
In a swipe at Chrome, Firefox now blocks ad trackers by default - whalabi
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/firefox-browser-cookie-blocking-default
======
newscracker
Those who want a world where Firefox has a higher market share and mind share,
please consider doing the following:

1\. Evangelize Firefox to people you know any chance you get and show them all
the reasons why its better than Chrome (focus on privacy as an important
point). Show them how great browsing can be with a few key extensions (like
uBlock Origin, Containers, Privacy Possum, etc.). This does not imply that
Mozilla is beyond criticism or that Firefox should not be held to a higher
standard.

2\. If you can, donate money to Mozilla regularly. [1] As of a couple of years
ago (IIRC), more than 90% of Mozilla's revenue was from its partnership with
Google for being the default search engine in many geographies. As long as
this remains true, Google will only tolerate Firefox being a viable competitor
while Firefox still remains as small to moderately sized competition (to avoid
antitrust action). If/when Firefox gains a much larger piece of the market,
Google will (as it has been doing all these years) even more forcefully use
its money and marketing muscle on all its properties as well as add more tiny
annoyances on its properties to make Firefox seem buggy citing tangential
things like "web standards" or "pushing the web forward" and other euphemisms
that companies like Google use to crush competition.

IMO, there needs to be a lot more individual funding of Mozilla while keeping
it accountable to users and as per its own manifesto. The level of competition
among browsers right now leaves us all vulnerable.

Edit: After seeing a reply to this comment, I did a quick search and found
that donating money to Mozilla means donating to the Mozilla Foundation, and
that the money may not go to funding Firefox development, which is part of
Mozilla Corporation. See this discussion from December 2018 on reddit. [2] It
may be desirable for at least part of the donation (as decided by Mozilla
Corporation) to go to Firefox development. Does it already happen that way or
is there a way to get this result, like in the case of Mozilla Thunderbird
where donations go to that project (alone)?

[1]: [https://donate.mozilla.org](https://donate.mozilla.org)

[2]:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/a98gmi/donations_t...](https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/a98gmi/donations_to_mozilla_foundation_are_not_used_for/)

~~~
skocznymroczny
Is there some way to ensure the donation money will actually go to Firefox and
not to some sort of "diversity" campaign?

~~~
interactivecode
Yikes why would you not want companies investing in diversity? Especially if
they are the interface to our online world?

~~~
avip
Possibly because affirmative diversity could be seen as incompatible with
meritocracy.

~~~
mcv
But a lack of diversity is a sign of a lack of meritocracy: clearly not all
talent gets an equal chance to flourish. Trying to get more talent on board is
valuable.

~~~
hgoel
A lack of diversity isn't in and of itself a sign of a lack of meritocracy,
and nor is simply increasing diversity a sign of meritocracy.

It's misguided to think that by manually ensuring diversity (eg. By hiring
someone for simply being a qualified minority rather than necessarily the best
candidate) is pushing for meritocracy.

If diversity programs were interested in maintaining meritocracy while
increasing diversity, they'd focus their energy on uplifting poor families
through things like training or scholarship programs so their kids have a
better shot at life.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
That's the usual line, that assume _no qualified minority candidates exist_.
Which is, at root, a biased assumption already.

E.g. Stanford (used to) vigorously recruited qualified minority candidates to
help improve diversity on campus.

~~~
hgoel
Isn't explicitly choosing based on their race also making the same
assumptions? That there aren't enough minority candidates, and thus they need
to explicitly force more of them in? After all, why would there be any bias if
selections were completely merit based (that is, blind to race and sex) unless
the pools being drawn from were themselves biased? The best way to get around
biases in the hiring process obviously being to avoid informing hiring
managers about the identities of candidates, instead of emphasizing it even
more.

My assumption was that not enough qualified minority candidates exist,
obviously there are qualified minority candidates, just not enough, thus why
they aren't as equally represented in the field in question.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Its sophistry, to say "to combat race bias, you are using race bias! That's
just as bad!"

Of course one is in service to bigotry, and the other to equality. That makes
them pretty different.

