[HN Gopher] Washington Post's Privacy Tip: Stop Using Chrome, De...
___________________________________________________________________
Washington Post's Privacy Tip: Stop Using Chrome, Delete Meta Apps
(and Yandex)
Author : miles
Score : 440 points
Date : 2025-06-07 16:33 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (tech.slashdot.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (tech.slashdot.org)
| dlachausse wrote:
| Safari reports that it blocked 16 trackers on WaPos home page. So
| it's probably best to avoid them for privacy too.
| politelemon wrote:
| I wouldn't be using Safari if I were concerned about privacy.
| Privacy is more than just blocking trackers.
| dlivingston wrote:
| How is Safari anything but strong on privacy?
| jhasse wrote:
| It's closed-source.
| dlivingston wrote:
| That's irrelevant to how private something is. Closed-
| source is a reason to be suspicious of privacy claims,
| especially without third-party privacy audits, I'll
| grant.
| leereeves wrote:
| I hope people can get a "Stop Using Chrome" movement going, like
| we did with Internet Explorer long ago.
| righthand wrote:
| Idk, isn't that how we got Chrome? Isn't this inviting someone
| else to be the new Internet abuse daddy?
| ljlolel wrote:
| Sounds like something written by a Google employee. Mozilla
| is a non-profit
| dc396 wrote:
| Might want to look at who provides most of the funds for
| Mozilla.
| ljlolel wrote:
| Not for long
| 0x_rs wrote:
| No, that was Firefox. Chrome's spread was fueled by literal
| malware or spyware bundling it to get some of Google's sweet
| money and some of the most aggressive advertisement campaigns
| for any online product ever.
| righthand wrote:
| Was it Firefox? I remember Firefox existing at the time but
| I don't think it's ever really had dominant market share,
| perhaps when it was Netscape? I do remember the IE campaign
| went on quite a long time to where eventually Chrome showed
| up to the party and people shifted over as well as shifted
| their family and friends over. You don't see that kind of
| active effort for Firefox ever.
| ndriscoll wrote:
| According to Wikipedia, Firefox share peaked around 31%.
| It was very much taking over and gaining share from IE
| before chrome appeared.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers
| #Ol...
| ethagnawl wrote:
| Yes, FF was revelatory (features and performance) and,
| relatively, very popular for a time. 31% was a massive
| share considering it was up against a browser that was
| the default for the vast majority of people using
| computers.
|
| Mozilla have had so many chances to position themselves
| as the privacy-preserving alternative in current years
| but just can't get out of its own way in any sense (e.g.
| corporate greed or being hostile towards users). There's
| still dim hope for FF and some of its forks, like
| Librewolf, but hopefully forward thinking projects like
| Servo and Ladybird can fill the void.
| timewizard wrote:
| Chrome is fine.
|
| Letting an advertising company own it is not.
| duxup wrote:
| I feel like that's like saying "it's fine, except for the bad
| part that you can't avoid" ;)
| turtletontine wrote:
| The future of Google as Chrome's owner is genuinely in
| question now due to Google's antitrust losses, in case you
| weren't aware.
|
| There's a few different cases, one recent one Google has
| lost and is now in the "remedy" phase. Meaning the court
| has officially decided Google did bad, and is now
| considering what to make Google do about it. And splitting
| up Google into separate Chrome, search, etc companies is
| completely on the table.
|
| Some reading:
|
| https://www.theverge.com/23869483/us-v-google-search-
| antitru...
|
| https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/google-found-guilty-of-
| mo...
| duxup wrote:
| I'm aware, but it doesn't change day to day choices for
| now.
|
| I'm also completely at a loss to imagine how chrome
| becomes someone else's play thing and is somehow less
| prone to serving advertisers.
| timewizard wrote:
| The DOJ could literally order their separation. So there's
| no part of this that's "unavoidable." Ask Ma Bell.
| userbinator wrote:
| Maybe even a "start using Internet Explorer again" movement ;-)
|
| For all the hate it got, IE was nowhere near as privacy-
| invasive as any of the "modern" browsers now, even Firefox. If
| you configured it to open with a blank page, it would quietly
| do so and make _zero_ unsolicited network requests.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Well IE (Edge) is Chrome now under the covers.
| winux-arch wrote:
| Your mixing things up Edge and IE are two completely
| different things
| xnx wrote:
| Source article:
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/06/06/meta-pr...
| HelloUsername wrote:
| > Source article
|
| Thx. Even the source in the slashdot article links to msn...
| bitpush wrote:
| Written by the same person who wrote Washington Post article.
|
| All very confusing.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| MSN is all rehosted articles I believe. Several times I've
| searched major paper headlines to read the full story on
| MSN.
|
| No idea what kind of deal these places have with Microsoft.
| not_a_bot_4sho wrote:
| I like the MSN articles. My ad blocker cleans them up
| nicely, and they never ask me to subscribe.
| MaxBarraclough wrote:
| Unfortunately MSN has a history of publishing AI
| hallucinations as fact.
|
| _How Microsoft is making a mess of the news after
| replacing staff with AI_
| https://edition.cnn.com/2023/11/02/tech/microsoft-ai-news
| righthand wrote:
| MSN used to be this special variation of Internet
| Explorer on Windows during the early era of the internet.
| My grandmother used it and the rebranded browser was
| packaged with other software products (if I recall
| correctly, I could be conflating it with preinstalled
| trash back in the day). It had a different color theme
| and allowed you to log into your hotmail account. I think
| at one point it became an IE addon.
|
| I remember it revolved around giving you the news and
| maybe even loading hotmail with a special ui button. I
| have a foggy memory of it, but this MSN forum thread
| confirms the MSN Explorer existed[0].
|
| You could even build a personal home page of sorts with
| the weather.
|
| [0] https://answers.msn.com/thread.aspx?threadid=2fa8c100
| -ed43-4...
|
| Any ways it had a following of people who got their news
| and it still exists in some form today. I know the
| website msn.com always catered to news stories, but I
| don't know if they were always reposted if they once had
| writers. I think it's always been some sort of data
| harvesting/media credibility facade news-focused branch
| of Microsoft.
|
| Here is a screenshot:
|
| https://img.informer.com/screenshots/53/53675_1.jpg
|
| From the screenshot it appears the news has always been
| reposted and FUD based. It probably worked well (for
| Microsoft) in the golden age of RSS.
| flomo wrote:
| Well the truth is Microsoft branding is totally
| incoherent, and MSN has been anything and everything MS
| thought they could put their name on. Like there is a
| cable network called MSNBC which now has nothing to do
| with either MS or NBC.
|
| Originally, like Bill Gates wrote about it in a book
| completely ignoring web browsers, MSN was a proprietary
| Windows client like AOL. Later on it became a 'web
| portal' like Yahoo. Then a 'content' site. At one point,
| it was even a social media site. Somehow, when my parents
| got cable internet, they were funneled into a @MSN.com
| account. It had this fake "dialer" which pretended it was
| "connecting", even though the internet was always on.
|
| For many years since, MSN has just been the tabloid news
| to remind you that Microsoft shit is low class.
| xnx wrote:
| Without the suggestion to install an adblocker, this is not
| credible advice.
| ninth_ant wrote:
| A media outlet which depends on ad revenue as a primary income
| source is unlikely to suggest this.
|
| Ditching these deeply invasive products remains a good idea,
| independent on any decision to use ad blockers or not.
|
| The Meta/Yandex incident in particular is straight-up malware
| and everyone should remove their apps.
| timewizard wrote:
| > which depends on ad revenue
|
| They're more tightly bound than that. They're dependent on
| Google Display Ads. Which really makes their whole diatribe
| that much more pathetic.
|
| Any media company that decided to traffic the ads themselves,
| from their own servers, and inline with their own content,
| would effectively be immune from ad blocking.
|
| > Ditching these deeply invasive products remains a good idea
|
| While still allowing random third party javascript to run
| unchecked on a parent website.
| kulahan wrote:
| > While still allowing random third party javascript to run
| unchecked on a parent website.
|
| Lol, why are you commenting as if somehow allowing it to
| run negates the other good ideas in some way? Obviously
| some is better than none, and all is better than some, but
| each step takes more effort.
| timewizard wrote:
| lol, because ads pay for the content you're reading. it
| pays salaries.
|
| what I _don't_ want is to be _tracked_. show me ads all
| day if you want.
| petre wrote:
| They'd like to show you personalised ads, for more
| effective manipulation, which implies tracking.
| kulahan wrote:
| I have bad news for you about how ads work. Also, you
| didn't really answer my question, you just dodged it.
|
| I'm not asking what you think makes for a successful ad
| campaign, I'm asking why you're letting perfect be the
| enemy of good
| jonhohle wrote:
| It's odd that orgs like NYT don't run their own ad
| services. I'm sure they have a dedicated department for ad
| sales for physical copies. They're large enough that
| companies would work directly with them. And they would
| have at least some editorial control on what is displayed
| on their site.
