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Comment by nacs | Hacker News Reader

As a Firefox user, this exactly.

The amount of things that now need to be toggled off on a new install are approaching Windows “telemetry” levels: disable sponsored shortcuts on homepage, disable experimental “Studies”, sponsored suggestions in search bar, “suggested extensions”, Pocket, and the list goes on.

I really need to look into a privacy friendly fork of FF..

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> I really need to look into a privacy friendly fork of FF..

I'd love to make the jump too, just that I rely upon FF sync too much. It's handy getting your bookmarks and other details on mobile devices. The other forks look to be desktop only.

FYI, you can use a desktop fork and mobile Firefox with Firefox sync.

source: I do that with floorp and Firefox for android.

also just realized that waterfox does have an android version [1], if you want you use the same fork on desktop and android

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.waterfox.a...

Not to hang around like a bad smell every time they come up, but just think it’s worth noting they are not open source anymore, instead being “source available”. Really gives me the old school “greenwashing” vibes Microsoft used to do with their Shared Source licenses. Poor showing considering they used others work to get to where they are, then shut the door when others started doing the same.

I would say feel free to give Waterfox a try - I’ve tried to strike the balance of useable web and privacy, with the added enhancement of Oblivious DNS enabled by default.

In this case I had completely missed the bad smell, so I appreciate the comment cause it prompted me to look up the whole situation. yikes. I was already planning on moving to another fork soon since I wasn't using most of floorp's power features, so this just expedited that.

Also from your language it sounds like you're a Waterfox dev? If so thanks for all your hard work on open source software! I haven't tried waterfox in years, I will definitely give it a go after uninstalling floorp.

True, it's very handy... but can't Chrome do it with a Google account ? (I really don't know)

To me the really seeling point of firefox is being able to switch off search suggestions. Now the bar only searches opened Tabs, history, bookmarks and I can tab into them quickly. If nothing turns up, pressing Enter will still launch a search. Being able to do casual navigation without having to go through a search engine is a killer feature (and it's better for the planet).

Not only tab but you can search directly into opened Tabs/history/bookmarks with the right %/^/* symbols !

EDIT : Almost forgot, it only really shines with that extension that prevent searches to turn up in your history --> https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/history-autod...

> I rely upon FF sync too much. It's handy getting your bookmarks and other details on mobile devices.

I would love to use that functionality, but... How?!? Once you have a gazillion tabs open on your phone, the “Open tabs from other devices” (or whatever it's called) menu item on the desktop just shows an endlessly spinning spinner. :-( So maybe via bookmarks... But where's the “Bookmark all open tabs” menu item in FF for Android???

Anyone got any tips?

This is an extremely uncharitable view of Firefox and an outrageously generous view of Windows. The things you listed take 2 checkboxes in a new tab window, 2 checkboxes in settings (which has a search bar that takes you right to them by just searching "studies" or "data collection"), 2 checkboxes in settings (search "suggestions"), 2 clicks (right click the pocket button and click hide)... The only tricky one is the recommended extensions but that's tucked at the bottom of a page nobody uses anyways (everyone just googles the extension they want and grabs it from the web), but even that takes like 15 seconds once you know what setting it is in about:config. I actually don't even disable the two telemetry checkboxes because they're transparent about the data they take and what they do with it, so I'm happy to share it. You can easily do all of this in one or two minutes and it won't roll itself back.

With Windows you would be lucky to even have a supported method to disable their telemetry, and if you do get one it will probably be through an obscure series of registry edits that will ultimately get rolled back during a system update.

> This is an extremely uncharitable view of Firefox and an outrageously generous view of Windows. The things you listed take 2 checkboxes in a new tab window, 2 checkboxes in settings (which has a search bar that takes you right to them by just searching "studies" or "data collection"), 2 checkboxes in settings (search "suggestions"), 2 clicks (right click the pocket button and click hide)... The only tricky one is

It’s wild to me that this is being presented as if it’s not a big deal.

Shows how far the goalposts have moved in this conversation.

It's not a big deal. They're easy to disable and easier to just ignore. It just doesn't matter in the way that you want me to panic over.

How big a deal it is depends on what you're comparing to. Yeah, at first, when I read his post, I was wondering if it was a joke or something, with so many checkboxes in different places. Then I got to the point about Windows and realized he's right: compared to Windows, all those steps in Firefox actually aren't that bad, and actually stay unchecked unlike Windows which happily changes things back.

> all those steps in Firefox actually aren't that bad, and actually stay unchecked

Not really, they keep adding new checkboxes that are of course checked by default.

Source? You may be thinking of Windows.

Thank you. And I would even say that settings aren't really even in different places, they're all either on the Settings page or on the element in question. New tab settings are on the new tab page, and you disable the pocket button by right clicking the pocket button. Not exactly rocket science, especially compared to Windows.

I cannot tell if this is sarcasm or not.

It isn't. I can without any sarcasm disable all of that in about a minute or two, and for the most part see no reason to do so in the first place (the worst bit is probably sponsored links on new tabs but that's also the easiest to remove). Acting like this invalidates the existence of the whole browser is what makes no sense to me.

Also Windows configuration is terrible.

"Acting like this invalidates the existence of the whole browser is what makes no sense to me."

They market themself as standing for the open and free web and digital rights and privacy and what not. And then have the browser spying on every user by default with integrated ads.

So sure, you and me deactivate it, but a common person who just fell for the marketing and who does not even know what "telemetry" is, will have it enabled. The only reason I use their browser is, because there is no alternative - yet.

Transparent telemetry is not spying. I'll agree that the ads are annoying but they're about as unobtrusive as you can make them. This is not the catastrophe you believe it to be, and even if it were, the big scary evil worse-than-Google Mozilla allows forks and Librewolf exists.

"Transparent telemetry is not spying. "

It is not transparent, if the information is hidden in the settings under a unclear name.

Its usage and the data it collects are not malicious or done to track you. "Data collection" is arguably a clearer name than telemetry to the average user and is clearly labelled, and can be disabled in a single checkbox in settings. It is transparent.

"Its usage and the data it collects are not malicious or done to track you."

There is tracking also for ad purposes activated by default in firefox. A recent developement. Before the tracking was ocasionally and hidden under "studies". Firefox in its default settings spies on its users and sells this data to advertisers - that is the situation.

On the frontpage FF is advertised as privacy friendly and there is 0 indication that FF itself will also track you.

If that is transparent to you, than we can just agree to disagree.

"by just searching "studies" isn't "just", to have to remember the option names and be certain you remember them all (and not miss the newly added ones), it's not that trivial of a hurdle

I don't use it myself, but Librewolf is a pretty popular fork that attempts to be private out of the box and is usually updated pretty quickly.

Yes, or Waterfox [1].

[1] https://www.waterfox.net/

Thanks. Finally got around to installing Librewolf and it works great.

Sensible defaults as Firefox should be.

I will definitely second this. I moved over to librewolf last year and love it. I’m glad Mozilla is staying in business though. I know not every organization has my beliefs and I can live with that

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