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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
Some Rules
- Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn’t great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
- Don’t promote proprietary software
- Try to keep things on topic
- If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
- Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
- Be nice :)
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much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
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At least might help compete with Firefox to improve Foss browsers.
Independent but then their coms are purely proprietary, US-based sludge. If you think folks should be contributing to your project, you should be using technology where you can where you & your contributors can patch & make better too. There is no good reason to be limited to only Microsoft Github & Discord.
Don’t get it wrong: I have followed for years & want the project to succeed, but this reliance on corporations & not giving your users a private option where they can control their data needs to stop. Normies have ignorance excuse but software makers do not as they generally know better about how these tech firms operate.
Languages: C++
Yeah, hard pass on looking at that code base.
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I’m not criticizing the choice of C++. I just don’t want to look at the code because I don’t personally like the language.
Same for me with Rust. I don’t like to look at it and it’s a lot harder for me to understand (and hence contribute to or modify), so I avoid it.
63.3K commits from 1K+ contributors and still pre-alpha, it’s amazing what a nightmare web browsers have become!
servo.org: am I a joke to you?
literally never heard of it.
Dillo sobs lonely.
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That could be great! Alternative to firefox!
It’s the one with a dev that thinks that replacing “he” by “they” is political propaganda?
Yeah, no thanks.
Based Andreas KING
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He is right, hey shouldn’t push a political agenda. They can fork it if they don’t like it. It is his choice and he is the one putting in the work, not you.
Refusing the change is pushing a political agenda too. But I guess it helps seeing which agenda you prefer ;)
Well it isn’t something that should be discussed in a Github issue.
I’m sorry but “project documentation should not be discussed in a GitHub issue or pr” is what you’re going with?? Where the fuck else would you discuss it?
And where then? It is about changing a part of the software, that fits quite clearly an issue/pull request
for someone who can speak a language that lacks gendered pronouns, this “hysteria” over he/she/they is ridiculous!
Well on the contrary you should understand it more. A gendered pronoun carries an idea of gender, and having a genderless pronoun frees the sentence of this gender assumption. Nothing very hard to understand.
that’s what i thought i meant but thanks for the lesson I’ve never needed
even your comment is, for me, coming from that ridiculous tension
As someone who speaks a language with gendered pronouns but no neutral option, this is very awkward to deal with.
yes, it’s awkward for the “individual” who is longing for reliable expression
it also seems to be awkward for people who can’t figure out the changes in the language they think as their own. They are irritated by their “disfigured” reflection
it’s awkward for officials who need to make decisions (positive or negative) about the use of “inclusive” language
we give shape to languages and languages shape us
English could initially have neutral pronouns and people would be obliged to find other reasons to hate each other 🤷
Can you provide some context?
Edit: I found the context. Here and here.
Maybe I’m dumb, but I completely do not understand what the dev did to upset people.
I read the thread and I’m confused about it.
People get upset over anything tbh
maybe I’m not seeing where the smoking gun is, here. I see a guy saying something akin to “can we not do this here in the github please”
and then I see a bunch of people blowing up and yelling about “dehumanization” over it.
…why is this such a huge deal exactly?
Changing “he” to “they” isn’t a political change, or shouldn’t be if you’re not a fucking shithead
Open mindedness is a key factor for success (especially in open source). Inclusivity demonstrates open mindedness. The fact that the lead dev goes out of his way to prevent such a minor change (it’s not even like people demanded a strict CoC or something) is a bad signal
Absolutely nothing. The fact that they had to bring up a totally irrelevant 3 year old issue during an event that is supposed to be celebrated tells you a lot. They have been blatantly brigading various communities just for attention, and probably to get the dev cancelled or something. Even this post, the privacy community does not need this whole chain of replies. And yet, they overshadow every legit discussion with this bullshit unprompted.
Open mindedness is a key factor for success (especially in open source). Inclusivity demonstrates open mindedness. The fact that the lead dev goes out of his way to prevent such a minor change (it’s not even like people demanded a strict CoC or something) is a bad signal
Don’t use it I guess. At the end of the day not everyone shares the same views. Also it probably didn’t want the Github issue to blow up.
he hasn’t gone out of his way. he just thinks its irrelevant to make a report about it. and he is correct. thats not what github report is for.
these commenters are hitting this guy for something so small it’s not worth getting angry over.
they’re calling this guy a transphobe for saying “please take this somewhere else. this is not the appropriate place” nothing about that is malicious or transphobic. at all.
