Many in the alt tech and open source club, and especially the variety who might visit wrongthink, probably go to some length to present their device metrics as some other platform. Often to foil tracking, which insinuates flying the flag of Windows, Chrome or some other predominant platform. Outright lying is enough to mislead simple tracking adversaries. But are we causing long term harm in exchange for short term gain?
One needn’t try hard to imagine that a Google or a Microsoft might desire for, or even covertly encourage, those of us who reject exploitative platforms to scurry away out of sight. To send ourselves into self-exile. Targeted self erasure. It is probably safe to assume that most privacy oriented techies are using some form of Firefox. And according to Cloudflare’s 2025 Radar (warning: javascript) Firefox sits at a despicable 4.1%. Or 7.5% if counting only desktop Linux.
I am going to strech my estimation and, based on my years of interaction with Linux techies both online and in the flesh, surmise that somewhere between one tenth to two fifths of desktop Linux users make efforts to conceal their device attributes. For example, by enabling Firefox ResistFingerprinting. That is up to 40% making an erronious headcount toward Windows in web stat tracking. That unmasks potentially up to an additional 1.64% Firefox users who might actually be rocking Linux under the hood. When looking at single digit metrics, every fraction of a percent holds valid weight.
And when we consider that simply using Firefox, now a statistically niche web browser, already heavily contributes to the uniqueness of those hiding behind a false user agent, it becomes evident that masquerading one’s platform is not only a form of self-erasure but has also grown ineffective at curtailing fingerprinting.
It can be reasoned that if one takes a minor loss in fingerprintability in exchange for a comparatively more substantial gain for accurate platform usage counting, an argument begins to manifest that open source privacy afficianados might have been shooting ourselves in the feet by bolstering numbers in the long term which favor the adversaries.
For years I’ve been sailing with the flags of Windows and x86 when what little traffic I generated could have been counting toward Linux on PowerPC. Don’t think it matters? My aversions kept me away from utilizing Debian Popularity Contest (popcon) with a platform whose user count could be measured only in the thousands, perhaps even the hundreds for most packages. It becomes very easy for maintainers to overlook issues when, in effect, there are no active users. And I’ve seen first hand the erosion of interest in maintaining PowerPC ports, from issues that long go unnoticed, distros dropping entire builds, to developers selling off their POWER gear, to packages that quietly drop ppc64 from their builds. Headcounts matter.
In a trend of critically examining where I stand in my own convictions, I’m finding yet again that perhaps the time has come to relax some of my most stringent battle lines. In a sense, I have broken rank to go fight the ghosts of a battle which hasn’t yet begun. All the while, a war still rages far behind me. I’m alluding to the very real ground being covered in the gaming platform space. Just weeks ago, for the first time, Linux has broken the 3% milestone among Steam users, long since surpassing Mac OS. And, apparently, some of the console prisons have taken to releasing their hostages to PC while at the same time conceding that the PC was the right way, after all.
This is substantial. And even for those of us who have taken an ideological stand in swearing off the use of things like Steam, what happens in that space will have ramifications which echo through the humble encampments of alt tech and open source enjoyers for years to come. It has me feeling as though I’ve been M.I.A. in a time of need. With the recent announcement of Valve’s latest major Linux push, I question the veracity of jumping straight to the idyllic conclusion, having ignored the collective pushing of the needle necessary for it to first materialize. Here’s some wrongthink for you: maybe I’ll even buy a Steam Machine. Probably not for myself, but to repay a friend. To move that needle forward.
With Linux usage share crawling meaningfully upward for probably the first time ever, what things might unfold if a substantial part of the Linux userbase were to begin uncloaking?