23 ms·

I know they screwed up recently with the Mr. Robot malware, but I think it's really important for developers to get behind Firefox again. As the American gover

by kevmo 9y ago

I know they screwed up recently with the Mr. Robot malware, but I think it's really important for developers to get behind Firefox again. As the American government fails to provide any sort of check on its behemoth corporations (Apple, Google, and Microsoft) and to protect consumer privacy, Firefox is basically the last contender for real consumer protection standing.

TheCoreh 9y ago
The Mr. Robot thing was not "malware". It was an easter egg, just like about:mozilla. You may say it was poor taste on Mozilla's part, since it was essentially a paid-for promotional tie-in with a TV show, and I would probably agree with you. But it did not damage anyone's computer, compromise any data or do anything that could put it on the "Malware" category. Something similar that noone has complained about are the Android version names which are promotional tie-ins: Kit Kat and Oreo. Mozilla's biggest screw up IMO was failing to disclose properly what was going on.
- Ajedi32 9y ago
  > it was essentially a paid-for promotional tie-in From what I recall, it wasn't paid-for either. > we developed an unpaid collaboration to engage our users and viewers of the show in a new way Source: https://blog.mozilla.org/firefox/update-looking-glass-add/ https://blog.mozilla.org/firefox/update-looking-glass-add/
  - bluetwo 9y ago
    If they didn't get paid, why on earth did they do it?
    - bugmen0t 9y ago
      Someone actually that it was fun and valuable. Shocking, I know.
      - paulryanrogers 9y ago
        ^thought
      - QAPereo 9y ago
        Of all possible explanations, that is the one I suspect is most divorced from reality.
    - 794CD01 9y ago
      They assumed their user base has dwindled to only the kind of anticorporate hacker wannabes that watch Mr. Robot.
    - Swizec 9y ago
      for the lulz? Hackers gonna hack. In the “let’s build cool stuff because we can” way.
    - teilo 9y ago
      Not all incentives are direct financial incentives. It's free marketing. It increases market penetration. It encourages people who only use Chrome to try Firefox. It was absolutely the wrong thing to do, but it's not like they stood nothing to gain from it.
      - bluetwo 9y ago
        Is this based on any fact or is it hyperbole?
        teilo 9y ago
        I don't thing that word means what you think it means.
        bluetwo 9y ago
        I'm just asking. It seems like a question that has an actual answer. Someone did it. Someone knows why it happened.
    - emveeoh 9y ago
      It seems they wanted press. Well, they got it...
      - micro-ram 9y ago
        and lost a lot of trust as a result.
    - bigleagueposter 9y ago
      bribery
    - mintplant 9y ago
      People who wanted to solve the Mr. Robot ARG/puzzle had to download Firefox to complete the part of it the add-on enabled.
    - ben174 9y ago
      I think it was the opposite of paid. They wanted to draw the Mr. Robot crowd to Firefox.
- syshum 9y ago
  >>Mozilla's biggest screw up IMO was failing to disclose properly what was going on. That was not the only issue 1. Failure to Disclose it before distribution 2. Failure to Properly name or provide any support context to the Add In. 3. Using the "Studies" System designed to improve the technology and advance the web browser for this Adware "Easter egg" not really an Easter egg addin 4. Failure to Publicly Comment about it until a full 72 hours after concerns were raised 5. Deleting and Hiding Bug Reports about the Addin in Bugzilla 6. Failure to adequately respond, apologize, or explain why and how the Studies system was used to distribute this Adware, There blog post so far is woefully inadequate. 7. Failure to disclose what steps are being taken immediately to ensure the Studies system is not abused in this manner in the future Should I go on? There were many many many failures here, which are compounded by the many other failures Mozilla has had over the last few years.
  - fatwa 9y ago
    And enabling the "studies" thing without my permission, which they did.
  - kevin_b_er 9y ago
    Then you can go back to chrome or chromium, both of which Google has pushed a binary plugin to that records voice in the past. Debian had to raise a storm over it and turned into a compile-time only option to not get the microphone listening plugin on your chromium install.
    - eckza 9y ago
      Fine, but that doesn't make the points in the comment you're replying to any less valid. That's... not how it works.
    - syshum 9y ago
      I never left FF, I have been using FF since the very first Beta Releases, I have been using Mozilla Browsers since before FF was even a concept I support Mozilla on Ideological grounds and it is said they are dropping their Ideology in favor of a pure commercial company.
