from Hacker News

Mozilla’s plan to fix internet privacy

by DvdGiessen on 2/11/20, 11:45 AM with 273 comments

• by walrus01 on 2/11/20, 1:33 PM

  Firefox on Android has become my go to choice now, because it supports the full set of desktop firefox plugins, including the essential ublock origin. I can't even imagine mobile browsing without full adblock functionality anymore.

• by ilitirit on 2/11/20, 12:45 PM

  > Mozilla lost the browser wars

  Honest question... who did they lose to? Google Chrome?

  For me personally, Firefox has been better than Chrome for several years now. The only reason I still load up Chrome is when I want to stream to my Chromecast.

• by ocdtrekkie on 2/11/20, 1:08 PM

  The aforementioned Facebook Container was an excellent step, but if they really were serious about fixing Internet privacy regardless of their financial backers, they'd ship an official Google Container as well. (A third party developer ships one as a fork of Facebook Container, but it'd be far preferable for a Mozilla shipped one.) They capitalized on the Cambridge Analytica scandal with the launch of that extension, but won't follow up with the Google equivalent.

  The code is already written, I just think they are still too scared to ship an extension that works against their primary sponsor.

• by mehdix on 2/11/20, 4:29 PM

  As a FF user I'll also share my experience.

  Since Firefox switched to Quantum, I am exclusively using it on my work, home and portable computers. Chromium on my Arch Laptop was buggy, had a memory leak, and would consume all my 16G of RAM after keeping tabs open for a while. Firefox solved that for me.

  With uBlock, Privacy Badger, Cookie AutoDelete and FF's built-in blocker I have a functional defense-line against privacy violating practices (not totally immune against fingerprinting yet).

  The reader mode helps me to get rid of the clutter and read the text, very happy with that.

  I also use Firefox and Firefox Preview on Android. The latter is specially superior in performance and has less bugs. For example on Firefox Android I had non-finishing download bars, not any more in the Preview. The performance is obviously superior. Nighly builds support uBlock now.

  The "Send Tab" feature is also very practical (I have a FF account for syncing purposes). I send tabs to my other devices which helps me to follow things on my other machines and also to memorize things by seeing them in a short while on another machine.

  There are two things about FF that I dislike. First thing is the massive amount of outdated articles and ancient support tickets online. Good luck with searching for a technical solution for a FF problem!

  Next thing is the source code. I have compiled it many times in order to fix a niche bug. I even bought a better PC to compile it faster. This aside, it is hard to understand the code. There are zillions of moving pieces, and ad-hoc bug fixing is not an option. You have to follow things for weeks if not months to get to the right information. This probably can be improved by better docs explaining the code to contributors and new comers.

  Overall I'm happy with it. Moreover, it is important to have alternatives otherwise we might lose the open web as we know it.

  Edit: add paragraphs

• by RabbiPires on 2/11/20, 12:37 PM

  All this talk about openness and freedom, and Mozilla's builds still ship with the proprietary Pocket extension by default. I really hope they don't have to rely on the revenue from Pocket at some point.

  Not only that, but it also connects to Google's SafeBrowsing servers. Is that required by their search engine contract with Google? Shouldn't be turned on by default.

• by CivBase on 2/11/20, 5:14 PM

  > Baker wrote on Mozilla's blog that in the last decade, the world had seen "the power of the internet used to magnify divisiveness, incite violence, promote hatred, and intentionally manipulate fact and reality." Baker then added four new manifesto principles calling for equality, discourse and diversity online in an addendum called "Pledge for a Healthy Internet."

  "Equality, discourse, and diversity" are the very principles that enable people to "magnify divisiveness, incite violence, promote hatred, and intentionally manipulate fact and reality." Any attempt to promote freedom of expression while simultaneously silencing the worst of humanity is inherently at odds.

  Hatred is a naturally occuring phenomina, not a learned behavior. You can't just quarantine it to make it go away. That only makes it worse.

  The internet is not a breeding ground for hatred. It's just a reflection of how bad we can really be.

• by DrScientist on 2/11/20, 12:51 PM

  Ex-Mozillian Brendan Eich agrees that privacy is the battle for the future http://www.brave.com

  The question is - do you need to re-write the internet economy as Brave are trying to to achieve it, and not just block trackers?

  The third element is that governments are becoming addicted to the vast trove of information gathered - will they be willing to give that up if a technical/business model solution takes off.

  Interesting times.

• by gfody on 2/11/20, 2:41 PM

  Using uMatrix really raised my awareness of how bad things are - spyTech is utterly everywhere. I still take the time to micromanage my matrix every time I encounter a new site and it’s ridiculous how long it can take to get a random infested page back to an acceptable level of usability.

• by badrabbit on 2/11/20, 2:38 PM

  Can they focus on making it perform as well as Chrome?

  I mean, I support their efforts and all but I am forced to use a chrome based browser because FF has poor windows/sso integration and absolutley horrible memory management. A tab of any tool's webui that does a lot of work with a lot of data will not only bring firefox to a halt but the entire system. I can at least try to use it for soft workloads but you never know when visiting the wrong page will cause this issue again. Why can't it manage it's impact on the rest of the system?

