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Comment by madmax108 | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if there's anyone from any advertising/ad-targeting companies on HN who can shed some light on if/how much this change may affect their "product".

Asking this since I know friends working at companies that were DRASTICALLY affected by the Apple advertising changes in terms of user targetability (and hence revenue) and I'm wondering if this change will be similar.

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Firefox has a sub 8% market share, so I doubt this will make a drastic change to how they operate.

Surprised it's even that high, I tried to switch to Firefox the other month for privacy but gave up because it crashed on me it-least once a day.

Edit: thanks for the downvotes, I would have preferred if it worked but it didn't. I tried basic troubleshooting, disabling extensions etc. but didn't find it usable on macOs Monterey, think it doesn't play well with youtube.

Strange...it's been rock solid for me for years, across multiple devices and OS's. I cannot remember the last time FF crashed.

I have used Firefox for 7 years and never had it crash once.

I used it for a similar time if not longer and I think it crashed < 10 times. In the last years it was mostly just single tabs failing and probably was just another website with some endless js loop anyway.

Extremely stable compared to almost any other software. Perhaps the parent means the mobile version. If not I would expect something is wrong with the system, even if visiting the worst pages of the internet.

Not even Firefox Android crashes for me.

I have also used Firefox for a similar time and although I can't say it has never crashed for me, it has at least proven to be a bit more stable than my experience with Chrome.

I don't think I've ever used another browser for as long as Firefox has existed. I think I can count crashes on one hand.

I switched to ff a month or two ago for the integrated tree-style tabs extension that you can't get on chromium-based browsers

I didn't really have any huge problem with firefox specifically, but Brave just feels a bit slicker, the adblocker is in-built and stronger, and it manages multiple windows better, so I've slowly switched back to brave for general use, and use ff for work and projects

care to share what sites were causing your "crashing"?

no? then hello downvote for just making unsubstantiated claims that goes totally against the grain of typical experience.

Been using firefox for multiple years now with no crashing issues, pretty much ever.

Probably you were downvoted because your comment took the thread on a generic tangent - indeed into one of the most-trodden areas on HN. Generic tangents are easy to fall into (of course) but make threads less interesting, which is why the site guidelines ask people to avoid them. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Unpredictable/whimsical/curious tangents are still ok. Just not the predictable ones.

More explanations here if anyone wants them:

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

Cookies are the easiest way to shore and share information but far from the only way. If it affects someone's product, it is not hard to fingerprint browsers.

It does seem relatively more difficult to fingerprint Safari on iOS which at least takes a sizeable % of web browsing out of the equation.

I work in advertising. this change is nothing compared to what Apple did. Edit : It's better than ETP.

Better? For who? The trackers? Or the trackees?

Not in an ad targeting company, but given Firefox current marketshare and their previous anti tracking measures, I doubt this will make a that much of a difference. But if the feature attracts loads of Chrome users then at least the ad companies relying on third-party cookies will feel it. Obviously if you are currently targeting Firefox users and your company is not in the current tracker list then I assume you will see significant drop

Most ad agencies don't know anything about targeting. It's something in the platform they have, but they don't know how it works and if it works at all. Had worked on both sides, providing ads and using them in pages. Would be much easier if the default becomes context sensitive ads. Showing an ad next to some news - give the platform some keywords and pick an ad based on that. No tracking or user targeting needed at all.

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