| macNchz wrote:
| The NYT does have a direct-sold ads business and first-
| party data platform for targeting them:
| https://open.nytimes.com/to-serve-better-ads-we-built-
| our-ow...
| rjsw wrote:
| That used to be how print newspapers worked.
| paradox460 wrote:
| I've worked for a few companies that had ad placements. I
| wasn't too deep into that side of things, and it was a
| long time ago, but as I recall, at reddit there was an in
| house ad auction platform. If there wasn't any ads sold
| for the period, we'd either show in house ads (think the
| old reddit merch store, pics of animals, a pic of one of
| the reddit staff with a paper tube on his forehead to
| resemble a narwhal, etc) or ads from a network like
| AdSense. Once upon a time this actually caused issues
| because there was malware being served from one of those
| and networks
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Targeted ads based on extensive data harvesting are just
| soo much more juicy though.
| labster wrote:
| Hosting the ads on the same server as the content is done
| in some cases, but doesn't result in any immunity. If the
| ads are sufficiently annoying, it only leads to a merry
| little game with the adblocker annoyance list community,
| where they figure out new regexen to block the content,
| deploying daily. Bypass the blocks too effectively, and the
| adblocker will accidentally start blocking website content.
| Users will assume the website itself is broken, and visit
| less.
|
| Self-hosting ads is not really a winning game unless your
| ads are non-animated, non-modal static text and images.
| alkonaut wrote:
| Getting privacy advice from an adtech funded outlet sounds
| like reading democracy advice from the Chinese ruling party
| or vegetarianism advice from lions to be honest.
|
| It might be correct-and-incomplete but they just have no
| credibility on the topic.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| WaPo is dependent on subscription revenue, not ads. They
| limit the number of articles non subscribers can read.
|
| They're also owned by one of the richest men in the
| world...
| romanows wrote:
| Maybe, but they they refused to offer an ad-free
| subscription tier last time I asked. NYT and Chicago Sun
| Times also refused.
| eviks wrote:
| Of course it's dependent on ads, what are you talking
| about, nothing prevents showing ads to subscribers to the
| tune of 180 mil/year
|
| https://cbsaustin.com/news/nation-world/washington-post-
| lost...
| gamblor956 wrote:
| WaPo is dependent on subscription revenue, which is more
| than 2/3rd of their revenue.
|
| Advertising revenue is less than a 1/3rd of their
| revenue, and dropping fast. Ad revenue from more than 50
| million visitors is less than subscription revenue from
| 2.5 million subscribers.
|
| If WaPo was dependent on ads, they would have taken steps
| to increase accessibility to articles, but they didn't
| and haven't. Instead, they're restricting more and more
| content to subscribers, because ultimately subscribers
| are the ones that keep the lights on.
| eviks wrote:
| In no world is a third of revenue a "small fraction",
| especially with such big losses, so you won't be able to
| argue out of this simple fact that it's dependent on ads.
|
| > and dropping fast,
|
| Just like the number of subscribers and subscription
| revenue?
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| Many HN commenters work for "adtech funded outlets". Do
| they have any credibility on the issue of privacy.
| hungmung wrote:
| Individually they might, but I wouldn't take advice from
| their employers.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| Is it true that, individually, Washington Post "tech"
| journalists might be credibie but their employers would
| not be credible.
| alkonaut wrote:
| Depends on their stance on the issue but individuals
| don't necessarily share the views of their employers.
|
| WaPo is by no means worst here. But their omission of
| Adblock in this article means they can't be credible.
| brookst wrote:
| You're not wrong, but there was a time many of olds remember
| when editorial content and commercial concerns were
| firewalled. It used to be outrageous, and usually wrong, to
| suggest an editorial position was contingent upon a business
| benefit for the media outlet.
|
| I miss those days.
| jfengel wrote:
| Does the ad blocker prevent leaks of your information?
|
| I know it blocks a use of your information against you
| (targeted ads). And any external source is a potential leak
| (e.g. the kinds of things that CORS is supposed to reduce).
|
| But does an ad blocker specifically leak more, or just reduce
| the incentive to collect that information?
| antithesizer wrote:
| Yes they block tracking
| weaksauce wrote:
| they don't load up the ads at all so they can't know your
| information in the first place at least from the ads
| themselves. if the website is sharing information directly
| there's nothing you can do outside of some kind of vpn and
| never logging on to any services.
| demosthanos wrote:
| A full-featured ad blocker (uBlock Origin original, not the
| neutered Lite version that runs on Chrome now) will intercept
| requests at the network level and prevent your browser from
| requesting the advertisers' JavaScript code. Your browser not
| only won't show the ads, it won't run the code that was
| supposed to show them or even send a request to the
| advertisers' servers.
|
| This blocks most existing tracking methods. The only thing
| you're not protected from is first-party tracking by the site
| you're actually visiting, which is impossible to fully
| protect against.
| zahlman wrote:
| >prevent your browser from requesting the advertisers'
| JavaScript code. Your browser not only won't show the ads,
| it won't run the code that was supposed to show them or
| even send a request to the advertisers' servers.
|
| Incidentally, just blocking JavaScript with NoScript kills
| quite a lot of ads (obviously, not first-party ones if
| you've white-listed their JavaScript for site
| functionality; but I try to avoid that when there isn't
| real demonstrated value) without any need for an explicit
| ad blocker.
| kvdveer wrote:
| NoScript is indeed very effective at blocking tracking,
| but it also breaks a lot of websites.
|
| If that is an acceptable compromise, you could also try
| ditching the Internet altogether, as that not only blocks
| all online tracking, it also blocks a lot of fraud,
| misinformation and all kinds of harmful content.
| IgorPartola wrote:
| That's always my problem with NoScript being suggested.
| For some people who consume stuff off RSS feeds or static
| sites and Wikipedia that probably works. But for
| literally anything more than that you can't do that.
| voytec wrote:
| It's not about living like a caveman. You can enable 1st
| party JS without JS from 20 ad/tracking hosts.
| voytec wrote:
| > NoScript is indeed very effective at blocking tracking,
| but it also breaks a lot of websites.
|
| Sure, images may no be present without JS lazy-loading
| them. Accidentaly, NoScript also fixes a lot of websites.
| Publishers are often paywalling posts via JS and initial
| HTML is served with full articles.
| everdrive wrote:
| Except for non-negotiables (eg: bill paying, government
| websites, etc.) a website that fully breaks when blocking
| js is just a worthless site which is not worth my time.
| haiku2077 wrote:
| Anubis (https://anubis.techaro.lol) requires Javascript
| and is required to view some otherwise static websites
| now because AI scrapers are ruining the internet for
| small websites.
| xena wrote:
| Next release will have a no-JS check: https://anubis.tech
| aro.lol/docs/admin/configuration/challeng...
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| 1st-party would likely be prevented by disabling cookies?
| Obviously they could fingerprint every visitor on every
| request, but most just set an ID cookie and check it on
| subsequent pages I think, since that's good enough for
| tracking most people (who aren't actively trying not to be
| tracked). Of course, that breaks things that need a session
| (like a cart), but depending on what you want from a site,
| it could be fine.
| demosthanos wrote:
| Those things help, yes. I say that it's impossible to
| fully block first party tracking because you must
| interact with the server in order to accomplish anything
| and those interactions can be tracked. But a third party
| can be cut entirely out of the loop.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| There are ways to maintain a session without a cookie,
| but cookie is very convenient so that is mostly what is
| used.
| tredre3 wrote:
| > A full-featured ad blocker (uBlock Origin original, not
| the neutered Lite version that runs on Chrome now) will
| intercept requests at the network level and prevent your
| browser from requesting the advertisers' JavaScript code.
|
| You're trying to imply that ublock lite doesn't do that. It
| does, including javascript files. The full uBlock does more
| things to prevent tracking that lite cannot do. But
| "intercept requests at the network level" isn't one of
| those things.
| eastbound wrote:
| I think there was a Defcon where they showed that some ad
| networks let the advertiser themselves provide the
| image/video. By targeting only people who first visited a
| given website, they know who you are. And by adding selectors
| on the ad, they extract your characteristics, including
| location.
|
| It looks very stretched, but the real magic happens when this
| data is sold in bulk. It allows recouping who is where. Your
| target person may or may not be in each dataset, their
| location isn't known like clockwork, but that allows
| determining where they work, where they sleep and who they're
| with. One ad is useless as a datapoint, but recouping shows
| reliable patterns. And remember most people on iPhone still
| don't have an adblocker.
| mingus88 wrote:
| They will not bite the hand that feeds them.
|
| But I am glad they are pushing people toward other browsers
| because that is the biggest step. Once you have taken that
| step, installing the most popular extensions is trivial.
|
| Guess what the highest rated extensions are?
| userbinator wrote:
| The FBI recommends using an adblocker:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41483581
| ryandrake wrote:
| I would bet money that the techie they asked to put the list
| together included "use an adblocker." And then the higher-up
| who approves articles like this said "shit! wait... no, no, no,
| delete that one!!" These corporations are deeply deceptive.
| godelski wrote:
| The advice is fine, just incomplete.
|
| It is better than nothing and definitely for the more "normies"
| advice. Let's start there and then we can get them onto adblock
| and other stuff.
|
| Btw, the ArsTechnica article they link offers more advice[0]
|
| [0] https://arstechnica.com/security/2025/06/meta-and-yandex-
| are...
| mmooss wrote:
| That may not be viable for many non-technical users, which is
| their audience. On HN, it would be an error to omit ad
| blockers; the Washington Post has a different audience. I
| expect that most would find installing and learning a new
| browser to be too much effort and too hard to understand.
| Larrikin wrote:
| This is provably wrong since Google has been pushing Chrome
| installs for over a decade.
| mmooss wrote:
| Good point.
