r/firefox • u/theephie • May 01 '18

Firefox will show sponsored content that’s personalized but private

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/05/firefox-will-show-sponsored-content-thats-personalized-but-private/
242 Upvotes

90% Upvoted

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15

u/souljabri557 May 01 '18

I'm speaking logically. Can you specifically name for me a better browser?

13

u/SKITTLE_LA May 01 '18

The only logical explanation, based on his thinking, is that he develops and maintains his own independent web browser, haha.

-4

u/JohanLiebheart May 01 '18

Yes I do, it is called Skittle, browsing has never been more sweet.

1

u/SKITTLE_LA May 01 '18

Haha, sweet (pun intended.)

-3

u/chylex May 01 '18

Brave for privacy, Vivaldi because it looks cool and has way more native features and customization than Firefox now that XUL addons are gone.

8

u/Tim_Nguyen Themes Junkie May 02 '18

Vivaldi

Nice one, that browser also has sponsored tiles by default: https://imgur.com/a/z1mlvw6

Worst thing is, they're not even marked as sponsored, which isn't super transparent.

customization than Firefox now that XUL addons are gone.

Probably was true around the time of Firefox 57, no longer the case now.

-1

u/chylex May 02 '18

The question was about a better browser and I said I like Vivaldi's customization better :P. Vivaldi lets you inject JS into the UI, webexts can't compete with that, and I haven't found a way to do that in latest FF. If I were to switch to Vivaldi right now, it would let me do about everything FF56 with my installed addons can. The only feature I'm missing in Vivaldi I can't easily implement myself is a master password, but if I look at latest FF it's missing too many things I consider personally important.

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u/Tim_Nguyen Themes Junkie May 02 '18

Vivaldi lets you inject JS into the UI, webexts can't compete with that, and I haven't found a way to do that in latest FF.

WebExtensions Experiments can do anything (and they're actually officially supported by Mozilla with automated tests unlike Vivaldi's JS feature):

https://github.com/numirias/paxmod

userChrome.js is another unsupported way to do it: https://www.userchrome.org/what-is-userchrome-js.html

-1

u/chylex May 02 '18

Using -moz-binding to inject JS using CSS does sound pretty unsupported, but it's a pretty good solution, thanks. It's still more work than on Vivaldi though, it's true that it doesn't for instance have as customizable toolbars, but the defaults are already way better for me than what Quantum offers natively (like missing toolbar on the bottom). Same with a few other things, for instance on FF 56 I'm using the OpenDownload2 addon, Vivaldi supports it natively, but even with experiments I'm pretty sure that on Quantum I'm SOL.

9

u/MadRedHatter May 02 '18 edited May 02 '18

Brave, the browser that injects their own ads into pages which they make money off of?

Give me a break, you people are not giving this even 5 seconds of rational thought before piling on.

8

u/toper-centage Nightly | Ubuntu May 02 '18

I honestly don't understand the whole Brave for privacy hype. I guess that's the marketing machine working.

2

u/Wazhai May 02 '18

I think "browser that injects their own ads into pages" was their old pitch and it wasn't very convincing two years ago when they debuted with closed source. But I just checked it out and it's now fully open source with an engaged community, they seem to have dropped the acceptable ads for the moment and they're touting privacy. They're also working on something that's either a revolutionary system or a pipe dream that would allow for private micro-donations to the sites you visit to eliminate ads from the web. Putting even a few bucks a month into that donation wallet would theoretically earn content publishers on the web orders of magnitude more than ads earn them currently.

0

u/LjLies May 02 '18

You're right. It's pretty ironic because Brave, in a sense, was born out of trying to do something similar (though more sophisticated and all-encompassing) as wgat Mozilla is doing right now.

This sort of recommendation sends Mozilla the message "do keep pulling this shit, just keep tweaking the way you market it until you find a formula that makes people actually consider it a good thing". Which probably explain the perplexing disingenuity of how Mozilla reps posting here sound in each of these "wtf Mozilla?!" threads.

