I think the article is fine, but I have to say, the quiz is kinda baffling. They picked weirdly niche items - I'm "off the grid", which I highly doubt is actually true. The only devices I own out...
I think the article is fine, but I have to say, the quiz is kinda baffling. They picked weirdly niche items - I'm "off the grid", which I highly doubt is actually true. The only devices I own out of that list is the apple watch and switch. I feel like the point is to show users how many things are tracking them but their list is so short and oddly specific that it does the opposite for most viewers...
It's also pretty easy to tell which ones are the ones tripping the "You're an open book" lol. I just clicked WeChat by itself and it triggered it, also the Nook, interestingly enough. Choosing...
It's also pretty easy to tell which ones are the ones tripping the "You're an open book" lol. I just clicked WeChat by itself and it triggered it, also the Nook, interestingly enough. Choosing just Google Hangouts and Video Doorbell surprisingly didn't trigger it either.
Actually, to save everyone time, if you have Facebook Portal, Echo Studio, Ring Security Cam, WeChat, Roku Streaming Sticks, and the Nook, according to the quiz "you're an open book"
Having Google stuff not being "privacy invasive" (lets face it, Google is an ad company and ad companies are privacy invasive by design) really made me think of the legitimacy of this list. Still!...
Having Google stuff not being "privacy invasive" (lets face it, Google is an ad company and ad companies are privacy invasive by design) really made me think of the legitimacy of this list.
Still! There are some good things to pick from here. As always, critical minds prevail.
Detailed reviews for all of the products can be found on this list, and here is the report for Google Meet/Hangouts/Duo. It has a middle rating, I guess it is because while google does use your...
Detailed reviews for all of the products can be found on this list, and here is the report for Google Meet/Hangouts/Duo.
It has a middle rating, I guess it is because while google does use your data for ads, they have great security standards and also give users some control over how their data is used
In Google's favor, it is the least likely data collecting entity to sell the actual data to a nefarious party, because it wants to use the data for its own ad service.
In Google's favor, it is the least likely data collecting entity to sell the actual data to a nefarious party, because it wants to use the data for its own ad service.
If you want to have a tin foil hat, Google provides a whopping 95% of Mozilla Corporation's income. Google hands Mozilla money from their pity deal a comparable amount to the entire annual revenue...
If you want to have a tin foil hat, Google provides a whopping 95% of Mozilla Corporation's income. Google hands Mozilla money from their pity deal a comparable amount to the entire annual revenue of DuckDuckGo.
That being said, I don't think this is editorially poisoned or anything. But I do think it's funny to think that a consequence of the FTC case against Google would be Mozilla death, at least the Mozilla that works on Firefox.
I have no idea what you mean by "Linux-based platforms" but in terms of web browsers, Firefox is still the least beholden to Google bc almost all other alternatives are built on top of chromium...
I have no idea what you mean by "Linux-based platforms" but in terms of web browsers, Firefox is still the least beholden to Google bc almost all other alternatives are built on top of chromium anyway.
I think that outcome is a concern, but it wouldn't be crazy to hope for either Alphabet to be broken up in a way that still allows the Google subsidiary-hopefully-spunoff to afford comparable...
I think that outcome is a concern, but it wouldn't be crazy to hope for either Alphabet to be broken up in a way that still allows the Google subsidiary-hopefully-spunoff to afford comparable amounts of advertisement, because that's hardly the problematic element of their business, or damages to be distributed in a structure that prioritizes competitors who've been directly harmed by their monopoly position.
Yeah, it seems almost incomplete. It makes you wonder how exhaustive their research was in making the report, and even makes you wonder if they cherry-picked the data out of corporations they knew...
Yeah, it seems almost incomplete. It makes you wonder how exhaustive their research was in making the report, and even makes you wonder if they cherry-picked the data out of corporations they knew ahead of time were bad with privacy issues.
If you get to the "Open book" part, it'll take you to this: https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/ Presumably where they get all the information
I'm so glad that Mozilla is doing this. Apparently they've been reviewing consumer products for years but I wasn't aware of that until I saw the report about car companies on Tildes recently. It's...
I'm so glad that Mozilla is doing this. Apparently they've been reviewing consumer products for years but I wasn't aware of that until I saw the report about car companies on Tildes recently. It's a tremendous public service.
If only Mozilla spent a bit more time working on Firefox and a bit less time on the other advocacy. If Firefox were still the most popular browser then Mozilla would be able to push back on...
If only Mozilla spent a bit more time working on Firefox and a bit less time on the other advocacy. If Firefox were still the most popular browser then Mozilla would be able to push back on Google's web integrity proposal and crackdown on adblockers (with Manifest v3).