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| They suggest Brave browser, which has an adblocker built in and
| on by default.
| greggsy wrote:
| It's still good advice
| bn-l wrote:
| What is the alternative to chrome that doesn't crash or is not
| noticeably slower?
| wyattblue wrote:
| Brave Browser: https://brave.com/
| GolfPopper wrote:
| Brave has some controversies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B
| rave_(web_browser)#Controvers...
| guywithahat wrote:
| I mean those aren't real controversies though, it's more
| like "we added a VPN feature and included the VPN, but have
| now removed it". A real controversy would be like Mozilla
| who was pushing for censorship and silencing "bad actors"
| in the years after the first Trump election.
| cheschire wrote:
| What?
|
| "This includes bringing new users to Binance & other
| exchanges via opt-in trading widgets/other UX that
| preserves privacy prior to opt-in. It includes search
| revenue deals, as all major browsers do."
|
| Seems pretty relevant to the current topic and not part
| of the VPN controversy.
| slaw wrote:
| Firefox + uBlock Origin
| azinman2 wrote:
| I feel like people sleep on safari, especially on Macs.
| hk1337 wrote:
| JavaScript Chrome developers did a good job of convincing
| people that Safari is the new IE.
|
| I love Safari on macOS. I love the pinch/zoom with the tabs.
| I love that private browsing mode, at least seems to, keep
| things contained to the tab they started with. e.g. if I open
| facebook in a private tab then open new tab and go to
| facebook, it's going to make me login.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Significantly better battery life too. Like hours.
| bitpush wrote:
| You're drinking Apple kool-aid if you think Safari isn't
| holding web back.
|
| Lots of anti-google people dislike Safari. Safari isn't the
| only non-google option you know.
| hk1337 wrote:
| Apple is slow to adopt new features, sure but Google
| bulldozes features to be first to market so it can
| implemented the way they want it implemented.
| gcau wrote:
| >Google bulldozes features to be first to market so it
| can implemented the way they want it implemented
|
| Can you give an example of this?
| kstrauser wrote:
| Safari is far from perfect, but I'm _glad_ they don't
| implement everything Chrome does. Many of the complaints
| come down to "Safari doesn't even support
| RunBitcoinMinerInBackground.js. It sucks!"
|
| And on the plus side, it's vastly better at power
| efficiency, meaning I can use my laptop longer without
| being plugged in.
| arccy wrote:
| sure if you want to live a life stuck in the App Store
| and Play Store walled gardens... having a decent web
| browser is the way towards a truly open web
| hungryhobbit wrote:
| Developers don't convince anyone of anything! They just
| build stuff according to standards (which are inevitably
| set not by standards orgs, but by the most popular
| browsers), and then they expect all browsers to follow
| those standards and "just work".
|
| When a browser like Safari fails to adhere to those
| standards, sites will break ... but you can't expect
| developers (of most sites; I'm not talking about the top
| 100 or anything) to test in every possible browser ... and
| then change their code to accommodate them. Certainly not
| in ones with single-digit percentages of market share, that
| require their own OS to test (like Safari).
| kstrauser wrote:
| Wikipedia says Safari's their #2 browser, with 17%
| traffic share:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers
|
| Web devs ignore Safari at their own risk, lest 100% of
| iPhone users be unable to use their site.
| someNameIG wrote:
| If Apple wanted more web devs to support Safari they
| should port it to Linux and Windows. The web is supposed
| to be an open standard, you shouldn't need a devices and
| software from a specific manufacturer to develop for it
| (I say that posting from a Mac).
| sertsa wrote:
| At some point there was a Safari for Windows.
| Uehreka wrote:
| Chrome's developers didn't have to say anything. Anyone
| who's been trying to build on the latest web features (for
| me, particularly WebGL, WebRTC, WebGPU and IndexedDB) over
| the past decade has been bitten by Safari over and over
| again. They usually come around after being raked over the
| coals by the web dev community, but they're still usually
| years behind.
|
| When "Safari is the new IE" was first published, they
| absolutely were. They've gotten a bit better since then,
| but all the same it was hilarious to see people who used to
| rail against IE for flaunting web standards ( _cough_ John
| Gruber _cough_ ) suddenly start saying that web standards
| were a bogus racket once Apple decided to stop keeping up
| with them.
| oefrha wrote:
| Safari is the new IE not because they refuse to implement
| questionable new web "standards", but because
|
| - It has all sorts of random quirks in their supposedly
| supported features;
|
| - Mobile Safari has even more quirks;
|
| - No other major browser introduces random serious bugs
| like Safari does (remember the IndexedDB one?);
|
| - Version updates are tied to OS updates meaning it's the
| only major browsers that's not evergreen, and coupled with
| the previous points you have to carry workarounds for bugs
| forever, and of course can't use new features;
|
| - Extensions are 10x harder to develop and more than 10x
| more expensive to publish since they're tied to Xcode,
| Apple Developer Program and MAS, because fuck you;
|
| - Like another commenter said, it's the only browser that
| crashes on me (random "this page has experienced a problem
| and reloaded" or something like that);
|
| - PWA is another kind of hell in Safari but opinions are
| divided so whatever. At the very least it's not conducive
| to an open web.
|
| It's a piece of hot garbage, like a lot of other Apple
| software these days. Sure, maybe it's battery efficient or
| something. I don't give a shit because I work plugged in.
|
| Oh and developer tools in Safari are crap but who cares.
| hxtk wrote:
| I tend to use Safari on my mac, but I will say that it
| evaluates CORS slightly differently than other browsers so
| that sometimes I have to disable CORS protection to get a
| site to work that works fine in Chrome or Firefox, and it's
| the only browser I've used where I expect to have it crash
| hard with a SEGFAULT or something every once in a while.
| Aurornis wrote:
| I continually try, but Safari is the only browser where I
| routinely experience crashes once or twice a month. There are
| also some random incompatibilities with certain websites
| (related to the CORS issue as mentioned in another comment)
| that force me back into another browser anyway.
| bn-l wrote:
| Safari lags on implementing key web tech
| haiku2077 wrote:
| Doesn't crash? Firefox/Mullvad Browser is fine.
|
| Not slower? Safari or Orion.
| ramon156 wrote:
| What's wrong with FireFox?
|
| And if you're not a fan of FireFox, Ladybird is becoming a
| thing in 2026
| wussboy wrote:
| Full time Firefox user. I run hundreds of tabs for days on end
| and need to restart it every week or so. Well worth it to not
| use Chrome. Need to open a site in Chrome about once a month
| abhinavk wrote:
| The upcoming version has "Unload tabs" built in to the
| context menu. That should result in restarts limited to
| updates.
| HelloMcFly wrote:
| I use the Auto Discard Tabs plug-in, just lets tabs time-
| out after a set amount of time
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I've used Firefox for years and it very rarely crashes.
| Individual tabs will crash occasionally, but rarely the
| entire browser.
| brazzy wrote:
| Firefox.
| NexRebular wrote:
| I use Vivaldi[1]. Also has built-in ad-blocker although I'm not
| sure how good it is compared to Ublock or others.
|
| [1] https://vivaldi.com/
| dijksterhuis wrote:
| seconded. been loving vivaldi since i switched.
| secondcoming wrote:
| Firefox. It's been my default browser for years but now I'm
| noticing sites that don't work properly with it. I'm not sure
| why.
|
| It also has a really annoying 'feature' that its update process
| will sometimes force you to restart the browser.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| I'm using Firefox and Kagi's Orion browser [1] on my Mac and
| Safari on iOS.
|
| [1] https://kagi.com/orion/
| m-localhost wrote:
| Is it easier to build a browser for MacOS? Arc was Mac only
| for the longest time, until they released a crippled Windows
| version. DuckDuckGo browser started Mac only.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Is it easier to build a browser for MacOS?_
|
| Financially, probably. Apple customers represent a
| disproportionate share of global consumer disposable
| income.
|
| Technically, I guess Unix-like, BrowserEngineKit and WebKit
| (Orion uses this) help. Good question, hope someone
| knowledgeable chimes in!