- muraiki 9y ago
  Note that the advertisement was for a TV show _owned by a company that helped destroy net neutrality_: Comcast. How am I supposed to "Join Mozilla in defending it" (from mozilla.org) when they are going to work for their own enemies?
  - Insanity 9y ago
    That's an interesting aspect I did not consider. (I had no idea it was a TV show owned by comcast)
TAForObvReasons 9y ago
They didn't just screw up once . They've screwed up many times over the years with many projects and attempts that run counter to the core values that Mozilla claims to uphold. Bryan Lunduke articulated this very well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMALm1VthGY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMALm1VthGY At this point Mozilla has to prove to us that they are worthy of our usage
- Vinnl 9y ago
  Mozilla is in great parts its community, and so far, it has done a great job in keeping it in tow when it appeared to derail. The Mr. Robot thing has been retracted (although it was also largely portrayed as a privacy issue, which it wasn't), Pocket has been acquired, and the rest were mainly diversions that many people deem unnecessary but that aren't necessarily a threat to Mozilla's mission other than potentially distracting them. So I think the project is relatively healthy, and in any case, still miles and miles ahead in terms of worthiness than every other major browser out there.
  - suby 9y ago
    If Mozilla was serious about repairing trust, they would make user studies opt-in instead of opt-out. As it stands now, they are performing experiments on users by default. When people say the Mr. Robot thing was a violation of privacy, I believe this is ultimately where they are coming from.
    - seanp2k2 9y ago
      I do agree. FWIW, most software companies do A/B test on their users these days. Most people probably don’t notice, and that’s a bit the point; you don’t want test cells to be distracting, you want them to be valid measures. Pocket and Looking Glass should have been regular add-ons available for people who want them (I’m an avid Pocket user and have had a paid sub with them in the past). Even with the Yahoo search deal, it would have been nice to have the first start go through a wizard that lets you choose Yahoo (as a default option), Google, Bing, or whatever else...though I guess they likely wouldn’t have been able to score as much funding from that arrangement (but that’s just an assumption). I’m very happy that Mozilla exists and have some friends who have worked there, but I can’t say that 100% of their decisions value users and privacy above all else.
ebbv 9y ago
I get your point but considering Mozilla gets all of its funding from those same corporations I'm not sure how true that is.
- ChrisSD 9y ago
  Ironically its attempts to diversifying funding sources always seems to piss off the community. For example the paid slots on the new tab page that were only shown in fresh installs.
SirensOfTitan 9y ago
I’ve found a lot of people are quite naively idealistic around browser development. The rendering, JS engines in Firefox and Chrome are state-of-the-art and take small armies to build and maintain. Mozilla has to strike a balance between revenue seeking and consumer protection seeking behavior that I would imagine is quite difficult to maintain. Lots of people here additionally are up in arms their incredibly specific workflow was upheaveled by a movement to webextensions planned like 2 years in advance. Browser engines don’t have the luxury of being vim and supporting every environment and config.
- syshum 9y ago
  >>I’ve found a lot of people are quite naively idealistic around browser development. So it is naive to hold a Non-Profit to their foundational mission statement and goal? Their Manfeisto? Mozilla is not, or rather used to not be, just a For-Profit Software firm making a browser. They were a Non-Profit Foundation started to advance ideological and philosophical ideas, namely Open Web Standards and Access for all. It seems like you are perfectly find with Losing the Mozilla Foundation, and replacing it with Mozilla Corporation the software developers that make a commercial browser. Maybe FireFox 60 should just go closed source and charge $40 a download
  - haukilup 9y ago
    We need to balance "holding them accountable" and "being realistic". Mozilla cannot compete against Google without funding from somewhere. As far as I know, this is a fact. So the question, to me, becomes "what kind of funding is acceptable?" And I suspect this is where we completely differ - because while Mozilla has made some mistakes, I am not nearly as enraged as some of the other commenters I've seen have been. I think Mozilla has been doing a great job, with a few notable hiccups.
- c3534l 9y ago