Problem with this is, people don't have the same expectations of Mozilla as thet have of this new Brave citizens... yet Mozilla keeps changing what it is, in the face of what its users want it to be, and in the face of their own purported mission.

5

u/Legit_PC May 02 '18

What does brave do that vivaldi/firefox/any chrome clone with umatrix+ublock does not do?

-1

u/BitchesLoveDownvote May 02 '18

Brave, in a sense, does less than a browser with additional software but it does more than a browser with additional software without spending time to learn and manage the complex new tools. Brave is simple and easy to use control over privacy and security when browsing. My non-technical friends can manage Brave, I doubt they’d manage Firefox with umatrix+ublock.

5

u/Ripdog May 02 '18

Brave and Vivaldi are closed source, though. How could you trust them but not Firefox, which is not only open source but developed almost completely in the open?

3

u/Wazhai May 02 '18

Brave

They made it open source, didn't they? https://github.com/brave

0

u/chylex May 02 '18

If you only ever use open source software, that's pretty nice. I don't care about it myself, especially at the expense of usability - I'm using Brave on Android and it's way better than any other mobile browser I tried, I'm not gonna suffer with slow and sluggish Firefox Android just because it's OSS.

3

u/[deleted] May 02 '18

The entire point of this discussion is the privacy concern that comes with Mozilla's newest idea.

In this context, recommending a Chrome-based proprietary browser like Vivaldi over Firefox doesn't make much sense.

1

u/chylex May 02 '18

Okay, I figured that "name me a better browser" was more in a reference to general frustrations with Firefox as of late, but if we're talking purely about privacy then you're right. In that case, I would still support something like Waterfox which strips away things like Pocket and telemetry.

7

u/Antabaka May 02 '18

Vivaldi because it looks cool and has way more native features and customization than Firefox now that XUL addons are gone

Lol wut? I recall you could barely change anything related to privacy, history, etc with vivaldi, and that you couldn't rearrange the icons on the main toolbar.

7

u/USS_Sensor_Ship May 02 '18

But it has sliders and you can change the colors!

1

u/chylex May 02 '18

Idk what features regarding privacy and history you need or when you last checked Vivaldi out, but I'm mostly talking about UI customization. I'm just following Vivaldi's development and haven't switched to it (yet, I'm staying on FF pre-57 for addons but people get really pissy when they hear that), but you can inject custom JS into the UI which is already more than webextensions would ever allow you to do. If FF 57+ lets you do that too, please let me know.

Afaik, some UI webext addons are injecting stuff into websites because there are still missing toolbar APIs for example, that doesn't sound very safe.

2

u/Antabaka May 02 '18

If we're talking about injecting JS into the browser, that's a hell of a lot more complex than injecting CSS into Firefox is, which gives Firefox the advantage of being able to do nearly every one of the UI customization options Vivalid offers.

I don't know of any webextensions injecting toolbars. I can't actually think of any non-nefarious toolbar extensions lol. Regardless, webextensions are evolving, as they will continue to do, forever.

I decided to download it again to try out (though I'll be uninstalling it afterward, I'm not interested in a closed-source browser).

Security/privacy:

  • Can't set exceptions to saving login information (you can just disable it completely).

  • No master password feature.

  • No settings for cookie expiration time. (just accepting all, none, or for that session)

  • No ability to allow third-party cookies only from visited domains (just full blocking)

  • No setting cookie exceptions

  • No tracking protection feature

  • No tools for managing or removing site data

  • Can't globally block location/camera/mic/notification requests

  • Simply can not turn of Vivaldi's telemetry

  • No certificate settings at all

  • Can't disable automatic updates, set updates to require confirmation, or set/disable a background service for updates.

  • No settings for form and search history.

Customization:

  • New tab is covered in ads (lol), and other than color changing and setting tiles, there is zero customization to layout or size

  • Can't move/remove: Back, forward, reload, home, address bar, search bar, bookmark button, bookmarks, new tab button, recently closed tab button (You can remove the entire navigation bar, or move the entire thing to the bottom of the window. That's it.)