| dismalaf wrote:
| I like Vivaldi myself.
| mrweasel wrote:
| Firefox? Weird question. I haven't even installed Chrome in the
| past 7 years. Firefox is fast (but I obviously don't know if
| Chrome is faster) and it never crashes.
| dartharva wrote:
| Chrome does feel faster to me; I remember someone here saying
| that was because of some kind of procedural loading
| shenanigans or something.
|
| But the main hook for me is how websites look. I do a lot of
| reading on the browser, and fonts on Chrome always look
| better than on Firefox. I would switch to Firefox in a
| heartbeat if only things started looking the same on it.
| duxup wrote:
| I use firefox full time, it works great for me.
| 0134340 wrote:
| Well, for the past twenty years, Firefox has been a good
| alternative browser to Chrome, IE, etc.
| guywithahat wrote:
| I really like Brave, blocks youtube ads and generally just
| works where other chrome alternatives don't
| https://brave.com/download/
| ronnier wrote:
| I'm pretty worried about the security of Brave and stopped
| using it. I'd like to be wrong. But years old patches missing
| in Chromium not ported over until recently makes me nervous
| (referring to a recently addressed long time websocket bug in
| Brave). What else is missing? It just seems to risky to use
| for me.
| voytec wrote:
| Zen Browser works well for me. It's a Firefox fork but privacy-
| focused whereas Mozilla recently became an ad company and
| published hostile TOS changes. No issues I had when I was
| evaluating LibreWolf.
| cosmicgadget wrote:
| Any browser that lets you block javascript? It is weird how we
| now call browsers fast because they can quickly render the most
| cancerous content.
| password4321 wrote:
| I use Chrome for Google workspace, Firefox for ongoing personal
| logins, and Brave incognito for other browsing (restarting
| completely for a new session when changing gears).
|
| Last week's discussion on a profile management tool offered
| several insights into how others a bit further down this path
| use their browsers of choice:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44132752
| mmooss wrote:
| What experiences have you had with crashing, noticeably slower
| browsers? I haven't seen that in any modern browsers.
| p0w3n3d wrote:
| I've noticed that recent Chrome version does not allow me to
| download the pdf I'm viewing. I had to open it in Firefox. The
| Chrome browser only allowed me to save it to drive (cloud)
| charcircuit wrote:
| Did you try finding a print button?
| Henchman21 wrote:
| To... save? I get that you can print to a file and it'll save
| it that way of course, but damn that strikes me as really
| confusing for non-techies
| thrill wrote:
| right-click save-as?
| kulahan wrote:
| This is how I get around that same issue, but it truly is a
| hacky workaround.
| cosmicgadget wrote:
| Save or export would make more sense but printing to pdf
| has been the way to do it forever.
| Legend2440 wrote:
| Seems weird. I'm in Chrome right now and I can right-click on
| PDFs and click save as.
| p0w3n3d wrote:
| I mean once you get into a pdf. Sometimes web page opens it
| instead of allowing download. The built-in pdf browser of
| chrome has no option to save it locally on android phone. I
| have not been not precise in explaining, because I find
| Google and Android constantly reducing my ownership of my own
| phone and that's another brick in the wall here
| esseph wrote:
| Click on the three dots top right.
|
| There is now a bar of 5 icons at the top. The middle icon,
| "download", saves the PDF.
|
| Edit: Long-pressing each icon will show you small pop-up
| text for the icon/action.
| Aurornis wrote:
| I downloaded a PDF within updated Chrome earlier this morning
| without problems. I would be looking at your setup to see what
| makes it unique.
| Grazester wrote:
| You can absolutely download PDFs on the all Chrome versions
| including the most recent. You need to do is set chrome to
| download them instead of open them.
|
| I am a developer but have to deal with questions on this
| regularly from people's at my company due to the IT
| department being small.
| gosub100 wrote:
| I have the opposite problem: I want to simply render the pdfs
| so I can, you know, read them. not download them like they are
| data to be fed into another app.
| NHQ wrote:
| Web browsers should become outmoded soon. It was fine for
| bootstrapping the web, but now to keep up a browser must emulate
| the operating system and more in a single app. This pressure is
| the centralizing factor in browser dominance. Ditch the features,
| drop the spy protocol (http), just get the files.
| thethimble wrote:
| What will the alternative to web browsers be after they become
| "outmoded"?
| consumer451 wrote:
| I can't speak for the user who you are responding to, but an
| AI maxi might believe that an AI powered interface will take
| over all information retrieval.
| zahlman wrote:
| > the spy protocol (http)
|
| I'm afraid I can't guess your reasoning.
| NHQ wrote:
| How do i turn it off?
| zahlman wrote:
| Turn what off? HTTP is how you receive the web page in the
| first place. It is not, in itself, causing data to be sent
| from your computer to others. That happens either because
| of a script on the page or because you request a web page
| (i.e. the browser sends headers).
| gosub100 wrote:
| block port 80
| aerhardt wrote:
| Then go full Walden and live your best life out in the
| woods!
| ck2 wrote:
| supermium --ungoogled-supermium
|
| https://win32subsystem.live/supermium/
|
| https://github.com/win32ss/supermium
| pmdr wrote:
| First time reading about this, thank you!
| TiredOfLife wrote:
| Washington Post also called Ukraines attack on russian bombers
| "dirty"
| cosmicgadget wrote:
| Can you elaborate?
| extra88 wrote:
| That's one opinion from one columnist. Also, the full phase was
| "dirty war," by which they seem to mean one dominated by covert
| operations by intelligence services rather than conventional
| forces, on both sides.
| jeffbee wrote:
| It's sort of interesting that Brave was not affected by this
| because they already blocked the technique used by the Yandex
| app. I wonder if Brave devs were aware of that specific abuse, or
| if they just thought that localhost traffic was distasteful
| categorically.
| testfrequency wrote:
| I really wish I was ok, morally, with using Brave.
|
| One of the few that seem to have their shit together
| throwaway290 wrote:
| Firefox in strict mode should be unaffected?
| meroes wrote:
| Hmm how can I use being forced to use Chrome for work, for me tax
| wise...
|
| If I'm a contractor forced to use Chrome and mobile devices, can
| I deduct a separate work phone?
|
| I really hate having it my iPhone, at least maybe I can claw
| something back this way?
| 0_____0 wrote:
| I believe it is good form to keep work and personal machines
| completely separate, including phones. If you ever have to hand
| over your devices for discovery in a law suit I think you will
| come to the same conclusion.
| Xorakios wrote:
| I very much agree. Retired now but I used to have a separate
| phone for each major client for HIPAA compliance but it's
| good advice everywhere (and $50 year-old android phones and
| $15/month Tracfone accounts aren't just for criminals!)
| jhbadger wrote:
| And stop using Alexa (of course Bezos' paper wouldn't say that!)
| m-localhost wrote:
| Zen Browser (FF) on Win and Firefox on iOS (for sync) works well
| for me. Edge for all M365 related stuff. Still use Chrome for web
| dev. Not sure what to move on in that regard...
| t-writescode wrote:
| I'm a relatively new web dev and I've been quite happy with
| Firefox's Web Dev tools. What does Chrome's dev tools give
| someone that Firefox's doesn't? I can edit css on the fly, see
| where a css rule is being overwritten, debug javascript, etc.
| arealaccount wrote:
| FF dev tools just don't work sometimes, notably with iframes,
| sometimes with source maps, and other edge case types things.
|
| I use FF for 99% of dev, open Chrome maybe once a quarter.
| It's a better browser.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Funny, I find Chrome Dev tools doesn't save some response
| bodies, while Firefox consistently does.
| nine_k wrote:
| One an develop in FF, but has to test in Chrome. (Same with
| developing in Chrome and also testing in FF.)
| elendee wrote:
| firefox doesnt have Workspaces. I do 100% of my CSS in Chrome
| Workspaces
| t-writescode wrote:
| I use vite, so I think I get that functionality without
| needing Chrome? ... if I understand what Workspaces are?
| politelemon wrote:
| I use FF but Chrome's dev tools have a lot more going for it
| including memory profiling and performance tools. On the
| other hand, Chrome's network panel is awful and it's a chore
| to see the domains and full URLs involved.
| jhasse wrote:
| Brave?