  > revenue seeking Then what the hell did I donate money to them for? I thought their whole thing was they were for "people, not profit." I don't want my technology to make money off of me in any way I'm not aware of.
stephenr 9y ago
Please tell me how Safari or Apple in general works against consumer privacy protection? This is yet again a too-simplistic view of things that seems very common with Americans. Some big companies do unethical things, and you translate that to "all big companies hate consumers and want to eat their children"
- danieldk 9y ago
  Please tell me how Safari or Apple in general works against consumer privacy protection? Safari is pretty good at privacy protection. Apple doesn't really have an interest in collecting your data and they have a history of implementing features improving privacy (cross-site tracking protection, build-in adblock API, etc.). The problem is that Safari is only available to the wealthiest in the world.
  - seanp2k2 9y ago
    Not technically Safari but https://webkitgtk.org https://webkitgtk.org is a thing and WebKit itself is open source: https://github.com/WebKit/webkit https://github.com/WebKit/webkit “”” WebKit is a cross-platform web browser engine. On iOS and macOS, it powers Safari, Mail, iBooks, and many other applications. “”” Midori is also based on WebKit: http://midori-browser.org http://midori-browser.org AFAIK Safari does not provide more privacy protections than WebKit.
    - alwillis 9y ago
      Some of Safari’s privacy protection (Intelligent Tracking Prevention: https://webkit.org/blog/7675/intelligent-tracking-prevention/ https://webkit.org/blog/7675/intelligent-tracking-prevention...) uses APIs in iOS and macOS that aren’t part of WebKit.
- seanp2k2 9y ago
  Related: “””In the recent history of management ideas, few have had a more profound — or pernicious — effect than the one that says corporations should be run in a manner that “maximizes shareholder value.”””” https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/09/09/how-the-cult-of-shareholder-value-wrecked-american-business/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/09/09/how-t...
Pharylon 9y ago
"The Mr. Robot Malware?" You mean the extension that did literally nothing unless you turned it on in about:config? That's "malware?"
- Fnoord 9y ago
  We should put it in proportion. Is Chrome worse, privacy-wise? Safari? Edge? Security-wise? Performance-wise? Cause it all ends up, like on large sum of + and -.
- fourthark 9y ago
  Sounds like it deliberately appeared to be malware, but wasn't. Which shows a strange and misguided sense of humor.
  - milesvp 9y ago
    Which was consistent with Mr. Robot's tone and theme. I have to say, that like it or hate it, the show does hark back to days of programming yore, and I could totally see it seducing devs into doing foolish things like releasing an add on that looks like malware. Mischievous easter eggs don't really belong in commercial software anymore (with very careful exception) but the allure still exists. I can't fault the dev team too harshly for this lapse of judgement, especially since it sounds from their blog post that they've taken the backlash to heart.
    - toxican 9y ago
      But if you've never seen the show all you saw was some sketchy extension appear in your extensions list with little to no explanation of why. Was my Mozilla account breached? Did some program installed on my computer auto-install an extension without me realizing? Am I sleep-installing extensions? It was just weird and it freaked me out until I heard everyone else was losing their mind over it. I just really don't get what they were thinking.
zeep 9y ago
I had the option disabled before they started pushing the Mr.Robot thingy ("Allow Firefox Developer Edition to send technical and interaction data to Mozilla")... You pretty much always had to disable a few things when you installed Firefox to preserve as much privacy as possible. I wish that they would change the defaults, but I will still be using Firefox for now.
jessewmc 9y ago
Political issues aside, firefox is much less usable as a development tool than chrome. When quantum came out I switched to dev edition to try it out, but I've had nothing but trouble. Page loads of local unbuilt code are 2-3x slower than chrome. Tabs crash with alarming regularity, especially after the most recent update. There is still no way to inspect websocket frames. Form inputs are black text on dark background with the dark theme of developer edition. At least I can get CSS source maps working, which seems to be impossible in chrome these days. But really that's the only plus for a lot of negatives. I'd love to be using firefox instead of chrome, but after this most recent update I get several tab crashes a day and I've finally given up as it's become a hindrance to productivity. I wish it weren't so.

