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Comment by LeChuck | Hacker News Reader

It's fascinating how any Firefox thread here inevitably devolves into accusations that Mozilla has abandoned users and a push to switch to alternatives, despite Mozilla working in the interest of users to a infinitely greater degree than any other major browser vendor.

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Actions speak louder than words. Firefox (including derivatives) is by far the most fingerprint resistant and adblock friendly webbrowser there is.

In terms of features, it's very rich and always improving.

Mozilla also maintains arguably the best web development resource there is, which is MDN.

Mozilla's internal problems aside, some people really don't appreciate how successful Firefox, Thunderbird and MDN have been and still are.

"Actions speak louder than words. "

Indeed. Talking about privacy and having spyware and ads activated by default and now this probably to legally safeguard this and more speak a very clear language.

The only reason to still use FF is indeed, that the competition is worse in this regard.

But that will change, once Ladybird becomes mature enough.

Pinging a Mozilla server to see if there is an active and usable internet connection is not spyware, let's stop with these useless accusations.

It's a product which optionally does accept some help from the users, e.g. opt-in error reports, which is a huge help. Certain people consider that a blatant violation of their rights for some reason, and they would apparently rather see the last bastion of a non-chrome internet die.

"Pinging a Mozilla server to see if there is an active and usable internet connection is not spyware, let's stop with these useless accusations."

No, but have you checked your firefox settings lately?

Meaning in the last 5 years or so? (Probably has been longer by now)

Some updates brought "allow firefox to install and run studies".

That sounded like experimental features, but were in reality spyware to study the user behavior to sell that data to ad companies.

It is still there. And a more blatant checkbox by default also arrived lately. (I think just in forefox mobile)

And then there are ads activated by default.

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox/#health-report

"How is your data used?"

... lots of seemingly innocent technical blabla

and then

" Firefox also shares information with our marketing partners to measure and improve these campaigns; what information is specifically shared varies (depending on how you discovered Firefox and your operating system) but generally includes how you were referred to our download page and whether you actively use Firefox. Where Firefox is pre-installed on your device, technical and interaction data (your device type and whether Firefox is used) will be sent to our marketing partners, and shared with Mozilla."

Lots of words and details to hide the kind of important detail, that they do sell the data by default how you browse the internet. What websites you use, how long etc.

If all of these 'phone home' features are as benign as you say-- why isn't there a clear, exposed, and stable user setting to disable them?

At best there is maze of about:config which incompletely prevent firefox from phoning home and are regularly undermined by new additions.

It's no business of the browser to know if there is an active and usable internet connection. All it needs to know are the responses to the URLs I have asked it to request.

> Firefox (including derivatives) is by far the most fingerprint resistant

Do you have a source? The fingerprint detectors [0] as well as reddit's banned/duplicate account system suggests otherwise.

Maybe at one point Firefox stopped the fingerprinting, but the tools have quickly found other ways to uniquely identify me.

[0] - https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/kcarter?aat=1 https://firstpartysimulator.org/kcarter?&aat=1&a=11&t=11&dnt...

Try Mullvad Browser or Librewolf, both of which are derived from Firefox.

These projects are made possible because of Firefox's customizability and feature set.

Firefox has a fingerprint resist toggle that may not be on when using vanilla Firefox.

Worth noting is that many of these features come from the Tor Uplift project[0]. I'm not sure if they'd exist if it weren't for Tor's work.

[0]: https://blog.torproject.org/tor-browser-advancing-privacy-in...

It’s about expectations. In very simple language: people expect Microsoft and Google to track the hell out of them. But Mozilla says they are your friend and respects privacy, but then their actions speak the opposite.

A betrayal from a friend is harder to handle than a blow from an enemy.

Mozilla's goals are still much more aligned with my own than any other browser vendor. Not even close. It's not a betrayal, it's a difference of opinion between friends.

Edit: If that. I personally think this Terms of Use thing is a storm in a teacup.

Are they? Their incentive is to maintain their revenue stream, almost all of which currently comes from Google. That source is now under threat so, to continue being able to pay the bills, they need to find another. And it's a big hole to fill.