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| For most people in the west, using yandex and chinese
| alternatives would be better than local ones, because neither
| china nor russia has any auhority over you, while your local
| agencies do.
| Wobbles42 wrote:
| This. Separation of concerns is a good thing. In this case
| "people who spy on you" and "people who kick your door in and
| shoot your dog".
| thadk wrote:
| Anyone have tips on how to avoid having the WhatsApp app on your
| phone?
| tdiff wrote:
| Use telegram
| sneak wrote:
| Telegram is a privacy downgrade from WhatsApp. WA is at least
| end to end encrypted; Telegram is not.
| Kinrany wrote:
| Telegram is not a downgrade in this instance.
| cguess wrote:
| It's not encrypted by default, WhatsApp is.
| geraldhh wrote:
| yes it is.
|
| it does not do the e2e hat-trick thou
| TsiCClawOfLight wrote:
| Encryption without E2EE is completely worthless for the
| threat model discussed here.
| kstrauser wrote:
| That's right. It's either E2EE, or it's not encrypted
| IMHO.
| capyba wrote:
| Why telegram instead of signal?
| rixed wrote:
| The app you have to pay premium to prevent them from selling
| your details to advertisers and scammers? Ha yes I totally
| trust them.
| baobun wrote:
| Give your WA contacts alternative contact method. Uninstall.
| Stop using WhatsApp.
| gman83 wrote:
| Try having kids in Europe, everything they do is organized
| through WhatsApp group chats. I had to get a separate burner
| phone just for that.
| AdamN wrote:
| Yeah, people in the US can choose not to have WhatsApp. In
| the rest of the world you have to be opt out of lots of
| stuff to not have WhatsApp.
| downsplat wrote:
| You can create a work profile on Android and install
| Whatsapp in it, this way it won't have access to your main
| environment and contacts. For the f-droid loving crowd, try
| the Shelter app to set up the separate area.
| soraminazuki wrote:
| Remove lock-ins that forces people to use a specific chat app.
| Move private communication away from "platforms" to
| interoperable protocols. That is the only way for us to regain
| control over our own private communications.
| politelemon wrote:
| The question may need a little more context - it's easy to
| avoid by simply uninstalling it. If you're actually asking how
| to minimize its presence, consider using an app like Island
| which isolates the apps into a separate profile which can't see
| anything in your main profile.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Source:
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/06/06/meta-pr...
|
| Related discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44169115
| ThinkBeat wrote:
| I dont yet understand this attack.
|
| The WP article says:
|
| "" Millions of websites contain a string of computer code from
| Meta that compiles your web activity. It might capture the income
| you report to the government, your application for a student loan
| and your online shopping. ""
|
| If I read that correctly then they are capturing all https web
| content you access in clear text and uploads it all to Meta? Then
| Meta
|
| I thought the exploit was used to track where you visited, not
| the full data of each webpage.
| bink wrote:
| It does sound fantastical. A piece of code that can violate the
| same origin policy would be a huge vulnerability. Meta could be
| working with other sites to share data on users via code
| running on both sites, but snooping on tax data without the IRS
| helping? Unlikely.
|
| I can only assume they're suggesting that companies like Intuit
| and H&R Block are sharing this data with Meta, but that seems
| like a huge violation of privacy and with tax data it might
| even be illegal.
| macNchz wrote:
| It's effectively malware--this article has some more detail:
| https://arstechnica.com/security/2025/06/meta-and-yandex-
| are...
|
| Basically, they created a channel between the browser and a
| localhost webserver running in their native apps, by abusing
| the ability to set arbitrary metadata on WebRTC connections.
| That way, they were able to exfiltrate tracking cookies out
| of the browser's sandbox to the native app, where they could
| be associated with your logged-in user identity.
| zzleeper wrote:
| Is there any way to fix it within Android? damn...
| petre wrote:
| Yes, don't install their native apps.
| tholdem wrote:
| You are implying Meta and others were able to just siphon
| data from any website via WebRTC using their native apps,
| but this was not the case. They were only able to track
| which websites you visited if that website already embedded
| the company tracking. Many websites do, but not all.
| helph67 wrote:
| Thirty months old but I'm guessing they haven't improved!
| https://www.techradar.com/news/nearly-half-of-all-online-tra...
| keernan wrote:
| If we truly lived in a democracy which 'obeyed' the overwhelming
| will of the people, there would be laws with 'horrific' penalties
| for any effort to track devices or people online.
| aucisson_masque wrote:
| What about the other app ? Now that this trick is known, either
| it's completely fixed, including in system webview, or all the
| other usual spyware ,that the play store is full of, are going to
| use it to track their user.
|
| Google still hasn't fixed the issue of app being able to list all
| other installed app on your phone without requiring permission
| despite having been reported months ago. They didn't even provide
| an answer.
|
| I believe Google isn't interested in Android user privacy in any
| way, even when it's to their own benefit.
|
| At this point either use iPhone, grapheneos or no phone at all.
| capyba wrote:
| I don't know anyone that works at Meta, so I'm hoping that
| someone here could answer this for me-
|
| What makes employees there feel good (or at least okay) about
| doing stuff like this? You're spying on people, no? Surveilling
| ordinary people, not enemy combatants or foreign militaries?
| Perhaps a friend of a friend or even a family member? This kind
| of thing is so creepy and disturbing to me, not that it's
| anything new...
| kb_dev wrote:
| In principle, I think most people believe their morals would
| prevent them from working at a company like Meta.
|
| On the flip side, how much are morals worth if you have the
| opportunity to be financially free?
|
| There's also the opportunity to work on interesting problems.
|
| Anecdotally, of course, I know a Meta engineer at the L7 level
| (generally staff engineer in these large tech companies). He
| makes over seven figures a year, 75% of that being from stocks.
| The money is there.
| godelski wrote:
| Are the people working on the interesting problems doing most
| of the spying?
|
| I'm sure there's overlap like people working on AR scraping
| images of people's homes to build better models but they also
| do a ton of research where they use open datasets.
|
| I'm curious what this distribution is.
|
| I'm also curious what the answer is for just average
| programmers. Meta has like 70k employees. Surely a lot of
| them aren't doing interesting stuff
| gsky wrote:
| Nazis too worked on lot of interesting problems.
| godelski wrote:
| Sure. There were also a lot of very normal people. There
| were people trying to take down Nazi from the inside. And
| there were people that were genocidal maniacs.
|
| It's not like one day all of Germany turned evil then a
| few years later turned good again. Framing things like
| that is unhelpful. It makes evil seem cut and dry.
| Trivial to identify. That's what authoritarians thrive
| on: oversimplification. Everything is easy, it's not your
| fault, "it's so simple, you just..."
|
| All that accomplishes is letting evil flourish. Gives it
| time to grow and set root. You're just being dehumanizing
| yourself.
|
| Don't help your enemies.
|
| Don't emulate your enemies.
| leksak wrote:
| I am not even sure most people could articulate their morals.
| It's not just about never having heard about things as moral
| absolutism or consequentialism. Similar to how atrophied
| people's understanding of sympathy and empathy is as well.
| EMM_386 wrote:
| > What makes employees there feel good (or at least okay) about
| doing stuff like this?
|
| I got this exact thought IMMEDIATLY (yet again) and posted on
| it here as well, putting my two cents in.
|
| This is totally unacceptable for a software engineer to
| implement features like this simply because their company told
| them to, doing what the company tells them to makes them money,
| so they do it.
|
| No apparent thought into whether they are creating is harmful,
| or caring about it.
|
| I've given up on any anger directed towards the company itself.
| They will make money any way they can. Now, the engineers who
| actually implement it bothers me, because it is clearly not
| something that should be built.
|
| To me, I don't care how much I'm being paid or how bad it would
| be to lose my job at that time.
|
| I would resign before working on features like this and deal
| with the consequences.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| History suggests there is no shortage of people who will throw
| all semblance of morality away as long as they are surrounded
| by people who they believe have done the same. I almost think
| the people who are not willing to cave in this way are the rare
| ones.
| ethagnawl wrote:
| I've heard people justify working there (often to themselves)
| by saying things like, "If I don't do it, someone else will.
| So, I may as well do it and make virtuous use of the money."
|
| I think some people also tell themselves that they'll be
| agents of change and fix things from within but that almost
| always winds up being another self delusion at worst and
| impossibility at best. There was a certain amount of this on
| display in Careless People.
| potamic wrote:
| There are many industries which are inherently hostile to
| users, insurance, betting, marketing, etc. If you ask people if
| they feel good about enabling the kind of things these
| companies tend to do, you probably won't get an answer. I don't
| think Meta is an outlier here nor are they the only one. Even
| across other industries you will find many questionable
| practices in usual operations. If pushing the boundaries of
| ethics gives a business an advantage, you can guarantee that
| someone will be doing it, and eventually most will be doing it.
| It's simply the natural tendency of any system with competing
| entities. The question we should rather be asking is, how do we
| tweak the system. What can be done to disincentivize pushing
| the boundary like this?