by kevmo 9y ago

TheCoreh 9y ago

The Mr. Robot thing was not "malware". It was an easter egg, just like about:mozilla. You may say it was poor taste on Mozilla's part, since it was essentially a paid-for promotional tie-in with a TV show, and I would probably agree with you. But it did not damage anyone's computer, compromise any data or do anything that could put it on the "Malware" category. Something similar that noone has complained about are the Android version names which are promotional tie-ins: Kit Kat and Oreo. Mozilla's biggest screw up IMO was failing to disclose properly what was going on.

Ajedi32 9y ago
> it was essentially a paid-for promotional tie-in From what I recall, it wasn't paid-for either. > we developed an unpaid collaboration to engage our users and viewers of the show in a new way Source: https://blog.mozilla.org/firefox/update-looking-glass-add/ https://blog.mozilla.org/firefox/update-looking-glass-add/
- bluetwo 9y ago
  If they didn't get paid, why on earth did they do it?
  - bugmen0t 9y ago
    Someone actually that it was fun and valuable. Shocking, I know.
    - paulryanrogers 9y ago
      ^thought
    - QAPereo 9y ago
      Of all possible explanations, that is the one I suspect is most divorced from reality.
  - 794CD01 9y ago
    They assumed their user base has dwindled to only the kind of anticorporate hacker wannabes that watch Mr. Robot.
  - Swizec 9y ago
    for the lulz? Hackers gonna hack. In the “let’s build cool stuff because we can” way.
  - teilo 9y ago
    Not all incentives are direct financial incentives. It's free marketing. It increases market penetration. It encourages people who only use Chrome to try Firefox. It was absolutely the wrong thing to do, but it's not like they stood nothing to gain from it.
    - bluetwo 9y ago
      Is this based on any fact or is it hyperbole?
      - teilo 9y ago
        I don't thing that word means what you think it means.
        bluetwo 9y ago
        I'm just asking. It seems like a question that has an actual answer. Someone did it. Someone knows why it happened.
  - emveeoh 9y ago
    It seems they wanted press. Well, they got it...
    - micro-ram 9y ago
      and lost a lot of trust as a result.
  - bigleagueposter 9y ago
    bribery
  - mintplant 9y ago
    People who wanted to solve the Mr. Robot ARG/puzzle had to download Firefox to complete the part of it the add-on enabled.
  - ben174 9y ago
    I think it was the opposite of paid. They wanted to draw the Mr. Robot crowd to Firefox.
syshum 9y ago
>>Mozilla's biggest screw up IMO was failing to disclose properly what was going on. That was not the only issue 1. Failure to Disclose it before distribution 2. Failure to Properly name or provide any support context to the Add In. 3. Using the "Studies" System designed to improve the technology and advance the web browser for this Adware "Easter egg" not really an Easter egg addin 4. Failure to Publicly Comment about it until a full 72 hours after concerns were raised 5. Deleting and Hiding Bug Reports about the Addin in Bugzilla 6. Failure to adequately respond, apologize, or explain why and how the Studies system was used to distribute this Adware, There blog post so far is woefully inadequate. 7. Failure to disclose what steps are being taken immediately to ensure the Studies system is not abused in this manner in the future Should I go on? There were many many many failures here, which are compounded by the many other failures Mozilla has had over the last few years.
- fatwa 9y ago
  And enabling the "studies" thing without my permission, which they did.
- kevin_b_er 9y ago
  Then you can go back to chrome or chromium, both of which Google has pushed a binary plugin to that records voice in the past. Debian had to raise a storm over it and turned into a compile-time only option to not get the microphone listening plugin on your chromium install.
  - eckza 9y ago
    Fine, but that doesn't make the points in the comment you're replying to any less valid. That's... not how it works.
  - syshum 9y ago
    I never left FF, I have been using FF since the very first Beta Releases, I have been using Mozilla Browsers since before FF was even a concept I support Mozilla on Ideological grounds and it is said they are dropping their Ideology in favor of a pure commercial company.
muraiki 9y ago
Note that the advertisement was for a TV show _owned by a company that helped destroy net neutrality_: Comcast. How am I supposed to "Join Mozilla in defending it" (from mozilla.org) when they are going to work for their own enemies?
- Insanity 9y ago
  That's an interesting aspect I did not consider. (I had no idea it was a TV show owned by comcast)

