
Is it worth supporting Firefox? - Matt3o12_
https://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/8hha0r/is_it_worth_supporting_firefox/
======
johnchristopher
> I work for a major publisher. Ad-blockers are starting to hurt our revenue
> big time.

No. What's hurting your _edit:employer 's_ revenue is years of blinking GIFs,
auto-play videos and misleading links thrown between paragraphs. That's the
first reason why I started using ad-blockers 15 years ago. The privacy issue
is a recent thing.

> We're doing a redesign now. Manager says that we should just discourage the
> users of Firefox (not optimizing for Firefox, and poor UI) from visiting our
> website as they bring a loss.

But that'd just bring chrome users who use ad-block.

> Edit: They are even going to approach google and ask them to introduce new
> API's that allow us to determine if browser really chrome or just chromium,
> so that we block chromium. And a DRM for website instead of only video DRM
> that exists, so that user cannot view source code, and no extension can
> block the ads. Other publishers are doing the same thing. Expect new DRM for
> HTML5 too.

Going to be fun :/.

~~~
_jal
Just a datapoint: if you "discourage" my browser, I go away and don't come
back. Same with EME - I will not need your efforts in my life.

I've yet to find a site so great that I'll disable security or switch browsers
to use them. (Work is an exception; somehow there's always some crappy site
with needy requirements. But that's my employer's browser/computer, and the
sites aren't major publishers.)

So I hope your manager did their cost-benefit well. I don't know too many
publishers in a position to be selective about their readers. But I suspect I
know who you're talking about, and won't personally won't miss any of their
properties.

~~~
pimeys
Atlassian products such as Confluence and Jira are some of those tools where I
need to disable uMatrix completely to not get a crazy redirect loop when I try
to login. Luckily we're leaving Atlassian quite soon, their sites have been
such a pain to use for many reasons.

~~~
rosege
what will you replace Confluence with?

~~~
pimeys
We'll change our whole business model and do 100% open source, so I guess
it'll be Github.

~~~
nancyp
Github is 100% open source. News to me.

~~~
omnimus
I believe he meant their product will be open-sourced so it will have home at
github.

------
627467
How hard is it to sell a fixed <img /> tag or any block of text within an
article? Sell it as "this content will stay there for as long as the page is
published". The problem is that every major publisher has bought into
centralized ad brokers.

Google and Facebooks of the world sell the idea that they can personalize ads
better than content producers and so everyone relies on their trackers and
javascripts to build content business online. Publishers should know their
audience better than ad servers.

This is what is killing the business: content creators stopped caring about
their audience.

~~~
juliangoldsmith
>Google and Facebooks of the world sell the idea that they can personalize ads
better than content producers and so everyone relies on their trackers and
javascripts to build content business online. Publishers should know their
audience better than ad servers.

Part of the problem is that Google and Facebook actually can know the audience
better than the content creator. A content creator only knows that the reader
is interested in, say, cooking. Facebook and Google know most everything the
reader is interested in, and what sort of ads the reader actually interacts
with. They can use all of that information to maximize the chance the reader
will click on an ad.

The problem now is that because of how effective Google' and Facebook's ads
are, a single click on an ad is basically worthless. Someone who's trying to
sell a product isn't going to pay 100 times as much per click to use a smaller
ad network, they're going to go with whoever can give them the most impact.

~~~
annabellish
I'm honestly not sure how true this really is. I don't do anything
intentionally to screw with advertisers, aside from standard ad blockers, and
the targeted ads I get from things which aren't ad blocked are just... eh?

I give Google a tonne of data, they know everything I search for, they know
where I live and where I shop, they know how long I spend in a shop before
buying something through android pay, et cetera. My targeted ads are still
just junk.

