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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 10th, 2023

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  • Gmail app in particular has been basically abandoned for the last 4+ major android versions. I only really use it for my work email on a Shelter profile since it’s just to handle urgent stuff if I’m afk. But even that minimal use has me about ready to install k-9 on the work profile too.

    Maybe my memory is bring foiled by nostalgia, but i honestly remember the Gmail Inbox app being better than the current Gmail app. Clearly google can output a good UI, they just 100% choose not to.

    The built-in email app for an OS doesnt have to be amazing, but it at least needs to be reasonable. iOS Mail isn’t amazing either, but compared to the Gmail app it’s a feature-packed power user tool.




  • As a side note, if you work somewhere that uses 1password, you can usually get your personal subscription comped as an individual. Only need to pay for it if you leave your company or they drop 1password.

    I dont know that I’ll stay on 1password forever, but on the scale of things I’m most concerned about self-hosting vs using a reasonably private SaaS, 1password is nowhere near the top of my list to ditch. Otherwise, its a solid recommendation for non-self hosters who want to make some progress.



  • And yet here you are, insinuating the government should legislate monopoly power over advertisements and simply hand the reigns over to the corporate interests that want to maximize profits at any cost.

    I have no idea where you got this idea I’m advocating for an adtech monopoly.

    You continue to put words in my mouth and come at this thread with aggression and demanding statements. You dont just get to demand a debate, and you certinally aren’t going to sway someone’s opinion by putting someone on the defense, putting words in their mouth, and attacking character right out the gate. Edit: apologies, someone else was doing the more aggressive responses. Difficult to keep track of this stuff on mobile sometimes.


  • How did you get an endorsement for adtech industry lobbying out of my other comments? And how would my comments insinuate that I want them to create a monopoly? You’re engaging in some heavy reframing and redefining of what I’ve stated.

    Mozilla deserves criticism. But i dont think it makes any sense to campaign against firefox as is happening all over this post. You are the one who began demanding an argument about Anonym on a comment where I was suggesting that firefox itself is still a net good, especially for people who want to continue to use forks like librewolf. Whether this path Mozilla is on ends up working out or not, firefox is still far superior in all sorts of other domains of privacy and user choice when it comes to a browser, and that allows the forks to exist, too. People should use forks if they want to, but they shouldn’t discourage people from using firefox if they aren’t interested in a fork.

    I don’t actually give a crap about Anonym, aside from the mission seeming better, nor do i believe I’ve endorsed Anonym anywhere. All I’ve said is thay they are steps closer to a realistic possibility for the current US political, legal, and economic environment to have any measure of privacy in advertising. You are the one trying to put the endorsement in my mouth and reflavoe my words as advocating for an adtech monopoly.

    I’d rather Ads not exist. I’d rather tracking not exist. But Mozilla planting a flag on that hill only means they go extinct unless the political, legal, or economic environment of our society changes. And Mozilla going extinct also means the forks will most likely go with it, and that is a far worse outcome than Mozilla doing some ad stuff in a different business unit.

    And based on Mozilla providing nothing more substantial than any other company engaged in the incestuous and corporate

    I agree the PATCG is a pit of scum. But while it exists and it influences how Firefox will need to operate to be competitive and work with web standards, why should they be faulted for being a part of it?


  • Dunno why you’re being so aggressive about this.

    My first comment that you replied to was primarily about how firefox getting more money through Mozilla being more successful would only serve to benefit forks like librewolf. Its a win-win for Firefox forks for firefox to be more popular and have more resources.

    And I also commented about considering what Mozilla is stating their goal as to be a possible better state than the current situation and likely representing the best case, realistic scenario out of the US government in regards to ads and privacy. At rhe end of tje day, the default state of privacy is based on the US laws , bit that doesnt mean that more countries doing better on preivscu legislation otherwise won’t help.

    Instead, you are demanding answers from me. I wasn’t here to argue. You could, idk, maybe do some of this leg work yourself rather than demand it from people? If this truly upsets you so much, maybe do something to more productively understand the situation rather than punch people around you who generally also want a more private future with less ads.

    So by your silence, do you concede that Anonym provides no privacy not already provided…

    What part about my description of Anonym was silence? You could maybe… Go to their site? Read some of the other Mozilla blog posts about it? I’d love more openness from them about how exactly their tools work, and I hope more is shared over time.

    Why are you comparing it to Facebook pixels?

