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Comment by jimmaswell | Hacker News Reader

The world kept turning all these years before people got unreasonably paranoid about cookies and ad networks. I think it's all pointless theater. I wish Mozilla would focus more on browser customizability and other extension powers like we used to have with XUL and bringing the mobile browser up to speed instead. I couldn't care less about a Facebook tracking cookie.

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I agree with the mobile browser (the only recent change they made, afaics, was to artificially disable most of the extensions and to make tab switching worse), however it is not just about ad networks that people are paranoid about. Tracking is pervasive and there are many players which know way too much about what users are doing on the net.

I don't even care if they track me - what I care about is that they track mostly everybody. Such power should not be underestimated.

Law enforcement is exempt from GDPR and other online privacy acts and we all know how much intelligence agencies know. The people who it matters if they track you are still tracking you. All that changed is it's harder to make money from ads and it's more expensive and dangerous to run your own web service.

Not true; a substantial part of the Schrems II decision was about how the GDPR applies not only to law enforcement, but also national security surveillance. See eg ‘European Essential Guarantees.’

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