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mcc

- This event seems to tie in with other confusing developments around Mozilla as a company/"Foundation". I do not know enough about these issues to comment on them intelligently. I know only that Mozilla has, inexplicably for a nominal nonprofit, recently bought an advertising firm: mastodon.social/@jwz/112650295

and that I have seen… let's say "criticism" of recent changes to the board makeup: spiceworks.com/tech/tech-gener

12 July at 20:37 | Open on mastodon.social
163 comments
mcc

Anyway, I guess that's a lot of typing. The TLDR is:

- There is now a feature labeled "Privacy-preserving ad measurement" near the bottom of your Firefox Privacy settings. I recommend turning it off, or switching to a more privacy-conscious browser such as Google Chrome.

- I have filed two bugs on Firefox about this, which I am choosing not to link to dissuade brigading. If I have not been banned from the bug tracker by next week I will file another bug about the ChatGPT integration in nightly

12 July at 20:40 | Open on mastodon.social
Happiness for Stray the Cat

@mcc maybe i just need to give up on not be a product, but to concentrate on how to be a terrible product.

12 July at 21:10 | Open on mastodon.social
Mx Verda

@Bigshellevent @mcc I can’t find it now but there was a user program that generated garbage data to mask your movements. I think it was called Noize, Noisr, or something

12 July at 22:25 | Open on lgbtqia.space
Peter

@MxVerda @Bigshellevent @mcc You might also be interested in AdNauseum, an ad blocker that hides ads from you and clicks on them, muddying the water for you. adnauseam.io/

13 July at 8:59 | Open on scintilla.social
bob

@mcc this sort of stuff is the reason why I use librewolf

12 July at 21:45 | Open on feed.hella.cheap
Xandra Granade 🏳️‍⚧️

@bob @mcc LibreWolf is really good, I just wish I could relax the timezone masking... ah, well.

12 July at 21:47 | Open on wandering.shop
bob

@xgranade @mcc librewolf has really good build tooling that makes compiling from source a reasonable thing to do. you can have your own patches if you wnat

12 July at 22:48 | Open on feed.hella.cheap
mcc replied to bob

@bob @xgranade In this situation (or in the situation where I use LibreWolf official builds for that matter) will LibreWolf contain the drm modules that would allow me to use (for example) Tidal on LibreWolf for Windows?

12 July at 22:53 | Open on mastodon.social
bob replied to mcc
KDHofAvalon :HeartNonbinary: replied to mcc

@mcc Yes, LibreWolf has everything needed to play DRM media included, it's just disabled by default. You enable it in "Settings -> General" just like in Firefox

13 July at 1:36 | Open on kind.social
mcc replied to KDHofAvalon

@KDHofAvalon thanks. Can this module be integrated in a case where I compiled my own copy of LibreWolf?

13 July at 1:36 | Open on mastodon.social
KDHofAvalon :HeartNonbinary: replied to mcc

@mcc That, I don't know. I haven't had a need to compile it myself yet in my testing. LibreWolf is just a fork of Firefox though, so it it works there it should also work for LibreWolf

13 July at 1:42 | Open on kind.social
mcc

@xgranade @bob Yeah, this is the problem with using "privacy-conscious software". Privacy is not a very high priority for me. It's just the situation has got *so* bad that even I, a person who doesn't give a shit, is worrying about privacy

12 July at 22:51 | Open on mastodon.social
Xandra Granade 🏳️‍⚧️ replied to mcc

@mcc @bob One of the most fundamental aspects of privacy is autonomy — being able to choose how much you share, with whom, and how. Contrary to how most privacy-conscious software projects tend to see it, that isn't always "no information shared ever." I wish it was easier to tune and express autonomy instead of either just locking everything to zero or letting ad-tech run my life.

12 July at 22:55 | Open on wandering.shop
mcc replied to Xandra Granade 🏳️‍⚧️

@xgranade @bob Yeah. Actually, more than half of the time when I get angry about a privacy violation, the thing I am angry about is not actually the privacy violation but that the company doing the privacy violation *lied to me*. I want to be able to make decisions and have them be honored.

12 July at 22:56 | Open on mastodon.social
Jack Yan (甄爵恩) replied to mcc

@mcc Same here. For example, I donʼt mind ads, but I donʼt like tracking. I block trackers, but not ads themselves. However, that will often bring up a big warning message asking me not to use an ad blocker. Um, I donʼt use an ad blocker, the site does! Just show me non-tracking ads, contextual ones are fine, just like what we had in the 2000s (when advertisers and publishers actually did better from online advertising!).

