Here is what is new and changed in Firefox 74.0 Stable
Firefox 74.0 is the latest stable version of the web browser. Its release date is March 10, 2020.
All major Firefox channels are updated as well. Firefox Beta and Firefox Dev receive an update to version 75.0, Firefox Nightly is moved to version 76.0, and Firefox ESR to version 68.6. Additionally, Firefox for Android will also be upgraded to version 68.6.
You may check out the release overview for Firefox 73.0 here in case you missed it. The next stable version of Firefox, Firefox 75.0, is scheduled to be released on April 7, 2020.
Executive Summary
- Firefox does not support TLS 1.0 or TLS 1.1 anymore.
- Privacy improvements by blocking access to certain information, e.g. geolocation from cross-origin iframes.
Firefox 74.0 download and update
The official release date of Firefox 74.0 is March 10, 2020. The browser will become available on that day on Mozilla's website and as an in-browser upgrade.
Firefox users may select Menu > Help > About Firefox to run a manual check for updates. Once released, Firefox will pick up the new version automatically and install it on the device.
The following pages list direct downloads for supported Firefox channels (will be available later on March 10, 2020)
Firefox 74.0 Changes
Firefox 74.0 is a smaller release with just a few changes and improvements. Mozilla reduced the time period between releases; a new Firefox version is released every four weeks from 2020 on.
TLS 1.0 and TLS 1.1 support removed
Mozilla and other prominent browser makers announced plans to deprecate the old standards TLS 1.0 and 1.1 in browsers in 2020. Mozilla started to disable TLS 1.0 and 1.1 in Firefox Nightly last year and has now removed support for the encryption protocols in Firefox 74.0 Stable.
Firefox will throw a "secure connection failed" error when a site only supports TLS 1.1 or lower. Sites need to support at least TLS 1.2 to make sure that users can connect to the sites.
Non-user installed add-ons may be removed using about:addons
Firefox users may remove extensions installed by external applications using the browser's add-ons management page about:addons.
Mozilla plans to disallow extension installations by external applications going forward.
Other changes
- Firefox now provides better privacy for your web voice and video calls through support for mDNS ICE by cloaking your computer’s IP address with a random ID in certain WebRTC scenarios.
- The Facebook Container extensions for Firefox supports adding custom sites to the container now.
- Firefox Lockwise, the built-in password manager of Firefox, now supports reverse alpha sorting entries (Z-A).
- Geolocation, fullscreen, camera, mic, screen capture requests from cross-origin <iframe> are now disabled by default
- Improved bookmarks and history importing from the new Microsoft Edge on Windows and Mac devices.
- Mozilla fixed an issue that could cause pinned tabs to become lost or reordered.
- Fixed Picture-in-Picture toggle on Instagram which sit on top of the "next" button when uploading photos to the site.
- The shortcut Ctrl-I opens the Page Info window on Windows now (instead of the Bookmarks sidebar).
Firefox for Android
Mozilla lists "various stability and security fixes" without providing additional details.
Developer Changes
- Cross-Origin-Resource-Policy header is enabled by default.
- Feature Policy is enabled by default.
- Javascript: Optional Chaining operator has been implemented
Security updates / fixes
Security updates are revealed after the official release of the web browser. You find the information published here.
Additional information / sources
- Firefox 74 release notes
- Add-on compatibility for Firefox 74
- Firefox 74 for Developers
- Site compatibility for Firefox 74
- Firefox Security Advisories
- Firefox Release Schedule
Who thinks that Pale Moon is a secure alternative… Stop recommending it, the browser seems to be undone soone!
https://www.reddit.com/r/palemoon/comments/fk4fnl/attention_palemoon_is_going_to_die_most_likely/
More information here:
https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=24004
https://freenode.logbot.info/binaryoutcast/20200314
Just wanting to say. As there is no fresh engine for them and this Google webcomponent thing seems too big, they are highly losing motivation and faith in their own survival.
Something vital which HAS to be shared for all who may still use Pale Moon!
Your comment is kinda off-topic and completely full of FUD. Tobin has already debunked all that doomsaying: https://old.reddit.com/r/palemoon/comments/fk4fnl/attention_palemoon_is_going_to_die_most_likely/fktidxj/
Just because they rebased two times before, it doesn’t mean that they’ll die soon. Have you ever heard of the expression “reinventing the wheel”? Bye.
Somewhat related, I just went to the Mozilla Twitter page..
https://twitter.com/mozilla
“You Might Like’ and “Who To Follow” = The frakkin’ Chrome Browser….WTF !
Are they about to sell the farm to Google?
The silence from Baker and Co since Jan 1 is deafening.
@To the MozCo trolls. this is why Mozilla disgusts us long time users.
@Stan
> Are they about to sell the farm to Google?
Google has been paying their bills for years, what difference would it make?
Can’t we agree that everyone uses a different browser,why does it have to turn into my browser v your browser.Or Brave v Firefox in just about every story related to Mozilla.It is really pathetic and immature.There are still lots of users who prefer to use Firefox even if a smaller user base now.
