[HN Gopher] Firefox Profilemaker
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       Firefox Profilemaker
        
       Author : KubikPixel
       Score  : 68 points
       Date   : 2021-12-18 14:37 UTC (8 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (ffprofile.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (ffprofile.com)
        
       | paulryanrogers wrote:
       | Sadly the site is nearly unusable on Firefox mobile
        
       | Someone1234 wrote:
       | I like it design wise, but like a lot of these "de-clutter" tools
       | it defaults to disabling security features without warning and
       | will break some sites while making _most_ sites slower. Plus it
       | ironically installs a bunch of browser addons.
       | 
       | So if you hit next, next, next you'll lose: Google Safebrowsing
       | (security), malware scan (security), DNS over HTTPS (security and
       | sometimes functionality), Automatic Browser Updates, access to
       | content that requires Widevine, all third-party cookies-based
       | authentication, anything that relies on referers, anything that
       | relies on IndexDB, anything that relies on extended session info,
       | anything that uses WebGL or WebRTC or WebAudio, et al.
       | 
       | As I said, I like the design, but the current defaults get 0/10
       | from me. Simply awful. If use the default profile here your
       | browsing experience will be objectively worse and less secure.
        
         | yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
         | It's making trade-offs, and differently than the Mozilla
         | defaults. Google Safebrowsing reduces privacy (not because of
         | the content, but because it says "hi Google, I'm running
         | Firefox at this IP address"), DNS over HTTPS happily sends all
         | your DNS queries to Cloudflare (and since we're arguing over
         | functionality, breaks some split-horizon DNS), Widevine is
         | blatantly anti-user, third-party cookies are a privacy problem,
         | referers are a privacy problem, ... oh, actually the rest of
         | your list from there is all privacy issues.
         | 
         | Anyways, the people who made this would say that Mozilla's
         | current defaults get 0/10 from them and are simply awful, and
         | that using them means your browsing experience will be
         | objectively worse and less private.
        
         | TonyTrapp wrote:
         | And on the other hand one of the biggest annoyances of the web
         | - autoplaying videos - is enabled by default! Clearly shows
         | that you cannot please everyone with your defaults, no matter
         | how hard you try.
        
           | atoav wrote:
           | Afaik the way autoplay works is that if it is on, it does
           | only autoplay videos without sound. This can be useful for
           | looping video backgrounds, memes and such. If they want audio
           | too, autoplay does not work (not even if you try to manually
           | trigger it via js).
           | 
           | In my eyes (browser-configurable) autoplay without sound is
           | an acceptable use case. Autoplay with sound is not.
        
             | franga2000 wrote:
             | Autoplay with sound is a perfectly legitimate use case, but
             | I agree with the status quo that it should not be allowed
             | by default.
             | 
             | In general, the "not an acceptable use case" argument is
             | almost always a harmful distraction - it angers people with
             | legitimate use cases and that in turn gives fuel to those
             | supporting it only for their own harmful use-cases. Call it
             | what it is - a useful feature that happens to be commonly
             | abused.
             | 
             | s/autoplay/cookies/g, etc.
        
       | VTimofeenko wrote:
       | Very interesting, I have been looking for a tool like this for a
       | while. Probably it would be possible to combine this with
       | something like home manager to manage the Firefox config along
       | the rest of user settings from a single place.
        
       | wackget wrote:
       | This is great but it's also enormously depressing that there is
       | such a massive amount of crap you have to do to have a reasonably
       | private/secure/frictionless web browser these days.
        
       | GNOMES wrote:
       | Wizard is cool, but would love if this also included the
       | GUI/about:config option to make this change.
        
       | nerdponx wrote:
       | So does this let me actually use the "multiple profiles" Firefox
       | feature? I was always so confused by Firefox having "profiles"
       | but apparently no interface for using or switching among them.
        
         | newhotelowner wrote:
         | I use multiple profiles for NSFW stuff.
         | 
         | I just go to about:profiles, and click on Launch profile in new
         | browser.
         | 
         | I can use incognito mode, but this way I don't have to login,
         | and keeps browsing history.
        
         | Arkanosis wrote:
         | Use `firefox -ProfileManager --no-remote` to get the profile
         | selection dialog on startup.
        
         | deft wrote:
         | Launch firefox with the -p flag and you'll have a profile
         | interface.
        
       | user764743 wrote:
       | This is great although some of the add-ons they suggest are
       | either redundant or no longer supported like uMatrix. Since it's
       | also now an option in Firefox settings you no longer need HTTPS
       | Everywhere and Privacy Badger is useless if you have Ublock
       | Origin. Also if you use Resist Fingerprinting, Canvas Blocker
       | will just mess with your ability to blend in the crowd,
       | effectively making your browser more unique than it should be.
        
       | yegle wrote:
       | Nit: the preferred abbreviation is Fx or fx, instead of ff. See
       | FAQ 8 on https://website-
       | archive.mozilla.org/www.mozilla.org/firefox_...
        
         | poisonborz wrote:
         | No one can decide the preferred usage but the public. Through
         | these two decades I hardly ever saw the Fx abbreviation in use.
        
           | contradictioned wrote:
           | This is the first time I saw "Fx".
        
       | sharmin123 wrote:
       | Let's Say No to FB Hacker Online And Prevent Facebook Hack:
       | https://www.hackerslist.co/lets-say-no-to-fb-hacker-online-a...
        
       | momenti wrote:
       | You can also enforce most of these settings in all profiles with
       | a policy: https://github.com/mozilla/policy-templates
        
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       (page generated 2021-12-18 23:01 UTC)