A little admiration of how easy UI customization is on Firefox, and how shitty Chromium looks.

  • TCB13@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    You never tried to listen for stock Firefox’s traffic with Wireshark for sure.

    People speak very good thing about Firefox but they like to hide and avoid the shady stuff. Let me give you the un-cesored version of what Firefox really is. Firefox is better than most, no double there, but at the same time they do have some shady finances and they also do stuff like adding unique IDs to each installation.

    Firefox does is a LOT of calling home. Just fire Wireshark alongside it and see how much calling home and even calling 3rd parties it does. From basic ocsp requests to calling Firefox servers and a 3rd party company that does analytics they do it all, even after disabling most stuff in Settings and config like the OP did.

    I know other browsers do it as well, except for Ungoogled and because of that I’m sticking with it. I would like to avoid programs that need no snitch whenever I open them. ungoogled-chromium + ublock origin + decentraleyes + clearurls and a few others.

    Now you’re free to go ahead and downvote this post as much as you would like. I’m sorry for the trouble and mental break down I may have caused by the sudden realization that Firefox isn’t as good and private after all.

    • abbenm@lemmy.ml
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      4 months ago

      Firefox is better than most, no double there, but at the same time they do have some shady finances

      So I went ahead and read that article and goodness gracious, does anybody actually read these links??? Because that link is a complete nothingburger. It’s a blog post from someone who never read a 990 before (standard nonprofit disclosure form) who thinks every other line of is proof of a scandal. But it’s not, it’s just a big word salad that is too long to read, so nobody will bother.

      The most significant charge is (1) that the CEO makes too much and (2) the author doesn’t like that they contract out work to consultants who think diversity is good. Every point made, so far as I can tell:

      • Have assets worth $1.1 billion as of 2021
      • Mozilla spent less on “expenses” from 2021 relative to 2020
      • Revenue went up over the same time
      • A lot of revenue was from royalties (e.g. agreements for default search)
      • They disagree with the wording on a donate form about whether Mozilla “relies” on individual donations
      • The CEO made $5.6MM
      • They pulled out one expense, which appears to have been training/education relating to social justice topics
      • They pull out a few more individual expenses and weren’t sure what they were.

      This isn’t secret documents being handed to Deep Throat in a dark parking lot. There’s no smoking gun, no smoke, just a PDF with ordinary tables of expenses and revenue, and consultants who did diversity training. If that’s shady then, get ready to be mad about every non-profit ever.

      • TCB13@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        It’s a blog post from someone who never read a 990 before (standard nonprofit disclosure form) who thinks every other line of is proof of a scandal.

        Only in the USA a “non profits” turns profit. 😂

        • abbenm@lemmy.ml
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          4 months ago

          Pretty sure all non-profits strive to be cash flow positive, in the United States and otherwise.

    • ferralcat@monyet.cc
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      4 months ago

      I will never understand how people expect software to gather no telemetry or metrics whatsoever.

      • root@precious.net
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        4 months ago

        We did fine without it for a very long time. We still do with a lot of software. It’s called voluntarily submitting a bug report and/or core dump.

        • Amju Wolf@pawb.social
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          4 months ago

          If you ask a user to show you a “core dump” they’re more likely to shit on their floor and send you a photo than do what you actually mean.

          Telemetry is absolutely crucial in determining what to focus on in development, to fix issues the users might not even realize exist. Especially for projects that aim at the general public. As long as it’s communicated clearly, used truly only for development purposes and an opt-out is available there’s nothing wrong about it.

          • root@precious.net
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            4 months ago

            You don’t use the technical term, but you do ask.

            I’m not against telemetry, I’m against making it hundreds of different hidden options.