Chrome has what over 60 percent usage,and no one says anything dissuade the use of this browser.
@Anonymous The reason why so many are now vocal against Mozilla and Firefox is because of Mozillas actions. They betrayed their own visions of power to the user and their origin vocal power-user base – which advertised them, which made them big.
It is seriously difficult to root for a developer who turns into a sell-out just to be able to (unsuccessfully) absorb Chromes user-base to (unsuccessfully) become number one market-share-wise.
A developer who shows so less morals and fairness – and these days only tries to appeal to the most radical zealots of the left side instead of still being fully embracing people from the whole political spectrum… is just disgusting and earns all the criticism.
Mozilla must blame itself for all this negative publicity. They are the root of this growing problem. A problem they easily could have avoided with keeping power-user features and not trying to defeat Chrome with becoming more of the same and avoiding in becoming a leftist fanatics dream-browser.
could we just have the add-on bar back, please!
Firefox lost me on all this privacy stuff, if they would only spend a bit more time on performance and less on being my net nanny. Isn’t Firefox just becoming the Tor browser these days?
@JohnIL,your copy /pasting the same stuff & really its complete nonsense.
-net nanny.Who says,yes only you in your feeble little mind.
-performance.I think your computer has the problem,I saw a video on youtube & it actually outperforms Chrome for page load speed.
Wow you saw a video on youtube so it must be true /s There are zero real world benchmarks that show ff is as fast never mind faster than chrome. Same goes for memory usage despite mozilla’s claims.
@JohnIL
Firefox is extremely far removed from the privacy level of the Tor browser. It is true that the Tor browser is based on Firefox, but they have to modify it so heavily in order to achieve their results, it’s not even funny anymore.
And regarding performance… I think you can already be happy with the fact that web admins still bother to test their websites against Firefox at this point in time. I don’t say that because I hate FF or something, I say that because FF only has 5% market share (desktop and mobile combined) left, so developers / web admins still testing against it is genuinely surprising. Too small for testing to be a rewarding endeavor, but still too big to be totally ignored, I guess.
For those still running legacy extensions on dev builds, you’ll need to toggle extensions.experiments.enabled to true. This is a new pref that is meant to replace extensions.legacy.enabled.
True, I was just wondering why the delay.
Are MozCo getting $$$$ from them?
“Mozilla rolls out DNS over HTTPS for users in the US: on by default”
Hmm, still not here in the US, with this release or the Beta…
@Stan
The only people who care about that nonsense are those who cannot wait to channel their entire traffic through Cloudfare.
Because surely it is a great idea to centralize all traffic at Cloudflare, who are known for being totally pro-privacy. /s
DNS-over-HTTPS is not a VPN, therefore your traffic can’t go “through Cloudflare”. It encrypts DNS queries and the default DNS server happens to be Cloudflare, which can be bad for privacy depending on the situation (not all ISPs are good).
This setting can be disabled, there’s already another choice (NextDNS) available, and we can use any custom DNS resolver we want (Adguard, Google DNS, OpenDNS, many community run servers, or your own server).
I assume the average ghacks user can change a simple setting.
@No0
I know that Cloudflare is not VPN or comparable with Tor, so traffic isn’t “channelled” through it in that sense of course. Excuses if I have been unclear here. My point is though that Cloudflare gets insights into your traffic, and while the connection is “encrypted”, we already know that almost all ciphers have been compromised. So I am not betting too much on that.
And let’s be real here, if it is enabled by default and if the default provider is Cloudflare, 95%++ of Firefox users will neither disable it nor change the provider. gHacks readers maybe, but our number is so tiny that losing us is totally irrelevant. The general public will have to put up with it.
Really Mozilla at least choose a different date for your new release and not push out updates on the very day that coincides with MS’s monthly horror story! 10’s bad enough to deal with on its own and really monthly madness from Mozilla will not win much in the way of converts. Oh and as I type this, the Update nagging begins, and Nagging that can not be easily disabled with a simple do not NAG setting in the Browser UI.
By the way, Firefox sank to an all-time low since 2005:
https://www.computerworld.com/article/3199425/top-web-browsers-2020-firefox-sinks-to-share-unseen-since-2005.html
Good job moz://a. Hope your shity little scheme of stealing all your userbase data and hope nobody notices was worth it. Sell whatever you stole, because this is your last chance earn something before you rot in Hell, forever <3
FF loosing just under 2 million users a month at the moment. Brave gaining just under a million a month but still tiny by comparison. I assume Mozilla’s CEO’s bonus will still increase though, it has every other year despite their users share going down. Should be out of a job not being rewarded for it.
Firefox “loosing” users would mean letting them off the leash, like you loose a dog, or loose a ship by untying it from the pier. I hope you meant Firefox losing users.
I did, it was late lol
Probably my eyes are kidding me or something, because it seems that FF 68.6 ESR loads faster any website than FF 74. Obviously I should be wrong, shouldn’t I? 🙄
Firefox v57 was a downgrade in every single way, memory management being the biggest hit. But facts are nothing to mozillians, they still believe their “quantum” meme is the next best thing on the market right now.
