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this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2024
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You have zero idea how much engineering it takes to create a standards compliant engine and then maintain it. "And you don't need half a fucking billion just to develop a web browser". Technically this is true if you are willing to use someone else's web engine. Firefox aren't doing that, and it requires huge investment to maintain their own engine. There is a reason only large companies these days (Apple, Google, Mozilla) have their own engines. The actual browser part is tiny compared to the engine. We are talking about something the size of the Linux kernel or bigger, that gets far less contributions from outside sources. It actually makes perfect sense they are looking at starting other projects when you think that all other companies that do this kind of work need those other projects to remain profitable. Web engine development from my understanding does not pay. You get almost the same amount of money using somebody else's engine as you do developing your own, yet one costs way more.
The fact Mozilla manages to maintain a better web engine than Apple's WebKit only from Google's advertising money is actually incredible. Did I mention Apple didn't even start that engine themselves? It's based on KHTML. Chrome is in turn a WebKit derivative. Firefox on the other hand actually comes from Netscape, and was first developed under the name Mozilla based on Netscape's code. So Mozilla has put in more work than Google in modernising their engine.
Thank you. Yes, they are also developing their own web engine, which is a very complicated piece of software because of the current sad state of the web. But it doesn't excuse any of the things I mentioned, and web engine development still doesn't suckle up that much money as we can see from their current revenue and other efforts to make an independent web engine such as Ladybird.
I do not mind Mozilla starting other projects, but if you're talking about FakeSpot or Pocket which are getting integrated into the "more private alternative to browsers like Internet Explorer, and now Chrome" by the "non-profit" whom "prioritize people and their privacy over profits", I think you need to take a look at those privacy policies I linked in my previous comment.
I agree with you on your last paragraph, but there are some things I'm bothered with. Mozilla is (or was) a company that focused on one thing, their web browser. Apple and Google are (and were) different, in that they have a vast range of products to maintain. And Gecko is most definitely inferior to Blink in terms of speed, although I'm not familiar with any of their "modernity".
I've read the one for fakespot. Given what it's designed to do then having your purchase history makes perfect sense. How else are they meant to make recommendations? If you really have a problem just don't use that service. The only real criticism here is the name doesn't imply they also make product recommendations. Nevertheless they explain that on the website.
I have skimmed the pocket one, and as far as I can tell they aren't doing anything dodgy. Keeping information only to provide the service, and some anonymised analytics to see how it's actually being used. The later is needed to direct development effort.
In summary: Not everyone is out to get you. Some information is needed to provide services.
Edit: sorry for there different comments, wanted to come back and do more research before I finished making a statement.
Yeah, no problem at all. This is a lot better than people downvoting and not actually talking about what they disagree on. Felt like r/apple.
Reading it again, Pocket's privacy policy is actually not that bad. Thankfully it was not one of those 100 page ones that are made to confuse the shit out of consumers, but I have a slight problem with it.
"Personalized Advertising: Some Pocket web pages have ads. With your consent, Pocket’s ad partners will place advertising cookies on your device to personalize the ads you see here and on other websites."
How does this consent exactly work? Is it just a simple check you have to tick in your account settings, or is it one of those cookie banners that require you to untick 800 advertising partners to "not give consent"? I'm not exactly a Pocket user so I'm a bit ignorant about it.
Though there doesn't seem to be another privacy concern with Pocket. It seems I had misconceptions about their practices.
The one other problem I have with Pocket though is, it's not a feature that should be in a browser, it should be an extension. They have already made a lot of extensions for features that not all of the userbase might need, even FakeSpot is currently an extension (approximately 40,000 users). I guess this is a whole another argument though.
I will write my thoughts about FakeSpot in another reply.
Okay, what does a sweepstake or a contest have to do with a browser extension, made to spot fake reviews. Trade shows? What?
I did take a look at this privacy policy before to check if the extension was worth installing, but holy fuck I didn't see that.
And they collect a lot of things, supposedly "automatically". I have never developed a browser extension, but does the browser force this information on the extension? Do they just look at their data collection and find the geolocation of their users, how they accessed the extension download page, browser specifics etc.?
They also sell your "automatically collected" geolocation data, "internet or other electronic network activity", "inferences drawn from other personal information to create a profile about a consumer", and "commercial information". I've quoted the three data selling points I really don't understand, since their "descriptions" aren't very descriptive. But if we are to fully trust the lawful descriptions they provided, I hope the extension stays at 40,000 users really.
