LWN: Comments on "Fixing our broken internet"

Fixing our broken internet

bostjan — Tue, 17 Nov 2020 21:10:37 +0000

AFAIK, this only works in certain countries (IIRC in Slovenia the phone number is mandatory, unlike in Germany where it isn't).

Firefox for Android

james — Thu, 29 Oct 2020 09:31:00 +0000

Firefox has recently released a massively reworked version of Firefox for Android with support for only a few plugins. uMatrix isn't one of them.

The old Firefox for Android is no longer receiving security updates, effectively killing it.

Also, uMatrix's developer has stopped updating it, which is a great shame.

Fixing our broken internet

daenzer — Thu, 29 Oct 2020 08:32:31 +0000

I'm writing this on current Firefox 82 with uMatrix 1.4.0, which works fine, so I'm not sure what you're talking about.

Fixing our broken internet

rzaa — Mon, 26 Oct 2020 09:51:47 +0000

For google you can easily create new acc without number, but for this you will need one phone device (in may case it was old Samsung).

1. Factory reset
2. Create new google acc
3. Chose "I don't have phone number"
4. You have one acc
5. Goto 1 to create new acc

Facebook demands takedown of AdObserver

alison — Sun, 25 Oct 2020 04:17:54 +0000

https://www.sfchronicle.com/news/article/Facebook-demands...

"The company has long claimed protecting user privacy is its main concern, though NYU researchers say their tool is programmed so the data collected from participating volunteers is anonymous."

Fixing our broken internet

landley — Thu, 22 Oct 2020 02:16:23 +0000

A lot of places used to let you register an account without a phone number, and services that now require it for all new accounts (like twitter and gmail) have grandfathered in accounts that don't YET have a phone number, until the first hiccup where it puts up a modal "add a phone number to your account" dialog you can't exit from every time you try to use the service, and then your account is bricked unless you comply.

Fixing our broken internet

jrigg — Thu, 15 Oct 2020 09:14:14 +0000

> Calling medium a paragon of "unbreaking the internet" is not even funny; it is one of the most annoying pages to visit with their pop-ups.

It works without popups in Firefox with NoScript; it's also readable in JS-less browsers like Dillo.

I only enable JavaScript if there's a specific need for it, eg. online banking and shopping sites. Most of the web would be intolerable otherwise.

Fixing our broken internet

nrdxp — Sun, 11 Oct 2020 22:55:51 +0000

I’ve never given them my phone number and have had an account since first release...

Fixing our broken internet

flussence — Sun, 11 Oct 2020 13:04:29 +0000

>Child labour wasn't abolished because people grew a conscience, it was because the government said children should go to school and enforced it.

The version I've heard is that institutionalised education was actually a huge hit with the industrial capitalism of the early 20th century, because it delivers a housebroken workforce with homogeneous baseline ability for no extra cost to the boss, driving down workers' bargaining power and massively increasing profits. Can't have interchangeable cogs without first building the machine.

Fixing our broken internet

flussence — Sun, 11 Oct 2020 12:29:40 +0000

Nah.

I really can't trust this version of Mozilla, under its current leadership, beyond providing a basic web browser application (one which I note now has an entire cottage industry dedicated to thoroughly neutering it, so that it doesn't phone home a hundred different ways, advertise junkware like a worm-infested windows box, and drop little executable DRM turds in your home directory). I'm resigned to waiting for the company to collapse, and at best see the codebase picked up by someone that actually “gives a fck” about the web.

And I say that as someone who participated in all the “Spread Firefox” grassroots marketing mania back in the day. It's not at all the same company it started out as; there's no soul or community left, only greed, the smug ingratiating narcissism of Silicon Valley PHBs, and a never-ending torrent of these obliviously ironic, cringingly out of touch, rich-US-liberal feel-good shapes-and-colours infographics campaigns talking down to users in the same way corporations that can afford to take that tone do.

Sorry Mozilla, but it's *our* internet. Not *yours*. We tried Taking Back The Web™ on your behalf once already, and you dutifully took our efforts in beating Microsoft back off the field and surrendered it to Google one principle at a time, all while sneering that *you* weren't going to die on each hill but *we* weren't doing enough for the Open Web. If you want fixing then bring out the corporate suits and the marketdroids and we'll bring a bus to throw them under. A large slice of the population in 2020 wouldn't even consider that a metaphor.