The people who work on this legally can't work on the browser so it's not really a zero sum situation - in fact, the two "resource" pools are completely separate. The reason for this is that...
The people who work on this legally can't work on the browser so it's not really a zero sum situation - in fact, the two "resource" pools are completely separate.
The reason for this is that Mozilla has a weirdly complicated setup - there's two entities, the Mozilla Foundation (that wrote this), which is a nonprofit, and the Mozilla Corporation (that works on Firefox), which is a for-profit company. Mozilla Corporation is entirely owned by Mozilla Foundation, but, the tax-free money of the Mozilla Foundation cannot move onto the Mozilla Corporation (it's not that easy to evade taxes).
I always get a chuckle when people donate to Mozilla to "support Firefox" - if any of that money went to Firefox, Mozilla would be committing tax fraud!
I know that the corporation and the foundation are structured seperately, but I still feel that the foundation leadership (who are also the corporation leadership) spend too much time on this kind...
I know that the corporation and the foundation are structured seperately, but I still feel that the foundation leadership (who are also the corporation leadership) spend too much time on this kind of easy advocacy because it boosts their egos rather than the harder work of making a great browser and making it popular.
Fascinating read. There’s a bombshell story in here just waiting to be cracked wide open, I think. I’m a huge advocate for the Firefox browser, and open source and privacy matters and browser...
Fascinating read. There’s a bombshell story in here just waiting to be cracked wide open, I think.
I’m a huge advocate for the Firefox browser, and open source and privacy matters and browser diversity in general. I’ve been panicking for years that Chromium is just absolutely eating the whole industry and Firefox is basically the last holdout against it (well, there’s WebKit too, but I digress). In all practicality it’s impossible for a newcomer to build a competing engine from scratch at this point; if Firefox falls, the Internet as we currently know it is likely to slide into some really user-hostile directions. And it makes me extremely uncomfortable that, to all appearances, the sole entity keeping Mozilla alive at all is FUCKING GOOGLE.
And when you throw in all the other bizarro details mentioned in this article, like Mozilla’s astronomical CEO compensation, questionable handling of donations, contributions to secretive and vague third parties, and seemingly self-sabotaging management decisions in the engineering department of what should be their flagship product… well, it stinks. It stinks to high heaven. Whatever’s going on here, there’s no way this ends well. The whole web is going to suffer for it.
Here’s hoping we get a 404 Media exposé that absolutely shines a spotlight on what’s going on. Soon.
Interesting. When going to the Firefox "About", the "Want to help?" link redirects to the Mozilla foundation donation page. I'm assuming, then, that supporting Mozilla also supports Firefox, even...
Interesting. When going to the Firefox "About", the "Want to help?" link redirects to the Mozilla foundation donation page. I'm assuming, then, that supporting Mozilla also supports Firefox, even if indirectly.
stu2b50 said "always get a chuckle when people donate to Mozilla to "support Firefox" - if any of that money went to Firefox, Mozilla would be committing tax fraud!" Which is why I thought it's...
stu2b50 said "always get a chuckle when people donate to Mozilla to "support Firefox" - if any of that money went to Firefox, Mozilla would be committing tax fraud!"
Which is why I thought it's interesting that the link to support, inside Firefox, goes to the Mozilla foundation page. Now, it could be that Moz Corp thinks it's not worth trying to get money from users directly so we're sent to Moz Found, or that the corporate structure or money flow doesn't work quite like stu2b50 said.
So, nothing to do with where the majority of Moz Corp's funding comes from.
I believe they mean in abstractia - you're helping the general "causes" of Mozilla, free internet, blah blah blah, which the Foundation focuses on. I suppose in some sense if the Foundation were...
I believe they mean in abstractia - you're helping the general "causes" of Mozilla, free internet, blah blah blah, which the Foundation focuses on. I suppose in some sense if the Foundation were insufficiently funded that would cause issues for the Corporation as well - maybe more of the CEO's $5.5m salary would have to come from Corporate revenue.
It is, also, a bit of tricky wording to get Firefox users who want to support their browser to donate to the foundation without realizing it. Mozilla is honestly a pretty sus company, that's done a lot of shady things.
For the most part, average people aren't using Chrome because it's vastly superior to Firefox. To most people these days Chrome is the internet. If you're not using Chrome, Google will nag you...