FakeSpot's privacy policy
A lot of this is the same kind of things amazon do to make purchase suggestions. It is fairly invasive but also effective. There are even some customers who appreciate this kind of thing. I will say though that the name is misleading. It dosen't just spot fakes, it seems to be designed as a shopping assitant or search engine who's stand out feature is pointing out fakes. I think there is a place in the market for such a thing, but they need to be careful of how they market that and what data is actually needed to be collected. Ideally they should put in a system where you can opt in to personalised recommendations and collect data for only those people who require that feature. It also needs to be spelled out clearly what this involves in terms of data collected and who sees the data. Regardless I don't think it should be enabled by default in Firefox. Including it in the browser isn't so bad provided they don't get up to microsoft-like shenanigans pushing people to use it.
Oh also the devs behind Ladybrid are apparently against anyone who isn't male using their technology. People tried to change masculine pronouns in the documentation to neutral pronouns just to be more grammatically accurate, and it started a whole chain of GitHub arguments arguing the change is "political". Apparently it's political not to imply that every computer user is a man.
There are many software from bigots and shitheads that still get used, being seperated from their creator (e.g. Hyprland, I guess you can put here some social media platforms like Xitter if we're not only talking about open-source software). Although I prefer not using or supporting such software, I've not been able to find what you're talking about. I've tried searching "ladybird pronoun controversy (forgive my search engine skills)" and other similar sentences but nothing really related pops up, so it would be great if you told me your source. Thank you!
The whole Vaxxry controversy is largely bullshit from both sides. The original complaint was something said in his Discord server, and that he didn't police it enough. Not something bigoted he himself said. Vaxxry was right to defend himself given their CoC doesn't apply to his Discord server, and talking about how they are trying to improve the moderation there.
Vaxxry from the little I know of him doesn't seem that bigoted. He certainly isn't progressive by any means. He does espouse tolerance for other political viewpoints, which is more than can be said for a lot of projects.
It's on there GitHub. I would have linked earlier but search engines don't seem to pick it up.
https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity/pull/6814
https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity/pull/8046
Thank you very much! I guess it makes sense a little bit that the lead developer of an older-style operating system is a conservative, but I was still not expecting it. It's pretty sad that this seems to be the only new web browser engine that has actual support.
Yeah it's really annoying. We need more browser engines and alternatives to the current web standards. The current way these things is not fit for purpose, and is making it easy for google to establish a monopoly on the web. I think wasm helps with this somewhat, but it isn't popular enough yet nor is it a complete solution.
Notice the word efforts here. No one has actually succeeded yet despite multiple attempts, some even by Mozilla themselves like Servo. Ladybird is not a fully functioning browser yet. Are they anywhere even close yet? Even if they are close it also has to be fast. Google and Mozilla have spent quite a bit of time, money, and effort making their JavaScript engines as fast as possible.
I will have a look at some of the links you have given, but honestly I think most criticism thrown at Mozilla isn't anything close to what the alternatives are guilty of, and is mostly done by conspiracy nuts. The kind of people were Mastodon and Lemmy is their only social media, and refuse to own a modern smartphone that isn't running custom firmware.
Ladybird is fairly new. Just like how Mozilla didn't get Gecko to this point in 1 year, Ladybird will take years of development to become a reliable browser and browser engine.
I pretty much agree with you. The alternatives are far worse. Seeing Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge being literal spyware, other Chromium-based browsers cutting out support for content-blocking extensions Firefox is vastly superior to them in terms of privacy. Although that still doesn't mean Firefox is good, at least if we're past talking about web browser engines etc., using another Firefox-based browser which is less bloated (Firefox Sync off by default, no Pocket, no recommendations in Addons tab), more privacy-friendly (all telemetry off by default, uBlock Origin installed by default, some hardening options from about:config enabled by default) seems to be the best choice currently, since other options like GNOME's Epiphany and KDE's Falkon sucks, if we're being honest.
And I do kind of fit your description, if we exclude being a conspiracy-theorist.
I actually use Firefox sync. In fact I think all of that is quite unnecessary given what the policies you brought up actually state as was discussed in another comment. Everyone should be using AdBlock at this point, and I am planning to setup network wide AdBlock and malware block at my home in the future.
Yeah I thought you could be. Nothing wrong with using a de-googled phone. Lemmy while a great idea is full of extremists. The kinds of people who go to that level of effort to cut out Google and social media tend to be uber paranoid. It's a shame that people are divided into three groups regarding piracy: unknowing sheep, people who know but don't care, and conspiracy nuts. The kind of person who hears something vaguely sketchy from someone and immediately jumps to the conclusion they need to boycott that company. Very rarely do you get reasonable, informed people who actually care with regards to online privacy without thinking every single organisation is out to get them (even non-profit like Mozilla or Wikipedia). It's why things like the legislation the EU comes up with is necessary, to protect those who won't or can't protect themselves.