• archonet@lemy.lol
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    4 months ago

    This is your daily reminder that Firefox and its derivatives exist and should be used wherever possible if you care about Google not having a monopoly over the internet. There’s even a Firefox-based version of Discord called Datcord.

    • takeda@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      Absolutely. If you think you can switch when chrome will be completely hostile it will be too late.

      The reason they are trying those things in chrome is because the market share of Firefox is currently low. They are counting that you won’t have the option to run Firefox anymore, because sites will stop supporting it. Don’t let that happen.

      • breakingcups@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        Also, Firefox is in a tough situation where they have to purposefully shoot themselves in the foot, because their builtin tracking protection means Firefox usually doesn’t show up in a lot of browser usage stats.

        • takeda@lemmy.world
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          4 months ago

          I didn’t think about it, though if that makes it harder to track it (can’t they just check the user agent?) could that actually be good, as the sites will never know exactly how many users they will lose, so might be more hesitant to pull the trigger?

          • breakingcups@lemmy.world
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            4 months ago

            No, they’ll just see the management summary that Firefox occupies less than 0.5% of their users’ marketshare and prioritize their budget accordingly.

          • Skydancer@pawb.social
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            4 months ago

            That would be true for competent web developers. Unfortunately, those are a vanishingly small subset.

        • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
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          4 months ago

          That blocks user agent string? Answer: no it absolutely doesn’t

          Explain how this comment isn’t completely wrong

          • breakingcups@lemmy.world
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            4 months ago

            If you use a third-party analytics service such as Google Analytics, as almost all serious parties do (with their nice dashboards and reports), then you’ll notice Firefox is severely underrepresented because the request never reaches Google

            • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
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              4 months ago

              I think that may be true if you set the privacy protection to strict, which is not default.

              I wonder if it’s underrepresented more so because people who use Firefox are more likely to install privacy centric extensions

      • Blaine@lemmy.ml
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        4 months ago

        Too late. Lumen5 crashes on Firefox. Google Cloud Console barely loads. I was a Firefox user for YEARS but finally had to uninstall this week. The amount of “Firefox is not supported” warnings and weird issues I was running into every day was getting a tad ridiculous.

    • jherazob@fedia.io
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      4 months ago

      Firefox is the only reasonable alternative to the Chrome monopoly right now, yes, but they too are going bad, we need more alternatives

    • tabular@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      Note: “I don’t use Discord/Datcord anymore because of their terrible TOS which Datcord can’t protect you from.”

    • grandma@sh.itjust.works
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      4 months ago

      Firefox is funded by Google and Meta, but its still better than being directly made by Google. There isn’t a single good browser right now.

    • kenkenken@sh.itjust.works
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      4 months ago

      I doubt Firefox will deprecate third-party cookies is Chrome won’t. And now Firefox has included literally ad tracking component into the browser and enabled it for all users by default.

      • Balinares@pawb.social
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        4 months ago

        Firefox’s stance on privacy, like Apple’s, is to some extent branding. Arguably it always was. You should still use Firefox (or any other third party browser) if it works for you. Ecosystem diversity matters.

        • Karna@lemmy.mlOP
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          4 months ago

          Firefox’s stance on privacy, like Apple’s, is to some extent branding

          Some of the recently introduced Privacy related features -

          • Enhanced Tracking Protection
          • Total Cookies protection
          • Browser Fingerprint protection
          • DNS Over HTTPS support
          • Encrypted Client Hello (ECH) support
          • Continued Manifest v2 support
          • Copy URL without tracking parameter
          • Protection against redirect tracking
          • In-Built on-device translation

          (Further options to harden Firefox via user.js or via about:config)

          • antler@feddit.rocks
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            4 months ago

            … and they’re tracking your searches, collecting massive amounts of telemetry, and using pocket that collects and sells your data.

              • antler@feddit.rocks
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                3 months ago

                We also share aggregated, non-personal data and related usage information, which does not contain any personal information which can identify you or any other individual user, with third parties, including content providers, website operators, advertisers and publishers.

                https://getpocket.com/privacy#sharing

                From the pocket privacy policy

      • verdigris@lemmy.ml
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        4 months ago

        facepalm it’s not an “ad tracking component”, it’s a test of a new API that, if adopted, will let sites opt in to a much less invasive anonymized system for evaluating the effectiveness of their ads, instead of the current crazy amount of personal data they scrape. The data is anonymized in a double blind scheme, and it’s already way less data than every ad is grabbing.

    • Blaine@lemmy.ml
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      4 months ago

      I just uninstalled Firefox yesterday after it came out that they are collecting user data by default. If I’m going to be tracked either way, I might as well use the browser that’s actually supported on sites I use so I don’t have to keep ignoring the “Firefox is not supported and some features may not work” warnings 5x a day.

      https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40974112

    • Engywuck@lemm.ee
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      4 months ago

      Nope, not going to use anything from Mozilla. They don’t even deserve the minuscule market share they have right now. I want them to disappear.

  • aard@kyu.de
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    4 months ago

    They probably couldn’t get google drive to work without 3rd party cookies.

      • aard@kyu.de
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        4 months ago

        I just mentioned that because google drive links are one of the very few things I’m opening in chrome - and they’re the only site where I need a 3rd party cookie exemption for.

      • smpl
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        4 months ago

        Do you have a source for that excus… uehm… claim?

          • smpl
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            4 months ago

            Thank you.

            Interesting that they’ll make it a user choice. Who would answer yes?

            On 22 July 2024, Google announced that it is changing its approach to Privacy Sandbox. Instead of removing third-party cookies from Chrome, it will be introducing a user-choice prompt, which will allow users to choose whether to retain third party cookies.

            • Spotlight7573@lemmy.world
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              4 months ago

              I’d imagine that making it a user choice gets around some of the regulatory hurdles in some way. I can see them making a popup in the future to not use third-party cookies anymore (or partition per site them like Firefox does) but then they can say that it’s not Google making these changes, it’s the user making that choice. If you’re right that there’s few that would answer yes, then it gets them the same effective result for most users without being seen to force a change on their competitors in the ad industry.

              What’s the UK CMA going to do, argue that users shouldn’t be given choices about how they are tracked or how their own browser operates?

    • orcrist@lemm.ee
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      4 months ago

      Nope, sorry. That technical hurdle is easily solved. In reality, this is about advertising and snooping.

  • corbin@infosec.pub
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    4 months ago

    Google worked on Privacy Sandbox/Topics API/FLoC for at least five years, and it couldn’t get something that advertisers, regulators, and users could all agree on, so it’s just falling back to the thing that worked (but has next to zero privacy protections). Sigh.

      • Contravariant@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        Also a reminder that accepting an alternative tracking method is likely to just end up with 2 different ways to track you rather than one slightly less invasive one.

    • davidagain@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      Google never had any intention whatsoever of prioritising your privacy over their advertising revenue. This technology was 100% designed to shut other operators out of the tracking and advertising market and 0% to reduce their ability to track you and advertise to you. Never in a million years were they going to spend a lot of time, effort and money destroying the source of their money. Hobble competitors, yes. Hobble themselves? Never. Not even a little bit.

    • orcrist@lemm.ee
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      4 months ago

      I think that’s a matter of perspective. IMO it didn’t work, it was broken, that’s why we’re even talking about it.