I truly, truly do not understand what is going on here at HN.

2 weeks ago mozilla deactivated by super-incompetent accident all of their security add ons and required a completely opaque 'studies' tool to push an update.

With the security features deactivated tons of people who need to get work done or didn't understand what was going on used the web with all of the tracking features turned on, no doubt allowing tons of previously anonymous stored data on users to be de-anonymized. They don't have to be able to track everyone all of the time, you just have to really get a unique identifier on the browser tracks left in the databases. Many FF installs in linux distributions ceased to function at all.

These simple observations went hardly remarked on HN.

BoingBoing.net which has previously covered security issues well, somehow did not notice/report this event, which stands out in recent memory as one of the worst privacy catastrophes. An inquiry to Mr. Doctorow himself in regards to this, as well as why there is still a tracking F on the page in 2019, has gone unanswered.

Now, a month later, without any further discussion of this event, Firefox wants us to trust it to single-handedly defeat tracking with a single new catch-all feature.

On HN, top rated comments, rather than expressing skepticism and asking for details, are about a completely different browser, Safari.

Perhaps the best comment after the firefix addon-aggedon noted, FF does not have to have a studies feature, it does not have to push automatic updates, it does not have to have a single signing certificate for all of the add-ons which creates a single point of failure. This line of inquiry is devastating to the true nature of mozilla and the loyalties of the individuals behind this code.

I am posting this as a response to the lowest rated, yet in my opinion best comment in this topic, hoping that other people who notice the complete distractions and consensus cracking going on all over the place above the fold, will know where to look for someone saying something intelligent about the situation.

And so this: the problem is not the computers and the software, it is the nature of these institutions and the people in them. Semi-corporate half-charitable, expansive things like whatever Mozilla is lend themselves easily to the same sort of infiltration and takeover as normal, evil, corporations. Do you not think the fbi, cia, air force and mossad have been spending years getting their agents into the 'key positions' at mozilla? Does mozilla(or canonical) seem to you like an organization who could resist this sort of effort?

It is now obvious that Firefox is run by the enemies of open culture, and having only the choice between FF and Chrome, developed by an even less trustworthy institution, the internet as dreamed of by people who care about freedom and liberty of the individual is in serious trouble.

So the comment to which I am replying is the best, what shape of institution will create software to make the internet open and fair, and facilitate free speech without infiltration and subversion by spies and paid propagandists?

Why can all of the kings horses and all the kings men not create a functional browser that doesn't publicize reading habits and de-anonymize with extremely obfuscated input analysis, if not outright keylogging and password theft and intentional malware backdoors?

The browser has replaced the television for most people, if you haven't noticed, so this is important and how discusion platforms like hackernews deal with the discussion of this, reveals all we need to know about the institution and individuals behind hackernews.

Something is rotten here and it could not be more obvious to anyone still capable of independent thought.