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| The question is how did a social media company end up so
| shitty it is now compared/it's behavior equated to insurance
| companies? Insurance companies are required to control
| payout, and people expect that. The level of stuff Meta does
| is not required, nor do people think/realize it is as hostile
| to them as an insurance company.
|
| In the past, people aspired to work at cool tech companies.
| Devs aren't lining up to work at insurance companies. I never
| worked in the industry I went to school for because the only
| jobs when I got out of school were for weapons. At this point
| I feel the same way about social media, I would never work at
| such a 'make the world as bad as you can get away with'
| industry.
| whstl wrote:
| The sad reality is that this behavior gets normalized in the
| name of making money.
|
| For employees it gets normalized at the first signal that your
| livelihood might be affected if you don't comply.
|
| As someone who's privacy conscious, it's an uphill battle to
| convince co-workers to actually follow laws instead of trying
| to find loopholes.
|
| I've worked at places who collect every possible data point and
| distributes it willy nilly in Excel spreadsheets posted in
| Slack. I raised it to a CISO and the response was "all that
| information is available for everyone anyway via the
| interface". I know a German company requires you to "accept"
| data collection and processing in order to settle a debt. I
| reported this to their legal department which I personally knew
| a person and they said they'd "look into it ASAP" two years
| ago.
|
| In the end people just roll along with it. I know this is
| unpopular, but the only forward I see way to prevent this from
| happening seems to be using courts and tightened legislation.
| blitzar wrote:
| > behavior gets normalized in the name of making money
|
| If Pavlov's dog gets a big fat steak everytime it bites
| someone ...
| salawat wrote:
| You are a human being. Having a gun put in your hand and
| $200000 shoved in your hands if you shoot the bagged
| individual in the head is not excusable under Pavlovian
| conditioning. Further, the starving artist is a
| counterexample to the entire vein of thinking.
|
| Marketing/advertising is an industry dead set on convincing
| everyone that that (Pavlovian conditioning) is actually all
| there is to how it works though. I can only hope enough
| people wake up and grow a spine sufficient for us to start
| severely ostracizing and impacting those of us that keep
| making it easier for our fellow man to be targeted by
| immoral, power hungry autocrats.
| bigyabai wrote:
| > I can only hope enough people wake up and grow a spine
|
| If that's all you can do, then I might as well go apply
| at Meta right now.
| salawat wrote:
| You seem to have edited your comment. Let me bring back
| what you seem to have dumped.
|
| >You could also stop participating in the attention
| economy, rewarding advertisers and paying people who show
| you ads. But that? That's tough. It's much easier to hope
| that Meta realizes what a bad, bad boy they've been and
| judges all of humanity like the Third Impact.
|
| Perhaps you think I haven't sworn off that bullshit?
| Perhaps you think you're talking to someone who hasn't
| snapped the Golden Handcuffs, and drawn a line in the
| sand that, goddamnit, this world may be eating itself,
| but I. Will. Not. Be. Complicit. Nor will I make life
| easy or fun for anyone who is.
|
| You ultimately decide what your legacy is going to be,
| and if you're willing to let yourself be bribed into the
| damnation of your fellow men by building machines for
| those unworthy or completely untrustworthy in their use
| of them, that's on _your_ soul. Not mine.
|
| I'll starve and die to ensure what I _could_ make, that
| could shackle everyone, does not get made. I 'll suffer
| privation, hardship, and pain, that those who come after
| me, whether descended from me or not, can at least not
| have to retread the exact same ground, or suffer in
| bondage to some tech empowered autocrat.
|
| Sleep well, sir, in your appeasement of the Golden Calf
| of our generation. But know well, that the smell of it
| will pervade everything you do, and your cruelty and
| callousness, and disconcern for your fellows will come
| around and be repayed sevenfold. The bank account
| ultimately changes nothing. The world has it's way of
| slamming down and humbling the high just as much as the
| low.
|
| Or listen to the voice inside you desperately calling out
| that something is wrong about all this and start doing
| the hard and painful, yet right thing. Make the world
| hurt for these bastards. Stop taking the easy way out.
| Set your own bars lower, and chain your avarice. Refuse
| their baccanal call.
|
| Sometimes, what we _don 't do_ matters more than what we
| do.
| bigyabai wrote:
| I don't care. I won't starve, live in my car or go hat-
| in-hand to my relatives to cover for rent. I did that for
| years while attending primary education and I will
| happily ruin whatever little middle-class pastiche you're
| so desperate to protect if it puts a roof over my head. I
| personally know dozens of people who would quit their job
| to subsume that compensation. The fact that it's all
| legal? I won't even remember who cares by the time my
| head hits the pillow. It's a problem for someone else.
|
| You hate ads? Surveillance drives you nuts? This is the
| consequence of a dysfunctional government. You can
| protest the businesses all you want, it's _their job_ to
| be apathetic. Make a big show of it, take off your flair
| and tell your AWS or Apple manager exactly how much all
| it sucks. They 'll nod, write it all down on a legal pad,
| put it in a folder and refer to it when your next
| employer calls asking for cross-references. It would all
| make for a very touching scene of career suicide, and
| then your replacement can have a technical interview
| scheduled in by the end of the week. That is the sum of
| damages you can enjoy as the fruit of your protesting
| this company.
|
| It's funny how much Americans care about their legacy
| while doing nothing worth remembering. A Microsoft
| employee who donates their disproportionate wage to an
| animal shelter is doing more to benefit the world than
| some shmuck who got mad at capitalism for the fly in his
| soup. John Carmack worked for Meta, and still has more of
| a legacy than every "hacker" on this site combined. If
| your identity is so shallow that it's defined by nothing
| other than the person who pays you, you have more serious
| issues than finding an ethical employer.
| phyzome wrote:
| Instead of reporting it to their legal department, report it
| to an EU data privacy regulator.
|
| (I know this wasn't your main point.)
| whstl wrote:
| You are 200% correct.
| wat10000 wrote:
| "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when
| his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"
|
| If understanding that it's wrong to invade people's privacy
| is incompatible with keeping your job, you probably won't
| understand it.
| Chris2048 wrote:
| > I know a German company requires you to "accept" data
| collection and processing in order to settle a debt.
|
| Pretty sure this is illegal, and probably a liability e.g. if
| it came up in court.
| whstl wrote:
| Yes. It was judged illegal a few years ago in several
| countries, and German courts recently ratified the
| decision.
|
| I'm pretty sure if the debt itself ever goes to court, the
| debtor can argue that they can't even enter the website. On
| the other hand this company is a bit of a shitshow so good
| luck having the website work haha.
| godelski wrote:
| It's not a complete answer but I've seen talking about the
| costs help. That's what's making them overlook things
| anyways.
|
| What they see is dollars now but not dollars later. Often
| these data issues can rise to the level that it could destroy
| the entire business. You might be called a party pooper, but
| truth is people like this want to keep the party going. It's
| hard to understand that sometimes keeping the party going
| means saying no. But it's just the same dealing with drunk
| people, say no by saying yes to something else. Like
| presenting another solution. Though that's way easier said
| than done...
|
| Just remember, everyone is on the same team. People don't say
| "no" because they don't want to make more money. A good
| engineer says "no" a lot because your job is to find
| solutions. It usually sounds like "I don't think that'll work
| but we might be about to...". If you stop listening without
| hearing the "but" you can't solve problems, you can only
| ignore them. Which * _that*_ is not being a team player.
|
| We're always rushing and the truth is that doing good is much
| harder than doing bad or "evil". I put it in quotes because
| it's very easy to do things that are obviously evil post hoc
| but was done by someone trying hard to do good. So I find
| this language to be a problem because it is easy to dismiss
| with "I'm not a bad person" and "I'm trying to do good".
| Truth is that's not enough. Truth is mistakes happen. We work
| with asymmetric information. It only becomes _your fault_
| when you recognize and don 't take steps to fix it (or active
| ignorance).
|
| Sometimes things take nuance. Sometimes it takes more than a
| few sentences to convey. But who reads longer anyways?
| bloomca wrote:
| Money, it's just business. I think every big corp is morally
| bankrupt (otherwise they wouldn't be big). There are some
| exceptions, of course, if a company found a sustainable way to
| monetize their output.
|
| But the baseline is really bad.
| michaelteter wrote:
| This is basically it. There are a dozen ways to become huge,
| and they all are essnetially anti-humanity.
|
| There's an expression: normalization of deviance.
|
| This is where we are now. People idolize others because of
| their wealth, and that wealth is always gained by means which
| are ultimately harmful to the greater population. Even the
| wealthy philanthropistMS which will remain unnamed acquired
| their greatness by cheating and stealing. But as long as you
| make a great show and give it all away eventually (while
| living lavishly the entire time), you look good.
| whstl wrote:
| As a 90s teen growing up with Grunge and in a DYI punk
| scene, I remember my youth being a lot about authenticity,
| and it felt weird reading about how the 80s were all about
| money and fame and how selling out was ok.
|
| To me that sounded absolutely absurd and a freaking
| caricature, something out of "American Psycho".
|
| Today I was just discussing with a friend how we're perhaps
| even more materialistic and cut-throat...
| prox wrote:
| A fear of mine is that we are speedrunning Cyberpunk
| 2077. And that's not something to expire to. It's a bleak
| no-hope hell.
|
| Hope is about finding and using that moral compass. To
| change worse outcomes to better outcomes for _everyone_.
| The "I'll take mine" or "My group needs to win" attitude
| is poison to yourself and to the world, and if you don't
| see that your conscience is blind or broken.