@xgranade @bob

13 July at 8:19 | Open on mastodon.social
HyperSoop :spinny_cat_aroace: :spinny_fox_agender: replied to mcc

@mcc @xgranade @bob go to the "librewolf" tab in the options and disable ResistFingerprinting. i'll admit it's not intuitive enough if you don't know exactly what rfp is.

13 July at 5:44 | Open on wetdry.world
yuki - queen of the snow
@bob @mcc i tried librewolf. unfortunately, it seems to force disable some acfessibility features i need, so i can't use it
13 July at 1:58 | Open on fedi.kemonomimi.gay
DELETED

@bob @mcc Isn't librewolf is just Arkenfox built-in?

13 July at 4:45 | Open on infosec.exchange
bob

@eilidh @mcc no, it's an actual fork of the firefox C++ codebase

13 July at 4:46 | Open on feed.hella.cheap
Ongion

@mcc I'm sorry, the ChatGPT integration???

12 July at 21:57 | Open on mendeddrum.org
tarot bird

@mcc "a more privacy-conscious browser such as Google Chrome" is such a cursed phrase 🤢

We really need a new browser from someone that isn't in thrall to adtech, AI bullshit, or fascist politics

12 July at 22:05 | Open on octodon.social
mcc
Chris 🦑

@morganmay @mcc thought the same. Isn't #Brave the go-to alternative for Chrome lovers?

13 July at 6:44 | Open on mastodon.social
Lunar 🛸 ♾

@sturmsucht @morganmay @mcc Unfortunately that's not safe either. Between the weird cryptomining feature and the transphobic CEO, there's a lot to go wrong there.

13 July at 6:53 | Open on dosgame.club
Chris 🦑 replied to Lunar 🛸 ♾

@lunarloony @morganmay @mcc Oh, didn't know that. The crypto bro thing is omnipresent of course. 🙄 Any links so I can read myself in?

13 July at 6:56 | Open on mastodon.social
(roll m3tti)

@morganmay @mcc ladybird.org/ thats a new browser that is completly rewritten

13 July at 8:23 | Open on functional.cafe
jesterchen42

@mcc Wow. If the direct comparison leads to sentences like "or switching to a more privacy-conscious browser such as Google Chrome", things must be REALLY off. (Yeah, they are.)

So, which browser is still a good approach?! I'm so tired of all the enshittification!

And of ChatGPT and all the other LLM stuff! 😤😒

12 July at 22:36 | Open on social.tchncs.de
mcc

@jesterchen I've been hearing about LibreWolf, but I don't know enough about it to endorse it.

12 July at 22:36 | Open on mastodon.social
The Notorious GDB

@mcc @jesterchen LibreWolf is decent. Firefox is more polished, but LibreWolf definitely has the privacy defaults ert to max to the point where I loosened settings to allow for a better login experience.

Definitely worth a try if FF is getting bad.

13 July at 0:06 | Open on wehavecookies.social
ZanaGB

@mcc at first i thought this was satire. Then i read the rest of the thread.

What in the olympic fuck

12 July at 22:54 | Open on mastodon.social
Nazo

@mcc I wouldn't really say "witching to a more privacy-conscious browser such as Google Chrome." Chrome/Chromium has done stuff like this before multiple times and a number of other privacy violations as well. They did this one thing better (ish), but I would absolutely not under any circumstances call them "privacy-conscious" or implying switching to them would be better.

12 July at 22:55 | Open on urusai.social
mcc

@nazokiyoubinbou It is possible part of my goal with that post was to make an unusual statement so as to underline the extremity of the current situation.

12 July at 22:57 | Open on mastodon.social
Nazo

@mcc Well, you have to be careful with that sort of thing. It is very easy for people to take it literally.

I admit I have a problem with that in general, taking stuff literally that everyone else finds very obviously not literal (Asperger's thing I guess,) but I think a lot of people also defer to such statements when it comes to complex things (especially tech.)

