Down and to the Right: Firefox Got Faster for Real Users in 2023 – Mozilla Hacks - the Web developer blog
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We’ve been working hard on making Firefox even faster and we’re extremely happy to report that this has resulted in an improvement in speed.

In order to measure the user experience, Firefox collects a wide range of anonymized timing metrics related to page load, responsiveness, startup and other aspects of browser performance. Collecting data while holding ourselves to the highest standards of privacy can be challenging. For example, because we rely on aggregated metrics, we lack the ability to pinpoint data from any particular website. But perhaps even more challenging is analyzing the data once collected and drawing actionable conclusions. In the future we’ll talk more about these challenges and how we’re addressing them, but in this post we’d like to share how some of the metrics that are fundamental to how our users experience the browser have improved throughout the year.

    • Limitless_screaming@kbin.social
      424·
      11 months ago

      Because Firefox collects diagnostic data by default; which they used to achieve this improvement, but @possiblylinux127 doesn’t like that.

        • OpenStars@kbin.social
          723·
          11 months ago

          I doubt it is just that - the sending of such info is enabled by default for one, and even after disabling it, for several years now Firefox has continued to connect to the server regardless. I have not personally delved into the source code to verify just how “friendly” such a check is, which has already been asked to be halted, but ad blocking software such as Blockada (Android) has decided to mark it as “bad”.

          If this feature was opt-in only, and functioned respectfully, it would be an entirely different matter, but as it is, user consent seems to be at least partly ignored. I am sure that those stats are useful to the developers… but that is not and will never be the point, for many people.

          • Fisch@lemmy.ml
            5·
            11 months ago

            Firefox also needs to connect to their servers for stuff like Extension updates. It’s not necessarily to send them your data.

      • KnightontheSun@lemmy.world
        112·
        11 months ago

        Mine are all toggled off. Seems like a reasonable compromise to me.

        I’ve been a FF user for a very long time. I just never understood why folks don’t like it.

        • Limitless_screaming@kbin.social
          171·
          11 months ago

          I used to use Librewolf too, but I opted to just customize FFs settings and keep diagnostic data collection and “installing and running studies” on.

          When I first discovered that Google gives FF a large sum of money to keep their search engine the default one, I immediately got paranoid and started researching Mozilla. I ended up using Librewolf for about a month and then decided to switch back because collecting anonymous diagnostic data wasn’t such a big deal, and Google doesn’t seem to influence Mozilla as much as I expected.

          • RickyRigatoni@lemmy.ml
            71·
            11 months ago

            The installing and running studies was off for me since that time they decided to use that feature to inject ads into web pages.

            • KnightontheSun@lemmy.world
              61·
              11 months ago

              The studies one is always an instant no from me. My CPU cycles are my own to allocate as I see fit. I love FF, but you don’t get that access here.

              That aside, FF seems like the only browser left that is interested in having me actually browse the web.