Or in terms that perhaps their campaign manager can speak - TL;DR: NYPA, STFU.

Fixing our broken internet

rzaa — Sun, 11 Oct 2020 08:20:53 +0000

> protecting the privacy and security of their users
> ProtoMail

Is this a joke?
I cannot register a mailbox without a phone number, and also registration does not work through the Tor service.

Fixing our broken internet

needs — Sat, 10 Oct 2020 19:31:39 +0000

I'm not so sure about Google being able to outperform Mozilla regarding tech and web standard implementation. There is actually the workforce and the money for Mozilla to follow web evolution. That's not IMO the issue at play.

The issue is that Mozilla income comes from Google.

The next big move for a browser is to ship with a built-in ad blocker. That's a move Chrome will have a hard time to deal with. However as long as Mozilla is tied to Google it will never happen and Google will win.

Of course Firefox mobile will not be able to ship because Google also controls Android, but at least it will pave the way for a very interesting lawsuit. I can't see any other way for Mozilla to eventually fight for a better web.

Fixing our broken internet

amarao — Sat, 10 Oct 2020 18:24:58 +0000

They said one thing and done opposit. Recent version broke umatrix plugin, and internet without umatrix is like walking the street with unzipped pants. Too much visible and it's a shame.

Fixing our broken internet

busman — Sat, 10 Oct 2020 16:01:32 +0000

They can't win Google. Mozilla once won IE but that was more because Microsoft didn't understand what was going on and gave Mozilla years that were badly needed to stabilize their browser. Google will not make that mistake. Net is *their* platform and they will throw as many person-hours on it as needed to keep it that way. This Mozilla campaign is an effort to cling on to at least some portion of their former user base.

I don't see any major shifts coming out of it but maybe we should see this bunch of independent smallish companies as proto-mammals of dinosaur era. Maybe the asteroid comes or maybe it doesn't but at least they are there trying to cease the moment if it ever does happen :)

Fixing our broken internet

ibukanov — Sat, 10 Oct 2020 09:17:13 +0000

In 1950s much more children in Africa went to school than in Taiwan or South Korea. In fact there is no data that show that stopping child labor helps wellbeing of people in the country long-term.

What happens historically is that when a country became prosperous, it became affordable for society to pay for schools as a form of day-care for children.

Fixing our broken internet

NightMonkey — Fri, 09 Oct 2020 23:03:39 +0000

Ah. Wow. Yes, that was a badly done integration. Thank you.

Fixing our broken internet

dtlin — Fri, 09 Oct 2020 20:49:11 +0000

Yes, it sounds like you missed this controversy: https://lwn.net/Articles/650869/

Fixing our broken internet

NightMonkey — Fri, 09 Oct 2020 20:13:59 +0000

I actually only started using Pocket when I recently purchased a Kobo Forma eReader (which bundles Pocket), so I could read Web-based articles on it 'offline'. For that purpose, it's not so bad. :) I don't use Firefox (Chromium/Chrome), so perhaps I have just missed some badly-done integration there?

Fixing our broken internet

nilsmeyer — Fri, 09 Oct 2020 08:49:11 +0000

Maybe Mozilla should focus on unfcking the Mozilla Foundation first. The pay the chair receives is inversely correlated to the browser market share. They are getting rid of developers while having an enormous administrative overhead. Instead of focusing on failing side projects they should focus on making a better browser.

Fixing our broken internet

nilsmeyer — Fri, 09 Oct 2020 07:52:15 +0000

> That's historically inaccurate. Legislating against child labour only became politically possible once it had already become rare for economic reasons.

Also children who acquired disabilities from factory labor didn't make for good soldiers when conscripted...

> Similarly, if given the power to regulate the web, governments will use it to benefit their cronies, not the people.

The cynic in me would agree. If Facebook or Google were European companies we probably wouldn't have as stringent privacy laws.

Fixing our broken internet

ecree — Thu, 08 Oct 2020 17:43:26 +0000

> Child labour wasn't abolished because people grew a conscience, it was because the government said children should go to school and enforced it.

That's historically inaccurate. Legislating against child labour only became politically possible once it had already become rare for economic reasons.

Similarly, if given the power to regulate the web, governments will use it to benefit their cronies, not the people.

So while a perfect unincentivised philosopher-king might be able to enforce the changes you desire, 'real existing government' won't.