For the most part, average people aren't using Chrome because it's vastly superior to Firefox. To most people these days Chrome is the internet. If you're not using Chrome, Google will nag you about it every time you visit one of their properties. And if you are not using any Google properties, Google will use it's vast advertising network to try to convince you to switch to Chrome. Google is a fricking monolith that has an soft but unavoidable grip on the entire internet; there is basically no web standard that Google does not have their finger in. Comparing Google to Mozilla is like comparing Mt. Everest to a chicken egg.
I think the issue is that Firefox at one point was significantly slower than Chrome – it was only thanks to the Servo developers that they were able to parellelise parts of the layout engine and...
I think the issue is that Firefox at one point was significantly slower than Chrome – it was only thanks to the Servo developers that they were able to parellelise parts of the layout engine and generally improve development velocity by removing lots of memory unsafety. Having a much faster browser is a good first step towards encouraging users to return to Firefox IMO.
Firefox has been on par with chrome for about six years now. People aren’t avoiding Firefox because it’s bad. People aren’t leaving Chrome because they are invested in the Google ecosystem. Most...
Firefox has been on par with chrome for about six years now. People aren’t avoiding Firefox because it’s bad. People aren’t leaving Chrome because they are invested in the Google ecosystem. Most people just don’t see any reason to make a change.
In my experience this isn't true anymore. I switched to Firefox about two years ago because I began running into performance issues with Chrome. I've found current Firefox to be snappier and more...
because it's vastly superior to Firefox.
In my experience this isn't true anymore. I switched to Firefox about two years ago because I began running into performance issues with Chrome. I've found current Firefox to be snappier and more resource friendly (only a couple gigs of ram with about 40-50 tabs open). I think the biggest issue is momentum and familiarity. It's really hard to get people to switch when they're used to something even if there's a better alternative.
As for getting nagged to switch to Chrome, I've never seen this. I can't think of a time I had a pop up or notification on a website telling me to switch to or download Chrome. I haven't seen it on desktop nor on Mobile. Maybe that was the case at some point, but I haven't seen it recently. It's certainly possible uBlock Origin is actually blocking those if they exist.
A huge part of why everyone thought Firefox and every other browser was because Google engineered an update to the YouTube UI that ran smoothly on Chrome but terribly on everything else. They used...
A huge part of why everyone thought Firefox and every other browser was because Google engineered an update to the YouTube UI that ran smoothly on Chrome but terribly on everything else. They used Shadow DOM v0, which to my knowledge was never implemented in any other browser. It’s the perfect example of why it’s bad that Google essentially has unilateral control over web standards. Though I guess that doesn’t really matter much since they practically have a browser monopoly at this point anyways.
Like, at this point, the end-user experience differences that are the browser's fault are negligible and are going to vary on a case-by-case basis. Firefox can't help that bad web developers only...
Like, at this point, the end-user experience differences that are the browser's fault are negligible and are going to vary on a case-by-case basis.
Firefox can't help that bad web developers only test in Chrome and then tell you to pound sand if you report a bug in anything that isn't Chrome.
Look Google can suck, but it doesn't do this to the extent you're describing. I use Firefox on all my devices and it would be much more annoying if I were nagged to install Chrome every time I...
If you're not using Chrome, Google will nag you about it every time you visit one of their properties. And if you are not using any Google properties, Google will use it's vast advertising network to try to convince you to switch to Chrome.
Look Google can suck, but it doesn't do this to the extent you're describing. I use Firefox on all my devices and it would be much more annoying if I were nagged to install Chrome every time I visited a Google website. As for their vast advertising network, they're not going to waste that convincing me to download a browser that the vast majority of people already use instead of actually making money serving ads for other things. Google doesn't massively pressure you to switch to Chrome if you're using another browser like this. Because you're probably already using it.
Chrome became dominant because back when people started switching to it en masse, it was genuinely a lot better than the main competition (Internet Explorer) and it had more distinctive features/better performance than Firefox at that time. It was due to this that it managed to become the browser that almost everyone uses and defaults to, and once it reached that point in the market it didn't need to push itself intensely on users, even those within its own ecosystem, because it already captured so much of the market that people just assume everyone else is using it.
I think the article is fine, but I have to say, the quiz is kinda baffling. They picked weirdly niche items - I'm "off the grid", which I highly doubt is actually true. The only devices I own out of that list is the apple watch and switch. I feel like the point is to show users how many things are tracking them but their list is so short and oddly specific that it does the opposite for most viewers...
It's also pretty easy to tell which ones are the ones tripping the "You're an open book" lol. I just clicked WeChat by itself and it triggered it, also the Nook, interestingly enough. Choosing just Google Hangouts and Video Doorbell surprisingly didn't trigger it either.