Firefox 74.0 on stage. No problems, nevertheless my CSS required a few modifications.
Waiting for ghacks user.js v74 at “https://github.com/ghacksuserjs/ghacks-user.js/releases”, latest is still 73.0-beta. Follows a personal message to ghacks.user.js’ development team : no idea what’s your coffee but my advice is to switch to a strong Arabica, you guys ain’t up to date :=)
> Mozilla plans to disallow extension installations by external applications going forward.
This is sold as having been decided to counter evil external applications but will also conveniently prevent legit user chosen external applications to modify the browser automatically. They didn’t even attempt to block specific threats, no: blanket ban. Better solution. For them.
This reminds us of how they can now remotely disable non malicious extensions (like translation ones) without letting us override their decision of what code we’re allowed to run on our devices.
Mozilla controls our browser, we don’t. And it’s not just for our own good.
Does the update re-enable disabled telemetry settings (as happened in the past)?
That setting does nothing. Telemetry is always enabled, whenever moz://a requires it:
https://www.ghacks.net/2018/09/21/mozilla-wants-to-estimate-firefoxs-telemetry-off-population/
I was referring to a host of disabled settings in about:config, not to the preferences.
It didn’t matter in 2018 when I had everything disabled in about:config. It bypassed every config.
https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/74.0/
Correction: switching ‘security.tls.version.enable-deprecated’ to ‘true’ enables TLS 1.0 and 1.1 in Firefox 74.
If anyone still had doubts regarding the intelligence level of society, this will remove your doubts:
https://twitter.com/manjarolinux/status/1194749794851459079
—–
Yes, please give us the browser that allows the remote insertion of unknown code by default:
app.shield.optoutstudies.enabled
app.normandy.enabled
Yes, let’s criticize Brave for analyzing your browsing behavior offline, and for it all being opt-in, while Firefox does the exact same thing for Pocket Top Stories, and it being opt-out in Firefox:
browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.feeds.section.topstories
extensions.pocket.enabled
Yes, please give us the browser that still leaves telemetry enabled via a hidden setting, even if we have already disabled all telemetry settings in about:config, not the browser that has a transparent telemetry setting that actually turns telemetry off:
toolkit.coverage.opt-out
Please, we do not want to support the Google monopoly, so give us the browser that is being funded by Google, not the one attacking its core business model by offering a viable and more user-friendly alternative:
https://www.cnet.com/news/google-firefox-search-deal-gives-mozilla-more-money-to-push-privacy/
https://venturebeat.com/2019/04/24/brave-rolls-out-its-own-ads-that-pay-users-a-70-cut/
Please, we want to surf for free and having our data mined by Google, we do not deserve a decent tracking protection, let alone one that is enabled by default, and do not under any circumstances(!) give us a browser that lets us earn money while surfing.
—–
80% of the people being dumb and uninformed is sadly what I’ve come to expect from society in recent years. Thought the Linux community would be smarter than that, but apparently not. Just posting this to illustrate why I have this sentiment regarding (and why I am thoroughly disappointed in) Firefox. I think Mozilla’s marketing department has done a decent job in advertising a product that claims to protect privacy while doing the opposite, Google-friendly thing as usual.
Iron Heart posting the same shit in Firefox news, right on schedule.
Feel free to ignore this idiot, folks. You don’t want to argue with voice recorder.
@Dude without a suit
Are you actually able to refute any of my points, or not? Attacking me is as a person doesn’t disqualify any of the points I make, even if they would be repetitive, which they are not.
Your comment is utterly idiotic.
The only REAL trolls which are on Ghacks these days are part of the Mozilla-new Firefox-wannabelike-Chrome-imitation browser fandom. Compared to them, i find @Iron-Heart really sympathetic – in direct relation to the paid crowd of Firefox defender radicals with either left/far-left/extremist opinion, which would love nothing more than to silence every vocal opposition against Firefox.
Lets face the truth – With each growing and more and more epic fails Mozilla falls with betraying their origin visions and believes and with betraying their origin power-user-base – and the higher the market-share loss of Firefox is becoming, the more Mozilla trolls launch attacks against other browsers, no matter if Edge, Pale Moon, Seamonkey or Vivaldi or Brave.
Fits a radical leftist browser developer and it’s radical leftist user-base-new. The MAJORITY of these days remaining non-enigmatic and non-sophisticated Firefox fanboys/fangirls are simply radicals and are part of the WORST browser community which is around these days, comparing browser communities all together. Truly nothing to be proud of.
Firefox and Mozilla – a toxic development area which delivers a product – which these days is no longer designed for intelligent people which want intelligent and powerful features, but for “fake-social-justice-extremists” – which do not even have the tiniest bit of clue of REAL social-justice!
And with each loss, the radicalization of the remaining Mozilla fandom is increasing, as most users who have shown intelligence and style have already left the Titanic or are going to leave it soon. You can not expect much from what remains. That is the sad truth.