They didn’t make a “report”, I think the word you’re looking for is “issue”. What they did was open a “pull request” that got rejected. So more of a “hey I made a small change to make everything more inclusive that will not affect you in any way” and the dev said “please don’t be political here”.
The person suggesting the change wasn’t being political but the dev was by rejecting the change
“us/them” mentality doesn’t help much. this is surely a great fuss for a 3 year old pr but you’re misrepresenting the situation:
folks are making a big fuss but Andreas really set himself up: just say sorry and change 4 words, such a weird horse to die on
Yup, the other side is pretty counterproductive with saying the project is dehumanizing etc. They’re absurdly exaggerating.
It wasn’t just a report tho, it’s a PR that could’ve been merged with a single click
I agree with that, I read the comments and I agree about exaggeration. At the same time it is not something political to just adjust the documentation to use gender neutral terms as it is a professional thing to do. Where would be the place to discuss it considering that the only way to modify the code is from GitHub and PR?
I hope this guy has himself a nice whiskey and a break. and I hope the commenters find some other fixation soon.
so I don’t understand. why are all these comments yelling the same stuff? did they just decide to harass this one guy for saying “take it somewhere else, please”?
I’m trying to find anything malicious in anything he’s said. I’m finding nothing but a dude working on a browser.
this kind of behavior scares me greatly. I know individuals who have been victims of real transphobia. this seems to be a simple language difference. and I think targeting this guy is a mistake.
Flooding and being loud doesn’t make them right. it just means they’re loud.
They use the “silence is violence” trope to harass and terrorize projects, hiding behind their “protected status” as a transgender. Whenever someone rejects anything that calls for “greater inclusion”, they go nuclear and tell all their friends to do the same. The bullied becomes the bully. It’s very childish. It’s always people that never contribute any meaningful code as well.
edit omg I’m sorry I was replying to the wrong comment. they got me fucked up. lol
I’m with you. i see this a lot in the lgbt community and nobody calls them out on it.
This Mastodon post discusses it and has links to the PRs: https://ruby.social/@denis/112718132053579597
This one for SerenityOS shows Kling’s response to a very minor and neutral change.
Thanks for the heads up. Not worth the time
Chill. Read the cited sources. It’s someone asking the community to not use the github forum for discussing the completely irrelevant topic. It’s not a fucking open forum it’s for developers to use as a resource. I don’t care if the person was giving out a $1,000,000 to anyone that commented, find an appropriate place to post your comments. I saw nothing against the topic itself but a bunch of angry responses. I mean if you read and are like na fuck that dude than 100% that’s your take but that’s the thing, its YOUR take. I hate seeing people so quick to draw the fuck this or fuck that card from absolutely zero rhetoric than what an anonymous internet comment said.
Treating social media as social media makes sense. If you don’t want your issue tracker to turn out like this, then stop using the social media code forge.
people can have different views. you might not like them but it’s their views, not yours
Yes, they can. And I can also view their views with disdain… or even horror and choose not to support their efforts, whatever they may be.
What you are really saying here is that you to some degree don’t disagree with Kling and so it’s this particular view you find acceptable to let pass. If it were something like “people should be fine eating small children” you might react differently.
ok lmao ctrl f my history for “they”
You don’t disagree with Kling enough to object. This is clearly demonstrated here.
Edit: Let me a little more clear. Kling is the one bringing politics into it. The change was simple (one word!) and technically correct. It would be like if I said “I want our new logo to be red” and you said “don’t bring politics into it” when really I just like tomatoes and sunsets.
And it’s my view that we are free to dunk on people with bad views.
Or you could be an adult and move on with your life. Shaming people for not sharing your groupthink ideology is such a strange way to spend your limited time on this earth.
I only trust the people that don’t comment, because they know it’s not worth their time.
He said with no sense of irony.
It’s almost as if there is no irony.
i don’t get why sane people would rather a person with good opinions over a free independent web browser, the latter just seems so much more valuable to me.