If you're driving down the road, and your car pulls slightly to the right, you
steer slightly to the left to compensate. Sure, we'd all like a car that
steers straight. But it doesn't. So we steer slightly to one side.

~~~
johnisgood
I do not understand your analogy. Are you implying that we cannot be unbiased?
I do agree with that, however, what is this diversity thing, fighting over
biases or preferences (sides)? I do not understand how one side is bigotry,
and the other is equality. It seems like it is just a matter of POV. When you
are steering to the left, the right is in service of bigotry, and when you are
steering to the right, the left is in service of bigotry. Additionally,
according to your analogy, it seems like that everyone - including the people
who say they prefer "equality" \- is actually not steering straight, just to a
different side.

It would be great if the people who preach we should not discriminate based on
ethnicity, religion, and so forth would actually stop doing that, and start
paying more attention to skills, which is actually more relevant to the job.
It seems like that they do not wish (or at the very least do not, regardless
of intent) to stop discriminating, they just steer to a different side.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Because one side attempts to ease societal bias by including folks often
overlooked. The other attempts to perpetuate this system, keeping an
underclass.

The old tired argument that "It's just another sort of bias!" is bankrupt. Its
a sort of bias that seeks to repair real problems, not keep them.

------
fnord77
> The block might appeal to users, but is potentially worrying to publishers

Yes, let's have pity on these poor publishers who are relentless infiltrating
and measuring our online lives so they can squeeze a few more bucks out of the
data grab.

Trackers have gotten insidious. I have privacy badger and on one particular
news site there were 36 distinct trackers. And somehow they're still getting
around the blockers because I'm getting ads and suggestions correlating to
some activity I did on a completely different device.

This business model is toxic and I really hope all the companies using it
either pivot or go bankrupt.

~~~
fouric
Wired is a (particularly) tracking-reliant publisher, so I'm not particularly
surprised that they adopted this tone.

I also hope that any sort of tracking-based business model goes extinct.
Unfortunately, in the case of online publishing, consumers have repeatedly
rejected micropayments (most recently Blendle[1]), which I believe is the only
viable alternative.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blendle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blendle)

~~~
WorldMaker
Traditional media never needed individual tracking for advertisements nor
"micropayments". Just because we have the technology to track advertisement
spends to the exact person doesn't mean we have to. Just because we because we
have the technology charge (fractions of) pennies per article read doesn't
invalidate the traditional subscriber model.

(In fact both microtargeting and micropayments are arguably much worse, less
stable business models from the perspective of a publisher. Y "demographic" or
"universal" advertisers at a steady monthly ad buy with X subscribers at a
steady monthly spend is an easy formula to forecast future revenue from.
O(X).Y micro-targeted ad buys with X readers at O(X).Z articles per month, is
almost entirely impossible to forecast with any accuracy.)

~~~
FussyZeus
This so much. We had large media organizations and publishers of
news/magazines/television/radio for decades and in some instances, centuries,
before targeted advertising was even a thing. Traditional advertising is now
nearly dead because it's worthless and as a result, media orgs have had to
rely increasingly on these creepy as hell targeting advertising systems. Why?

We as consumers never agreed to this. We were never even asked. Make the
entire industry illegal, and publishers will revert to traditional
advertisement. Again and again it's been made clear that the ad tech industry
cannot be trusted with our data, so why do we continue allowing it to collect
it and use it to show us crap we don't want?

Throw it all in the garbage. The whole damn thing.

------
aldanor
Started using Firefox half a year ago because of a single plugin:
__TreeStyleTab __\- which lets you keep a tree of your tabs in a sidebar on
the left (I tend to keep a hundred or so open all the time). I have no idea
how I 've lived without it for so long...

Since then, Firefox has been gaining some momentum + performance and add
tracking, surely not planning to switch back to Chrome/Safari anytime soon.

~~~
_coveredInBees
Yep, I've been using TreeStyleTabs for years and years and it is the single
most useful addon I have ever used in my life and is also what will keep me
using Firefox over every other browser indefinitely. Every other browser feels
like a toy without TST. I'd highly recommend everyone check out TST and give
it a whirl. It is especially useful when you are researching something on the
web due to how well it supports hierarchical, collapsible tab groupings.

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-
ta...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/)

------
shadykiller
Switched to Firefox a few months back. Havn’t missed Chrome at all

~~~
a254613e
To offer a bit of an opposite view here on HN:

I give firefox a shot from time to time. I switch all devices to it, and then
I use it exclusively all the time.