Ads for websites I've visited because I've done work for them, products I've
already bought, and stuff that seems completely unrelated seems to make up 99%
of it. I guess the first category works as a "let's remind people the things
they've used exist" in a coke kind of way, but why have Google been able to
trick people into believing that this is 'effective targeted advertising'?

~~~
wang_li
Targeted ads always seem to trail my interests. I search for a product, buy
it, and then see ads for that product for two weeks. If Facebook and google
want to show relevant ads they’ve got to figure out a way to be ahead and not
behind my interests.

------
sevensor
Firefox is a standards-conforming web browser. If some nincompoop puts a web
page out there and my browser can't render it, I'm not going back. I make an
exception for restaurant websites, because I want to see the menu and they all
seem to have been defrauded by the same bad designer.

~~~
DanWaterworth
The rule of thumb for restaurants is the poorer the website, the better the
food. Restaurants with Flash-only pages that haven't been updated for 15 years
are the best. Also, the cleaner the bathrooms, the cleaner the kitchen.

~~~
xori
> The rule of thumb for restaurants is the poorer the website, the better the
> food.

While I think this is a stupid rule, I can't deny that for my top 10
restaurants it's true.

------
rsoto
> Extension cannot mimic everything. There are far too many features. NaCl,
> other css values. Also we use obfuscated js to resist reverse engineering.
> There are like 100 features, and more in future that'll be chrome specific.
> Average time to reverse engineer a 10mb obfuscated js file is like a 1
> month. We're safe for 10 years. I'm against this shit tho.

Not to be dismissive, but this sounds like he's trolling. One thing is not
actively supporting one browser because «it's at the bottom of the list» and
another thing is actively trying to detect it.

Also I don't think he understands what obfuscated JS means, and is he
seriously talking about having a 10MB JS file? Just for a major publisher? For
comparison: NYT's home page is 1.6MB, the whole document. The thing that
totally gives it's trolling away is the 10 years «safe thing».

~~~
FRex
I agree.

One time he (or she) is against that, another time he acts cocky like saying
they'll now sabotage opera too (after being told it has a built in ad blocker)
or bringing up existing DRM in a tone that is less like being sad those ideas
are getting into web and more like he wants the same in html.

It also starts reasonably with just focusing on chrome and then goes to asking
google for a html drm, asking google to help sabotage chromium users, blocking
firefox using obfuscated 10 mb js even though the site works well on ie8,
vague threats of html drm coming soon to end ad blocking in an accusatory
tone, saying they do all this to cut costs because each page they send is 3
megs and ff users are freeloaders, etc.

Plus the weird title ('should we support' vs. 'we sabotage'), going with this
to reddit instead of anonymously tipping fsf, eff or mozilla off (if he's
already willing to leak that info and the fact he works there, the latter
could remain hidden if he tipped these orgs off), etc.

Edit: oh, and since css and images are loaded via js (on which he also
comments by saying that people using no script 'ironically make their job
easier') wouldn't that 10 mb one cause a flicker (fast internet) or a broken
website for several seconds (slow internet) during at least the first load
uncached load? And 2-3 megs of content for the few freeloading ff users is too
much or can't be cdn'd but pushing that 10 meg js to everyone and taking up
time of web devs and business-y people (for lobbying for drm at google or
wherever) is fine and cheaper?

~~~
rsoto
Haha, I didn't get to read that much, but that sounds hilarious! Now I'm sure
he's just trolling.

------
ppeetteerr
Display ads are dead. They have been dying for over a decade. Video ads have
picked up some slack but they too are being commoditized. These days,
publishers are turning to the paygate model and commerce.

Anyone who thinks that ads can pay for publishing are fooling themselves into
believing they are part of the top percentile of publishers for whom this
works due to sheer impression volume.

~~~
scarface74
There is also the opposite end of the spectrum where advertising works - niche
publications by small teams.

In the Apple ecosystem there is Daring Fireball. John Gruber charges $6500 a
week for one ad that appears on Monday on both the website and RSS Feed and a
thank you post at the end of the week.

He also charges $5500 for three ads in each podcast.

~~~
ppeetteerr
It works for some, there is no doubt. I would believe that industry
publications (transportation, forestry, etc.), and popular blogs, still make
decent coin on selling print ads or sponsorships on the web.

It's different to the original post's comments. They are looking at a public
audience with ad blockers.

Podcasts are a different affair altogether. I would love to see the numbers
for those as I'm never in front of my computer when I listen to a podcast and
I don't remember the ads long enough to followup even when I'm interested in
the product.

Also, thanks for sharing that Gruber has a podcast!

