I'm inclined to believe it. Governments went absolutely nuts at the height of the Covid panic, Boris Johnson's government more so than most.
kbal
Indeed. But cups-browsed isn't necessary in order to be able to print things, it's for automatically discovering new printers on the network.
cups-browsed <= 2.0.1 binds on UDP INADDR_ANY:631 trusting any packet from any source
Well that would explain why I didn't have it installed (although I did have other parts of cups until jwz coincidentally reminded us two days ago that it can all be removed if you don't have a printer.) I clear out anything that opens ports I don't need to be open. A practice I would recommend to anyone.
It's the "always will" where I disagree. This society we've built isn't anything close to sustainable no matter how much lip service is given to the idea that it should be. What can't go on forever, won't.
It's amazing how much of 21st-century politics consists of badly-disguised attempts to reconstitute fascism. Maybe that's why people like Elon Musk are so quick to accuse everyone else of "communism" — they're still living in the ideology of 1939 and so they naturally assume that everyone else must be doing the same.
Wait, what? You think they're not planning on getting paid for providing this data to advertisers?
P.S. It looks like Mozilla's Data Privacy FAQ is going to need updating. It doesn't even mention this stuff. As the noyb complaint points out:
- The Respondent does not provide any information at all in its privacy policy with regard to "PPA". Neither in the general privacy policy (enclosure 9) nor in the privacy information for Firefox (enclosure 10) is any relevant information apparent.
- The last update of the Firefox privacy policy took place on May 13, 2024.
I would say it's more of a desperate attempt to continue the current paradigm of online advertising which deems indispensable the kind of data about conversion rates to which the industry has become accustomed, despite the recognition that their current means of collecting it must come to an end.
But either way, it's incompatible with the principles of free software. Users are not meant to put up with features that are there for the sole benefit of someone else; someone they might normally consider an adversary. The only incentive we're given to participate in this scheme is one that resembles blackmail. Except it isn't even advertisers saying "do this, or we'll spy on you like usual" — it's Mozilla saying "do this, and maybe we can persuade a few of them not to spy on you as much, and to give us a cut."
They are selling behavioural data about their users to advertisers. People are not going to be happy with that no matter how they try to spin it.
They added a feature to track conversions among Firefox users for online advertisers. Selling it as a "paradigm-shifting boost to online privacy" while accusing others of pushing a misleading narrative is absurd.
There certainly are many people who seem suspiciously eager to find fault with Firefox. But it's not really a surprise when its authors do things like this. They chose not to make this feature opt-in because they know that nobody in their right mind would opt into it. There is no benefit to the user in it, only risk. Mozilla seems to be leaving us to go off and join the advertising industry instead. People feel betrayed, and it feeds the cynical nihilism that comes so easily to social media users under the conditions of late capitalism.
Fucking garbage article and headline.
You got me to read the thing, just to see what could possibly be so offensive about it. It's a pretty good summary of the situation for an audience that might not be too familiar with Canadian politics. Don't blame the messenger.
It's still operating for now, right? Because if I look at random government pages in a browser that profile that doesn't block the social media widgets I can see links to facebook, twitter, instagram, whatsapp, youtube, and threema. There seems to be no mention anywhere that a mastodon server exists.
They're complaining about the low number of users. Did they bother to tell people that it exists?
Okay then. Thank you for resolving the dilemma of remaining ignorant or having "wolf erotica" in my search history.