My most recent attempt failed few days ago, after a bit more than a month with
it.

Firefox performance just doesn't feel the same as chrome, from constant small
freezes, to using 100% CPU pretty often.

And just overall experience on some platforms - especially macOS doesn't feel
native at all. On top of that some websites don't support it that good (not
Firefox's fault here - but I don't want to deal with that day to day).

Firefox also seemed snappier on the first few runs, but as the time went on I
didn't find it faster or feeling less bloated than chrome as a lot of people
like to portray it.

Chrome for me, as an average user, does not have any of these downsides. The
closest to a downside for some people you could pin to chrome is that it's
owned by google.

At the end of the day, chrome gets the job done, and does it without being in
my way, on all the platforms I use, - and that's what I want from a browser,
so for now I'm sticking with chrome.

~~~
iamnotacrook
"Firefox performance just doesn't feel the same as chrome, from constant small
freezes, to using 100% CPU pretty often"

I don't get those problems, but even if I did, it would be _well_ worth it as
opposed to seeing ads all the time. If Google wanted me to uninstall Firefox
forever and use Chrome they'd allow for plug-ins for Chrome (on Android).
While they don't I'll simply never switch. I have no idea how people tolerate
ads.

~~~
dhimes
The only sites that give me problems now are ones like Accuweather that try to
load media connected to third-party trackers. Firefox won't load them (and I
decline to change the settings) and the site fails.

For those sites, and others that are intrusive, if you need them, you can use
containers. I use containers for things like Twitter and Facebook.

------
someonenice
Already lot of sites are not tested on Firefox and many explicitly so [1]. Now
the web publishers that rely on ads will have less incentive to support
Firefox. They might even actively promote other browsers. Similar to how IE
was discouraged by websites explicitly.

"This site works best on Chrome" is only what is needed now to reduce the
Firefox userbase further.

Note - This comment was typed on firefox.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17363721](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17363721)

~~~
Semaphor
Meanwhile, in Germany, Firefox is at a stable 25-26% (according to
statcounter)

If you are offering services to us, you probably can’t afford to ignore FF. If
you are a German company, that goes double.

~~~
wutbrodo
Is that true? I'm not speaking morally here, but pragmatically: 25% of German
GDP is a little under a trillion dollars, or about 1% of global GDP. I know
there are plenty of problems to nitpick with this rough model, eg that
developed countries are often targeted first, but even limiting to OECD
countries only yields 1.5% of GDP.

Europe-wide figures would be more relevant, but it's tough for me to see any
company that isn't Germany-specific (or at best, regional) caring much about a
fraction of the userbase of a country whose GDP is itself a fraction of
potential markets.

Now don't get me wrong, businesses that are Germany-only are still pretty
massive objectively, but it doesn't seem like that would be enough to move the
needle on the way the Web ecosystem develops. German (eg) bank support for FF
seems like not much more than a regional technological quirk, like if you
found out that Kazakhstan's banks only worked well on IE6

------
burtonator
Serious question. Say I have a site and I want to track users. Do I have to
just do this via my own HTTP logs now if I want this working with Firefox? I
mean this is how it was done in the bad old days.

I have no nefarious intent. I just need to figure out what features my users
are using so I can fix them if they're broken.

It would be nice to possibly get some sort of explicit opt-in from Firefox.

I guess one workaround I could have is to call the analytics APIs on my server
directly...