~~~
scarface74
_I would love to see the numbers for those as I 'm never in front of my
computer when I listen to a podcast and I don't remember the ads long enough
to followup even when I'm interested in the product._

It's not always about direct action, it's often about brand awareness. If you
listen to a lot of podcasts, you'll know the first company you think about
when you are in the market for:

\- Mattresses

\- Eyeglasses

\- Creating a website quickly

\- online backup

\- shaving products.

\- Mesh networking devices

It's an old joke that the definition of a podcast is "two or more white guys
talking about tech sponsored by Squarespace".

Whether you act right then, when someone asks you to build them a website,
your first thought is going to be to point them at SquareSpace.

Since the same sponsors keep buying ads on podcast and most of them have
coupon codes to tell them where their customers came from, they have metrics
that tell them the return on investment.

~~~
draebek
Oh jeez, don't tell podcast advertisers, but I read your list, recognized that
I've heard ads for every one of those products repeatedly across multiple
podcasts, but I couldn't remember _any_ of the brand names except for
shaving—and I think that's only because I recently got annoyed when a YouTuber
I subscribe to started to advertise for Dollar Shave Club (I assume that's who
you refer to) at the beginning and end of his videos.

But maybe advertisers are happy enough if I remember their name when I
eventually go looking for, say, eyeglasses and recognize their name in the
search results.

~~~
scarface74
\- Mattresses (Casper)

\- Eyeglasses (Warby Parker)

\- Creating a website quickly (Squarespace)

\- online backup (Backblaze)

\- shaving products. (Dollar Shave Club)

\- Mesh networking devices (Eero)

------
phyzome
> Ad reinsertion solutions exist for Chrome, but they also dont support
> Firefox.

"Ad reinsertion". You're trying to bypass the user's self-determination on the
web. Good luck, bozo.

> They are even going to approach google and ask them to introduce new API's
> that allow us to determine if browser really chrome or just chromium, so
> that we block chromium.

And now we see the real question: "Is there some way to lock our users into
browsers that give more control to us than the users?"

~~~
pritambaral
By "Ad reinsertion", they mean the paid advertisement inclusion programmes of
Adblock and Adblock Plus, which is opt-out and pretty shady in the first
place.

They think that Adblock and Adblock Plus don't exist on Firefox, and that
people who use uBlock Origin on Firefox will not use uBlock Origin on Chrome
too if they were somehow forced to use Chrome.

~~~
Washuu
No, they are talking about services such as Instart. Javascript that runs on
the page, detects the advertisements are being blocked, does a redirect
through Instart's proxy to insert hard coded advertisements, and redirects
back. Instart only works on Chrome.

~~~
pritambaral
I don't know where you're getting that — and I couldn't find any mention of
Instart with a Ctrl-F on that page — but my source is this comment by the OP:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/8hha0r/is_it_worth_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/8hha0r/is_it_worth_supporting_firefox/dykjb5o/)

Besides, wouldn't something like that itself get blocked?

------
jasonkostempski
Firefox isn't to blame. Users that are proactive about their web browsing
(hopefully a rapidly growing number) often choose Firefox because it offers
the most control. These aren't the types of users that are going to switch to
a different browser to render a random site, they'll just ignore the site. If
that's what the manager wants, I think they're on the right path. Seems
shortsighted to me, but they're still in the online publishing business,
playing the same old cat-and-mouse game, trying to live off antiquated ad-
tech, so I'm guessing they're not very forward-thinking.

------
wheaties
Yes, it's worth "supporting" Firefox. Just like it's worth it to "support" a
standards compatible web browser. I swear we're going backwards in time to IE6
days when everyone built for just one browser and forgot that others existed.

Do you really want Google to dictate how the web works? I don't. When
Microsoft did this we lost _years_ of meaningful improvements and just
recently got the ability to vertically center in CSS.

~~~
squarefoot
"I swear we're going backwards in time to IE6 days when everyone built for
just one browser and forgot that others existed."