It does have the most fanatical, intolerant community (the vocal, not all users obviously), it’s just a browser and, out of the box, not really that great in any area.
Anyway you do wonder how much longer it will be around at this rate. Next time negotiations happen I doubt google or anyone will be offering anything like as much money for a product that will have lost at least half of its users. If it is really costing them silly amounts money to keeping it going what will they do then? It’s all very well adding things like a paid vpn but if you haven’t users then that’s no help.
@3rdrock Once Mozilla was awesome – when they believed in powerful features/add-ons and power-users. When they believed that something should stick out of the crowd instead of just trying to blend in with the generic rest.
That was when Mozilla was great. What is left at this point in time, is just disgusting and nauseating. I really loved Mozilla when they still had a soul – today it is just a commercial empty shell, and just a toy which is abused by will by Mozillas “sugar-daddy” Google!
@Lard They went downhill, nay off a cliff, when they ousted Eich. For example you read about the things he didn’t want to implement because of privacy concerns or just bad in general like DRM yet, once he was removed, all those things were added in short order.
@3rdrock
I suspect Google will be funding them once more, albeit with a reduced amount of money. Not necessarily because they want to be the default search engine again – when Mozilla briefly switched from Google to Yahoo, Yahoo’s search engine market share didn’t significantly increase, because users switched the search engine back to Google immediately.
I suspect the real reason why they will continue to fund them are the antitrust laws of various states, which Google escapes by artificially keeping Mozilla alive as a small competitor, to which they can point if unpleasant questions are being raised. It’s better to have a small competitor (that they indirectly control anyway) than having to deal with antitrust cases being filed against them.
Whether the technical foundation of Firefox (specifically the Gecko rendering engine) survives is debatable, though. Basically all browsers, except for Firefox and Safari, are based on Chromium already. However, I think a rather unexpected party will bring Mozilla down: Apple. Once Apple switches to Chromium as the basis of Safari, it’s game over for Firefox. As it stands, WebKit is being neglected and is far behind the other two engines in terms of web standard support, and Apple has no business incentive to keep any specific browser engine going. They’d be better off reducing development cost and increasing the web compatibility of Safari at this point. I would not put it past them to do what Microsoft did, throwing in the towel and start using Chromium. We shall see, I strongly believe Apple will be the one to do Mozilla in. Mark my words, and remember that you heard it here first, once it happens.
Well Google are also pointing to all the chromium forks when people mention antitrust.
I still find it hard to believe that they need 1000+ staff to maintain and develop ff so perhaps even if they only get half the funds they do now they will just get rid of the waste and still be fine. Whatever happens it won’t simply disappear, someone will continue to try and keep it going, sort of a pale moon but more difficult.
I’d be surprised if Apple switch to chromium/blink. It’s not impossible but very un-apple like but more than that it wouldn’t go down well with users to put it mildly. Safari wasn’t bad until they ruined the extension ecosystem, I still use it once in a while and I’ve never come across any website problems, or read about them, so any lack of standards doesn’t seem to be much of a thing in the real world.
@Lord Lestat
Google funding Mozilla is just a fact – one can easily research it if one is interested, even if the FF fans dislike it being mentioned too often. Google is the default search engine of Firefox as a result, but their influence doesn’t end there. Mozilla also stands idly by whenever Google comes up with nefarious new “web standards”, the most egregious example being DRM. Mozilla was okay with having a closed source blackbox in the browser, open source be damned. That already tells you all you need to know about them. It’s also fairly surprising to the unsuspecting Firefox user that Firefox’s privacy settings are extremely poor, another result of Google’s influence.
That’s why I don’t take the two points cited by Firefox fans seriously:
– We fight against Google’s dominance by using Firefox.
– If Firefox were to die, Google could just decide upon web standards on their own.
Both are laughable, as Google allows Mozilla to exist, as controlled opposition meant to fend off antitrust charges, by using FF you are definitely not fighting Google. Google also decides upon web standards already, with Mozilla standing idly by.
You know that I don’t share your opinion that a program having less features than before is an expression of “leftism”. I don’t think you can go by the feature-richness of a product and then say it has a certain political affiliation. For example, I don’t know whether the people at Vivaldi are left-wing or right-wing just because their browser allows more customization than current Firefox. I know that the people at Mozilla are left-wing, at least going by what they utter on social media, but these people do create an apolitical product. And no, having either more or less features in a product doesn’t have any relation to political affiliation of the persons behind it. A browser can become an actual political tool, for example if it prevents you from visiting certain sites for political reasons, but just going by its overall design and capabilities I don’t think grouping browsers into political affiliations works. Just saying. And remember, browsers aren’t Adobe Photoshop, they do not necessarily depend on or profit from having hundreds of options 99% of the people won’t use, though of course it is sad when companies do a 180° turn from what they offered before, this can be seen as betrayal (Mozilla, Opera). When you declare that you offer a customization- and privacy-focused product, I think you should stick with it instead of doing the plain opposite all of a sudden.