Talking to our users their main complaint isn't necessarily that I'm tracking
them more that the data is going to Google so maybe the solution is to run
mixpanel.

~~~
wccrawford
Yeah, I'd say you have to implement your own tracking system instead of using
an off-the-shelf one. Either from your logs, or from code that you write,
server- or client-side.

------
paulcarroty
After couple of days with Brave/Chromium testing on my Linux machines, I
definitely should say: Firefox is really __SLOW __, it feels without any
benchmarks.

So, Mozilla has two ways:

1\. Build a really fast browser. 2\. Die as Internet Explorer.

It's realistic way to handle things. People don't care about privacy in
general, browser is too complex to build for privacy/security activists only.
Time to focus on business instead promoting services like Pocket & including
Google analytics in addons page.

Do or die.

~~~
arriu
It's not always Firefox's fault. Some websites literally serve different HTML
to Firefox, Google services are a good example.

~~~
dhimes
I use Chrome for Google properties (GSuite); FF for everything else, including
youtube. I find FF works great.

------
iliketosleep
It's going to be interesting to see where this ends up. Ads are inevitable,
and in some ways beneficial to both content providers and consumers (i.e.
revenue can be earned from users without any direct payment). But are invasive
forms of tracking such as 3rd party cookies really that necessary? Could
websites survive using only contextual advertising without the excessive
tracking?

~~~
leggomylibro
The ads that I find most useful are the ones which mimic olde
newspaper/magazine ads by simply showing things relevant to their general
readership.

The advertisers don't need to know a thing about me, they just need to know
the general demographics and interests of the publication.

For example, the ads on this blog[1] are far more relevant and less
invasive/annoying than anything that Google ever showed me before I started
aggressively blocking ad networks. I assume that it is because the blog knows
what I am interested in better than Google does, simply because I voluntarily
go to their website and read their content.

[1]: [https://hackaday.com/](https://hackaday.com/)

~~~
gear54rus
Consider this though, would those marketing schmucks invest that much money
into dystopian tracking on the web if they didn't have the data to back it up?

The problem is in the user. They do this because we let them. Spread the
adblock around your non-technical peers whenever you can.

~~~
raxxorrax
I think this phenomenon has also a lot to do with self marketing of ad
agencies. To stand out against the numerous competitors, they want to provide
as much information as possible to their clients about potential customers,
target groups, etc.

I agree that we should block those even harder. The bad side is that
whitelisting sites doesn't work well and well behaved actors are punished too.
Especially those, since they do not employ measures against blocking in the
first place. That does cost those sites that you actually do want to support.

So the current situation is that bad actors ruin it for everyone.

------
brianpgordon
Ironic- [https://i.imgur.com/jBMKcN5.png](https://i.imgur.com/jBMKcN5.png)

------
onyva
Great news though I do think adblocking should be built into the browser,
rather than left to extensions and 3rd party services. The internet should be
taken back from AdTech agencies (Google, AdBuddy AKA Brave). Maybe add to the
rumored premium version something like Nextdns?

~~~
adangert
If adblocking is left up to the browser than companies who own the browser
have a financial incentive to let certian ads from paying companies through,
as has been seen by adblock plus, and the proposed built in chrome ad blocking
(which would obviously never block Google's own ads for any reason). Conflicts
of interest should be separated into different independent organizations.

Chrome mobile not allowing extensions and therefore adblockers is a crime.
There are different revenue sources other than ads (patreon or crypto
micropayments for instance) which might evolve as the next means of payment
for the internet and search engines. Google purposefully stopping the growth
of new technology in order to grasp at an increasingly shrinking past is
hurting the end user and is evil.

~~~
onyva
I don't see that with Firefox. Google "blocking" ads in Chrome is of course
not serious and not something that's done to protect users. Mozilla is not an
ad company like Google (or the wanna be new Google, Brave). But I do think
it's a core service a browser should offer, both for privacy reasons, but also
environmental and esthetics. We've seen the carbon footprint of processing
spam mail, I'm sure ads (which nobody wants or even pays attention to) are
even worse.

~~~
Synaesthesia
Mozilla gets a lot of money from its partnership with google. That’s why
google search is the default on Firefox. Google probably wouldn’t want them to
block all their ads.

