
“Stylish” is back, and you still shouldn't use it - based2
https://robertheaton.com/2018/08/16/stylish-is-back-and-you-still-shouldnt-use-it/
======
cco
The older I have gotten the less I'm willing to install, either in my browser,
my phone, or my local machine.

It's come to the point that it seems reasonable to assume that anything you
install will pull every iota of data available to it.

I think this grew out of a good place, at least I hope, where early pioneers
assumed good intentions and generally most software was designed with "open"
as a core philosophy. However it's very clear that we're very far removed from
that, it boggles my mind that if an expense app on my phone needs to take a
picture of a receipt my only option is to allow it not only permanent use of
my camera but also access to all of my photos and videos. Why is the default
not to launch a sandboxed camera app that only exists to take the receipt
photo, and then disappears taking with it any permissions the app needed to
carry this out?

~~~
jimjimjim
When looking at google play store I will only look for non-free apps.

Using the 'follow the money' idea, if the app maker can get income from
selling it they are LESS likely to try to make money by mugging you for data.
It's not 100% but it helps.

~~~
yellowapple
By that logic, Windows 10 ought to be ad-free.

~~~
kiriakasis
by that logic it should have less ads than android

------
btown
From the article:

> I’m surprised that SimilarWeb finds the personal browsing data that it
> siphons off via Stylish so valuable. The data almost certainly feeds into
> SimilarWeb’s main product, the SimilarWeb platform, a tool that provides
> reports on the aggregate usage statistics of websites and apps... But data
> collected via Stylish will surely be riddled with so much sampling bias that
> it becomes worthless... A giant stew of miscellaneous, unattributed scraps
> of data can’t ever turn into a representative sample, no matter how much
> salt and machine learning you add.

I'm not surprised at all. It's important to note that SimilarWeb sells its
data to non-statisticians.

Imagine this scenario: Marketing analyst has a gut feeling that the product
would be popular with millennials on Reddit, but old-school marketing execs
barely know what Reddit is. Analyst sneaks a SimilarWeb subscription into the
budget. Analyst gets Stylish-based data that is heavily biased towards Reddit.
Analyst may know this. Analyst doesn't care. Analyst uses the data to "prove"
that the company's users are on Reddit and justify the Reddit ad spend they
wanted anyways. Campaign is a success. Pretty much everyone wins (kind of):
Reddit users get more relevant ads. Analyst advances their career and
reputation. SimilarWeb gets paid. Stylish extension can be maintained and
polished. SimilarWeb maybe even affords to hire for their security team, who
makes sure that the data is anonymized at rest.

At the end of the day, adtech is a beast that grows because it tells people
what they want to hear, and remains silent when it can't find that answer.
p-hacking and survivorship bias are the way of the world. This isn't
necessarily a bad thing. But... if this sounds like a bubble to you, all I can
say is that you should diversify your holdings outside of tech stocks.

------
jyrkesh
Quick FYI, if you "backup" your Stylish themes when migrating, it comes out
with a file that ends in `.json,.bin,.dms`. Just drop it to `.json` and Stylus
will be able to import it just fine.

Thanks to the author and submitter. I had no idea, been using Stylish for
years. Very disappointing, but I'm glad there's an easy alternative.

~~~
hpbd
And how do we know Stylus won't go the same route?

~~~
nambit
It's open source. You can install from source.

~~~
hpbd
All extensions are open source. Just download the xpi/crx and decompress.
Doesn't help much unless you are willing to read all diffs, or never update
them (and be exposed to bugs which could lead to other security issues.)

~~~
bastawhiz
You're right, we should never install software ever again unless we wrote it
ourselves.

------
eternalny1
I've been using Stylus for many months now, it works exactly the same but is
open source.

That, combined with "Dark Background + Light Text" with custom colors makes
Firefox a beautiful sight in my personal night mode.

"Dark Background" for the majority of sites that don't have good dark Stylus
themes, disabled on the ones that do.

This one is nice:

[https://github.com/dparpyani/HackerNews-
DarkTheme](https://github.com/dparpyani/HackerNews-DarkTheme)

~~~
theclaw
DarkReader is great if you just want want dark-mode. It automates what used to
take me ages overriding CSS in Stylish. I’m fairly confident it’s not spyware.

------
amarshall
Alternatively, Firefox provides similar functionality built-in with
userContent.css [1], which avoids needing a third-party extension at all.

[1] [https://superuser.com/questions/318912/how-to-override-
the-c...](https://superuser.com/questions/318912/how-to-override-the-css-of-a-
site-in-firefox-with-usercontent-css)

~~~
ChrisGranger
And you can edit Firefox's UI, using userChrome.css in the same location.

------
shmerl
I've been Stylus instead of it just fine.