  My job performance would tank dramarically if I used firefox exclusively!

  Why can't they work to make it better than Chrome? They were throwing Rust at it a few years ago,so what happened? Do they just not test against the right sites?

  I mean, the mozilla foundation is not poor. They have money. Is it just politics or do they think getting gmail and youtube to work is all that is needed? I am only saying all this because i like firefox. Mozilla needs a wake up call. Do they not get the problems at hand or do they not care or do they lack some resource or motivation? I mean I will be happy to even buy a license for firefox if they get it to even come close to Chrome's performance. Maybe they have too many well intended fanboy's cheeeing them on?

• by kup0 on 2/11/20, 3:18 PM

  I'm finally back to Firefox for good. Feels good to be home.

  I keep 'Edge-ium' around if I encounter any rare use cases that necessitate it, but that's relatively rare

• by mark_l_watson on 2/11/20, 1:05 PM

  I liked the wrap up where the position is that it is OK when other browsers adopt some of Mozilla’s privacy features.

  I just about exclusively use FireFox with nine containers on my Linux and macOS laptops. Being able to segregate data is a game changer.

  On my iOS devices, I feel stuck with Safari since other browsers sit on top of Safari. I appreciate the privacy features in Safari but still feel the need to frequently remove all cookies and use private tabs when using sites like FaceBook. I just wrote about this yesterday https://mark-watson.blogspot.com/2020/02/protecting-oneself-...

  Because I like to sometimes use my Chromebook, I am stuck using the Chrome web browser. Deleting all cookies frequently helps.

• by h91wka on 2/11/20, 2:07 PM

  It's funny how Mozilla preaches privacy, but if you open `about:config' and count

  1) parameters that include word "telemetry"

  2) everything that looks like a unique token

  3) "mozilla.org" URLs

  you'll see that the sum is steadily going up with every release. It leaves me under impression that Mozilla is trying to follow Facebook and Google. Lately they removed setting to use a custom page for the new tabs, leaving only choice between blank page and Mozilla-provided "interest based" homepage. I am still using it as the main browser, though, as "lesser evil", but discrepancy between Mozilla's slogans and actual features is pretty chilling.

• by dependenttypes on 2/11/20, 4:30 PM

  How ironic. Firefox is the browser that calls home the most on the first run https://twitter.com/jonathansampson/status/11658588961766604...

  They also disabled the ability for extensions to work on mozilla pages and things like about:addons by default, where mozilla uses google analytics.

  They add new tracking crap on the browser in every release, so you are at a loss what to disable first in about:config as the online guides tend to get outdated easily.

  > that's good for trolls and surveillance organizations and violent groups

  Only "surveillance organizations" is relevant to privacy. The others make me think of centralisation and censorship.

  The only real way to browse privately is to use a browser with javascript disabled and only a subset of css enabled over tor/isp. (but then you have to deal with cloudflare and broken sites)

• by davidy123 on 2/11/20, 1:57 PM

  The concept of the browser is a universal vehicle for information. One of the greatest breakthroughs for browsers, aside from increasing front end application rendering and interactivity, is extensions. They put the user as the primary, where they can access, control, organize the information accessed as they wish using extensions. Of course, there is a wild west aspect to this, and over time extension facilities are becoming closer to app stores, with ratings and permissions being primary. Chrome has had some of the best support for extensions, making it easy to create them and offering most features through them, which is one reason I use it instead of Firefox day to day. But no browser properly supports extensions on mobile. Chrome just doesn't, the Kiwi fork is supposed to but in my experience doesn't really, Firefox says they will but the signals are it will only be select extensions, at least for now. Extensions are one of the best markers and facilities of a free, user first web, that isn't just about accessing opaque, absolutely controlled services, where hobbyists and principled organizations can work directly in the space of privacy and trust as information is processed, so I hope they pick up some priority.

• by jeffrufino on 2/11/20, 1:47 PM

  Brilliant, I'll be moving to Firefox.

• by us000538 on 2/11/20, 4:38 PM

  Specifically for mobile divices mozilla's performance is too good you can feel it just try to open blogger html codes in crome it will hang but for mozilla it's fine https://www.boringworld.org

• by ecmascript on 2/11/20, 1:33 PM

  Mozilla essentially did a "get woke, go broke". They fired Brendan for ridicolous reasons, they focused on products that were useless and were really focused on spreading propaganda for woke causes.

  I still use Firefox everyday since it's the best browser for linux but I also use Brave. Mozilla as a company in my eyes are a bit lost and they need more focus on their technology. It seems like they have realized this in the last two years or so and I hope that trend will continue. Firefox is awesome, focus on privacy is awesome. MDN is awesome. If they need money from other sources than Google, why not create some kind of subscription service for their MDN docs?

  There is a bunch of things they actually need to fix like lack of PWA support in firefox (still) which is pretty bad that they don't have that enabled by default.

  Focus on what matters, no one cares about your woke politics in the long run.