    Maybe you dont know as much about advertising and tracking on the web as you think. Facebook sells a lot of ads through their sites and apps, but also hosted through clients sites. the data they track to know which ads to serve to eyeballs is gained through Facebook Pixel, which lots of people install on their web sites to gain analytics data from, which both tells facebook who you are when you are on one of their products and also tells other sites using pixel who you are to then target you while present from facebooks dataatores about your activity elsewhere. Putting it on your site also gives you some advantages for selling ads through Facebook, since it gives you targeted data about customers to your site so you can advertise to them where they are anywhere else on the internet. It’s a self-sustaining network of ads > data > ads. Facebook pixel, by its ubiquitous nature, is everywhere which allows facebook to track people across websites to a high degree of accuracy. It’s a big reason you may still feel targeted by ads despite being extremely privacy conscious and blocking ads nearly everywhere. Its just that level of ever-present.

    Google analytics provides similar benefits to google for their ad network, it’s just not as blatantly insidious since google doesnt really have a social network to drive more addictive advertising.

    This is how targeted ads function. The ads dont have the data, its the other stuff that gets rhe data back to the ad network.

    The only reason people use Firefox currently is that people used to trust Mozilla.

    Don’t let your bias color your opinion. That may be true of people on the privacy side of the fediverse but its certinally not the only reason people use firefox.

    Since you can’t name any reason Anonym is more private than Google Ads, people might as well go with a company that has vastly more expertise in cryptography and security.

    See thats the thing: web users aren’t the customers of facebook ads, google ads, anonym, and other ad companies. Businesses are. Businesses either care about being more private, or they care about the appearance of privacy, or they don’t care at all. We as web users have no say in those decisions or priorities in most cases other than to make it such that advertising via trackers is unpopular, ineffective, or pushing to make it illegal.

    If you spent some time reading about anonym instead of punching other people in the community, you might have noticed thay Anonym is looking to bypass tracking via tools like facebook pixel and instead using the data that a company has based on user registration, use of the product, etc. Then, they use ML to make assumptions without needing to resort to the level of data collection things like Facebook Pixel do. Plenty of information used to determine what ads to show to someone through detailed tracking can be just as effective as some educated guesses from context in data the company looking to sell ads already has from you being a customer or having provided some intentional information for sales and marketing use, which is exactly what ML is good at. If they truly can provide as good a value to people as Facebook Pixel + Facebook Ads or google analytics + google ads and other competotors without resorting ro invasive tracking, and especially if they can do it cheaper and give companies a marketing win to say they dont use trackers, then there is a chance the future of ads doesnt include tracking. Products being out in rhe market that work well without invading privacy also decreases rhe likliehood of lobbyists blowing up any bills thay would increase privacy. Or at least has way less of it. Its literally the goal of Anonym to provide ads without gaining targeted leads via trackers, but if you didn’t already know that from easy, intentional research, then you aren’t here to get answers, are you?

    I’m not here to say Anonym is perfect or that no concerns are valid, but i am here to say that flipping tables and fragmenting the community further isnt going to help anyone. If firefox dies, so too do the forks, so theres reason to hope for the best here and not tilt at windmills.




  • The space example is extremely apt. Its possible we could have had tons of space stations, a moon colony, maybe even some other stuff going on around the solar system, asteroid mining, etc. But thay would have at least required the space race to continue longer and for spending to grow to create a big enoigh industry to ensure thay outcome, assuming no capacity or time issue. Alas, we took another path.

    Something that seems important to us might not matter in even 10 years, or at least, not have a monetary and/or societal incentive to keep advancing.





  • FWIW some of the problems are on website/app developers. Not sure on specifics on the app side, but with websites if the dev doesn’t use semantic html input elements with the correct type attribute to denote the password form, autofill won’t work (since neither android or the password manager know its time to do stuff)

    Nothing wrong with username/password on different screens (one at a time is good for several accessibility-minded reasons) but again, there are some best practices to follow which allow screen readers and password managers to still act as you would expect.

    I’d assume android app dev is similar.

    That said… I do think it’s gotten a bit clunkier at times in ways I dont recall being problematic in the past. I use 1password and heliboard or floris board and while those keyboards seem to bug out a bit, sometimes the bigger problem seems to be that android isn’t always telling 1password enough info to find the right account. Idk how apps “inform” the password manager (maybe via url’s in a metadata file or maybe passwors managers have ro keep theor own internal db?), but apps that use web wrappers (specifically the old and/or shitty ones) report their url as http://localhost since the wrapper just renders a local page in a web view. that’ll wreck a password managers day real quick.

    Idk if Android is worse than iOS here, not that it is a reason for google to punt on improving it. iOS has its own autofill quirks thay can be just as annoying. Esp constantly asking if you want to use your app or apple keychain without a way to just pick a default…