It's even worse than that. The Internet grew in the hands of engineers who
cared about functionality and compatibility first, then about profitability.
About two decades ago the industry started turning tables (and later the
smartphone boom helped to achieve that goal even more). Now every big player
is looking to build its own proprietary environment to get the most users on
so that they're forced to use that player resources; this is precisely the
mindset the world wide web openness fought against. Sadly they're now fighting
back: if yesterday a browser could help to surf 10 sites, today you need 10
apps, each one closed source and doing who knows what under the hood. And this
monstrosity is slowly sneaking into the non mobile world hidden behind catchy
buzzwords and fancy graphics. Using "the cloud" to store documents and
important data seems so cool, but is not that different from going back to the
60s world of dumb terminals and big mainframes where the mainframe owner
decided if, how and when the user could access to his/her own data. Both
engineers and users are losing control and quite frankly I have no idea of
what to do.

------
giancarlostoro
The biggest irony for me is the fact the new Reddit doesn't fully work for me
in Firefox (all plugins / extensions disabled) there seems to be completely
missing the ability to toggle / collapse comments from Firefox. Works on
Chrome. Not sure who QAd those new changes but they missed one of the features
I use most on HN and Reddit...

~~~
seanalltogether
Reddit broke for me on Firefox whenever they moved to ssl permanently, hitting
the back button always reloads the page rather then going back to the cached
state it was in so comments show uncollapsed. HN doesn't seem to have this
problem.

~~~
3131s
I've noticed that too, is it only a Firefox thing? It's very annoying.

~~~
Matt3o12_
I think it is a reddit thing. I’m pretty sure I observed the same behavior
when I used chrome (thought this was almost a year ago) and this still happens
on my iPad using safari.

------
floatboth
> And a DRM for website instead of only video DRM that exists, so that user
> cannot view source code, and no extension can block the ads

Good luck with that. You could render an article into a DRM'd video, and
utterly destroy SEO, accessibility, readability, and the website's whole
reputation.

"DRM for news articles" makes zero sense. Movie DRM works because HDCP
decrypts the video _on the display_. ("works" \- pirates got the private keys
anyway :D) You can't DRM software on a general purpose computer. You can try,
and it would be cracked soon. Even the best attempts (Denuvo) get cracked.

~~~
cesarb
> Movie DRM works because HDCP decrypts the video on the display.

No, it doesn't. The movie is decrypted on the player, uncompressed, and
encrypted again with HDCP for the display.

~~~
amdavidson
> ...encrypted again with HDCP for the display

And after it is encrypted again "for" the display, the display decrypts it,
closing the loop, and allowing the DRM to be at least more than trivially
functional.

------
teamhappy
This is obviously pretty weird and stupid on many levels, but there is one
interesting fact hidden in one of the authors responses. They ended up in this
(really just incredibly stupid) situation because they use feature detection
and non-standard features only available in Chrome (or WebKit maybe).

------
callahad
The Web works because no single vendor has absolute control over the platform,
and the competing browsers can keep each other in check. Hell of a thing to
watch people in such a hurry to throw that all away. No one would ever abuse a
platform monopoly, would they?

 _(For disclosure, I work for Mozilla. But I wouldn 't want us to control the
Web, either: competition and open standards are key.)_

------
Arr0wH34D
They also opened an interesting issue on Brave browser:
[https://github.com/brave/browser-
laptop/issues/14041](https://github.com/brave/browser-laptop/issues/14041)

Looks like their feature detection is based on user agent, and they are angry
at Brave for using an user agent that resemble the one Chrome is using.

~~~
thebouv
Oh, the issue has devolved into threats against Brave now by FineHub.

[https://github.com/brave/browser-
laptop/issues/14041](https://github.com/brave/browser-laptop/issues/14041)

------
kibwen
Note that this is exactly why Firefox has resisted shipping with adblock on by
default for years now. It's not just about websites deciding not to support
Firefox, it's about websites like this one deciding to go out of their way to
_break_ on Firefox.

