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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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Firefox enables user tracking (mstdn.social)

submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

114 comments fedilink hide all child comments

... I mean, WTF. Mozilla, you had one job ...

Edit:

Just to add a few remarks from the discussions below:

As long as Firefox is sponsored by 'we are not a monopoly' Google, they can provide good things for users. Once advertisement becomes a real revenue stream for Mozilla, the Enshittification will start.
For me it is crossing the line when your browser is spying on you and if 'we' accept it, Mozilla will walk down this path.
This will only be an additional data point for companies spying on you, it will replace none of the existing methodologies. Learn about fingerprinting for example
Mozilla needs to make money/find a business model, agreed. Selling you out to advertisement companies cannot be it.
This is a very transparent attempt of Mozilla to be the man in the middle selling ads, despite the story they tell. At that point I can just use Chrome, Edge or Safari, at least Google has expertise and the money to protect my data and sadly Chrome is the most compatible browser (no fault of Mozilla/Firefox of course).
Mozilla massively acts against the interests of their little remaining user base, which is another dumb move made by a leadership team earning millions while kicking out developers and makes me wonder what will be next.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

            
              Concerning advertisement: I want the option to pay for content for myself, I do not want or intent to force this on other users. Although Netflix is moving in a bad direction, in the past I could pay their service and watch a movie/show w/o advertisement. I totally would not mind if Netflix lets me pay a reasonable amount and give other users the option to have a free, advertisement based plan.
One related fact: Even payed newspapers etc. since the start of the industries always relied on money from advertisement, there was AFAIK never an outlet which could survive on subscriptions/payed readers alone
Fair point about Mozilla not selling your data. But when you phrase it like this, Alphabet/Meta etc. are also not really selling your data (which is their golden goose, after all). I'll still correct this.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Netflix pricing is quite reasonable already. The industry sucks, splitting subscription services into silos instead of taking on the music streaming model, but shows and movies are terribly expensive to make. People who get ads on Netflix are the ones without the income to pay the full amount, or who don't care about ads I suppose.

I think the Meta/Google comparison doesn't hold water. The protocol in use here intentionally hides information about you specifically, whereas Google and Facebook will let advertisers gather information about specific users (based on some filters, like age and market demographic) once the advertisement has been shown.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Good points, but again: I would assume advertisers track/fingerprint you anyway, so we are not speaking about getting anonymized information from Mozilla but IMHO we are speaking about getting one more data point about you, which is easy to de-anonymize in combination with the rest of the information known about you.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

The whole point of this system is that you're not being tracked by advertisers. They don't get any additional information on you specifically through this system. Their existing tracking infrastructure and the data they receive from Mozilla cannot be linked together.