But honestly it comes down to this: in one you have an option to disable stuff you dont like, in the other you hope there will an option. You can guess which is which.
Yes, it's annoying to disable Firefox suggestions. The company shouldn't be doing it, it is a violation of trust. Yes, it is hypocritical for Mozilla to talk about privacy and then to run these experiments. But you won't be able to run uBO at all in Chrome.
Even if the settings were getting constantly unchecked over and over, and even if the end result was that you had to check your Firefox settings every single day, that's still a better position to be in than not being able to do anything about the advertising even on a short-term basis.
If I have to constantly remind someone over and over again not to slap me in the face, I am going to be annoyed at that person. That person's behavior is bad. But it's still going to be easier to deal that person than with someone who just starts slapping me and refuses to even temporarily stop no matter what I say or do. I still have more agency when dealing with the first person than I have when dealing with the second.
This doesn't feel temporary if I routinely have to study the Firefox settings to find out what new ways they have found to violate my trust.
And actually, I don't really like the idea of ad blockers, they do seem rather bad faith to me. I don't like ads, but Google is ad supported, I do a search, I go to Google, I accept the ads, they're part of the deal.
Firefox though, they get plenty of money from Google when I search via the Firefox search box. If they were having cashflow problems I would understand, but they're going to look for alternative revenue streams from AccuWeather? As if being in bed with Google weren't bad enough they're like "how can we work with more companies that solely exist to gatekeep access to public data." But being in bed with Google at least makes sense, I don't see a better way to provide the service. And similarly for Google, I don't see how they could run YouTube without ads, I get their motivation here.
> This doesn't feel temporary if I routinely have to study the Firefox settings to find out what new ways they have found to violate my trust.
I mentioned this already:
> If I have to constantly remind someone over and over again not to slap me in the face, I am going to be annoyed at that person. That person's behavior is bad. But it's still going to be easier to deal that person than with someone who just starts slapping me and refuses to even temporarily stop no matter what I say or do. I still have more agency when dealing with the first person than I have when dealing with the second.
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> And actually, I don't really like the idea of ad blockers, they do seem rather bad faith to me.
Then just say that :) Why come on here and trying to create an equivalence if your actual point is that you don't mind what Chrome is doing? From a privacy and unsolicited advertising point of view, Chrome is worse than Firefox.
If you don't mind unsolicited advertising, then sure, use whatever you want. But it feels vaguely disingenuous to phrase "I'm OK with Google advertising to me" as "there's no point switching to Firefox if you don't want ads."
> Firefox though, they get plenty of money from Google when I search via the Firefox search box.
If your position is that Firefox is flush with cash and doesn't require any additional revenue streams, but you worry that Google is a struggling business that will kill Youtube if you install uBlock Origin, then I have very good news for you about Google's annual profits.
I don't understand someone complaining about Firefox being in bed with Google if they don't have an issue with Google's advertising. The reason we don't like that Firefox is in bed with Google is because we don't like Google. If we liked Google, we might even want the companies to be in bed together.
Similarly, if your view of Mozilla showing unsolicited sponsored content is that they're "getting in bed" with AccuWeather, then I have really bad news about how the entirety of Google Ads as a platform works. If you're morally offended that Firefox is working with one closed down weather forecaster, just wait until you find out that Google is currently taking money from all of the closed down weather forecasters. That is how Google Ads works, Google "gets in bed" with those companies and shows you sponsored content from those companies whenever you do a web search.
And I understand being upset that Mozilla would do the same thing, but Mozilla is still strictly speaking doing a lot less of this stuff than Google is.
Mozilla should be working on doing none of this stuff, not resting on doing less. I expect that from Google, they're a for-profit company offering a closed-source for-profit browser. Yes, I hold Mozilla to a higher standard.
Okay. That's not controversial, I have higher standards for Mozilla too. It makes me angry when they act hypocritically.
This is still factually false:
> Unfortunately Firefox is just as caught up in enforcing unsolicited web advertising.
And sticking with a browser that is worse on the issue of advertising just because the better browser is a bit hypocritical is cutting off your own nose to spite your face. You can be mad at Mozilla, that's fine. Just don't tell people that Chrome and Firefox are the same when they're not.
Look, the reason why people get angry at Mozilla about this and why they shrug at Google is because Mozilla is not as caught up in advertising as Google is. If Mozilla was actually equivalent to Google, then we wouldn't hold Mozilla to a higher standard than Google. We treat the two companies differently because they are different.
I would like to be able to leave studies on to participate without having my trust violated. Part of me is willing to chalk this up to an error, but it feels bad faith and there is a definite pattern of Mozilla adding new intrusions that they know are not welcome without asking.
But honestly it comes down to this: in one you have an option to disable stuff you dont like, in the other you hope there will an option. You can guess which is which.