TAForObvReasons 9y ago

They didn't just screw up once . They've screwed up many times over the years with many projects and attempts that run counter to the core values that Mozilla claims to uphold. Bryan Lunduke articulated this very well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMALm1VthGY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMALm1VthGY At this point Mozilla has to prove to us that they are worthy of our usage

Vinnl 9y ago
Mozilla is in great parts its community, and so far, it has done a great job in keeping it in tow when it appeared to derail. The Mr. Robot thing has been retracted (although it was also largely portrayed as a privacy issue, which it wasn't), Pocket has been acquired, and the rest were mainly diversions that many people deem unnecessary but that aren't necessarily a threat to Mozilla's mission other than potentially distracting them. So I think the project is relatively healthy, and in any case, still miles and miles ahead in terms of worthiness than every other major browser out there.
- suby 9y ago
  If Mozilla was serious about repairing trust, they would make user studies opt-in instead of opt-out. As it stands now, they are performing experiments on users by default. When people say the Mr. Robot thing was a violation of privacy, I believe this is ultimately where they are coming from.
  - seanp2k2 9y ago
    I do agree. FWIW, most software companies do A/B test on their users these days. Most people probably don’t notice, and that’s a bit the point; you don’t want test cells to be distracting, you want them to be valid measures. Pocket and Looking Glass should have been regular add-ons available for people who want them (I’m an avid Pocket user and have had a paid sub with them in the past). Even with the Yahoo search deal, it would have been nice to have the first start go through a wizard that lets you choose Yahoo (as a default option), Google, Bing, or whatever else...though I guess they likely wouldn’t have been able to score as much funding from that arrangement (but that’s just an assumption). I’m very happy that Mozilla exists and have some friends who have worked there, but I can’t say that 100% of their decisions value users and privacy above all else.

ebbv 9y ago

I get your point but considering Mozilla gets all of its funding from those same corporations I'm not sure how true that is.

ChrisSD 9y ago
Ironically its attempts to diversifying funding sources always seems to piss off the community. For example the paid slots on the new tab page that were only shown in fresh installs.

SirensOfTitan 9y ago

I’ve found a lot of people are quite naively idealistic around browser development. The rendering, JS engines in Firefox and Chrome are state-of-the-art and take small armies to build and maintain. Mozilla has to strike a balance between revenue seeking and consumer protection seeking behavior that I would imagine is quite difficult to maintain. Lots of people here additionally are up in arms their incredibly specific workflow was upheaveled by a movement to webextensions planned like 2 years in advance. Browser engines don’t have the luxury of being vim and supporting every environment and config.

syshum 9y ago
>>I’ve found a lot of people are quite naively idealistic around browser development. So it is naive to hold a Non-Profit to their foundational mission statement and goal? Their Manfeisto? Mozilla is not, or rather used to not be, just a For-Profit Software firm making a browser. They were a Non-Profit Foundation started to advance ideological and philosophical ideas, namely Open Web Standards and Access for all. It seems like you are perfectly find with Losing the Mozilla Foundation, and replacing it with Mozilla Corporation the software developers that make a commercial browser. Maybe FireFox 60 should just go closed source and charge $40 a download
- haukilup 9y ago
  We need to balance "holding them accountable" and "being realistic". Mozilla cannot compete against Google without funding from somewhere. As far as I know, this is a fact. So the question, to me, becomes "what kind of funding is acceptable?" And I suspect this is where we completely differ - because while Mozilla has made some mistakes, I am not nearly as enraged as some of the other commenters I've seen have been. I think Mozilla has been doing a great job, with a few notable hiccups.
c3534l 9y ago
> revenue seeking Then what the hell did I donate money to them for? I thought their whole thing was they were for "people, not profit." I don't want my technology to make money off of me in any way I'm not aware of.