------
ttctciyf
> Also we and some other publishers are even approaching google for full page
> html drm standard. This means adblock will have a hard time, as they cant
> modify the requests. Full page drm means that extensions cannot interfere
> with the page.

Esccalation has reached the nuclear phase.

------
devit
This is one of the problems with making decisions based on "data".

Obviously, the benefit of having users is not only in the profit from ads, but
rather from having your site be popular, recommended to friends, posted in
links in discussions, training Google's algorithms by people clicking on their
search results, having people willing to subscribe to future paid services or
buy future products, etc.

But since those things aren't measurable in the short term, they get
completely discounted by naive businesspeople, with bad results like this.

------
JepZ
Sounds like a major publisher is in big trouble when the management tells the
webdevs which browsers they should support.

~~~
Steltek
It's worse than that, if you read more comments, they're actively breaking
Firefox (reader mode, etc). It's not the IE era of benign neglect.

Some of the comments are helpful in building in a better business case, such
as this one:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/8hha0r/is_it_worth_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/8hha0r/is_it_worth_supporting_firefox/dykdd4j/)
. In summary /u/wedragon says that users have multiple environments and even
multiple browsers. Damaging or disabling Firefox on the desktop may lose the
profitable mobile side where the user may have Safari or Chrome.

------
kevincennis
I honestly wonder if this is real, or the whole story.

How many websites are actually doing things that require a meaningful amount
of extra effort to support Firefox if it already works in Chrome/Safari?

For most websites, cross-browser testing is almost an afterthought these days.

~~~
realusername
> For most websites, cross-browser testing is almost an afterthought these
> days.

Most of my time involves fixing things for IE11 or mobile Safari, Firefox-only
or Chrome-only issues are extremely rare.

~~~
kevincennis
Yeah, agreed. I think I run into more issues in Safari than anywhere else
these days.

It's always some weird rendering bug that mysteriously vanishes with the old
null transform trick.

~~~
realusername
Yes exactly, it's either that, or some random JS feature which is unsupported
or does not work as expected.

------
gwbas1c
The bigger problem is that publishers are loosing control over their
advertisers. The reason why I block ads is that they turn great websites into
horrible experiences.

Remember, the way ads work today is that the web site is delivered to your
browser, and then ad networks' Javscript comes in and mangles the page to
insert ads wherever the ad network pleases.

In the days of paper, editors laid out where the ads went in newspapers and
magazines. There weren't obnoxious blinking ads that would move the text
around while you were reading it. Now, publishers hand control over where ads
go to the advertisers themselves. The publishers are in denial about the
problem they created.

~~~
criddell
> The bigger problem is that publishers are loosing control over their
> advertisers.

I've never understood this. There are a lot of magazines that clearly spend
considerable resources making their printed page look exactly how they want.
Then when they publish that same content online, they apparently don't care at
all about the presentation.

Matthew Butterick's great article _Bomb in the Garden_ makes this point very
well. It's from 5 years ago but I think it is more relevant today than ever.

------
some_account
Computer savvy users are never going to accept the web flashing, blinking,
popping, interrupting, lagging.... And there will only be more of us in the
future when the new generation grows up.

Your revenue model is dying and you are trying to save it by making the web
even worse. Its a race to the bottom.

~~~
OtterCoder
> There will be more of us

That doesn't look to be the case. While the "net native" generation is more
likely to turn to digital content than other media, studies show that computer
literacy, in the sense of understanding the basic workings of a computer, is
on the decline.

------
ryandrake
This isn't 2002. If you're writing a standards-compliant web page, you're
already supporting Firefox (and all other browsers). Why go out of your way,
investing the extra effort needed into _not_ supporting a browser?

------
Matt3o12_
The discussion on r/firefox is also quite interesting:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/8hhss1/is_it_worth...](https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/8hhss1/is_it_worth_supporting_firefox/)

------
adamc
Here's the reality: Most people won't pay for most sites. I get that. I'm the
same. I have subscriptions to a handful of high value sites (e.g., NYT), but
most sites just don't deliver enough value to make that viable.

