this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2022
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Ads are not the problem, the problem is the surveillance advertizing as buisiness model, that means that the company log the userdata and activity to sell it to advertising companies. That is how Mozilla make money, Brave make money with selective adblocking with associate cryptocompanies (I don't know if this is better), Vivaldi make money with default bookmarks and search engines from sponsors, which pay when the user use these, but the user is free to delete these, if not. Apart by donations and a merch store., they don't use any ads or trackers.
Again, I don't know where you get the information from that Mozilla makes money off of surveillance. For many years now, they've had the problem that they're overly reliant on Google, but from the search engine deal, not advertisements. See, for example, this article: https://www.zdnet.com/article/googles-back-its-firefoxs-default-search-engine-again-after-mozilla-ends-yahoo-deal/
They have tried to gain a foothold in advertising to reduce that dependence on Google, but that was always privacy-friendly advertising.
I do not trust so much what they say or what they put in the posts, if the Mozilla.com analytics shows me Google trackers and fingerprinting to put personalized ads, which implies the monitoring of user activity, yes or yes.
See the screenshot or test it by yourself
I use FF as second browser for some tasks, without account or sync, but I prefer to use a browser without any of this Google crap, which in FF isn't given, even if it is minimal compared to other browsers.
@Zerush @Ephera
That's a problem with the Mozilla website, it has nothing to do with the Firefox browser ?
@lienrag@mastodon.tedomum.net Yeah, and it's not proof of a problem with the webpage either.
Google Analytics is bad on basically any webpage that uses it, because by default, it will share data with Google. But Mozilla has a deal with Google to block that: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=697436#c14
And you can use Google Analytics for just basic telemetry, which is not privacy invasive at all. You can do more, but this screenshot doesn't actually provide evidence of that. And ad tracking will usually happen via ad domains, e.g. doubleclick.net.
I'm definitely on board with not just believing everything at face value, but then we need actual proof. Mozilla is legally a nonprofit with express claim of wanting to protect privacy.
Any actual evidence of them breaking with that, would set the internet ablaze. Any tech journalist would want that news story published. Their own employees would become whistleblowers sooner rather than later, because they are aware of the public image.
Therefore, if you don't have complete evidence, I think, it's sane to assume that Mozilla are not being evil until you do find actual evidence.
They are not a traditional company, where I have made that same observation that Google Analytics on the webpage == garbage. @Zerush@lemmy.ml
If you read my posts, you will see that I also use FF and I know that the issue with Google is les than in other browsers, but even Mozilla need money for its infrastructure, servers need money. Their business model is the advertising and by usin Alphabet, which is the associate company, they pass userdata in this model. Even there are few data, I prefer a browser which don't has this business model de surveillance and advertisings for my daily use. Currently there are a lot of browsers in the market, but when you search those which respects the privacy, there are only Vivaldi, Brave and also Firefox. Brave use some cryptosites as sponsores with a probably selective adblocking, which I don't like much, others are half discontinued, outdated engines or a bad support. The rest are Firefox and Vivaldi, because of this I've both, but using Vivaldi as main browser because of the reasons I mencioned before.
Right, so here's what I believe to be facts, without having sources to prove every little detail:
Firefox's main source of income is the default search engine deal with Google. Yes, they practically advertise Google Search by doing this, but they do not submit more data to Google than google.com itself would like to submit. If you change your default search engine, you're completely unaffected.
Mozilla also does some advertising, but they are building their own (privacy-friendly) advertising network for that. They are not collaborating with Google for that.
The use of Google Analytics is for telemetry only, so they can improve their software with anonymized data.
This isn't a great situation. Whenever they add privacy protections to Firefox, they're biting the hand that feeds them + they're competing with that hand + they need webpage owners to like them, too, since they have their own rendering engine.
But when it's a decision about a smaller implementation detail, those parties won't notice Mozilla's decision and then Mozilla will gladly opt for the most privacy/user-friendly option.
If it is a larger decision, like good ad blocking, then they will often not make it the default, but give users the option to install an extension or change a setting. This is also especially driven by the Tor Browser devs, who need these capabilities and if they're not contained in Firefox, they need to maintain their own patches on top of Firefox.
So, with Firefox, we have a finance model that requires the user to configure a few things to get the most privacy-friendly option possible.
Vivaldi, Brave et al have a different model. They need significantly less money, because they're not building their own engine. More than 99% of their code base is taken verbatim from Chromium/Blink. Those smaller implementation details were all decided on by Google.
And then they add content blockers on top to try to fix that.
This finance model generally allows them to be more privacy-friendly out of the box. But with 15 minutes of customizing Firefox, you get a privacy-friendly browser like no Chromium-based browser will ever be.
The Engine in Vivaldi has as base Chromium, but that didn't mean that te maintance work is minor than in Gecko, see https://lemmy.ml/post/361337. Vivaldi is a coop own by it's employees, they have ca 20 devs for 5 OS. Mozilla have their own engine, Gecko, but the work to update and patch is now rhe same as Vivaldi has with Chromium. You would be right that the Chromium browsers already have 99% of the work done, if Vivaldi were just a simple fork like others, which is not the case. The main expenses for a company, be it Mozilla or Vivaldi, is the infrastructure they have (server, tax expenses, personnel, etc.). Vivaldi has no outside investors and refuses to have any in order to preserve independence, von Tetzchner set up the cooperative with his own money. Now it is financed, as I said before, apart from donations (introduced at the insistence of users), sponsor links and default search engines (alliances with DDG, Ecosia and others), which pay when the user uses them, otherwise it is free. to delete them, apart a webstore with Merch. There are no advertisers involved, no google analytics or other google tracking or fingerprinting APIs. Apart Vivaldi offers for the user a own blog and a own webmail with 5Gb (xxxxx@vivaldi.net). Inbuild in the Browser a Feedreader, Mail client and Calendar, among other features which nobody else have or only partial with a lot of extensions. Yes, part of the UI is proprietary soft (~5%) but full aditable and customizable by the user (with knowledge in scripts). In the community they show how.
Only when you download FF from there or you create an account because you want the sync service, then Google know it.
@Zerush
Oh, right.
But that's why NoScript and uMatrix exist, isn't it ?
uMatrix not longer exist, abandoned since years.
Your beloved Vivaldi blocks absolutely nothing with its adblocker by default. It's one of the worst browsers to protect the user's privacy. I admire Vivaldi for being against cryptocurrencies and for their alliances with products that are private and trustworthy, but your fanaticism disgusts me.
And I find it very hypocritical of you to blame Mozilla for including 1 tracker on their website, when Vivaldi is proprietary software and they include a whitelist for their weak adblocker to satisfy their partners. Also, their UI is written in Node.js, that's what makes it so slow compared to Brave and Firefox.
The Vivaldi ad and trackerblocker is customizable, you can it easy reforce with the filter you want in the settings. By default use the same filters as uBO.
Vivaldi's adblocker lacks cosmetic filtering aka element blocking. Advanced features like JavaScript blocking, web logger, are not available in the browser's built-in blocker. And some websites detect their native adblocker, and prevents you from accessing the website without disabling the feature. Not a good implementation IMO. Also, it's written on C++ (a memory unsafe language).
Well, test your system how private it is https://www.deviceinfo.me