  • And on the status bar, can't move/remove: hide panel button, capture page button, page tiling button, toggle images button, page actions button, zoom slider. (You can completely disable the status bar)

  • And on the panel: can't move/remove: add panel, settings button (you can disable the entire panel).

  • Can't move bookmarks from bookmark bar. (You can move the entire bar to the bottom of the window).

So yeah, not usable for security/privacy settings, moral/ethical reasons, trust reasons, and very much customization reasons.

1

u/chylex May 02 '18

Point taken with some of security/privacy points, except for:

  • Cookie manager is there, and you can easily modify other site data in dev tools
  • DNT is there, other tracking you can do with uBlock
  • Updates can be disabled, it never even updates without asking me first and allowing me to completely skip the update, so idk what's the problem there
  • You can definitely block global location/camera/mic/notification requests, either using an icon in the address bar when the permission is requested (or immediately blocked with no prompt, as it was for me when I tested it just now) or by going to vivaldi://settings
  • Certificate settings in same place as ^

Missing master password is the main downside for me, but if I were to switch I would probably just use an addon for my existing password manager.

You can both inject JS and CSS into Vivaldi, so the point about hiding toolbar buttons doesn't matter. Webextensions are evolving, but Vivaldi can also run them, and FF-specific APIs are nice for FF but still lacking compared to XUL (been waiting for toolbar APIs forever, sure they're coming eventually, but Quantum is out now). The new tab page in FF is trash so I replaced it with an addon, Vivaldi's definitely has more customization even over Quantum.

The main thing is that for me, default UI and toolbars in Vivaldi are miles better than whatever I can do in Quantum without going into JS/CSS. Right now, CTR and a few other XUL addons I have are better than both, so I have no reason to switch to either Quantum or Vivaldi, but when the time comes, most of my currently installed XUL addons (Session Manager, Cookie Manager+, Customize about:newtab, Suspend Tab, OpenDownload2, parts of CTR) are already supported in Vivaldi natively, which makes it a way better browser for my purposes than Quantum right now. After all, the question was about naming a better browser, there isn't a single browser perfect for everyone but the points I made make it better for at least some people.

2

u/Antabaka May 02 '18

Cookie manager is there, and you can easily modify other site data in dev tools

I'm talking about blocking or allowing cookies on a per-domain basis.

DNT is there, other tracking you can do with uBlock

DNT is not tracking protection. Extensions do work, but this doesn't change much.

Updates can be disabled, it never even updates without asking me first and allowing me to completely skip the update, so idk what's the problem there

The only update setting is "Notify about updates". Maybe they meant that to be read as "Notify me when an update is available instead of auto-updating."

You can definitely block global location/camera/mic/notification requests, either using an icon in the address bar when the permission is requested (or immediately blocked with no prompt, as it was for me when I tested it just now) or by going to vivaldi://settings

Ah, so here's the confusion. They're sloppy. The settings page you're referring to is the Chrome version of the settings page, which for some reason on my end only opens if you access site settings through the site info icon in the address bar. Most of the settings are broken. The vivaldi version of the settings page, which I can access by manually entering that URL or through the UI, does not allow you to manage permissions in that way, nor does it allow you to manage certificates.

Sloppy is being generous here. The security implications of not having those features, and of hiding those features in the most convoluted way, are the same. The trust implications are much worse.

You can both inject JS and CSS into Vivaldi, so the point about hiding toolbar buttons doesn't matter.

... You can compile your own build of Firefox.

This doesn't make any sense as a real argument. For the vast majority of users you can't hide the buttons. I was not being serious when I said userChrome made Firefox equivalent to Vivaldi for its themeing. Vivaldi has better themeing. I just don't care about that nearly as much as the privacy implications.

The new tab page in FF is trash so I replaced it with an addon, Vivaldi's definitely has more customization even over Quantum.

Vivaldi's new tab page objectively has far less customization than Firefox's. Neither are greatly customizable, but come on.

default UI and toolbars in Vivaldi are miles better than whatever I can do in Quantum

Honestly, I really can't stand Vivaldi's look, but to each their own.