Actually, to save everyone time, if you have Facebook Portal, Echo Studio, Ring Security Cam, WeChat, Roku Streaming Sticks, and the Nook, according to the quiz "you're an open book"
Having Google stuff not being "privacy invasive" (lets face it, Google is an ad company and ad companies are privacy invasive by design) really made me think of the legitimacy of this list.
Still! There are some good things to pick from here. As always, critical minds prevail.
Detailed reviews for all of the products can be found on this list, and here is the report for Google Meet/Hangouts/Duo.
It has a middle rating, I guess it is because while google does use your data for ads, they have great security standards and also give users some control over how their data is used
In Google's favor, it is the least likely data collecting entity to sell the actual data to a nefarious party, because it wants to use the data for its own ad service.
If you want to have a tin foil hat, Google provides a whopping 95% of Mozilla Corporation's income. Google hands Mozilla money from their pity deal a comparable amount to the entire annual revenue of DuckDuckGo.
That being said, I don't think this is editorially poisoned or anything. But I do think it's funny to think that a consequence of the FTC case against Google would be Mozilla death, at least the Mozilla that works on Firefox.
Good to know. Not surprised. Just out of curiosity do you know of any Linux based platforms that aren't beholden to Google or other mega companies?
I have no idea what you mean by "Linux-based platforms" but in terms of web browsers, Firefox is still the least beholden to Google bc almost all other alternatives are built on top of chromium anyway.
I tend to be a bit tinfoil-hat-ish but it's a byproduct of having zero trust to any of these companies.
I think that outcome is a concern, but it wouldn't be crazy to hope for either Alphabet to be broken up in a way that still allows the Google subsidiary-hopefully-spunoff to afford comparable amounts of advertisement, because that's hardly the problematic element of their business, or damages to be distributed in a structure that prioritizes competitors who've been directly harmed by their monopoly position.
Yeah, it seems almost incomplete. It makes you wonder how exhaustive their research was in making the report, and even makes you wonder if they cherry-picked the data out of corporations they knew ahead of time were bad with privacy issues.
If you get to the "Open book" part, it'll take you to this: https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/
Presumably where they get all the information
I'm so glad that Mozilla is doing this. Apparently they've been reviewing consumer products for years but I wasn't aware of that until I saw the report about car companies on Tildes recently. It's a tremendous public service.
If only Mozilla spent a bit more time working on Firefox and a bit less time on the other advocacy. If Firefox were still the most popular browser then Mozilla would be able to push back on Google's web integrity proposal and crackdown on adblockers (with Manifest v3).
The people who work on this legally can't work on the browser so it's not really a zero sum situation - in fact, the two "resource" pools are completely separate.
The reason for this is that Mozilla has a weirdly complicated setup - there's two entities, the Mozilla Foundation (that wrote this), which is a nonprofit, and the Mozilla Corporation (that works on Firefox), which is a for-profit company. Mozilla Corporation is entirely owned by Mozilla Foundation, but, the tax-free money of the Mozilla Foundation cannot move onto the Mozilla Corporation (it's not that easy to evade taxes).
I always get a chuckle when people donate to Mozilla to "support Firefox" - if any of that money went to Firefox, Mozilla would be committing tax fraud!
I know that the corporation and the foundation are structured seperately, but I still feel that the foundation leadership (who are also the corporation leadership) spend too much time on this kind of easy advocacy because it boosts their egos rather than the harder work of making a great browser and making it popular.
There is a pretty interesting article about this called "Firefox Money: Investigating the bizarre finances of Mozilla"
https://lunduke.locals.com/post/4387539/firefox-money-investigating-the-bizarre-finances-of-mozilla
Fascinating read. There’s a bombshell story in here just waiting to be cracked wide open, I think.
I’m a huge advocate for the Firefox browser, and open source and privacy matters and browser diversity in general. I’ve been panicking for years that Chromium is just absolutely eating the whole industry and Firefox is basically the last holdout against it (well, there’s WebKit too, but I digress). In all practicality it’s impossible for a newcomer to build a competing engine from scratch at this point; if Firefox falls, the Internet as we currently know it is likely to slide into some really user-hostile directions. And it makes me extremely uncomfortable that, to all appearances, the sole entity keeping Mozilla alive at all is FUCKING GOOGLE.
And when you throw in all the other bizarro details mentioned in this article, like Mozilla’s astronomical CEO compensation, questionable handling of donations, contributions to secretive and vague third parties, and seemingly self-sabotaging management decisions in the engineering department of what should be their flagship product… well, it stinks. It stinks to high heaven. Whatever’s going on here, there’s no way this ends well. The whole web is going to suffer for it.