|
| This is nothing new, in numerous books on moral
| philosophy and people who have been in these situations
| have spoken out on it.
| whstl wrote:
| As an old-school leftist that feels politically orphaned,
| I feel like there's a huge group that is hating all the
| current bullshit. Even terminally online people.
|
| I don't see a way out, though. I just hope we can leave a
| planet for the animals.
|
| EDIT: On the other hand: the internet is already a
| dystopia if you look closely. Maybe it will prove to be a
| fad and people will go back to their lives. One can hope!
| dd36 wrote:
| Musicians used to not let their songs be used in
| commercials.
| whstl wrote:
| For music I blame poptimism.
|
| An entire generation of critics tried to appeal to a new
| market and money suddenly became synonymous with quality.
|
| Naturally artists stopped caring about authenticity,
| sharing their beliefs. And also about the critics.
|
| Just as music was replaced by reality shows in MTV, music
| journalism was entirely replaced by gossip and tabloids.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockism_and_poptimism
| ajmurmann wrote:
| They also used to have income from selling records.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > There are a dozen ways to become huge, and they all are
| essnetially anti-humanity.
|
| Offering customers lower prices is a way to gain more
| customers. Software allows for automation and efficiencies
| of scale. The end result will be a few big organizations
| that win, without cheating or stealing. (Although, there
| most likely is cheating or stealing due to other factors).
|
| But I would not classify the success of most larger modern
| businesses solely due to cheating or stealing. It was
| simply being at the right place at the right time and
| executing correctly to take advantage of developing
| technologies to take advantage of economies of scale.
|
| In this specific case, I know my family and friends benefit
| greatly from the "free" instant communication and file
| transfer capabilities that Meta offers (WhatsApp). There
| obviously might be costs, but international communications
| have been made far, far cheaper and higher quality due to
| WhatsApp.
| jajko wrote:
| Its way less bad than some investors ie on Wall street or
| arms/military business, by huge margin. Folks scamming old
| people out of money or encrypting their HDDs for ransom
| should be shot in sight. But - this topic affects billions
| very directly, and its not about the effect _now_ , but
| helping general direction which is outright evil by any moral
| standards.
|
| I can pull out usual godwin's law plug but I guess we all
| know what would be there. People like to feel great about
| themselves, its subconscious. And if slightly tilting reality
| in their favor can achieve that then what's the problem,
| right. Again, this is not a conscious decision so most don't
| even notice that, and who would complain about feeling better
| about themselves.
|
| Old enough, when you want to see such things like these
| biases in people around you, its very easy once you start
| looking for them. I guess we really are all heroes of our own
| stories (but what I mention is far from uniformly
| distributed, some folks are really stellar human beings and
| some opposite)
| procaryote wrote:
| The arms business seems more honest really, and arguably
| hurts society less, especially in peace time.
| jajko wrote:
| Buy they _very_ actively push and lobby to end those
| peaceful times, ie second Iraq invasion for completely
| made up reasons, or stay in Afghanistan way beyond
| anything reasonable, when it was clear there is no
| winning possible.
| wat10000 wrote:
| Big companies are paperclip maximizers, for money instead of
| paperclips. It's strange how many people can see the danger
| of a hypothetical nonhuman intelligence with a goal of making
| as many paperclips as possible, but not the danger of actual
| nonhuman intelligences with the goal of making as much money
| as possible.
| msgodel wrote:
| In theory optimizing for money _long term_ should align
| everyone 's interests. The problem is that (for a number of
| reasons) public executives have _far_ more incentive to be
| short sighted.
| wat10000 wrote:
| How's that? I can see that being the case in a world
| where all interactions are voluntary, but that's not
| reality.
| mindslight wrote:
| No, it doesn't. You're assuming that markets have a
| computational efficiency and smoothness that simply isn't
| there. P != NP.
|
| Markets are a heuristic based around mediating between
| the interests of different parties precisely because the
| overall problem is computationally hard. If markets
| achieved the kind of optimality you're thinking, then
| top-down central planning would _also_ be workable.
| blitzar wrote:
| > What makes employees there feel good (or at least okay) about
| doing stuff like this?
|
| A big house, a fast car, more money.
|
| Where else in SV are you going to go anyway? Every company does
| the same thing.
| procaryote wrote:
| Finding a company less bad for the world than Meta isn't very
| hard. They pay really well to compensate, so people will
| rationalise working there of course, but "everyone does it"
| is just a way to dodge responsibility for your own choices
|
| If you value money over other people, it's a great place to
| work though
| blitzar wrote:
| Smearing shit on your face every morning is "less bad" than
| smearing shit all over your whole body every morning.
|
| "Everyone does it" is as much of a cope as "less bad". You
| are still covered in shit.
| procaryote wrote:
| That argument could be made against any improvement that
| isn't an immediate leap to perfection. It's not very
| useful
| et-al wrote:
| > _Where else in SV are you going to go anyway? Every company
| does the same thing._
|
| That's like saying mechanical engineers can only work at
| Raytheon or Lockheed Martin. Or biotech people can only work
| at Purdue Pharma.
|
| There are companies in SV who are making products for actual
| users. Just look outside adtech.
| gsky wrote:
| Some engineers do anything for money. Check out teamblind.com
| to know the evil side of engineers
| ReptileMan wrote:
| It should be noted that no ethically -trained software engineer
| would ever consent to write a DestroyBaghdad procedure. Basic
| professional ethics would instead require him to write a
| DestroyCity procedure, to which Baghdad could be given as a
| parameter.
| palmfacehn wrote:
| Generally employees put the responsibility on management. As
| everyone has a higher up they answer to, no one feels
| personally responsible. From the top down, the concerns of how
| things are actually implemented are often too abstract. Combine
| these dynamics with institutional echochambers and group-think.
|
| Employees just want to make it to the weekend. Execs want to
| hit their targets. Sales dept. needs their bonuses. The board
| wants to pump valuations.
| whstl wrote:
| Not Meta but I once got yelled at not by a real manager, but
| by a PM because I said I wouldn't let the team do something
| shady without legal signing off. I'm in Europe so it was GDPR
| related.
|
| The PM tried shopping the task to other teams, but nobody
| took the bait after I raised it publicly, and both legal and
| the external law firm sided with me after about three months
| of delay.
|
| In the meantime I raised the topic of yelling with HR but
| every step of the way the company made me feel like I was the
| one in the wrong for not complying.
|
| I believe if I were meeker I would probably have complied
| right there.
| fittingopposite wrote:
| Yes. Was my same first thought. Same thing that happened in
| Germany: "The banality of evil" how Hannah Arendt described
| Adolf Eichmann's excuse that he didn't bare any
| responsibility since he was just doing his job...
| et-al wrote:
| Eh, software engineers throughout the ZIRP had the choice of
| working at plenty of companies. People _chose_ to work at
| Facebook for the money disregarding all other concerns. That
| 's it.
| porridgeraisin wrote:
| Optimization with the objectives we have today, and more
| generally financialism are all about splitting up end-to-end
| tasks into pieces and removing redundant common work. This is
| obviously good...upto a point. It gets bad because morals and a
| bunch of other stuff also gets split up.
|
| Like someone mentioned below, it's unrealistic to expect people
| to think about second or third or nth order effects of their
| job. Heck, those effects are not even visible in 90% of cases.
|
| To answer your question, the engineer at meta is just building
| a graph database. It takes a `void* node_data` as argument.
| Another is just building a kafka-clickhouse data pipeline that
| can transfer so many millions of `void* message`s a minute. The
| android engineer is just improving the percentage of requests
| without location data by using wifi ssids as fallback. The CEO
| just sees "advertising revenue WoW" in his dashboard. And so
| on. That it is actually being used for spying is many steps
| away from each of them -- OK, in the case of meta I'm sure the
| employees know to an extent. But it's still very different from
| the feeling they would get if they were doing the end-to-end
| task themselves.
|
| It's the same thing with other questionable products. It's
| split up sufficiently across the supply chain that no one is
| actually aware _enough_ of the task end-to-end.
|
| In some cases, the same participant in the supply chain will be
| a supplier for something really good and necessary..but they
| will also be a supplier for something despicable. In this case,
| it is easy for everyone involved to sweep the latter under the
| rug.
|
| As far as I have thought about it, there is no way to get rid
| of this larger problem without also losing the (unfathomably
| massive) benefits.
| sneak wrote:
| Same thing at Google or Apple. Google has everyone's email and
| browsing history, Apple has the complete copy of everyone's
| iMessage and SMS history (in the non-e2ee iCloud backups,
| readable by Apple).
|
| Anything these companies know, the FBI and CIA can know,
| without a warrant thanks to FAA702 (did we all forget about
| PRISM?).
|
| The state now has leverage over almost every normal citizen,
| thanks to what these companies have built.
|
| Turnkey tyranny. Built by silicon valley.
| msgodel wrote:
| I know it's not so hip here but the answer is _money._ You go
| to work for _money._ It 's not to socialize, not for personal
| growth, and not for charity. If I want those things I have
| hobbies (including hobby programming.)
