Hacker News Reader

Comment by _jal | Hacker News Reader

> they've lost sight of what running a sustainable business in this space would look like

Is the claim that it is economically impossible to create a browser without turning it in to surveillance malware?

To the extent that's true, it is the best argument yet for shutting down the web.

Are you implying that Firefox is "surveillance malware"? Precisely what surveillance are you referring to? Telemetry isn't surveillance. Recommended content (e.g. on the default New Tab page) doesn't involve surveillance.

>Are you implying that Firefox is "surveillance malware"? >Telemetry isn't surveillance.

(honest question) Why is this necessary then: https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js

Why do you assume it's necessary? FWIW, I'd rate quite a bit of what it does as "not necessary".

On another thread, I was told: "Firefox is feeding your data to Google. You need to disable it in the user.js file"

Oh, some random stranger on the Internet said so? That must be right, then.

I was not proclaiming that it was a fact. I am openly frustrated and confused. An oft repeated claim is that "people just don't care about their privacy." I am moderately technical and I am totally unsure of how to keep my data from these parasite companies. Achieving privacy is incredibly arcane and confusing. Instead of quipping at me with a low value post, why don't you tell me exactly what Mozilla's telemetry does? Do you know?

If you want to know about Mozilla's telemetry, you could start with https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/telemetry-clientid and its links to additional details.

Perhaps these indicate data leakage?

>Searches: Firefox sends Mozilla what you type into the search bar and Mozilla may share that data with its partners.

>Sites you visit: For the Suggestions you click, Firefox sends Mozilla the website URL, and Mozilla may share that data with its partners.

Interesting that turning off "suggestions" is not located in the "privacy" section.

To google? Other than it being the default search engine, highly doubt.

And those “home calls” are nothing more than calls like whether you are on the public internet, whether a new update is available and other mundane things.

AFAIK Mozilla uses Google services for some telemetry. But that's exactly the kind of thing that warrants detailed consideration and not just "there's traffic touching a Google IP, THEY ARE FEEDING DATA TO GOOGLE!" and random scripts from the internet that disable IPv6 "against tracking"

> Telemetry isn't surveillance.

As a categorical statement, this is false. "Not all telemetry is surveillance" is true.

Telemetry is exfiltrated data the user did not ask to send. The line between telemetry and surveillance depends on the use and intent of the data recipient, not (necessarily) the data itself, and that use is opaque to the person whose actions generated the data.

It is interesting to note that telemetry can become surveillance after it is collected. Perhaps a new manager has a different plan, perhaps the cops show up with a subpoena.

Your prejudice is showing. "Exfiltrate" implies a surreptitious operation. E.g. Merriam-Webster: "to remove (someone) furtively from a hostile area"; Dictionary.com: "to escape furtively from an area under enemy control"; Collins: "to remove (data) from a computer, network, etc surreptitiously and without permission or unlawfully".

When Firefox is first launched, it opens the Privacy Notice page https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox/, which is totally up-front about data being collected. Nothing surreptitious about it. Data is not "exfiltrated", it's simply "sent". But that doesn't sound nearly as evil, does it?

I'm talking about telemetry, not FF. But whatever, I'm not going to have a pointless discussion with someone more interested in criticizing word choice than replying to what I wrote.

I can’t tell if this is supposed to be serious, but just in case [1].

In case it is, really, shut down the web? What would that look like? Why would we do it? How? How can “browsers are expensive” possibly be worth doing something that extreme?

[1] https://xkcd.com/1454/

The majority of the web should be standardized uniformed wizards. Then people can apply whatever the skin they want onto all of the web. We don't want to deal with all kinds of design that are hard to make, require crazy powerful browsers, and was asked for by no one anyway.

Fancy UIs are made to slow people down in their tasks and draw attention to things that don't matter to what they want to do.

Web developers and creative people like to think the web is their playground but really the most important role of the web should be delivering informations and services efficiently, and get the hell out the way.

Something I vehemently agree with

Can't drain the swamps if the goal is to have moats.

Except if you go full-on Neo-Amish/Luddite and use

[->] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemini_(protocol)

or the remaining stuff which stays accessible via simple

browsers like [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetSurf ,

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dillo ,

or textmode stuff like Lynx, (E)Links(2), W3M, and similar.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com