Google's goals were once noble.

> Edit: If that. I personally think this Terms of Use thing is a storm in a teacup.

You may be right, yeah. I don't actually use Firefox, there was something else they did like this before which spooked me off. I was mainly explaining the seemingly odd response people have about this, and why they created a storm.

It's like a friend who says they are your friend, but then don't act like it. As opposed to say a known asshole being an asshole, people don't make a big deal about that any longer.

Yes, Firefox is the best bad option. But I'm not sure how we dont classify it as a betrayal to remove these statements:

  Does Firefox sell your personal data?
  Nope. Never have, never will. And we protect you from many of the advertisers who do. Firefox products are designed to protect your privacy. That’s a promise.

and

  ...Unlike other companies, we don’t sell access to your data...

While also weaseling your words about your new policy and how its "basically the same thing if you think about it" [1]

[1] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/faq/ - "Mozilla doesn’t sell data about you (in the way that most people think about “selling data“), and we don’t buy data about you. Since we strive for transparency, and the LEGAL definition of “sale of data“ is extremely broad in some places, we’ve had to step back from making the definitive statements you know and love. We still put a lot of work into making sure that the data that we share with our partners (which we need to do to make Firefox commercially viable) is stripped of any identifying information, or shared only in the aggregate, or is put through our privacy preserving technologies (like OHTTP).

The same effect applies to political parties. The people that care about X focus their complaints to the party that is trying to address issues with X.

Yeah, pretty much. If you look historically, it's always that traitors and betrayers get the most severe punishment. It just wakes up something very basic in humans.

It's not just an emotional reaction but rather that trust is a fundamental requirement for a functioning society.

>despite Mozilla working in the interest of users to a infinitely greater degree than any other major browser vendor.

Obviously not anymore, it's a add company now.

But at least they have "cool" party's in Zambia.

> it's a add company now

Note that "any other major browser vendor" is a short list of ad companies with a much worse track record.

I don't think Apple (Safari) is a ad company.

They are[1][2]. It makes them billions every year[3]

[1]: https://ads.apple.com [2]: https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/control-how-apple-del... [3]: https://appleinsider.com/articles/22/06/15/apple-ad-business...

Ah ok, but do they have a worse track-record then Google Microsoft or Mozilla?

Relative to Mozilla: on the advertising front I can't judge whether Apple is worse or about the same. On most other fronts I don't think there's much of a question. Others disagree, the extent to which Apple's actions are user-hostile is an often debated topic I'm not particularly interested in re-threading.

Google and Microsoft aren't really a comparison, both have been openly anti-user on many fronts for many years.

So let's correct your statement then to >>most other major browser vendor

;)

No, I stand by my statement. I consider Apple extremely user-hostile and in many ways worse than Microsoft and Google. Those ways are just less broadly agreed upon.

Huh? Those aren’t in-browser ads. Those are ads delivered through installed native apps.

Do you have a source showing that Safari makes money from ads?

You're right, and at the same time those two things go together if you think about it. The browser that does more (or cares at all) is held to the higher standard and inevitably found wanting.

(I'm not taking sides in the debate about it, I just find internet psychology fascinating)

It's disheartening to see people playing villification of users when it is the companies (yeah, mozilla CORPORATION) that went back on their words. Just cos you did something good in the past isn't and shouldn't be an excuse to do bad things now.

Also, why are we talking as if we haven't seen these same things happening to favourite products/companies over and over again? You don't need to be an analyst to put things together.

Tell me why I should care when they gave up Rust and MDN to competitors with the excuse of no money and then gave the boss a heft hike with an ever decreasing userbase? Would any company give a hike of this margin to it's employee when their product is doing bad in the market?

They kept doing things against the community. And then they bought an ad company, then this change. ENSHITTIFICATION IS WRITTEN ON THE WALL IN BOLD LETTERS. Let them backtrack.

Still very very disappointed. We are supposed to be a community who should be thinking through things. This isn't a new scenario. We have seen this so many times.

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