Firefox v128+
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OK, but I’m running Firefox 131. And it let me avoid Google as the default search engine provider and it then let me remove Google as a search engine provider (so that accidents are not even possible).
If Google / Firefox were truly evil and all of the above is just theatre (e.g. a search pretends to go via Wikipedia or Bing, but actually just goes to Google) then eventually I would notice it in my DNS logs (and, sure, I understand that if they were truly truly evil, they could bypass my DNS server without telling me).
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Are you talk about url searching?
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I’m talking about
Edit/Settings
Search
Default Search Engine and Search Shortcuts
and their effect on the Address bar (where you type a URL or a search) and on the Search bar (where you type a search). Some (most?) users don’t even enable the Search bar, which I believe is not enabled by default.
(If I had my choice, I would completely remove all search functionality from the Address bar. So Address bar is for addresses and Search bar is for searches.)
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I think this is quite an aggressive stance.
If someone states an uninformed opinion, that’s not trolling if it is their true, real, uninformed opinion… right?
As an example, I heard that Firefox makes 80% of their revenue from Google - because it’s so important to Google to control the default search provider - and so that money is given in the name of changing default search.
So although I did not read the source code of Firefox in any great depth, when I learned to understand 80% of Firefox revenue is from Google, I then anticipate from a distance that now Firefox would have a big incentive to cater to Google, both publicly and privately. Google might have more money than I do, and thus more manpower to hide security holes in plain sight via contributions to Firefox in the name of gain-of-feature.
And I can state this uninformed opinion – that Google might be doing this and might be outsmarting me with their superior manpower.
If I then make this declaration, that I see this likelihood for an abuse of their influence, and I have concerns it might be happening, and almost at times feels likely to me that it would be happening… Isn’t that… not trolling at all? It feels to me that this is very far from trolling. It is a form of sharing a legitimate concern. Or stated differently, I may be legitimately concerned even if you believe that the basis for my concerns was not founded upon legitimate evidence. (So, it seems right and reasonable that I be allowed to tell the story that I was legitimately concerned, even if it was based upon bad reasoning that I became concerned.)
And if you ask me to point to Firefox line 1472 in code where it says, if (dlonk) { outsmart(dlonk); }, and I do not find it and fail to identify the location of this line of code… because it did indeed outsmart me… was I ever a troll for predicting it to have existed?
It feels honestly rather hostile, almost like trolling itself, to want to disqualify someone’s concern and try to encourage moderation action against it because you believe them to be uninformed or incorrect.
Is that a hot take? Did you not interpret @carlosgonz opinion in the same manner as me?
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The forum rules are not strictly followed anyways:
In particular, necrobumping/posting along with double posting are widely ignored in practice, so it is clear that they are merely guidelines.
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It depends on how it’s stated. A statement of “Mozilla now work for Google which is enabling privacy holes” with no real explanation seems absolutely like bait to me.
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Why? I was under the impression that this is a simple statement of what carlosgonz actually believes.
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That’s not correct. In the URL bar you can shut off searches completely. I mentioned it as “an annoyance” maybe 6m-1y ago and someone here (irvinewade?) pointed out how to change that.
I understand the power that defaults have to “nudge” people.
At the same time, I have written a lot of software and I realize that there are always different options. Setting the default options is not as clear-cut as people make it out to be.
Thus: it’s still my view that if I can change settings to get an appropriate experience for me then it’s acceptable.
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Youre a fancy programmer and know what going on to revert it, however this things are different for innocent end user which Firefox will take advantage of the innocence users.
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You cut off the “with no real explanation”. Did you do that intentionally?
Making a strong accusatory statement [e.g. an accusation made as a statement of fact rather than an opinion] with no real explanation is absolutely setting bait in my opinion. He didn’t couch his statement as an opinion, did he? And to do that without offering a “why I think that” doubles-down on him stating it as a fact rather than an opinion.
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If you need a Firefox that actually cares, get Librewolf, the Flatpak runs well on basically anything
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I don’t have a clue either.
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Posting in an inactive/dead topic. What is deemed inactive or dead varies between forums, along with enforcement, if any. For example, here is the relevant rule in the Lock Picking 101 Forum topic:
Lock Picking 101 Forum • How to Pick Locks, Locksport, Locksmithing, Locks, Lock Picks.
Other similar terms are gravedigging and resurrecting.
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I like this metaphorical term!
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So I haven’t personally used Librewolf but I found myself reading one of their GitHub issues that was linked a while back. The users on this forum were discussing how you can IP trace that Firefox was connecting to a node in Google Cloud whenever it opened, and leaving the connection open until Firefox closes - for the lifetime of the process - even if we do not visit any Google-based website.
And in the context of that discussion, there was this GitHub issue linked where someone confronted the Librewolf developer about it, and asked why they do not remove this constant connection to Google Cloud that opens before we visit any site, to make Librewolf better than Firefox for privacy, so we’re not essentially telling Google metadata about whenever we use the browser.
And the developer got kind of hostile about this. He was saying that anybody who doesn’t want to connect to Google in this way is an idiot who doesn’t know what they’re talking about, and who doesn’t understand that we connect to many things in many ways for our technology to operate and therefore nothing matters and these details don’t matter.
The way it was written seemed so flagrantly contrary to how I would want to approach the problem that I honestly wondered if whoever this “Librewolf dev” was, if perhaps he was under duress from the U.S. government, forced to say what he was saying, because from a distance it felt like it didn’t make any sense.
Does not - at all - make me want to use Librewolf, though.
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I have been hearing about LibreWolf for many years but i have never been interested in trying it and to the date from today i have never tried it as it looks like a “Libre” Opensource Honeypot.
Personally when i see phrases like Open Source or FLOSS in Software/Programmers it is a Red Flag(warning) for me.
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Citation:
The LibreWolf team mirrored the (now archived) GitLab repository issues to Codeberg using a bot. The Codeberg issue itself is still open.
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?Possibly a reference to: Firefox search by default - #10 by irvinewade and that topic in general.
My goal in that specific post in that topic is that, for example, if I type “dog” in the Address bar, nothing will be sent to the internet -
- not a search for “dog” (whether that search is handled by Google or Bing or anyone else) and
- not a DNS lookup involving various attempts to make “dog” into the likely intended fully qualified domain name.
The only thing that will happen is that it will ask my local DNS server to resolve “dog” as a host on the local network (which in my case will fail, there isn’t an Internet of Animals yet).
However that assumes that the person is running a local DNS server e.g. PiHole. Without that, a single DNS lookup (of dog.) may escape to the internet - or another DNS server may apply default suffixes. That is, just because I stopped Firefox applying default suffixes, doesn’t stop a DNS server applying default suffixes elsewhere.
Merely expressing an opinion here: It is requiring more and more settings in about:config to get decent behaviour from Firefox i.e. the defaults are getting further away from what I would consider desirable from a security / privacy point of view - but I understand that what I consider desirable may not align with what anyone else does. It is also possible that I am becoming more knowledgeable about what you can adjust with config settings i.e. that previously I didn’t even know you could, so I just put up with the behaviour.
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