@3rdrock
Mozilla also owns a luxury estate in Paris, I wonder for what a browser developer needs that – but this doesn’t deter them from asking for donations from the naive populace. I think it is evident by the number of their employees alone that the company as a whole is not very efficient and not very focused. They do offer a browser, what do they need? They need lots of engineers (some of which maintain their website), a small team handling AMO, a few people in general support, a few designers, translators, marketing, and a legal department + their overall leadership. Look at Brave or Vivaldi, those are far smaller yet fully operational companies, which do not have anywhere close to 100 employees. Of course, these do not develop Chromium themselves for the most part, so let’s give Mozilla a far bigger engineering team at hand… But even then, I don’t see how they can possibly exceed 200 – 250 employees. Bloat, too much bloat, waste of money.
That being said, even without a bloated company like Mozilla, it should be clear that developing a browser totally on your own (which only Google – though Chromium has other major contributors, Mozilla, and Apple do at the moment) requires lots of money, it can’t be done by a small operation. The small companies currently developing browsers have all branched their browsers from either Chromium or Firefox and pull most of their changes from there still. If you want a sizable number of capable engineers that also have job opportunities at Google and Apple, in order to develop your own browser independently, then this becomes expensive very quickly. I therefore don’t see anyone picking up Firefox development, should Mozilla abandon it, and if someone does, it would have to be a major player of the tech industry. Volunteers alone won’t be able to stem it, that’s guaranteed.
You mentioned that Safari works well for you… That’s the result of endless hours of developers having to solve issues caused by Safari-specific quirks. So yes, websites do work well in it, but users are usually not aware of the trouble involved in making it work on Safari. Apple always lacks behind in terms of web standard support, and their implementation usually differs from how everyone else implements the same thing. More info here:
https://dev.to/nektro/safari-is-the-new-internet-explorer-1df0
Since they neglect Safari as we speak, I wouldn’t be surprised if they throw in the towel within the next few years under growing pressure from Chromium. And most Apple users wouldn’t know about it, nor would they care. That’s also the case with users of all other OSes except maybe Linux – they don’t know and don’t care, as long as it works.
You said that Google can point to other Chromium-based browsers as well, that they don’t need Mozilla to fend off antitrust charges. While there is some truth to that, keep in mind that Google doesn’t control the other Chromium-based browsers aside from Chrome itself. Should they really totally overtake the market with Chrome, they need a “competitor” that a) still exists and that they b) control. And that’s Mozilla.
Safari renders some things better, such as this: http://testserver.palemoon.org/gradients/gradient-transparent-test.html
Following web standards is not always a good, mainly considering that they are mostly controlled by Google. Mozilla has adopted some bad standards that wouldn’t even break websites if not adopted, such as the [Reporting API](https://w3c.github.io/reporting/#privacy) and hyperlink auditing.
@Iron Heart
Well, it is logical that Mozilla is controlled opposition – and as you said, Mozilla protects Google against a possible antitrust investigation. That is the only reason of this pathetic company these days – why it is even allowed to exist. Of course the Firefox “Otaku zealots” never would believe this, even if this simple fact is literally like the “Elephant in the room” – which can’t be ignored by the majority, but a small radicalized minority is still denying that it is there all along.
I do not think that Apple switching over to Chromium would be the end of Firefox. But Mozilla would have a way harder time compared to the status of how it is right now.
And Mozilla would possibly see even less reasoning to use an own engine which loses more and more traction and support by site-owners. In a Google dominated web it is more easy to re-base Chromium instead of maintaining your own engine successfully a long time.
+1
Let’s be real.
a. Practically nobody who runs Manjaro would use Firefox with its default settings.
b. Anyone who uses Manjaro knows you can’t neuter Brave to the same levels you can neuter Firefox.
Frankly, it’s that 21.5% that concerns me.
@Matt
Brave doesn’t need to be modified as much as Firefox to achieve a very good privacy level, between the user and the browser developer. If you are talking about website-related settings, then some of that stuff can be achieved via extensions. In general, most of the changes would negatively affect websites in some way or another, leading to problems while using the browser. Very few website-related settings can safely be changed in Firefox without breaking stuff, at least in my experience.
And frankly, Mozilla Firefox just isn’t trustworthy compared to e.g. Ungoogled Chromium. I trust that the latter won’t ship nefarious changes all of a sudden, can’t say the same about the former. Linux distros should throw their support behind projects like Ungoogled Chromium or Iridium if they really care, instead they are supporting Mozilla, who have already violated user trust more than once.
@ Iron Heart
May I ask why it is that you cannot post without having to stoop to the point where you call 80% of the people dumb?
Have you polled them? Measured them? Tested them in some way? Know what they are thinking?
Or do you just like to assert some kind of misplaced superiority at every chance to shill for Brave?
@Sophie
Good graces, you are annoying. There, I said it. Now on with your usual stuff:
> being either a shill for a certain browser
What you describe as “shilling Brave” is actually me debunking much of the criticism certain clowns utter against it.