Fixing our broken internet

mathstuf — Thu, 08 Oct 2020 15:59:25 +0000

I've not seen Pocket in anything other than my "nothing done to it" profile I use to test whether it's my suite of extensions causing problems or not. Maybe I did an `about:config` change, but I don't remember it at least.

Fixing our broken internet

kleptog — Thu, 08 Oct 2020 14:31:28 +0000

No mention of the government, or is that a dirty word in this context? While I admire the idea of us individual consumers who care about this installing some extensions to collect more data and tweeting about it, real change is only going to happen when these huge companies are simply forced to change.

Child labour wasn't abolished because people grew a conscience, it was because the government said children should go to school and enforced it. The big companies didn't start giving you insight into the data they have on you because they woke up one morning and figured it'd be a neat idea.

There must be a strategy here, but I'm not seeing it.

Fixing our broken internet

hubcapsc — Thu, 08 Oct 2020 14:02:18 +0000

I use firefox, privacy badger and have never had a
facebook account. I just went to youtube and scrolled
through a few pages. You don't seem to be able to get
to "the bottom", more just keeps coming :-) ... Anywho...
besides a few ads and a couple of lines that everybody
probably gets (?) "breaking news" and "latest youtube posts",
everything was stuff I'd like to look at... people playing
guitars, John Wayne and Gunsmoke and Breaking Bad,
motorcycles... I don't know why there was one of a sheep jumping
on a trampoline and then there seemed to be one of
some naked person running track, I didn't look at it, maybe
a motorcycle was chasing her?

I saw a link on my motorcycle forum (no facebook, but I
do look at a motorcycle forum and an acoustic guitar forum
and a truck forum, the old fashioned forums remind me of usenet
groups) to the Hodge Twins, and I thought they were funny, so I
looked at a couple more. Youtube started recommending
their videos to me. It wasn't long before I realized they were
repetitive and profane, so I quit looking and youtube noticed
and quit recommending them.

So... I'm not foo-fooing the idea that the Internet is
kind of broken, but I like the recommendations I get by
youtube's tracking of what I look at. I picked Billy Strings
and Steely Dan and they recommended Reina del Cid.
I don't know why I'd have ever looked at one of her videos
otherwise...

-Mike

Fixing our broken internet

MattBBaker — Thu, 08 Oct 2020 13:40:48 +0000

I've only seen Pocket as unwelcome crapware. Everyone else I talk to feels the same. I try disabling it but any update re-enables it. Been looking for browser alternatives.

Fixing our broken internet

mcatanzaro — Thu, 08 Oct 2020 13:39:01 +0000

> That should not come as a huge surprise since the other major browsers come from companies that stand to profit from surveillance capitalism.

WebKit's stance (which applies to Safari, the world's second most-popular web browser): https://webkit.org/tracking-prevention-policy

Fixing our broken internet

jlicht — Thu, 08 Oct 2020 10:26:31 +0000

How does pocket embody any of these qualities? Has it finally been made open source, as promised years ago?

Calling medium a paragon of "unbreaking the internet" is not even funny; it is one of the most annoying pages to visit with their pop-ups.

Fixing our broken internet

LtWorf — Thu, 08 Oct 2020 09:30:02 +0000

On facebook, continuously, a few weeks ago, for multiple weeks, I'd get suggestions to join pro donald trump/ivanka trump groups. They were supposedly not paid ads, just group suggestions based of my preferences of being a leftist who doesn't live in USA.

I also once got an ad for prostitutes on fb, but that got removed almost immediately and I only saw it once.

Fixing our broken internet

mkubecek — Thu, 08 Oct 2020 06:43:21 +0000

Internet? Sounds more like web - and only specific part of it.

Not that Internet wouldn't also deserve some "unfcking". But that would be a completely different topic.

Fixing our broken internet

himi — Thu, 08 Oct 2020 01:29:15 +0000

Aside from the free link feature, it's also worth noting that all LWN content becomes free a week after it goes into the weekly update - while this may well be a timely article, it's not going to age much in a week.

Fixing our broken internet

am — Thu, 08 Oct 2020 00:56:27 +0000

At the bottom of each paid LWN article, there's a "Send a free link" button specifically for that purpose.

https://lwn.net/op/FAQ.lwn#slinks

Fixing our broken internet

frispete — Thu, 08 Oct 2020 00:51:29 +0000

I would like to share this article with some of my colleagues and family, but they are not subscribers.
To live up to the spirit of the article, you might want to reconsider the $ for this particular case.