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Comment by Nextgrid | Hacker News Reader

Another Mozilla PR piece regarding "privacy"... let me see, did they finally bundle (or reimplement) uBlock Origin as a standard feature of the browser? No. Did they make telemetry opt-in as required per the GDPR? No. Did they stop opening Mozilla webpages on first run which contain Google Analytics (also in breach of the GDPR)? No.

Snark aside, this change (for once!) does have some benefits. Tracking using IP address & user-agent alone is pretty strong regardless of cookies/etc and can't be completely blocked client-side when you do need to load the requested resource (such as browsing the malicious website, or third-party websites using Google Fonts/ReCaptcha/etc), so containing these within their own VPN, separate from other browsing activity is an effective countermeasure.

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While I agree with most of your points, I don't want Firefox to implement uBlock Origin.

Should Firefox prioritize compatibility with it? Yes. Should the uBlock Origin developers have the personal cell phone of Mozilla's CTO? Also yes. But there's nothing to be gained from absorbing it, and all we'll get is more bureaucracy.

If anything, I'd like Firefox to focus more on their core product, not less.

My argument is that Firefox should have functionality equivalent to uBlock Origin by default, so that less tech-savvy users who install the "privacy" focused browser actually get some without having to browse for extra add-ons and potentially install an inferior or outright malicious option.

> My argument is that Firefox should have functionality equivalent to uBlock Origin by default

It largely does.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/enhanced-tracking-prote...

That'll cause Firefox to get blacklisted by a large number of websites.

It doesn't take much for a website to determine that the Firefox user agent (or detectable fingerprint) results in zero advertising ROI. They'll block it outright and ask you to use Chrome.

Then Chrome wins.

Then you pretend to be Chrome, which you should do anyway to defeat fingerprinting.

Outside of running the Chrome process itself, you can't defeat fingerprinting. Even headless use can be detected.

They derive nearly 90% of their revenue from allowing Google to be the default search engine. Default uBlock is an impossibility. If you’d like Firefox with that feature, try the LibreWolf fork.

That doesn't prevent me from calling them out on their bullshit. You want to make money from ads? Fine, but don't go around shouting "PRIVACY" at every possible opportunity and giving people a false sense of security.

Maybe not integrating it, but allowing uBlock Origin to use Firefox Sync and sync filter lists and other settings would be very useful on Firefox for Android:

* https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Cloud-storage#firefox...

> Firefox for Android can't sync extensions settings. This is tracked in Bugzilla #1316442.

* https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1316442

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