~~~
onyva
I understand that but I do think it should be something Mozilla should offer,
even if it’s a premium service only. The web should not be held hostage by
AdTech imho, and as a non for profit Mozilla should be able to generate
revenue (and before the Mozilla Corp people jump in, for operations and r&d)
from essential services centered around online privacy (cloud storage, vpn,
dns etc) with like minded 3rd parties.

~~~
jdnenej
Why would anyone pay for Mozilla to do adblocking when they could install an
ad blocker for free.

~~~
onyva
Part of a premium package. I would pay for something like NextDNS as part of a
NextCloud based storage and apps, for example.

------
kerkeslager
Just to be clear, what are we specifically talking about here? Does this mean
that `privacy.firstparty.isolate` is now set to true by default?

------
FreeHugs
As I understand it, they do _not_ block the tracking scripts. What they do is
that they do not accept their cookies.

This does not change anything for me:

1) I do not keep cookies around anyhow

2) I use umatrix to not run known evil scripts in the first place

I am not sure if it changes anything for the average user either. I would
assume ad companies already use fingerprinting?

------
Kiro
I must be the only person in the world who likes being tracked and getting
tailored ads. I've found lots of things I've bought due to ads that were
obviously targeted at me specifically.

~~~
oriettaxx
yes, this is an old story, but it has been already solved: strong tailored ads
are tailored not on your will, but on the seller's will, who tailor ads to be
able to sell to you: so at the end of the story it is not your free will and
somebody helping you to pursue it.

More deeply you risk to miss what could really be the best for you, for what
is the best for somebody else.

------
tracker1
Why I hate are when sites tether their interactions to their
tracking/analytics system... a failure for the analytics script should not
prevent pressing 'Login' from working properly. This one is as much on
developers as the ad/tracking scripts. When I've worked for public entities, I
always went extra to make sure things worked well for users with ads disabled.
Even so far as to make sure ad slots didn't even display the placeholders.

------
jjohansson
Does it block all newish variants of the google analytics snippet?

~~~
chinathrow
It does not block Google Analytics per se. It only blocks the cookie being
attached to the used tracking pixel.

Source: verified on own site in v69. Page views show up fine in GA but the
browser displays the new warning shield.

~~~
jjohansson
Thank you! I guess that means Google’s client ID is lost, so attribution will
be muddled. I wonder if each page view is treated as its own single-page
session?

------
rajangdavis
Not sure how profitable it would be, but if Mozilla created a privacy-focused
email client, I would consider leaving the Google ecosystem.

~~~
rypskar
Like Mozilla Thunderbird? Like most email clients it blocks loading external
resources by default. Or am I missing something?

~~~
rajangdavis
I meant to say a browser based client but I will look into Thunderbird a bit
more.

I misunderstood the purpose of Thunderbird - it's marketed as a messaging app,
which it is, but I didn't realize it did email as well.

~~~
jdnenej
I have been using thunderbird for years and didn't even know it did IM. It
does a decent job at email and calender stuff.

------
needle0
Chromium monoculture is bad, therefore use Firefox. That's pretty much all
there really is to it. Everything else is a distraction.

------
mkonecny
Just installed version 69 on my Thinkpad T540p with Debian 9.9.

I'm going back to Chrome. Firefox still lags on my machine after all these
years. Even with a single tab and on their own initial launch page, scrolling
performed a "caterpillar" effect where only the top half scrolled, and the
bottom half jumped to catch up a split second later

------
johnchristopher
Won't publishers just outright block Firefox from displaying their websites
and suggests chrome or others for "enhanced and better experience" ?

Firefox has a market share small enough that publishers and the ad industry
could try to just reduce ff usage with a coordinated campaign.

------
Hitton
Call me cynic and selfish, but I kinda like when people who don't care about
their privacy essentially subsidise my browsing on websites that track their
users. Now they will have even bigger incentive to invent new tracking
mechanism.

------
thorn
I would love to if FF could handle Amazon.com without boiling my MBP2013. Is
it a bug in FF or just Amazon did not care to optimize their shit?

