I guess I'm interested in browsers who's developers wouldn't have done this in the first place - a browser which has privacy as a core principle and who's develop we wouldn't consider pushing any data, regardless of aggregation or commercial value, to a third party without explicit consent..
To be blunt, you're not going to find one. Developing a modern browser is extremely difficult, on the order of developing an entire operating system. Mozilla does respect privacy rights, and it is clearly treating this as a bug to be fixed. You're going to have to cut them some slack for not being 100% perfect always.
I disagree. I think people who believe in protecting their privacy can also be OK with Google Analytics processing, anonymizing, and aggregating the data. I also understand why someone would not feel that way. I think it's something about which reasonable people can disagree. This is why Mozilla provides the option[1].
[1] Which is, incorrectly, not being respected. This is a bug which they will fix.
They really didn't actively think it was a good idea. They changed the discovery tab to be a web page, which as the github repo linked by the OP will show you, is now handled in the same repo (by the same people) as the AMO website proper.
It was a mistake, and not as huge of one as people are making it out to be. As they have repeatedly pointed out, their GA contract makes it essentially a non-issue, unless you believe Google is so obsessed with tracking that they will violate their contract with Mozilla.
These are things which are greatly helped by having good analytics (Telemetry for the browser, analytics on your sites). You have to realize that to some extent these goals aren't mutually compatible. Developer resources don't appear out of thin air, even for open source software. Note how in the threads Mozilla explicitly acknowledges alternatives to GA.
I opt(ed) in to Firefox Telemetry for this reason (and will in future if this bug is satisfactorily fixed). I did not expect that would mean sending my data to 3rd parties I don't trust.
Your comparison is a false equivalence, because it's not about telemetry vs privacy, it's about consent. If Mozilla devs adhered to the ethos of the company they took a job at they simply would not have implemented this feature.
It's only a false equivalence because you just moved your goalposts from "no tracking/analytics" in the original post to consent.
If Mozilla devs adhered to the ethos of the company they took a job at they simply would not have implemented this feature.
It looks as when the problem was reported, this was in fact the reaction: make it respect DNT. Using GA by itself rose no red flags because Mozilla has a privacy-enforcing deal with Google about it.
I'm not sure what you mean by moving goalposts? I was mainly just discussing my own expectations, but also, it looks like the above comment from davb that you replied to did discuss consent.
> Using GA by itself rose no red flags because Mozilla has a privacy-enforcing deal with Google about it.
I saw that, and I guess that legal contract may appease some people. Personally, I would rather not have to trust a company with a well-earned reputation for breaking the law when it comes to respecting users' privacy. I would rather they spent the time they invested into negotiating that contract on self-hosting instead.
Sorry, but sad truth is, those two things are mutually exclusive.
The modern web is all about running pieces of code. Websites give you a code and expect you to run it (or they'll break). You can throw in some heuristics (e.g. blacklist known offenders and replace them with do-nothing shims) and try to keep up with the ever-changing world, but here is just no way to have this guesswork as a core principle and expect things to not break.
Like not implementing cookies, LocalStorage, screen resolution info, font enumeration, canvas, WebGL, WebRTC, etc etc?
It's probably realistically possible to disable those with the existing browsers. Problem is, that will also break sites that expect you to have all those available. And it's said that there are too many of those (I never saw a proper analysis, though)
Just consider: there are sites (one of my favorite pizza delivery sites does that) that break if you just block Google Analytics ga.js (or their newer versions, whatever they're called) scripts. Just because they have stuff like `_gaq.push` hardcoded into click handlers and if those raise exceptions, they fail.
Cookies are still needed for site logins so it would be quite difficult to get rid of them, it would be possible however to enable them only for the sites that you are planing to log into.
As for local storage, I only needed it for some greasemonkey extensions. Do legit sites actually use it?
> font enumeration, canvas, WebGL, WebRTC
I have all of these disabled for the last 2 years or so actually and I don't feel like I miss anything. Only a few non-important sites need these.
> Just consider: there are sites (one of my favorite pizza delivery sites does that) that break if you just block Google Analytics ga.js (or their newer versions, whatever they're called) scripts. Just because they have stuff like `_gaq.push` hardcoded into click handlers and if those raise exceptions, they fail.
I think that uBlock Origin avoids that if you have the experimental filter enabled.
Firefox has an extension called "self destructing cookies" that implements those the way they should be done everywhere.
There is absolutely no need for font enumeration. A browser can decide do download fonts it does not have from the site (what will indeed open it to some tracking), or use another cache (with other, different tracking possibilities). But any way it chooses, it just needs to cache the fonts locally to avoid most of the tracking.
There's no reason for local storage to permit 3rd party tracking. WebRTC was a mistake, and WebGL although well meant is so complex that will never work well.
A lot of out javascript signature could be simply removed without any ill effects.
it just needs to cache the fonts locally to avoid most of the tracking.
Caching is one of the ways of tracking you. If site A says it needs some custom font, the browser will have to download it. If then site B (affiliated with A) asks for the same font, and the browser loads it from cache instead of asking site B, then it knows that you've been to site A.
Yes, but by "functions that can be used to track you", you're including user accounts, logins, forms, surveys, &c.
The term "tracking" has become abstracted to a point where many forget that they usually want to be "tracked" (by hitting "reply" here on HN, YCombinator is "tracking" who I am - user account - and what I've written).
If you'd be happy with a browser exclusively to view public, static content, then it could be done.
For selectively disabling tracking, you need uMatrix[0], but a component of the Firefox bug being reported here is that the extensions API used by uMatrix is failing to block GA in this particular case.
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