I could live with advertising if it were unobtrusive, useful, and didn't try
to track me. Very little advertising is like that, so I block it. Yep, that
means marginal sites will die. I can live with that.

It is still possible to sell magazines and other media. No one was promised
that the web would be a perfect was to sell media. If it's only a good way to
exchange information (for free), that is not a bad thing.

I don't think it is a tragedy if sites collapse that cannot find a viable way
to serve me. I don't give a rat's ass about serving advertisers.

------
mcintyre1994
Whatever these ad reinsertion methods that work for Chrome but not Firefox
are, they're encouraging me to keep using Firefox :)

------
mathieubordere
So, why would your manager want to optimize for the browser with the highest
average revenue per user?

e.g. a browser with 1 user that generates $100 vs a browser with 1K users that
generate $1 on average. Your manager would optimize for the former?

------
potench
The real question for media publishers (one I've already experienced at a
large sports agency): "is it worth supporting the web".

It is worth it, there's still a lot of traffic, but it's a different model and
elegant, interactive browser experiences aren't the target.

Minutes spent, repeat, and quality traffic continues to move toward native
apps. GDPR and ad-blocking represent increasing risk + decreasing revenue with
the status-quo media web experience.

So the status-quo is becoming prioritizing search engines, social scrapers,
and a well-designed URL funnel that pushes traffic toward your native app
where you can still monetize with display ads, reliably autoplay video with
client-side video ads, and push notifications that result in actual traffic.

There are strategies for monetizing on the web (server-side ad stitching,
integrated marketing, pay-gates, hell - just buy traffic to your site that you
know doesn't have ad-blockers) but sometimes it's counterintuitive to
funneling traffic to native.

Ultimately it requires investment in Product/Creative/UX/Dev to define and
sell-through a vision/strategy for web to decision-makers when those decision-
makers are seeing numbers that suggest even the investment to define the web
strategy is a poor investment - let alone investment in developing and
maintaining it.

------
DanBC
There's a bunch fo websites (Atlantic being notable) that tell me I'm using an
ad-blocker and ask me to turn it off. I'm not. I'm using stock Firefox.

So, I guess their conversation goes:

> We block Firefox (but don't know that we do so)

> We don't see many Firefox users

> Why do we optimise for Firefox?

It's mildly frustrating that they block users for dumb reasons. (Again, I'm
not blocking ads). But it's only a mild frustration - there are a gajillion
places to get news that are better than Atlantic.

~~~
adrian1973
They are probably detecting that some ad/tracking cookies are not being set...
because by default in FF tracking protection is enabled.

~~~
Sylos
It's only enabled by default in Private Browsing. And it doesn't actively
block cookies (they obviously do get cleared at the end of your Private
Browsing session, though).

------
_bxg1
When ads stop tracking me, serving malware, and showing fake download buttons,
I'll turn off my ad-blocker. Usually if there's a site I visit frequently, I
try turning it off to support them. But if the ads are abrasive or misleading,
I turn it right back on.

Here's an example of a non-skeezy ad provider which would not cause me to turn
my ad-blocker back on.
[https://www.buysellads.com](https://www.buysellads.com)

~~~
stordoff
It can also push _paying_ customers away. There was a site I paid to use for a
few years until one of their sister sites (which I only used infrequently so
didn't have a paid membership for) started showing large auto-playing video
ads in a way that was deliberately hard to block (div ids were 30-odd random
characters). I ended up canceling my subscription soon after.

------
solarkraft
Chrome user: "Let's check out website X"

Firefox user: "It's hopelessly broken"

------
gkya
I don't use an ad blocker. I have JS turned off, thus don't see ads. When I
encounter a website that's interesting enough to browse even though it does
not work w/o JS (rare), I open it up in Chromium (which I actually keep around
to use a couple web apps that I _have_ to use). And every time I do that I
realise what a huge piece of shit online publishing has become. Almost all
websites that publish professionally are just overengineered crapware, viable
only because the bubble that's the ads business. Luckily there's a sane subset
of the internet that I can use without thouching all this crap most of the
time. If their business model is failing due to us not turning around and
bending over, let it be so. Who cares, apart from them?

------
yosito
This discussion makes me wonder why I haven't seen more server side ad
solutions that render ads into a page in a way that's harder to detect or
block. Of course, advertisers could find ways to abuse that too and then
adblockers would have to up their game. I think the best strategy is to render
a fallback into your page that looks like an image related to your content and
then replace that image on they fly with unobtrusive ads that respect the user
experience. If people block the adds they'll see the fallback which is an
opportunity to plead your case to users and ask for donations, subscriptions
or permission to show respectful ads.