@Jumuta@sh.itjust.works
@Gargari@lemmy.ml @Solumbran@lemmy.world @DrJenkem@lemmy.blugatch.tube
This is sorta a hornets nest. On the one hand I get that when it comes to tech who cares about the persons personal life but on the other hand when it comes to free software there is a concern over the orgs or individuals that run them given the trust involved. Yes you can rely on the many eyes but you want to be confident of the org (or individual) to begin with.
What, you only use software of honest and upstanding people? Cars too?
Yes, I don’t agree with the whole “separate the art from the artist” thing. It might be wrong but I don’t care. If someone is openly rude and abusive to their users, publicly, for years on end with no remorse (cough Linus Torvalds), it just turns me off to the entire project.
So you think you can draw a connection between someone’s views on inclusive language and whether an individual or org can be trusted with software security.
I’m sorry but to me this line of thinking is bonkers. The two things have nothing to do with each other whatsoever. What if a conservative individual argued that they have trust issues with an open source project because it features inclusive language now? The person might argue that they don’t understand why devs would devote their limited time to such cosmetics instead of focusing on code quality. How would you view this argument? On Lemmy it would probably be ridiculed, and rightfully so. Yet it’s the same line of thinking that I see if I interpreted your comment correctly.
Look, the dev is a reactionary. He lists that the browser is unstable and intended for devs. So IF I were to use it, that would mean reporting issues and/or fixing issues myself. I’m not interested in working with a reactionary. So I will not be using this browser. You’re welcome to use the browser if you want. At this time, I’m not interested.
Sure everyone’s free to use it or not, contribute to it or not. That’s not related to my argument. I was only talking about making a connection between someone’s political views and how much trust they deserve when it comes to e.g. security.
Thats because you don’t view it as a moral failing. How would racist language rank. What about nazi stuff. I mean none of that technically effects trustworthiness for running an org. Well ah. unless your the particular thing.
Yes but not using inclusive language is far from counting as a moral failing in my world… It’s far from racism, let alone nazi stuff. So what’s that comparison good for?
interesting idea, I guess maybe we just think like that in selfishness? (idk if selfish is the right word here) if someone was to become the lead dev of a project like this and they were extremely hateful of my culture in particular or something, i’d prolly not want that guy to be the lead dev, but if they’re not doing any harm i guess that’s just my selfishness wanting them to reflect my views so my views get more recognised in society through the platform that they’ve earned? (though that’d be quite justified)
overall though if that person wasn’t causing actual harm, just publicly having that view there’s no harm done and it’d be the most resource efficient to just let that person be. i’d probably complain but that’s probably because we evolved to prioritise our own interests above that of society as a whole.
though we all live in democracies and developers of foss projects shouldn’t have to be where we gain our political voice, but I guess we just aren’t there yet.
That’s true and I’d probably not use the software myself if the dev was someone known for stealing credentials or something, but honestly I don’t really see how someone viewing the use of “they” over “he” as political propaganda could affect the browser they’re making negatively in a substantial way.
I guess you could say that there is a possibility that he’s saying that out of homophobia and when ladybird becomes as influential as google they could do some homophobic things? I really doubt that’d be allowed by governments though
Did the OP say they couldn’t have different views? You must have replied to the wrong comment.
isn’t that what they implied?
I’m fine with solumbran seeing the dev’s opinions as “wrong”, I just find how they base their whole view of the project on that single small disagreement makes them seem like a shortsighted dumbass
Oh that’s not at all what they implied. They implied you shouldn’t use the project based on the author’s opinions. That’s very different from implying the author isn’t entitled to their opinions.
Boycotting the software doesn’t infringe on the author’s rights to have a shitty opinion. It’s called consequences for being an asshole.
that’s what i said??
how am i saying this? i’m saying that the guy is shortsighted for telling people to boycott the software just bc of the dev’s opinions
i’m not arguing about the arbitary rights of authors, i’m just saying that boycotting isn’t an efficient use of resources
I don’t like bigotry
I think most people would not agree that that’s what this actually is. Plus, attacking people for having an opinion is not how you progress in ANY way, whether societal or technical. This likely means they have some ulterior motive i.e. they just want to see the world burn and they were never actually going to contribute anything meaningful in the first place. I always check the activity history of people like that, and look into what kind of person they are in general, what they typically say and what kind of opinions they have. Often you will be shocked, disgusted and saddened. One of the other like-minded people that posted a similar story here on lemmy about the same drama, literally has a picture on their social of them wearing a hat that says “gender terrorist” and they also sell explicit content of themselves on fansly.
defending bigotry isn’t progress, and outright lying in the face of obvious bigotry isn’t doing yourself - or anyone - any favors.