12 July at 22:59 | Open on urusai.social
damien

@mcc for completeness' sake, i found a Reddit thread where ppl raised an issue about that 'feature'

- reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/
- in which a Mozilla dev commented and sent an explainer about the feature that Mozila has on Github. I haven't read it yet but i figure it'd be useful to read for people who care about that github.com/mozilla/explainers/

13 July at 0:08 | Open on octodon.social
demize

@Eramdam @mcc having given it a quick read I think I agree with andi here more than I did before I read the explainer

like... I guess the intentions are good? but they're coming from a position of "we need to make the web more useful to advertisers" and that's an inherently bad position, and any intentions you have that come from it are also inherently bad, ultimately

we need to stop capitulating to advertisers and investors. the stance mozilla seems to have taken as late, of "we need to show everyone else how this can be done responsibly, because they're doing it irresponsibly" is one I reject outright and this solution only makes sense if you accept that stance

@Eramdam @mcc having given it a quick read I think I agree with andi here more than I did before I read the explainer

like... I guess the intentions are good? but they're coming from a position of "we need to make the web more useful to advertisers" and that's an inherently bad position, and any intentions you have that come from it are also inherently bad, ultimately

13 July at 0:23 | Open on unstable.systems
damien

@demize @mcc for clarity i wasn't saying andi is wrong. Just adding onto the thread for ppl who might have found that interesting + I feel the explainer is more technical than whatever copy Mozilla uses in their support documentation.

13 July at 0:27 | Open on octodon.social
damien replied to damien

@demize @mcc *personally* don't care much, i disabled the feature but i have a pihole/ublock set up so whatever 'non-private' tracking may happen in a result of that is probably not very useful to anybody (and i wouldnt see the ads fed off said tracking lol)

That said, even despite all that I'll stick to Firefox for a while because, like, I'm concerned about the engine homogeneity and sadly Firefox is basically my only option.

Safari on macOS could be an option but I need Windows support and the extensions story still sucks there if you want niche stuff.

I might change my tune when/if Firefox becomes less customisable than it is and "it's not Blink/WebKit" is the only argument but thankfully we're not there yet.

And I guess I'm also married to Tab Containers, every other browser's really wants me to use whole-ass profiles and that's just overkill and clunky imo lol

@demize @mcc *personally* don't care much, i disabled the feature but i have a pihole/ublock set up so whatever 'non-private' tracking may happen in a result of that is probably not very useful to anybody (and i wouldnt see the ads fed off said tracking lol)

That said, even despite all that I'll stick to Firefox for a while because, like, I'm concerned about the engine homogeneity and sadly Firefox is basically my only option.

13 July at 0:35 | Open on octodon.social
demize replied to damien

@Eramdam @mcc yeah. I’m not thrilled with Mozilla here but I still think they’re the only good option that’s not just Chromium wearing a hat, and Google is throwing their weight around threatening even worse stuff with Chrome :/

13 July at 4:56 | Open on unstable.systems
Fazal Majid replied to damien

@Eramdam @demize @mcc no, this won’t protect you because in the incredibly deceptively named “privacy sandbox”, your browser itself becomes the ad network that tracks your interests and matches them against ads, no external server needed, and not something your firewall can protect against.

13 July at 8:10 | Open on social.vivaldi.net
mcc

@Eramdam I am definitely interested in technical details if only so I can criticize it more precisely

13 July at 0:34 | Open on mastodon.social
Rich Felker

@mcc Google Chrome, or even degoogled Chromium, is NOT "a more privacy-conscious browser". It's 1000x worse. Yes this is (yet another) betrayal by Mozilla management clowns, but in browsers like in politics, "X betrayed us" doesn't justify "so we should turn to Y who was 1000x worse to begin with".

13 July at 2:46 | Open on hachyderm.io
smallcircles (Humanity Now 🕊)

@mcc super bad shenanigans. Thanks for your info on the matter!

In my version 127 I also noticed two telemetry settings turned on, which I sure as hell didn't do myself. Sick of it. Firefox is dead.

social.coop/@smallcircles/1127

13 July at 6:07 | Open on social.coop
Harry W.

@mcc Link about the AI integration if people want to know more.
I can see *why* they've done it. But really wish they wouldn't....

blog.nightly.mozilla.org/2024/

13 July at 6:54 | Open on mstdn.social
🐧DaveNull🐧 ☣️pResident Evil☣

@mcc WTF? Chrome is not "privacy-conscious browser"

That's BS… 🤮

- google IS an ad company, Mozilla iis imitating them because someone though it was a good idea to have hire silicon valley assholes as management
- google has a long track record of spying it users
- google is actively fighting against ad/trackers blockers
- chrome has trackers and phonew home
- chrome/chromium tries to run as root with setuid on GNU/Linux and probably runs with high privileges (whatever its called) on winblows

13 July at 7:39 | Open on mamot.fr
Jennifer 🏳️‍⚧️

@mcc I would very strongly advise to recommend @Vivaldi instead of Chrome, if one needs a Chromium-based. Because I still don't trust Google on privacy issues.

13 July at 9:04 | Open on peculiar.florist
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