- I think the correlation of people using extensions and people disabling telemetry is pretty high. I do both myself. Even a decent password manager requires one (though not on android because it has an API for that). On android I do use others obviously.
- Reading cell towers also is supposed to be behind the location tracking flag. Including bluetooth by the way, which is why so many apps need this permission these days to even link a BLE device.
And tracking bluetooth emissions shouldn't matter as they are randomised while not in an active connection.
- > At best it's like 0.001% circumstantial evidence that has to be reconciled with their history of opposing the Manifest changes. If reading tea leaves matters so much, then certainly their more explicit statements need to matter too.
Their history is less relevant now because it's a fresh CEO that came up with this statement on his first day. New leaders often means a change in direction and this is a worrying sign. Also the number he quoted is far too explicit. Doing something like that would instantly move Firefox to be the absolute worst browser possible considering even advertising- and tracking-loaded crap like Chrome and Edge don't go that far.
Clearly they have been running the numbers and clearly he feels fine talking about it which is a pretty strong departure of previous values.
Of course I'd not continue using Firefox in this case, and I'm sure it would get widely forked. I found it pretty shocking.
The other examples don't reassure me one bit because they're not the same teams and in many cases they were simply external pushes like offers that were rejected. Here it's a different team that already has been changing direction for the worse recently (e.g. PPA, purchasing Anonym), and came up with this without external pressure. There's also plenty of situations where FOSS projects did go full evil.
Anyway I don't really have any better options than firefox and I'm sure that it would get heavily forked if they started siding with the advertisers, but it is worrying to me especially coming from a new leader on his very first day. Not only because it's about ads. Just because it removes user freedom of choice completely if they were to enforce this.
- > New CEO says he's not going to remove adblockers, people suspect him for planning to remove adblockers
It's because he has obviously been thinking about it. That $150M number didn't just come out of nowhere. Someone at Mozilla modelled this. The resulting analysis made it into the CEO's mind so far he even mentioned it without being asked.
This is something that's unthinkable to most of the Mozilla users. That's why it's so shocking.
It's like your son making dinner conversation like "hey I was thinking, if I would sell drugs at school I'd make at least 500$ a week! But don't worry I'm not going to do that!".
- Yes but local translation already is in Firefox and it's already made with some kind of AI model. Nobody complained about that.
- Yeah, most of the browsers "with AI" are not existing because they're so incredibly useful. They're there because it's a hype, because their parent companies have invested billions and they need to show their shareholders it's actually being used by people. So they ram it in our faces, left right and center. They're not doing this to help us, they're helping themselves.
Mozilla doesn't need to play that game because they're not selling any AI.
- I don't agree. I think opinionated design products are much worse in general.
It's really great when your opinions are aligned with those of the designer. If they're not, you're straight out of luck and you're stuck with something that isn't really for you.
This is why I love software that gives as much choice as possible. Like KDE for example. Because I have pretty strong vision myself and I respect my tools to conform to that, not the other way around
- I don't really care so much about that. I worry more about the CEO speaking about blocking adblockers like it's a normal business decision. Wtf
- Yeayyyy now for the EU to finally do the same. But they're too busy nerfing privacy laws to appease trump.
- That shouldn't be accessible without location permission, that loophole was fixed a long time ago.
- Do you have to share your location with it? I don't use it but similar apps like Instagram don't have my location permission.
- Hmm in our community it's also a way to connect when you meet someone at parties, that doesn't expose too many details like your real name or phone number.
- Great job from noyb.
It's sad that the gdpr is now being watered down, especially the protection of these specially protected data points.
- Agreed, I make a lot of stuff in my free time (cosplay related) and a lot of my older friends from Holland really frown on that saying it's "immature" and "I should do something more important with my time like doing a work course instead of playing dress up" :( The same with my projects at the makerspace, several people have asked me "why do you bother if you're not selling anything". People are so focused on money it's ridiculous. I just love the experience of dreaming something up and seeing it materialize. It gives me agency.
At least most of my more recent friends love it. But it's a bit off-putting.
A lot of my older friends don't think watching mediocre streaming shows or football is a waste of time though, no, that's "enjoying the fruits of hard work". Whatever.
- Encryption is easily doable even with one way pagers. With one way you will lose the perfect forward secrecy option but that's usually ok.
- I wish I could still buy a pager where I live :'(
- You're still a miracle worker. Single-handedly managing a well-known fully user-contributed site not just technically but moderation in contentious times like these and still keeping it working well and encouraging a positive user community can't be an easy task.
- Hell yes I hear you on that. I've been sideways involved with some of their projects too. It's always a minefield because they don't know what they want, what they do think they want makes no sense and they don't care about what's technically possible or is streamlined, maintainable and affordable (us engineers try to find a solution that is also robust and straightforward, not just to tick a maze of boxes).
Governments tend to write the legislation of everything under their purview and they don't really have to deal with forces of nature so they think they can just decree water to not be wet and that's sorted then. So their resulting solutions tend to be pretty awful. Oh and the decision makers tend to be there because they're great at spouting hot air, not because they have a clue what they're doing. Not fun projects to work on.
Most corporates are much more flexible. They come to you with a vision and you discuss how to best make this happen. And an 'Actually, it would be a lot simpler if you do ...' is very appreciated.
- To be fair, this is more a result of the EU not being specific about their censorship so the providers have started to scramble to make their own lists without any oversight (which the article indeed identifies as a big problem).
If we're going to do censorship, have a clear process on it under democratic control with challenge processes etc.
At least these aren't actual blocks anyway. It's just cosmetic, just change the DNS and voilà.
Edit: so I mean I agree here in case that wasn't clear