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An hypothesis about much of the criticism for this change, and similar movements of outrage on the Internet. It's amateur social theory and goodness knows we do
by hackuser 10y ago
An hypothesis about much of the criticism for this change, and similar movements of outrage on the Internet. It's amateur social theory and goodness knows we don't need more of that, but I haven't seen it said like this:
People naturally feel anger in their lives (about home, work, politics, health, etc.) that is not socially acceptable to act on; to varying degrees, they need an outlet. It's not a new phenomenon; some go to the gym or play video games (where some act out on audio channels); some people drink heavily; some abuse people close to them, or the waitress, or get in a fight at the bar, or join an angry mob and lynch someone in the streets. When there is a socially acceptable target, indicated by lots of other people acting out, they act out too.
Changes like Firefox's attract outrage not because they are wrong but because they create a social attack surface: People can see that the change isn't socially secure (e.g., messages about inclusiveness are relatively secure right now[0]) and thus know that it will be a target for attacks; again, it's socially acceptable. They attack because it's a vulnerable target; there is chum in the social waters.
Consider how much of such outrage completely disregards the facts and betrays a lack of interest in learning the facts. They make no effort to learn about the facts - I see almost no discussion of the merits or facts on this page - and you can put the information in front of their eyes and they will ignore it and attack you: by not joining them you expose your own social vulnerability.
It's very dangerous socially; mass bullying campaigns have serious, real effects on their victims. Whole nations embrace bad policies, from discrimination against their own to war, that can kill in the hundreds of thousands or more and ruin generations. Evil leaders manipulate this phenomenon.
But also consider the affect it has on innovation, something we should be very concerned about at HN. It stops innovators from getting too far ahead of what's already accepted; they will be judged by their social security not its merits. It kills innovations from those who are socially acceptable; for example, the Blackberry Passport was the most innovative phone in years, but it was trashed, including on HN, because Blackberry Inc. was socially vulnerable, an outcast.
If you read this far, thanks for listening!
[0] To be clear, I'm not disparaging them - I strongly support them.
- nonbel 10y agoI don't think so, I think its that Firefox used to be awesome. Now people who advocated for them feel betrayed when the search is "updated" to yahoo, the homepage is "improved" to have ads, the menus are "modernized" so you can't find the settings you used to, the add-on system is "secured" so you have to modify your workflow, etc.
- hackuser 10y agoThanks for addressing my comment. Of course I can't speak for everyone (and neither can you or anyone else), but to my general point ... > people who advocated for them feel betrayed ... Consider how strong an emotional response that is to a search engine change, etc., especially from people very familiar with IT and capable of adjusting to change (changing the default search engine, for example), and in a context where they see software changes frequently (think of hosted apps like Facebook!). I don't think Firefox's changes are enough to explain that emotion; if you'll pardon the metaphor, they don't contain enough energy to explain the reaction; the energy must be coming from someplace else. I think the emotion is from someplace else and about something else. Also, the comments raised above don't address the merits; they reflect only anger, which is consistent with my point. (In fairness, it may not be the context to review the merits of all those changes.)
- l_t 10y agoI understand your point, but I think you might be underestimating the importance Firefox has to some people. It was never just a replaceable Web browser for me. It was one of the few pieces of software that seemed to be "made right", built by people who care, and built for people who know what they want. I always thought of Firefox as a paragon of power-user design, and I loved it for that. In terms of hours of usage, I'm sure I've logged more with Firefox than with any other program in my life. It might not be an exaggeration to say it's the most important piece of software I have ever(!) use. So this change, in combination with the overall direction Firefox seems to be headed, does evoke fairly strong feelings, and I really don't think they are "actually about something else". Having said that, I do want to say that I am not angry, and I don't want to vilify anyone. I'm just concerned, and a bit sad, because the browsing experience I've grown up with seems like it won't be around much longer.
- 20after4 10y agoMany people, myself included, have felt a special connection to Firefox and Mozilla. I evangelized Firefox to family and friends. I built add-ons and participated in the larger Mozilla ecosystem for many years. It was/is a big part of my life and I feel betrayed by the direction Mozilla is headed. It's a strong emotional impact and I don't think it's an over-reaction, all things considered.
- theonemind 10y agoWell, you may be right about the outrage. I don't have any outrage, and I want to see competition in the browser space, and I actually use firefox. I am, however, as a "power-user", mostly annoyed by the direction Firefox has gone in. It often feels like they're apeing Chrome, especially since Australis took a very similar feel to the Chrome UI. If I wanted to use Chrome, it's over there. No outrage, and for all I know, they've made the best moves to maintain their marketshare, but once the extensions get comparatively neutered, the only things keeping me on Firefox are inertia, the awesomebar (I haven't played with chrome a lot, but Firefox's awesomebar works really well, and I use '*' to narrow it down to bookmarks all of the tmie), the real dialog boxes for managing history and bookmarks (vs Chrome's pseudo webpage thing), and inertia. So I can understand the frustration of 'power-users' with their changes, which seem aimed to make it a more mass-appeal product.
- hackuser 10y ago> once the extensions get comparatively neutered My impression is that's not an accurate characterization; do anyone know of a serious analysis that supports it? As I said in the GP, there's not much concern with the facts and merits; people (maybe not the parent) just want to act out.
- 20after4 10y agoHow exactly have you gotten this impression? They are completely killing the old extensions APIs and replacing them with a much more limited system. The browser is nowhere near as extensible with Web Extensions.