“don’t believe your lying eyes” is a line that only works on the most stupid and gullible, and you’re not going to get very far by telling your audience they’re too stupid to know better.
oh, and if you think that defending bigotry is “contributing something meaningful,” think again.
perhaps you should ask yourself: why do you like bigotry so much that you must dedicate so much time and effort and space to defending it? what sort of person does that make you?
it’s not bigotry. this is a massive nothing burger.
“don’t believe your lying eyes”
we covered that lie already. know any other tunes?
how about explaining why you so enthusiastically defend bigotry?
yeah but does that affect the browser development process significantly?
there are people with differing views in this world and you need to accept that if you want to actually achieve things
I’m not saying i agree with him bc I don’t, but I wouldn’t base my opinion on the project on the small grievance i have with one dev’s opinions.
I don’t need to accept bigotry. I can just use a different browser.
have fun with google spyware ig when they finally do something like web environment integrity
Or we can just keep using firefox
I like that Firefox exists and I use it and its forks but I really doubt that the aging gecko engine could be made competitive with chromium anytime soon enough to claw back market share to stop google doing shit like web environment integrity. Mozilla stopped work on Servo and they’re also kinda sus in terms of how they seem to be fine with receiving funding from google.
It is just disappointing. But people forget that there are many FOSS projects that we widely use where the developers have shitty ignorant opinions. Maybe peoples uproar is directly related to the refusal to merge a simple grammar change, which seems very anti-open source. Or maybe that the Dev has a code of conduct that speaks about inclusivity which they weaponized to justify not merging, as to be “politically-inclusive” (aka some people dont believe that “they” can be used for one person lmao). It just feels like they are choosing a weird hill to die on and also being a hypocrite by being so intentional obtuse, and of course the devs abrasive and accusatory method of responding on multiple occasions.
I think it is harder to separate the Dev from their creation when it relates to open source. It really is a passion of the heart a lot of the time. But that doesn’t make the tech any less interesting.
I see your argument and I agree, but I just believe that with these talented/intelligent/passionate (valuable imo) people it’s better to dedicate their limited valuable time to things they exceed at, not time for them to “correct” their sometimes ignorant opinions. We can ignore their ignorance, we can’t replace their value.
When getting people to “correct” their opinions, my opinion is that they’re far more likely to learn to mask their opinions, having to be constantly conscious of how others will respond to what they’re saying and reducing their work throughput in the process.
Poor behavior can be corrected. Ignoring bigotry and letting it slide hurts others. That’s not acceptable
It can only be corrected if the person actually starts believing that the “correct” idea is actually correct. That’s way harder than for them to simply pretend like they believe the “correct” idea, which they’ll obviously do first. Isn’t that a waste of time?
What the fuck have to do one thing with another. You people are so fucked up . You make drama from anything imaginable
Kling is the one “making drama”
Do you think there are no assholes working for google or mozilla? Assholes are everywhere. And fuck cancel culture.
Edit: I stand by what I said, you can downvote me all you want. It doesn’t matter to me one bit.
Cancel culture, this far-right myth that fascists love so much. You forgot to continue and talk about freedom of speech and how you are a centrist.
Where is the anti pronoun shit though? I’ve only seen one cited link and it was asking not to use the forum for discussing irrelevant topics. Github forums are resources used by all levels of developers for finding answers for issues with open source no instruction manual software development. Nothing i saw was anti-gender or pronoun anything (didt read thru the responding comments from users but why would they reflect on the person in question? Am I missing something beyond what op commented without providing any rhyme, reason or resource for?
Edit: now I’m even more confused after reading a second commenter’s link that shows they made the requested edit.
Removed
That’s enough brigading for today
Ambitious.
Is this browser private? Does it implement proper sandboxing and have any methods of anti-fingerprinting? I hope it eventually see the implementation of a robust content blocker. What makes this related to privacy and not instead just open source. While it is nice to see an independent web engine, if there is no method of anti-fingerprinting, the privacy of this browser is severely limited.