> having a patronizing tone towards others (80% of people being dumb, levels of intelligence in society, etc etc)
Yeah, whatever. The fact is this: I know what I am talking about, I am fully aware of the awful default settings of Firefox. If others were aware, you wouldn’t see it promoted as much. It’s easy to understand.
> trying to appear superior by endlessly cutting and pasting text from other sources, and trying to self-congratulate in the process
I base my comments on actual sources, but I am not “cutting and pasting” from these sources, that’s just a claim you use to smear me, albeit unsuccessfully.
> There seems to be just one view, that being held by the poster.
Question: Are you actually able to refute any of my points, or is smearing your opponent your only way out?
> And boy, do the posts get long in the process.
Don’t like them, don’t read them. It’s easy. Try it for once.
> May I ask why it is that you cannot post without having to stoop to the point where you call 80% of the people dumb? Have you polled them? Measured them? Tested them in some way? Know what they are thinking?
https://twitter.com/manjarolinux/status/1194749794851459079
That in conjunction with the points I made my original reply.
> Or do you just like to assert some kind of misplaced superiority at every chance to shill for Brave?
What you allege is my “superiority” is actually me doing my due diligence and researching the topics I dare to talk about, it has nothing to do with me being smarter than anyone else. If other people would do their due diligence as well, lots and lots of pointless(!) discussions wouldn’t even take place.
PLEASE MARTIN consider disabling the comments for a week or two. Everybody needs some time to cool off… comments are not bringing anything useful anyway so visitors that come to read the news will do just that.
“PLEASE MARTIN consider disabling the comments for a week or two’
Is that today’s MozCo talking point ?
>>>disabling the comments for a week or two
Ad this line to your uBlock Origin filter list
www.ghacks.net###commentsfor a week or two and …
@Ironheart, valid points about the default values mentioned … HOWEVER, you can simply use the ghack user.js & ALL of those problems are solved.
I don’t have any problems with any of those preferences in about:config, because I have already changed those defaults, as well as other values by following the ghack user.js & the articles posted by Martin here at ghacks.
BTW, the hidden preference toolkit.coverage.opt-out doesn’t even matter AFAIK, because another preference toolkit.coverage.enabled is set to “false” by default. Also, you can set the toolkit.coverage.endpoint.base to “”, thereby deleting the preference that points to the website that would receive any communications from Firefox.
The ghack user.js does all of this & more.
So your point is made, but it’s easily mitigated by using the ghack.js or following the articles posted by Martin.
@notanon A teeny, tiny percentage of users will have even heard of user.js or about:config never mind want to touch them and they well know that. You shouldn’t have to mess around with either in what they keep pretending is a privacy browser to actually turn it in to a privacy browser. Neither shouldn’t you have to go through settings, the defaults should be fine, but you have to. They good mozilla of old has long gone and, to me, the lack of real privacy out of the box is down to who they take money from and having to keep them happy.
@notanon
So your reply was the only sensible one I’ve received so far here…
Yeah, you can change the default values and delete related strings of course, and there are good resources online telling you how to do that or even outright user.js scripts. My point is though, the state of these settings shouldn’t be the default(!) in a program that is being advertised as privacy-respecting. This is just shameful, and I think it is hypocritical of FF fans to criticize Brave for its defaults, which are either the same or better in many cases.
We shouldn’t forget that we being able to change these settings quickly has little influence on the general public using Firefox, and that Mozilla therefore deserves criticism for the state of the settings they ship Firefox with. I’ve also heard that user.js functionality is potentially slated for removal, in case you are interested: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1543752
You mentioned that toolkit.coverage.enabled is disabled in your profile; might be, it depends on whether or not Mozilla is currently running a study and whether or not you are in the target group of an experiment (experiments can, as I’ve said, be remote-installed into your Firefox unless you have disabled them – which I think you have, but many others haven’t):
https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/toolkit/components/telemetry/data/coverage-ping.html
>>> 80% of the people being dumb and uninformed
Posting the same copy&paste B.S. over and over again is surely the 100% proof you are NOT in the other 20%
@ 99
It’s hard to fathom.
This poster seems unable to write anything without either….
– being either a shill for a certain browser
– having a patronizing tone towards others (80% of people being dumb, levels of intelligence in society, etc etc)
– trying to appear superior by endlessly cutting and pasting text from other sources, and trying to self-congratulate in the process
and
– making sweeping generalizations and assumptions about the general populace, on the basis of their own preconceptions and bias
There seems to be just one view, that being held by the poster. And boy, do the posts get long in the process.
@ Sophie said on March 10, 2020 at 3:54 pm
>>> There seems to be just one view, that being held by the poster
This one-sided view is the last topic that still generates page views and thus page impressions here on ghacks.net.
The needed debate about Brave being a Trojan horse and a poisoned gift from the ad-tech industry disappears behind a smokescreen of newspeak and PR gobbledegook with the passive assistance of the moderator.