~~~
pritambaral
There have been attempts to render ads with the page. For example, Facebook
and some news sites do it. It's just that it is bad UX to not clearly mark ads
as ads. When Facebook launched sponsored ads and posts embedded in its feed,
it was only a short while before DOM-manipulating ad blockers could block it
because Facebook had to mark those "posts" as "sponsored".

~~~
yosito
That's a good point. But I think there are some ways around that which aren't
too intrusive. If you just render a fallback on the server side with a message
asking users to support you in some way, and then replace that fallback with
your ads, you can mark the ads as sponsored without having to mark the
fallback. And if you have image based ads, you could mark the image itself
using server-side processing to add some sort of watermark rather than a DOM-
based marker.

------
yakcyll
It strikes me in a weird way that power users are brought up in one of the
comments as the main users of Firefox. It's obviously a major stretch to argue
the counter-argument, that Chrome and others must be mostly used by casual
users, but the idea that those people are somehow more accepting of bullshit
UX is, well, just wrong. They are either even more frustrated, not knowing how
to deal with it, or have already developed habits to sieve the noise out,
definitely not bringing any additional advertisement revenue.

------
leephillips
I recently switched from uBlock origin to using a hosts file (there are
several going around; I got mine from
[http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/](http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/)). This
seems to work better, overall, although uBlock origin was quite good. Less
fuss, smaller resource usage. I'm happy to view self-hosted ads, but don't
feel bad about blocking connections to a list of sites that track, invade
privacy, or worse.

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stuaxo
If it's a small fix, just drop it into some other change and don't mention it.

Sometimes it's the only way to do the right thing is in spite of management.

~~~
Stephen304
I get the feeling that this user is either trolling or not being honest about
their position on this. Or both.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/8hhss1/is_it_worth...](https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/8hhss1/is_it_worth_supporting_firefox/dykmd45/?context=10000)

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Net-effects
Like in a Comic, 'seeking minimising differences'-user: But buying/downloading
runs in browsers - so the browser is like a shopping mall and the net-effect
(of internet shopping) is: 'dying inner city shops, franchise shops, empty
shopping malls...-but wait it happens in your community, hey! - abstract
yourself (-;

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onyva
I agree with the comment above. Most of the sites that exist to drive revenue
from traffic (content farms and such) are essentially dispensable. If they
don’t work I won’t be back. If it’s a service, there will always be a
competitor. The only one getting screwed here is the business not taking care
to support all would be customers.

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daemin
A lot of the comments on the article remind me of the time people put those
little gifs on their homepage to note that "optimised for Netscape Navigator"
or "optimised for IE". Nice to see that Chrome is today's IE.

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wybiral
I block content [1] on Chrome but maybe I'm in a smaller group.

[1] Not ads. Just scripts and other potentially dangerous stuff but since most
ads use scripts I generally block ads.

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nukeop
This is a totalitarian publisher's wet dream, to strongarm users to pay them
or look at they ads whether they like it or not. If somebody's using
adblockers, they're not going to be converted by your ads either way. If you
introduce bothersome mechanisms preventing me from interacting with your
website on my terms, I'm just going to leave and never come back.

This is exactly why we need Firefox and other browsers, so that Google can't
dictate what the web has to look like. They'd like to ideally introduce a
tracking id in everything you ever do everywhere, it's up to us to stop them.

Anyway, no matter what kind of mechanism is introduced, there will be an equal
and proportionate response to mitigate it within a week. You can't force
people to watch ads they don't care about, and that's it. The sooner you
accept it, the smaller losses you'll incur.