Is there a way to figure out the performance's origin in FF somehow?

~~~
carey
It’s probably
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1574538](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1574538),
so you could try Firefox Nightly and see if there’s any improvement.

------
ljw1001
i really wanted to use Firefox, so I switched recently. It lasted about 3
hours. Every time I tried to Google something I got a warning that Google was
a dangerous site because of their self-signed certificate (seriously? Google
should be on the list of trusted certificate signers, no matter what you think
of their business model).

Then it asked if I wanted to trust them. I answered yes, repeatedly, yet the
error message reappeared over and over again. (really bad). I gave up.

A little more competence and I'm on board.

------
m3at
Relevant HN thread from yesterday:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20866084](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20866084)

------
acd
Is the ad tracking also blockad in Firefox mobile?

~~~
chrisjc
From what I understand, Firefox Mobile isn't one thing. On iOS it's safari
under the surface. On Android it's a distinct code-base.

There might not be the level of control that you speak of in the iOS variant.

------
tripzilch
In a swipe at its users, Chrome doesn't.

------
aussieguy1234
these tracking scripts are essentially malware, maybe browser vendors could
store hashes of these scripts in the same way an antivirus stores hashes of
viruses.

Then block the scripts, do a daily update of the latest hashes as they appear.
Include an option for expert users to report new scripts.

~~~
jdnenej
Last I saw the Firefox blocker had a domain block list for removing the ad
scripts. It's not as effective as other tracker blockers which heuristics but
it's less likely to break the page for users.

~~~
aussieguy1234
if domain blocking because widespread, I wouldn't be surprised if tracking
vendors ask their users to self host their scripts

~~~
icebraining
Self-hosted scripts are less useful for tracking, since a cookie generated on
a visit to site A won't be visible when the user visits site B. So if vendors
switch to that, it's good news.

------
hanniabu
A big reason why I stick with Chrome is because Firefox's menu pisses me off
how it's this popup box with huge icon rather than Chrome's more traditional
list of text. Sounds stupid, but that's a big enough reason for me.

~~~
Grumbledour
I guess it just shows your privacy is not that important to you, which seems
always to be the point with many posters here who, while complaining loudly
about google, present rather minor reasons why they can't use firefox ever.

That being said, while I vaguely remember there being huge icons at some point
for a few versions, there aren't any now in my Firefox. Just a normal looking
menu with small icons on the left and text on the right. I can't promise this
is true for every platform, but maybe you want to take another look.

~~~
hanniabu
This is like saying that somebody doesn't care about privacy if they don't PGP
encrypt all their emails and messages. Convenience is always a factor.

~~~
Grumbledour
I don't think it is. If we talk using the browser of one of the worlds
foremost data collecting companies vs. mostly no tracking, if privacy is
important it should outrank most small to medium convenience factors.
Especially the ones that can easily be overcome by customization or
familiarity.

While I think everyone should value their privacy, I did not mean that as an
attack on you, but if a menu you never need to access once you learn some
shortcuts is just as important a factor as being tracked on everything you do,
you should reevaluate how important privacy really is to you.

------
qrbLPHiKpiux
I don’t believe any of it will help.

[https://twitter.com/Shadow0pz/status/1168284101675298816](https://twitter.com/Shadow0pz/status/1168284101675298816)

~~~
WilTimSon
Wow, this is terrifying on a whole new level. This kind of invasion isn't
anything new but I shudder every time I see it detailed. However, I don't see
anything about Firefox there? Should we really automatically presume that
Mozilla won't be able to deal with these issues just because other companies
couldn't? (Or, let's be honest, didn't bother to/had incentive not to?)

------
yeahforsureman
So...when is FF going to get proper site isolation?

------
Demigod33
Let's see whether Google pays less now to be the default search engine in
Firefox.

~~~
wstrange
The default search spot is a directed search with intent, so pretty valuable.

I think it will be a pragmatic business decision.

------
0xfffff
love it!

------
__b_tom_kasidy
Or we can all go to Brave or even better to Tor.

~~~
VistaBrokeMyPC
Tor browsing speed is a catch 22. Not enough users for ample bandwidth - >
users think it's too slow and don't use it - > not enough users

I've set up a relay myself, so I guess I did my part... But I wish more people
would see tor as a private browser, not a gateway to "drugs, CP, and
extremism'"