Just to be clear, Brave is a tool to neutralize the success of ad blockers as much as possible and this is the elephant in the room that some here at ghacks.net are embarrassed to overlook. Don’t get bamboozeld by phrases à la “Privacy-by-Default Future for Digital Advertising” or buzzwords like “privacy-oriented browser”.
Be aware, “Oriented” is not equal “Private and Secure”!
The only purpose is to place targeted advertising to influence people’s behaviour in the sense of the big corporations. It is hypocritical for a “privacy†browser to roll out an advertising program. This ‘opt-out’ thingy is just an illussion. Privacy is’nt your right anymore, it is just a commodity.
Unfortunately ghacks.net is biased and not willing to discuss this topic in a honest and open manner.
Hang Loose
@99
You are spewing a whole lot of nonsense about Brave, as always. For one, by default Brave Rewards / Brave Ads are disabled, meaning the browser doesn’t display its own ads unless you explicitly activate them. By default, it blocks ads and trackers. If you activate them, Brave will display its own ads via system notification, it doesn’t insert its own ads into websites.
Brave analyzes your browsing behavior locally and periodically downloads a list of ad notifications. Out of that list, it chooses the fitting ads based on the local analysis of your browsing history. No data leaves your PC / phone towards Brave Software Inc. or any middle men in the process. With the BAT users earn by allowing Brave Ads to be displayed, users can tip content creators based on the time they’ve visited certain websites relative to other websites.
Compare that to the current system: As it stands, websites will have invasive ads and trackers, which advertisers use to analyze your data on some remote server you don’t control. Once you retaliate by using an adblocker, you have mostly stopped advertisers from doing that, but it also means that the content creators who rely on the ads being displayed earn nothing. That’s the reason why you will be asked to deactivate your adblocker on many websites, and which is why you will be refused access if you don’t comply to the demand in some cases.
The model Brave proposes is the solution for the current situation, and the much needed reform of the current advertising system, that is based on user data exploitation on remote servers, while users earn absolutely nothing in the process. It’s not just “buzzwords”, it actually works and is objectively miles better than what we have now. You might ask: “Why should I use Brave if I could just use an adblocker in another browser?” – Two good reasons are that that more and more websites will lock you out for it as they earn no money, and that with a normal adblocker you don’t earn money while browsing, whereas Brave users do earn money.
You say that it’s “hypocritical” of a privacy-focused browser to roll out an advertising program, but honestly I don’t see how – Brave Ads are opt-in (they are not opt-out, like you falsely claim) and they are implemented in a very privacy-respecting manner, should people decide to use them.
And I don’t think the other alternatives are better than Brave when it comes to privacy. Firefox? Give me a break, the browser that actively tries to prevent you from disabling telemetry by hiding settings, and what is worse, also allows teh remote insertion of unknown code, circumventing the update functionality? That’s what actual trojans normally do. And the only “gift” to the advertising industry are Firefox’s lackluster default privacy settings, I assume a gift to Google, the source of Mozila’s funding and the biggest advertiser of the world.
You are also unfairly accusing gHacks of being biased – if anything, Martin Brinkmann is one of the most impartial moderators I know of. That’s why he allows both sides of the argument to present their points here, but it seems you are unhappy with that. You want one side to be banned, or else you will accuse him of bias (again: Why? He lets arguments of both sides through…). Yuck.
>>> Brave Ads are opt-in
Ads are displayed when you opt-in …
… ads are not displayed when you opt-out. Bravo!
But …
— Brave CEO Brendan Eich on a Privacy-by-Default Future for Digital Advertising… where in the Terms and Conditions is clearly stated, that this creepy in-browser agent that studies all the valuable data feeds in every browser stops all of his actions when you are opt-out? Starts when you opt-in …? Stops when you opt-out …??? Starts … Stops … and so on … and so on?!
Brave is open source at github.com. Each line of code has a permalink.
Example
https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/blob/8780ef24136d20d6c64225acf5289a4b383862af/src/js/advanced-settings.js#L33
Before you flood this comment-thread again with endless PR gobbledegook, please provide the fellow readers with the function that indicates “the studies of all valuable data feeds” is stopped while you are opt-out. And explain it in a way even non-programmers can follow you!
btw.
>>> Brave Ads are opt-in (they are not opt-out, like you falsely claim)
Just for the record!
This is what is claimed:
“This ‘opt-out’ thingy is just an illussion.”
@99
Your Brendan Eich quote tells you again what I’ve already told you before. Brave uses an in-browser ad matching algorithm (or “agent”), which analyzes your browsing behavior offline. The browser also periodically downloads a list of ads. The browser then determines which of the ads from the list are being displayed to you, by matching the results of the algorithm with the available ads. For example, if you are interested in sports and regularly visit related websites, and if an ad of Adidas shoes is available on the list, it will display said ad to you via system notification.
During the process, no data sets leave the browser towards Brave Software Inc. or any middle men, like it would happen with invasive / ads trackers that are currently placed on websites, those which Brave blocks. The algorithm itself is not a privacy threat, as its activity is entirely offline from start to finish. The list of possible ads Brave downloads is the same list for everyone using it, so it is not a privacy threat either, because as I said, the ad matching then happens locally.