| laweijfmvo wrote:
| +1 for "money". how many years until AI makes everyone's job
| obsolete? do you really think countries like the US have their
| citizens' best interests in mind? i'm guessing Forced
| Meaningless Labor (like the cartoon prisoners hammering rocks)
| is more probable than Universal Basic Income.
| adolph wrote:
| > What makes employees there feel good (or at least okay) about
| doing stuff like this?
|
| Would someone explain in plain language what is wrong with an
| app listening on a port for messages from the browser? It seems
| like a helpful asynchronous method to maintain state between
| browser and app.
| grumpymuppet wrote:
| I'm nearly certain it's the dopamine response of "solving
| problems" coupled with the fear of losing a paycheck.
|
| Morality isn't a consideration.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| Nobody is stopping you from making whatever you want and
| putting it out there in the world. If you believe strongly in a
| different order of things, go for it!
| greatwhitenorth wrote:
| Where do you work you perfect neck beard human being? Let's see
| if your company or every company in the supply chain of your
| company's products or your work are ethical.
| mcculley wrote:
| It is the same process whereby websites deploy Google
| Analytics. They are getting value by harming their users. They
| easily rationalize and justify it.
| bluesnowmonkey wrote:
| You start with small moral compromises. That prepares you for
| big ones.
| dagmx wrote:
| Meta pays a lot. Most people there don't work on the shady
| stuff and don't pay attention to what else is going on.
|
| That's generally the case for everyone I know who works there.
|
| Many of them are even quite liberal and will join protests for
| things that Meta has actively and negatively played a part in,
| so they're in effect protesting their own workplace indirectly.
| But will continue to work there because they can
| compartmentalize this.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| No snowflake feels responsible for the avalanche
|
| - "I didn't write it, I just had the idea"
|
| - "I didn't implement it, I just made the prototype"
|
| - "It wasn't my product, I just fixed some bugs with it"
|
| - "I can't track everything in these implementation updates, I
| just work with what I am given"
|
| - "I didn't collect the data, I just deal with what is in the
| dataset"
| Fairburn wrote:
| Doubtful someone from Meta would admit to anything.
| lazyeye wrote:
| Here's a senior ex-Facebook exec detailing how the company
| would betray users in the US to the CCP to help gain access to
| the Chinese market:-
|
| https://youtu.be/f3DAnORfgB8
|
| amongst other things...
| akomtu wrote:
| The same reason people eat meat. The reality of what happens
| behind the scenes to produce meat or their paycheck is
| carefully hidden from their sight, and when it's hidden, it's
| easy to convince ourselves that we aren't some monsters who run
| concentration camps with cows and pigs in them, but decent
| humans who have taste for medium rare steaks.
|
| What Meta does to society is more insidious: it gets people
| addicted to _content_ so it can make them eat a poison for
| their minds, so-called _ads_. Surveillance is just method of
| making the ads more invasive, tailored to each user
| individually.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| Text-only, no Javascript:
|
| https://assets.msn.com/content/view/v2/Detail/en-in/AA1GecPs
| geraldhh wrote:
| unformatted html with sugar is not really helpful to humans, is
| it?
| EMM_386 wrote:
| If any software engineers out there are working on things like
| this I can only pray they STOP and think about why what they are
| doing. Implementing features by having to jump through hoops,
| just so that their employer can better spy on people and make
| more money.
|
| That is so wrong, on so many levels ... I personally couldn't do
| it.
|
| I hate this even more than NSO Group's Pegasys, which could
| easily get people killed. I'm ok with my reasoning, and I really
| hate that one as well.
|
| Here, with Meta and Yandex, you see what you always see.
|
| As soon as people catch on, they immediately remove it. But they
| will keep using it until that day comes.
|
| For money, while trying to hide it from the users they are spying
| on.
|
| It's greedy and evil and whoever in these companies think up
| these ideas should be let go. Immediately, in a perfect world.
|
| Instead they'll just try another approach.
|
| While everyone else has to clean up this latest one.
|
| "Following public disclosure, Meta ceased using this method on
| June 3, 2025. Browser vendors like Chrome, Brave, Firefox, and
| DuckDuckGo have implemented or are developing mitigations, but a
| full resolution may require OS-level changes and stricter
| enforcement of platform policies to prevent further abuse."
| klipklop wrote:
| Always funny how nearly universally Meta employees are quiet and
| never defend their companies practices..
|
| The silence says a lot.
| pmdr wrote:
| Silence keeps food on the table.
| flanked-evergl wrote:
| They make something people want. Most people I know thah use
| it, including me, just don't really see that big a downside to
| using it.
|
| I'm not even slightly considering removing any Meta app, and
| let's face it, Firefox is over as a project because their
| priorities are all out of wack.
|
| So Chrome and meta apps all the way for me, but I'm sure to
| listen to the Amazon Washington Post as to how I should treat
| Amazon competitors in the future.
| swat535 wrote:
| Why would they say anything ? and how are they any different
| from Google employees, weapon manufacturer employees, 3 letter
| agency employees, etc?
|
| Everything can be justified given enough money. There is no
| such thing as objective morality.
| righthand wrote:
| WaPo's reputation so tarnished they have other outlets reporting
| for them? I don't understand why a slashdot article has WaPo in
| the headline. Are they some authority on privacy?
| DidYaWipe wrote:
| Never used Chrome, and don't use Meta apps... and when I did, I
| did not give them any real information.
|
| I'm disgusted by the number of people giving real personal
| information to these assholes. "Open"AI insisted that you give
| them a real, functioning phone number to use ChatGPT. No
| goddamned way.
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| I didn't give open ai my number...because i wouldn't have.
| Works fine for me (though i do use deepseek more, nowadays.
| gsky wrote:
| Gmail should be at the top of the list
| HocusLocus wrote:
| It's CREEPY to imagine the Internet is under a mandate to protect
| your privacy. Don't be CREEPY.
|
| The EU cookie fiasco is just that. All of a sudden, your every
| day experience was derailed extremely in a way that 'broke' HTML
| standards and sites at first in hundreds of ways. All of a sudden
| sites that never did track users were forced to start tracking
| them -- in order to set the flag to suppress the harassing cookie
| warning. Ironically, they will remember your cookie settings if
| you 'sign up'. Meanwhile nothing became more secure or private.
| It was just a way for the EU to virtue signal out loud and be
| annoying. It throws the user into sitespace to navigate the
| site's own cookie settings. It's theater.
|
| Meanwhile, advanced fingerprinting is, well uhm, advanced. If the
| EU cared about cookie privacy a better course of action would
| have been to see whether browsers were locked down with best
| anti-fingerprinting possible and local cookie dialogues... and
| certify the ones that were. Educate users, harass them one time.
| huijzer wrote:
| Yes if the EU's aim was to just throw sand in the machine that
| is called society, then it seems they did a splendid job.
| gherkinnn wrote:
| > All of a sudden sites that never did track users were forced
| to start tracking them -- in order to set the flag to suppress
| the harassing cookie warning.
|
| How is this true? You don't need a cookie warning if you're not
| tracking or doing other nastiness. A cookie banner is not
| required for functions like user sessions or keeping track of a
| shopping art.
| jhasse wrote:
| > All of a sudden sites that never did track users were forced
| to start tracking them -- in order to set the flag to suppress
| the harassing cookie warning.
|
| If the site never tracked the user, they wouldn't need to show
| the cookie banner in the first place.
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| The 'fiasco' is for your benefit. If you don't like the
| banners, get a blocker or don't visit sites that track you.
| It's a pissy thing to add, but do you also get upset with
| places that have "This area is under video surveillance for
| your [cough] security"?
| miohtama wrote:
| https://getfirefox.com
| downsplat wrote:
| Yes. Especially on Android, FF with uBlock Origin is the
| superpower.
|
| For this particular issue: Three dots > Extensions > uBlock
| Origin > Open dashboard > Filter list > Privacy, enable "Block
| Outsider Intrusion into LAN".
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I like the succinctness of it. Reminded me of "Eat food, not too
| much, mostly plants" as Michael Pollan says about dieting.
| unstablediffusi wrote:
| anyone who knows a damn about (non-ideological) nutrition will
| tell you that it is terrible advice.
| skylurk wrote:
| What do you suggest as an alternative to food?
| jgalt212 wrote:
| > Know, too, that even if you don't have Meta apps on your phone,
| and even if you don't use Facebook or Instagram at all, Meta
| might still harvest information on your activity across the web.
|
| A bit wishy washy. They are still tracking you, just not as
| effectively as before.
| cuncurrenzio wrote:
| There is a data pipe directly into the PNNL from Meta. Do your
| research!
| kstrauser wrote:
| I don't want to. You do it for me: post a link to what you're
| talking about.
| cuncurren6zio wrote:
| There is a data pipe directly into the PNNL from Meta. Do your
| research!
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