As a privacy conscious user that loves open source software, I'm really puzzled regarding browsers right now. It's confusing.
It feels like basically everything is Chrome nowadays.
Are there any alternatives to Chrome-based browsers?
Best wishes and have a wonderful week
What causes this phenomenon where the project with significantly less resources is held to a higher standard than the other players?
Google did give us a lot of warning that they would greatly restrict ad-blocking and tracker-blocking, so most of that angst has already been and gone.
HN used to gush over how great Chrome was. Some of us were saying, um guys, you know google is in the business of selling advertising right? Nobody seemed to care. Now mozilla's lawyers have them change some legalese and they are instantly the bad guys.
Because anyone who cared knew this was coming in the near future after they published manifest v3 several years ago. Back then there was a huge kerfuffle, but since then anyone who cared has moved on.
But FF was supposed to remain the shiny counterexample (despite acting also shady since years).
Personally, even though my trust in Firefox (and especially Mozilla) has been eroding rapidly in recent years, it's still so much greater than what I have for Google and Chrome that it's not even a choice.
Therefore, I agree with GP that this rhetoric is exhausting.
Bringing up the issues with FF and Mozilla is important and deserves attention. This kind of misleading FUD is not and does not.
Hm, my lived experience is the inverse, and both seem sort of important to talk about.
We've been hearing about Chrome implementing the same privacy protections as Safari as a transgression for years, years, and years, as it was delayed again and again.
It was ex-Mozilla people who brought to my attention that they were deeply alarmed by the privacy-concious-Do-Not-Track people making this pivot and that it was a really bad sign.
Generally, I try to avoid loaded questions phrased like "why is X considered as A while Y is considered as B?" because it suffers from high failure rates
(likelihood you're the first person to realize the truth; likelihood these things ended up sorted neatly into opposing binaries; undecidability of 'how come everyone believes the wrong thing?'; uncomfortable conversation when someone starts from 'how come everyone believes the wrong thing?' and you have to sort of lead them gently to 'is it possible you are missing something, not everyone else?' without making it obvious)
Well Apple didn’t turn around and try to push the Topics API..
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Topics_API
(Just to be clear. Mozilla is opposed to it too. They are just documenting it and don’t plan to implement the API)
Dead Comment
I will never understand why people attack Firefox so eagerly at every given opportunity.
[0]: https://circuitbulletin.com/what-is-global-privacy-control-t... [1]: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/global-privacy-control
10 posts daily about it on HN.
Having worked there, it's concerning, since if you saw the discussions that go on with regard to user data, you'd know they are trying to make sure they word things correctly, not... insert weasel words to grab your data.
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At this writing, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43322922 has 962 points and 485 comments, and is the latest in a long line of posts. What are you on about?
> What causes this phenomenon where the project with significantly less resources is held to a higher standard than the other players?
There is the thing where Mozilla explicitly claimed to uphold a higher standard.
It's not the resources. It's their holier than thou attitude.
Dead Comment
Particularly given the browser itself is open source and already has many eyes on it.
I’m going to wait and see what Mozilla’s next few releases are like before passing judgement.
For what is worth, I still use Firefox.
If you fear Mozilla's telemetry going forward, you could pick a fork that disables it. E.g., Mullvad or Zen seem pretty good.
But on the other hand, if you really want to get off the Firefox bandwagon, yes, Chromium-based browsers are a viable alternative. Although, in my view, there are only 2 Chromium-based browsers that are fairly trustworthy (i.e., well updated, not insecure) and that are not full-on spyware: Vivaldi and Brave.
Regardless, the “forks” are good only for disabling features that you don't want. But keep in mind that the hard work is still done by Mozilla, Google or Apple, it costs a shit ton of money to maintain a browser engine and all of them are financed by ad-tech (Google's ad-tech to be more specific).
Firefox also still supports Manifest V2, which lets you use the full, ultra-powerful version of uBlock Origin. There's no better privacy protection than uBlock.
Firefox is a much better choice than any Chromium based browser for the privacy conscious.
I don't get why you needed to mention this, when the story became viral before Brendan Eich communicated it.
Do you feel that people misunderstood that, in fact, Mozilla does intend to sell user data?
Note that I'm still using and advocating for Firefox, I just found this offtopic attack odd.
Mozilla is apparently run by corporate drones who made a blunder (as drones do). It happens. They corrected it. No need to attack or dismiss Firefox in general. Firefox is excellent.
yes, mozilla's TOS update is a bad thing, but switching to chrome (or chromium-based) for it is really cutting your nose to spite your face.
Probably rage-bait.
I will continue supporting Mozilla and using Firefox.
I don't think trust in Firefox should be gone.
If anything, it's worse, in that they EXPLICITLY admit that they are getting kickbacks—“'monetary' or 'other valuable consideration'”—for providing your user information.