Re:On Our Abusive Relationship with Mozilla’s Firefox
by danShumway on Friday October 23, 2020 @12:10PM
(#24870993)
This article is fatalistic and harmful, and I have zero patience for it.
I understand that it's become fashionable to say that there's really no difference between Mozilla and Google, and that Mozilla has fallen from its ideals and become an awful, abusive company. And I'm not going to debate over whether or not Mozilla is a great company, people can indulge in whatever hot takes they want.
But even if I agreed that Mozilla was completely unfixable, this article would still be terrible. It's not offering any solutions, it's not adding anything to the conversation, it's not serving any purpose other than to put down people who are trying to make the web better.
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A quick TLDR of the article's main points:
- Firefox makes design decisions I don't like, which is emotional abuse, and therefore I've decided to switch to a Chromium fork, because Google will definitely make fewer design decisions I don't like without consulting me.
- Firefox includes Google Analytics, so there's no practical difference between it and Chrome, a browser that links Google sign-in to your browser account and doesn't respect settings to automatically clear cookies for Google domains.
- Do you remember web extensions vs XUL? We're still having this conversation, and we will always have this conversation until the end of time, even though pretty much every serious security researcher at this point agrees that extension sandboxing is necessary to protect end users.
- Also, telling people to try to solve problems as individuals or to collectively take control of their computing experience is also emotional abuse. This comparison has no problematic implications at all. It was definitely the right analogy for me to use.
- Sure we can try to fix this stuff, but would losing adblockers really be that bad? I mean, yes, but... think about it. Let's pretend for a second that adblockers are losing the battle, and that they aren't growing in usage every single day, and that browser crackdowns and increased DRM aren't a direct response to one of the largest modern success stories in the battle against pervasive advertising. Let's pretend there aren't any additional gains to be had in this area, and that actually it's headed for an inevitable decline.
- The web is headed in a bad direction right now, to the point where a complete rework might be necessary to change things, and I've decided that accelerationism is an appropriate response. Normal users don't care about any of this, and I haven't thought about what that might imply about the feasibility of a community-run, radical restructure of how the web works. Google is going to do whatever it wants to do, even if people try to oppose them, and I haven't thought about what that might imply about the feasibility of convincing Google to rebuild their own vision of the web that isn't a trash pile.
- A neocities website told me that UnGoogled Chromium is the safe option now, and I haven't looked into the addon/privacy features of Firefox past that to figure out if the website actually understands what it's talking about. The only thing that matters here for privacy is what requests the browser makes when it starts up -- not container isolation, anti-fingerprinting, or better adblocking APIs. I also see no irony in recommending people compile their own fork to avoid reading a small config guide that shows how to disable anti-privacy features in Firefox.
- "the future doesn't look bright, but we are past the point of no return".
----
There's a more reasoned, less sarcastic response possible about how most of the people who say the web is irredeemably bad aren't really paying much attention, and aren't involved enough in web conversations to realize how bad the world could be and what the web currently enables. But someone else will need to write it and dig up the examples.
I'm being kind of mean here, maybe too mean, but that's because I feel very angry reading this. If the author wants to go sulk off someplace and talk about how nothing matters because individuals and communities can't change the direction of the world, then go do that. But stop dragging other people down to that level.
I am not willing to give up on one of the only remaining mass-market Open computing platforms. I will go kicking and screaming into that night. And I will work with any company to pragmatically make the web better, even if they don't fit anyone else's ideals of what a perfect company is. Even if they have structural problems like Mozilla.
I understand that it's become fashionable to say that there's really no difference between Mozilla and Google, and that Mozilla has fallen from its ideals and become an awful, abusive company. And I'm not going to debate over whether or not Mozilla is a great company, people can indulge in whatever hot takes they want.
But even if I agreed that Mozilla was completely unfixable, this article would still be terrible. It's not offering any solutions, it's not adding anything to the conversation, it's not serving any purpose other than to put down people who are trying to make the web better.
----
A quick TLDR of the article's main points:
- Firefox makes design decisions I don't like, which is emotional abuse, and therefore I've decided to switch to a Chromium fork, because Google will definitely make fewer design decisions I don't like without consulting me.
- Firefox includes Google Analytics, so there's no practical difference between it and Chrome, a browser that links Google sign-in to your browser account and doesn't respect settings to automatically clear cookies for Google domains.
- Do you remember web extensions vs XUL? We're still having this conversation, and we will always have this conversation until the end of time, even though pretty much every serious security researcher at this point agrees that extension sandboxing is necessary to protect end users.
- Also, telling people to try to solve problems as individuals or to collectively take control of their computing experience is also emotional abuse. This comparison has no problematic implications at all. It was definitely the right analogy for me to use.
- Sure we can try to fix this stuff, but would losing adblockers really be that bad? I mean, yes, but... think about it. Let's pretend for a second that adblockers are losing the battle, and that they aren't growing in usage every single day, and that browser crackdowns and increased DRM aren't a direct response to one of the largest modern success stories in the battle against pervasive advertising. Let's pretend there aren't any additional gains to be had in this area, and that actually it's headed for an inevitable decline.
- The web is headed in a bad direction right now, to the point where a complete rework might be necessary to change things, and I've decided that accelerationism is an appropriate response. Normal users don't care about any of this, and I haven't thought about what that might imply about the feasibility of a community-run, radical restructure of how the web works. Google is going to do whatever it wants to do, even if people try to oppose them, and I haven't thought about what that might imply about the feasibility of convincing Google to rebuild their own vision of the web that isn't a trash pile.
- A neocities website told me that UnGoogled Chromium is the safe option now, and I haven't looked into the addon/privacy features of Firefox past that to figure out if the website actually understands what it's talking about. The only thing that matters here for privacy is what requests the browser makes when it starts up -- not container isolation, anti-fingerprinting, or better adblocking APIs. I also see no irony in recommending people compile their own fork to avoid reading a small config guide that shows how to disable anti-privacy features in Firefox.
- "the future doesn't look bright, but we are past the point of no return".
----
There's a more reasoned, less sarcastic response possible about how most of the people who say the web is irredeemably bad aren't really paying much attention, and aren't involved enough in web conversations to realize how bad the world could be and what the web currently enables. But someone else will need to write it and dig up the examples.
I'm being kind of mean here, maybe too mean, but that's because I feel very angry reading this. If the author wants to go sulk off someplace and talk about how nothing matters because individuals and communities can't change the direction of the world, then go do that. But stop dragging other people down to that level.
I am not willing to give up on one of the only remaining mass-market Open computing platforms. I will go kicking and screaming into that night. And I will work with any company to pragmatically make the web better, even if they don't fit anyone else's ideals of what a perfect company is. Even if they have structural problems like Mozilla.