Ancestors

Written by Pomax on 2025-01-14 at 15:20

It'd be cool if browsers didn't come with all this "to prevent finger printing we've made it impossible to do things with precision" bullshit. Here's an idea: instead, you make adblocking, script blocking, and third party domain blocking just part of "this is what a browser is supposed to let you control out of the box".

It's almost like someone should make a new browser based on you owning your browsing experience, not funded or owned by people who benefit from sabotaging your experience.

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Written by Jonathan Dallas on 2025-01-15 at 20:01

@TheRealPomax I don’t follow this at all. How would a browser prevent fingerprinting from websites if not by limiting the precision of APIs?

Anyone can make a website that does any kind of nefarious thing with web APIs. If a browser opened up those APIs, how would the browser maintain the user’s privacy?

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Written by Pomax on 2025-01-15 at 21:15

@doctype_jon it wouldn't, that's the whole point. Instead of locking everything down, make it super obvious when it happens instead, so that users can make an informed decision on whether to allow it or not.

And if that's not how you want to interact with your browser, due to privacy concerns, then obviously don't use my fictional browser.

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Toot

Written by Jonathan Dallas on 2025-01-15 at 21:22

@TheRealPomax this is what I’m confused about. How would this fictional browser make it super obvious when fingerprinting happens?

How does it know when it happened?

Is it going to have a database of every known way to fingerprint and update that database constantly as people find new approaches?

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Descendants

Written by Pomax on 2025-01-15 at 21:34

@doctype_jon It's going to tell you that the website you're currently on is trying to do X and whether you're okay with that.

"That'll be a shit experience!" yep, it'll be a shit experience the first time you visit a website you want to visit again in the future and so you set what you consider acceptable permissions and move on with your life. Does this random site you clicked through from Mastodon want to load third-party images? Tough luck, those are broken image links until you allow them

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Written by Jonathan Dallas on 2025-01-15 at 21:52

@TheRealPomax Ahh ok so the idea is no web APIs are available without a permission prompt.

IIRC this approach was considered before choosing to make the API less precise. I might be imagining this but I think the consensus was that they felt the user of the browser wouldn’t understand the trade off between features and privacy or would be forced to choose between their privacy and not using a website.

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Written by Pomax on 2025-01-15 at 22:01

@doctype_jon As far as I remember, the reasoning was along the line of "normal people want X" and by the time the decision was made, pointing out "okay but normal people use Chrome or Safari instead, the whole reason they use a privacy-oriented browser is because they want control" it was already way too late.

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