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Top-level
 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 162 comments
 @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 @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. https://adnauseam.io/ @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 @KDHofAvalon thanks. Can this module be integrated in a case where I compiled my own copy of LibreWolf? @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  @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.  @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!).   @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    @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. @lunarloony @morganmay @mcc Oh, didn't know that. The crypto bro thing is omnipresent of course. 🙄 Any links so I can read myself in? @sturmsucht I misremembered - 'transphobe' wasn't quite the right word, but if he opposes gay marriage so strongly then it's not much of a stretch - https://www.ft.com/content/461bf398-47ee-11e4-ac9f-00144feab7de And here's one about the cryptomining... or, indeed, how to use it: https://www.pcmag.com/how-to/how-to-earn-and-use-cryptocurrency-with-the-brave-browser   @m3tti @morganmay @mcc https://text.tchncs.de/latenightblog/ladybird-browser-and-drama Couldn't easily find a better source, but basically a minor PR to change doc language to bs more inclusive blew up because tech is supposedly apolitical (it's not). @chiraag @morganmay @mcc why can't people just leave all those politics and stuff aside. Don't we have bigger problems like that. Water gets short. We are heading to a new war and all those other really bad stuff thats happening. And here we are complaining about everyone and everything. Sometimes i feel like being part of a medieval society that needs its scapegoats that they can shitstorm and talk about. Gossip is the thing today. And the guy just wanted to write a browser.  @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! 😤😒 @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.  @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. @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. @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.)  @mcc for completeness' sake, i found a Reddit thread where ppl raised an issue about that 'feature' - https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/1dv59fd/dear_firefox_please_stop_adding_dubious_settings/  @Eramdam @mcc ugh, I can't say I like Mozilla's "end-user benefits" justification *at all*. How did the original intent of capitalism of "businesses that don't provide what the consumer wants/needs should fail and those that do provide it succeed" become perverted into "we should do things the consumer doesn't want to make sure these existing businesses don't fail". I don't know what else I can get out of their statement... Any hint that they're going to pull (or are already pulling) similar shenanigans with Thunderbird? [Starts looking for more privacy-centric email clients]  @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".  @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.  @mcc Link about the AI integration if people want to know more. https://blog.nightly.mozilla.org/2024/06/24/experimenting-with-ai-services-in-nightly/  @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  @betalars yep, that's the joke. In this instance, mozilla have managed to out-google google. @wouldinotcallmyselfahumanbeing @betalars Like, Google *tried* to track me, but they failed, because they warned me they were going to do it before they started, so I was able to turn it off. But Firefox didn't tell me they were going to track, they just started doing it secretly. So they did actually manage to track my "Impressions" for a while there. Firefox tracked me and Chrome didn't. @wouldinotcallmyselfahumanbeing @betalars Note, I don't believe this happened because Google is actually more privacy conscious than Firefox. I believe the difference in the two features is because Google ran what they were going to do by a lawyer and asked "is this GDPR compliant?" and Firefox didn't @twcau Can you please turn off the setting that tags the person that boosted a toot into your reply mate? @ThermiteBeGiants Doesn’t seem my client has a setting for that, at least one I could find looking through settings. @twcau @mcc @ThermiteBeGiants The absurdity of the statement is for this exact shock value @mcc@mastodon.social The replies to this lead me to believe that your other followers don't appreciate understated irony as much as I do.  @mcc i will watch closely to see if this drops in ESR and thus IceCat.... hunch says yes, though ESR is "corporate aligned" in a sense....  @mcc and then they go about saying in their blog that tracking is terrible yet attribution (just tracking with extra steps) is needed when it isn't. For them it is a delimma. For the rest of us it isn't. This disconnect is glaring. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/privacy-preserving-attribution @mcc isn't this a different thing to the Chrome stuff that was a subject of controversy? tracking the user is bad, but Chrome's big idea was to spy on all your online activity to figure out your “interests” and then tell advertisers about them, whereas this Firefox feature is, I guess, purely to know if ads are effective? at least that's the intention…   @mcc yeah. we believe Mozilla's thing to be an independent thing of a technology that was in early negotiations when we left Google, which we had serious objections to and waited several years for it to become public so we could speak against it  @mcc chatgpt? so it's not enough they pay justine tunney to work on some ml/llm features? ehh.  @mcc@mastodon.social oh. Sorry, what? ChatGPT Integration in nightly? Have they announced this anywhere or is this going to be another last minute sneak in? Because I am going to be running some stale ass code until Gnome Web stops crashing on my KDE install to keep that from coming in.  @mcc I did not have "[Chrome is] a more privacy-conscious browser" on my bingo card.  @mcc If you like Firefox like I do, switch to Librewolf. It's Firefox without the tracking. Or even better, TOR browser, my main browser actually. I don't use Firefox or Chrome. @mcc   @mcc Why would you be banned? I can't remember a single case where a well intentioned bug report resulted in a ban. You could argue that a a request like yours is not a "bug” but Bugzilla has long been the main place to organize work and have discussions .. even difficult / contentious ones. @mcc Ouch 😂 😂 😂 |
Gregory's Server
@mcc maybe i just need to give up on not be a product, but to concentrate on how to be a terrible product.