Here’s hoping we get a 404 Media exposé that absolutely shines a spotlight on what’s going on. Soon.
Now that was an interesting read....
Interesting. When going to the Firefox "About", the "Want to help?" link redirects to the Mozilla foundation donation page. I'm assuming, then, that supporting Mozilla also supports Firefox, even if indirectly.
Donations are just a tiny fraction of Mozilla's profit though, about 90% of their money comes from Google
stu2b50 said "always get a chuckle when people donate to Mozilla to "support Firefox" - if any of that money went to Firefox, Mozilla would be committing tax fraud!"
Which is why I thought it's interesting that the link to support, inside Firefox, goes to the Mozilla foundation page. Now, it could be that Moz Corp thinks it's not worth trying to get money from users directly so we're sent to Moz Found, or that the corporate structure or money flow doesn't work quite like stu2b50 said.
So, nothing to do with where the majority of Moz Corp's funding comes from.
I believe they mean in abstractia - you're helping the general "causes" of Mozilla, free internet, blah blah blah, which the Foundation focuses on. I suppose in some sense if the Foundation were insufficiently funded that would cause issues for the Corporation as well - maybe more of the CEO's $5.5m salary would have to come from Corporate revenue.
It is, also, a bit of tricky wording to get Firefox users who want to support their browser to donate to the foundation without realizing it. Mozilla is honestly a pretty sus company, that's done a lot of shady things.
For the most part, average people aren't using Chrome because it's vastly superior to Firefox. To most people these days Chrome is the internet. If you're not using Chrome, Google will nag you about it every time you visit one of their properties. And if you are not using any Google properties, Google will use it's vast advertising network to try to convince you to switch to Chrome. Google is a fricking monolith that has an soft but unavoidable grip on the entire internet; there is basically no web standard that Google does not have their finger in. Comparing Google to Mozilla is like comparing Mt. Everest to a chicken egg.
I think the issue is that Firefox at one point was significantly slower than Chrome – it was only thanks to the Servo developers that they were able to parellelise parts of the layout engine and generally improve development velocity by removing lots of memory unsafety. Having a much faster browser is a good first step towards encouraging users to return to Firefox IMO.
Firefox has been on par with chrome for about six years now. People aren’t avoiding Firefox because it’s bad. People aren’t leaving Chrome because they are invested in the Google ecosystem. Most people just don’t see any reason to make a change.
In my experience this isn't true anymore. I switched to Firefox about two years ago because I began running into performance issues with Chrome. I've found current Firefox to be snappier and more resource friendly (only a couple gigs of ram with about 40-50 tabs open). I think the biggest issue is momentum and familiarity. It's really hard to get people to switch when they're used to something even if there's a better alternative.
As for getting nagged to switch to Chrome, I've never seen this. I can't think of a time I had a pop up or notification on a website telling me to switch to or download Chrome. I haven't seen it on desktop nor on Mobile. Maybe that was the case at some point, but I haven't seen it recently. It's certainly possible uBlock Origin is actually blocking those if they exist.
A huge part of why everyone thought Firefox and every other browser was because Google engineered an update to the YouTube UI that ran smoothly on Chrome but terribly on everything else. They used Shadow DOM v0, which to my knowledge was never implemented in any other browser. It’s the perfect example of why it’s bad that Google essentially has unilateral control over web standards. Though I guess that doesn’t really matter much since they practically have a browser monopoly at this point anyways.
Like, at this point, the end-user experience differences that are the browser's fault are negligible and are going to vary on a case-by-case basis.
Firefox can't help that bad web developers only test in Chrome and then tell you to pound sand if you report a bug in anything that isn't Chrome.
Time to break them up
Look Google can suck, but it doesn't do this to the extent you're describing. I use Firefox on all my devices and it would be much more annoying if I were nagged to install Chrome every time I visited a Google website. As for their vast advertising network, they're not going to waste that convincing me to download a browser that the vast majority of people already use instead of actually making money serving ads for other things. Google doesn't massively pressure you to switch to Chrome if you're using another browser like this. Because you're probably already using it.
Chrome became dominant because back when people started switching to it en masse, it was genuinely a lot better than the main competition (Internet Explorer) and it had more distinctive features/better performance than Firefox at that time. It was due to this that it managed to become the browser that almost everyone uses and defaults to, and once it reached that point in the market it didn't need to push itself intensely on users, even those within its own ecosystem, because it already captured so much of the market that people just assume everyone else is using it.