• by mariushn on 2/11/20, 9:50 PM

  I'd love to have a Gmail-like alternative, both with a Mozilla domain (personal) and custom domains (business), for a small yearly subscription. Maybe have ad-supported as an alternative.

• by SergeAx on 2/11/20, 6:33 PM

  The momemt Google pull the plug for Ublock Origin and other similar plugins - we'll see how "Mozilla lost the browser wars".

• by wnevets on 2/11/20, 4:50 PM

  The moment ublock origin is limited or broken in chrome is the moment I abandon chrome completely and switch to firefox full time.

• by tonfreed on 2/12/20, 9:45 PM

  > namedropping Cambridge Analytica

  And opinion discarded

• by einpoklum on 2/11/20, 4:02 PM

  Mozilla destroyed their own platform - by removing its most significant feature, which was deep extensibility, instead of fixing it to keep that feature.

  > That's how Mozilla works: slowly, collaboratively, trying to speak for everyone.

  I don't remember Mozilla works collaboratively. By the way - remind me where they publish their income sources again?

  > "the power of the internet used to magnify divisiveness, incite violence, promote hatred, and intentionally manipulate fact and reality."

  Yeah, well, so has the printing press. When someone suggests we should keep a "healty press", that's oligarchic censorship. Reminds me of the US Comics Code.

  > Mozilla has spent the last several years fighting harder and louder than ever for the future of the internet.

  Must not have been loud enough, because I believe few people have noticed this.

  > the company's vision of a more user-centric, privacy-conscious web.

  "user-centric" web? Don't know what that means. It's like "reader-centric books". As for privacy - when something like uBlock Origin and EFF Privacy Badger is installed by default, and when TOR is an easily-accessible option, and when Mozilla funds some TOR endpoint routers (in countries outside US reach of course), then we'll talk.

  > But what if people could also use them to keep Facebook from snooping as they traveled the web?

  If Facebook was prevented from snooping entirely, that would not be that much of an issue.

  > Firefox has long held the not-entirely-flattering distinction of being the most popular browser not made by a huge corporation

  It's bankrolled by huge corporations. IIRC it was mostly Google for a while. Also, see below about their new VP.

  I am reminded how Mozilla had, for years, neglected its email client in favor of the browser, thus effectively helping to promote webmail, stored and spied on by these corporations. It certainly did nothing to promote end-to-end encryption of email, which has been quite possible with Thunderbird, and would have prevented (some of the) spying on users.

  > So far, Firefox has blocked 1.6 trillion tracking requests

  That means it doesn't block most tracking requests.

  > Alan Davidson ... new VP of policy ... has been working ... at Google and then as President Barack Obama's director of digital economy

  So one of the top people at the spying-B-us corporation and the "can't have privacy and security" administration is the new VP who'll help protect us from his former colleagues and bosses? Uh-huh.

• by throwaway8291 on 2/11/20, 12:32 PM

  I'm using Firefox for years, after Chrome started to ask me for a login (at around version 40). Never looked back. One day I woke up to a chart showing browser market share of FF at around 4%, which surprised me - as I thought many people would understand the implications and directions.

  Maybe I'm too optimistic.

  Update: Loved chrome, used it for years, I also love most Chrome engineering and all the innovation they added to the field - it's just good to have alternatives.

• by cousin_it on 2/11/20, 1:57 PM

  1) Thirteen banner ads, most of them animated

  2) Tracking from Google and Facebook

  3) Cookie warning with no way to opt out

  4) You can only opt out if you live in California:

  > Opting out of the sharing of your personal information by Protocol with marketers: Please send an email to privacy@protocol.com with the following information: -Name -Email -Confirmation of California residency

• by inviromentalist on 2/11/20, 3:34 PM

  If anyone can figure out why Firefox doesn't work on my computer, let me know.

  It's at least 30 times slower than chrome. So somethings wrong Right?

• by fmajid on 2/11/20, 1:50 PM

  Their shabby treatment of Brendan Eich discredits their self-proclaimed commitment to diversity and open discourse.

• by arkitaip on 2/11/20, 12:30 PM

  Maybe the ultimate move would be to create a Tor alternative that goes beyond slapping on some privacy on the pig that has become the Internet.

• by beardedman on 2/11/20, 1:31 PM

  I've been using Brave these days. Really like it. IMO: Firefox doesn't seem to know what sort of company they are anymore. Their product arsenal is expanding, yet core features of their flagship product is still stuck in the 2000's.

• by heartbeats on 2/11/20, 1:11 PM

  If they want to do something, there's a simple three-step plan.

  1) block all ads, by default

  2) do not unblock Google's ads,

  3) receive Adblock Plus-style bribes from Yandex or whoever to whitelist them, provided they don't harm privacy

  This would kill several birds in one stone. First, break Mozilla free of Google funding. Second, hurt Google. Third, increase Firefox' market share. Fourth, help users' privacy.

  As things stand today, Mozilla just exist so that Google can pretend they don't have a monopoly. Follow the money - who pays?

  (A: Google pays nearly all of their budget, and they have next to no rainy day fund)