It isn’t done yet. They are targeting 2026
*sets reminder now*
My point exactly. It isn’t ready and OP gave no context for why this relates to privacy. Better suited for the open source community on Lemmy.
It is good for freedom of choice which ultimately is good for privacy
All I was saying is it isn’t ready for use as a browser, it states on the github that it is in pre-alpha. It doesn’t have the threat model goal of protecting fingerprintable metrics. Using this over security and privacy hardened firefox, even in the future once all the web standards are supported, will worsen your privacy. There needs to be intentional development of anti-fingerprinting measures.
I like choice, this isn’t ready and OP should have added more context then just a title and a github. This is not a privacy browser, this is a tech demo.
I don’t think anyone was trying to imply that it was ready. Of course once it gets more mature then things like privacy will likely start to become more integrated.
Making a post in the privacy community with the tittle “truly independent browser” and a github link makes it seem that this project is related to privacy somehow. Nothing on the github has anything to do with privacy. There is no reason to believe the Dev has any intention to add privacy protection features. It is just another web engine. The only reason gecko has a lot of its anti fingerprinting is because of upstreamed features from the Tor browser, not because gecko’s developers engineered them. So my question is still “how does this relate to the privacy community instead of the open source community”.
I think some would consider the mere fact that it is independent, to be a positive for privacy in ways other than fingerprinting. I understand not everyone agrees, but I can see why some would think this.
I posted the website a while back. By the way they got more than a million dollars in funding and are looking for sponsors.
oh yeah also js isn’t very usable yet so that improves privacy
To be fair, it is quite possible to fingerprint you pretty well without any JS at all, both inside and outside of html/css.
And disabling javascript is certainly something that not many people do, so already that makes you stand out even more.
Btw, how much of HTML features do they support yet? I found nothing googling.
Because, it’s not that you support HTML 4 or 5 but how much of it. I think QtWebkit is still ahead of Blink and Gecko there, but less performant.
idk, but from my testing pure html and css seem to work pretty well. it’s just js that ladybird seems to have issues with
Lol, but also JS being volatile in the current browser makes it easier to fingerprint.
because it’s not affected by google’s anti-privacy decisions?
That doesn’t make it private. Privacy on the modern web requires anti-fingerprinting, otherwise any website with tracking scripts can easily start creating a shadow profile for you.
Edit:
What I mean is it isn’t a browser anyone who cares about their privacy should use (yet or every depending on development). Not close to ready yet. OP didnt put any context either for why they posted it.
Come back in 10 years
fingerprinting won’t be useful if every browser has google telemetry
Firefox and chromium are open source. You can just remove mozilla and google telemetry during compile, or disable in the settings.
Fingerprint is 100% still useful even with telemetry. This is not a privacy browser and is still in early stages, volatile and easy to fingerprint (not even counting it is a different web engine and so has an even smaller userbase than Firefox). Also, a content blocker is good for cyber security, so regardless of fingerprinting, this is not ready for privacy-conscious people.
I made my original comment to add context about why this browser shouldnt be used if you care about privacy. If OP had said “this is a promising new independent player in the browser world, look forward to seeing what they do in the future when its more stable” I wouldnt have said anything.
no you can’t if the entire web runs on a whitelist system that requires the google telemetry, like what google is trying to do with shit like web integrity. you need a sizeable independent browser so that google isn’t 70% of the market share like it is now. obvs you can’t trust apple to do this because safari is a piece of shit and people only use it because it’s the only option, and they’d obviously follow google if it meant more profit. mozilla might do something about it, but their funding is pretty sus.
i understand ladybird isn’t good for privacy at the moment, but we’re gonna really need it for privacy in the future
The only reason Firefox still has any market share is probably because it is old enough. I highly doubt this browser will ever stop google forcing a new web standard. We need to educate the general users to make better tech decisions if we want change. We can stay hopeful about this engine. Still would have liked it if servo was getting more development.
I’m very doubtful that educating general users will work, unless they’re being educated by people they really trust like family members. whatever they’re educated on will be wiped off by companies like google running a giant advertisement campaign or some subconscious annoyance that makes free software projects seem bad (things like what yt is doing with adblocking and stuttering)