, or decides that it's ok to have 8GB ram as a requirement ? What if they choose to implement a hardware accelerated feature that works only with NVIDIA LATEST-WHATEVER-AI-VR-HYPE ? What if they want to implement "crypto payment" as a standard and, oh, that's GDollars ?

Of course those are just random made up ideas but the point I want to make is that it's giving only one actor the power to define what the future of our only and sole international knowledge network will be.

Yeah, that's why ideally the engine itself would be open-source (which it is, though largely controlled by Google). I wish it were further controlled by a third party, kinda like ICANN or Mozilla, but that also subjects it to political capture.

The thing is, the existence of Gecko never actually meaningfully challenged corporate oligarchies. Mozilla's mission was noble but they were never particularly effective at it... web standards went from IE6 being the defacto standard to the Wild West for a while to Webkit dominance to a Blink/Webkit duopoly. There was never a period where we actually saw a standards-based web ecosystem. It was always renderer-based. In that sense, I'd argue the Gecko contributors (and Mozilla as a whole) would have more influence over the web ecosystem if they abandoned Gecko and focused on the Chromium/Blink project instead, especially if they had override/veto power over questionable commits from any one corporation. As it is, Gecko/Firefox is less than 5% of the web. You can't influence, much less set, any real standards when you're just a rounding error.

Like it or not, Chromium IS the standard. Only when Mozilla realizes that will they actually have a chance to succeed at their mission, instead of being the beloved but always-losing underdog...

Google already does this. Ask OpenPOWER or *BSD users about the fact their patches must live outside the Chromium tree and be merged in manually, for example. Mozilla has been much more friendly to niche systems as long as they don't impact higher-priority tiers; OS/2 survived in tree for literal years because it was self-contained and non-obtrusive.

Because if Google decide to make a user hostile change to the engine (Chromium), because everyone consolidated on one engine, now there will be no alternative. The only recourse would be to maintain patchsets or forks, which could be increasingly infeasible from an architectural standpoint, especially from smaller authors.

One way or another, browsers are heading towards engine homogeny (or hegemony), but Firefox and Safari are at least slowing this process down to some extent.

Chromium/Blink is an open source project (forked from Webkit, forked from KHTML).

Chromium/Blink is pretty much only maintained by Google. Google decides what goes in and what doesn't. It's a pretense of open source, except when it serves them.

That's often how open source works. It may not be what you want, but it's not just a pretense.

I think it can be. AOSP feels a lot like a pretense.

Actually there is now a ton of contribution from Microsoft as well.

How does switching to FF improve "Chromium engine hegemony?" FF is not Chromium based.

Seems they ment improve as in lessen the hegemony.

That's the point. Using a Chromium based browser just further cements Google's grasp on the web.

I'm biased, but a lot of users should also be using products that respect user privacy. We're building a dev-focused ad network called EthicalAds that does this: https://www.ethicalads.io/ -- but there's lots of other privacy-focused products out there we should be building and supporting.

I've been on Firefox for a few years now and it irritates me how super slow it is. Version 89 seems to be a bit better though.

I know it might be the extensions (I have 20+) but I seriously don't care. Chrome manages to be fast with the same set of extensions.

I don't like Google but Firefox's slowness is a real strain on my productivity and brain well-being. Hope they improve even more soon.

I am on an iMac Pro btw. Stuff like this should not ever happen on a workstation.

Not sure if this would help in your case but try to enable `gfx.webrender.all` or `layers.acceleration.force-enabled` in `about:config` if it's not already enabled.

Only the second one was disabled, enabled it. Thanks for the tip!

In that case it won't make a difference I think, `gfx.webrender.all` should override `layers.acceleration.force-enabled`.

Strange. I find Chrome to be annoying and slow.

What is it that is slow, are you on OS X?

Yes. Often times pages load very slowly, we're talking 5-8 seconds. I am on a gigabit connection (yes, that doesn't guarantee that my ISP has fast access to that particular page, I know) and Chrome is always loading those pages at least twice as fast.

Can't describe it perfectly. The UI is responsive but page loading is just severely slowed down -- not always but often. I have a bunch of privacy extensions but again, they don't seem to make Chrome sweat.

> Often times pages load very slowly, we're talking 5-8 seconds [...] I have a bunch of privacy extensions

If you are using uBlock Origin, you may want to see if un-checking "Uncloak canonical names" option in the "Settings" pane in the dashboard makes a difference.[1]

There have been reports of slow page load with some network configurations, and this has been linked to DNS lookup in uBO.[2]

Chromium-based browsers do not support CNAME-uncloaking, and so this would explain why the issue is not present in Google Chrome.

* * *

[1] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Dashboard:-Settings#u...

[2] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1694404

Super interesting, thank you! I immediately disabled it and will monitor if that improves my page loading speeds.

EDIT: pay no attention to the text below, I have misread the linked documentation. uBO isn't using external proxy for any network requests.

Not sure how much -- or at all -- you're involved with uBO. Your name does ring a bell though so I'd like to remark to you that making the users' browser use proxy is a step too far. It shouldn't automatically be enabled.

A privacy extension should do everything it could locally and stop there. If I one day figure it's not enough then I'll set a privacy VPN (or use an existing one).

I don't want that decision made for me on my own machine without my consent. :(

And apologies if my comment is misguided -- I only skimmed the linked page and I might have misunderstood.

> making the users' browser use proxy is a step too far

uBO does not do this, and nowhere is there any suggestion that uBO does this.

Users configure their own network settings, and it was found that in some cases when the browser is configured to go through a proxy (through either OS or browser settings), uBO's CNAME-uncloaking feature, which requires a call to the `dns.resolve()` API[1], would cause undue delay to page load. The root cause is outside uBO and outside the browser, it lies in the proxy.

* * *

[1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/Web...

Then I have misread. My apologies. Editing the comment above so as not to mislead readers.

How did you end up at the conclusion that it is Firefox that is the problem and not one of the add-ons? Or maybe you didn't? Some add-ons can do less in Chromium based browsers than in Firefox. Are you sure this isn't what you are seeing instead? Like slower DNS because of add-on settings or bigger block lists?

FYI I'm asking, not doubting or blaming or whatever.

I have no clue if that's the case hence I am not blaming only the browser or only the extensions. It's most likely a combination of both.

But the fact remains that I installed 100% the same set of extensions on Chrome and it loads pages at least 2X faster.

I might be a programmer, I might care about putting a rod in Google's giant personal-info-gathering machine, and all that good stuff that makes us feel we're making a difference in the world -- but when 1/3 of all my pages load more slowly in Firefox, I can tolerate this only for so long.

So I don't really know which factor is the real page load speed detractor. I just wish the Firefox team fixes it.

Well, that's part of the issue. On macOS, all browsers are just skins over Safari. Google obviously has more resources to make this work better but I agree, overall I always found Chrome better than Firefox on macOS.

You can't really compare that to a native linux/windows experience.

You’re thinking of iOS. On macOS third party browsers can and do implement their own browser engines. Firefox is not running on WebKit.

On macOS all browsers are distinct engines, just like on Windows and Linux (yes, and on Open/Free BSD, Haiku, etc. I see you). It's on iOS that all browsers must be skins over Safari.

That certainly doesn't seem quite right, have you got any sources for this?

Wait what?! I thought this only applied to iOS / iPadOS.

You're telling me Firefox under macOS is using Safari's engine? If so, wow. Extremely disappointing.

No, the parent is incorrect. This is only true on iOS/iPadOS.

Been on FF for a few years now. FF89 is really nice.

Is Safari in the running?

Safari team is seriously understaffed, because Apple want people to use the App Store instead.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com