And please refrain from claiming that I am just spreading “PR gobbledegook”, as this is just not true. I describe correctly what Brave does, and Brave currently works as intended. That I view Brave Rewards as positive has something to do with the fact that they are objectively(!) more privacy-respecting than what we have now.
@99
> copy&paste
Pics or it didn’t happen. Seriously, it’s not copy and paste. And even if it were so, my points would still be perfectly valid.
Care to actually refute any of my points, or do you have no idea how to refute them, as they are the facts?
@ Iron Heart
Be careful. We don’t want you to “{cry a river and start damaging your keyboard}”, do we?
“Firefox now provides better privacy for your web voice and video calls through support for mDNS ICE by cloaking your computer’s IP address with a random ID in certain WebRTC scenarios.”
I think this has been available as a flag in Chrome for a long time now, but good on Moz for adding this too.
Can you explain what exactly it does? I read the bug, but nope.
@ShintoPlasm: thanks for mentioning that Chrome/Chromium flag.
@Klaas Vaak
You should enable these flags in any Chromium-based browser as well:
chrome://flags/#reduced-referrer-granularity
chrome://flags/#prefetch-privacy-changes
@Iron Heart: many thanks for this tip.
1 thing that frustrates me about Chromium-based browsers is there does not seem to be a way to carry over your settings from one to another, like you can do with a Firefox profile.
If I am wrong about this statement, can you tell me how to do it? I literally went through all the flags in Dissenter and made a fair number of changes. However, now that I have opted for Ungoogled Chromium I am back to square 1, or so it seems.
@IH: chrome://flags/#prefetch-privacy-changes is not available in EdgeC.
@ShintoPlasm
Addendum: Microsoft plans to reintroduce the flag in Chromium-based Edge 82, it seems: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/discussions/new-privacy-oriented-feature-added-to-edge-82-freeze-user-agent/m-p/1165269
@ShintoPlasm
chrome://flags/#prefetch-privacy-changes is available in vanilla Chromium, as well as Ungoogled Chromium and Brave. No idea about Vivaldi.
If it’s not available in Chromium-based Edge, then it seems like Microsoft has removed it for reasons unknown. The setting does the following, if enabled:
“Prefetch requests will not follow redirects, not send a Referer header, not send credentials for cross-origin requests, and do not pass through service workers.”
FYI my current Brave setup is based on Chromium 80.0.3987.132, so I am using the most recent stable Chromium version, in case you are wondering.
Well, well, well… Semi-OT: Why doesn’t Mozilla make any progress with their anti-fake news initiative!? I welcomed it when it was first announced. There is so much hate and misinformation spread in our age, I don’t get why some browser makers still do not contribute their expected share in fighting it.
Microsoft has published an update for the mobile version of Edge that has a fact checker included now, that means trustworthy sources are now marked as such and fake news are now marked as such. This gives people orientation in an age where anyone can write anything, an age during which racists and sexists and generally bigots are on the rise again.
I would even be in favor of a banner being displayed at the top of such websites, informing users in greater detail about the type of misinformation any given website spreads. I don’t know if totally denying access to websites like these is legally possible, but if so, Mozilla should explore this possibility as well.
Microsoft already does fight fake news, Mozilla should put the money where their mouth is and start doing so as well.
The people fighting against our peaceful and accepting society must be stopped before it is once again too late, but they won’t be stopped by mere declarations of intent.
@Mozilla, are you listening?
A terrible idea. The left will use this to censor even more things, not that there’s much left at this point, that they don’t happen to agree with. Use some common sense instead. It’s like this sudden clamping down on conspiracy theories by them, why exactly? Who does it harm if you think the world is flat or there’s more to 9/11 than the governments have said. Just another part of your life they want to try and control. Don’t let them.
@Monique
What if your opinions and world view differ from mine? Should I allow you a voice only if it agrees with mine? Think about that.
Microst fights anything not approved by Bing News lol. Just nooooooo, switch to Edgium if you like to be fed by Microsoft approvals.
Heck no. Miranda is correct. No one should decide which websites are accessible and which aren’t. The Internet needs to remain completely open to everyone.
definitely don’t want this… who decides, you?! web should be open, period, whether I like what is said or not, whether it offends me or not. this is a basic tenant of freedom of thought and expression which should never be abridged.
Miranda, I agree with what you say. However, I have a couple of linguistic suggestions. (I was an English teacher for a couple of years once.)
The word you want is “tenet”. A tenant is someone who pays rent to a landlord.
Capital letters exist for a reason: they make sentences easier for your readers to parse. By omitting them you’re signalling to the readers that your convenience is more important than theirs.
You may think I’m being pedantic… but if readers sense that you don’t use the language well, or are making them work harder to read what you write, they may take what you say less seriously.
“The shortcut Ctrl-I opens the Page Info window on Windows now (instead of the Bookmarks sidebar).”
OMG I can’t believe it!!! after what, a decade of users requests?! LOL