stephenr 9y ago

Please tell me how Safari or Apple in general works against consumer privacy protection? This is yet again a too-simplistic view of things that seems very common with Americans. Some big companies do unethical things, and you translate that to "all big companies hate consumers and want to eat their children"

danieldk 9y ago
Please tell me how Safari or Apple in general works against consumer privacy protection? Safari is pretty good at privacy protection. Apple doesn't really have an interest in collecting your data and they have a history of implementing features improving privacy (cross-site tracking protection, build-in adblock API, etc.). The problem is that Safari is only available to the wealthiest in the world.
- seanp2k2 9y ago
  Not technically Safari but https://webkitgtk.org https://webkitgtk.org is a thing and WebKit itself is open source: https://github.com/WebKit/webkit https://github.com/WebKit/webkit “”” WebKit is a cross-platform web browser engine. On iOS and macOS, it powers Safari, Mail, iBooks, and many other applications. “”” Midori is also based on WebKit: http://midori-browser.org http://midori-browser.org AFAIK Safari does not provide more privacy protections than WebKit.
  - alwillis 9y ago
    Some of Safari’s privacy protection (Intelligent Tracking Prevention: https://webkit.org/blog/7675/intelligent-tracking-prevention/ https://webkit.org/blog/7675/intelligent-tracking-prevention...) uses APIs in iOS and macOS that aren’t part of WebKit.
seanp2k2 9y ago
Related: “””In the recent history of management ideas, few have had a more profound — or pernicious — effect than the one that says corporations should be run in a manner that “maximizes shareholder value.”””” https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/09/09/how-the-cult-of-shareholder-value-wrecked-american-business/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/09/09/how-t...

Pharylon 9y ago

"The Mr. Robot Malware?" You mean the extension that did literally nothing unless you turned it on in about:config? That's "malware?"

Fnoord 9y ago
We should put it in proportion. Is Chrome worse, privacy-wise? Safari? Edge? Security-wise? Performance-wise? Cause it all ends up, like on large sum of + and -.
fourthark 9y ago
Sounds like it deliberately appeared to be malware, but wasn't. Which shows a strange and misguided sense of humor.
- milesvp 9y ago
  Which was consistent with Mr. Robot's tone and theme. I have to say, that like it or hate it, the show does hark back to days of programming yore, and I could totally see it seducing devs into doing foolish things like releasing an add on that looks like malware. Mischievous easter eggs don't really belong in commercial software anymore (with very careful exception) but the allure still exists. I can't fault the dev team too harshly for this lapse of judgement, especially since it sounds from their blog post that they've taken the backlash to heart.
  - toxican 9y ago
    But if you've never seen the show all you saw was some sketchy extension appear in your extensions list with little to no explanation of why. Was my Mozilla account breached? Did some program installed on my computer auto-install an extension without me realizing? Am I sleep-installing extensions? It was just weird and it freaked me out until I heard everyone else was losing their mind over it. I just really don't get what they were thinking.

zeep 9y ago

I had the option disabled before they started pushing the Mr.Robot thingy ("Allow Firefox Developer Edition to send technical and interaction data to Mozilla")... You pretty much always had to disable a few things when you installed Firefox to preserve as much privacy as possible. I wish that they would change the defaults, but I will still be using Firefox for now.

jessewmc 9y ago

Political issues aside, firefox is much less usable as a development tool than chrome. When quantum came out I switched to dev edition to try it out, but I've had nothing but trouble. Page loads of local unbuilt code are 2-3x slower than chrome. Tabs crash with alarming regularity, especially after the most recent update. There is still no way to inspect websocket frames. Form inputs are black text on dark background with the dark theme of developer edition. At least I can get CSS source maps working, which seems to be impossible in chrome these days. But really that's the only plus for a lot of negatives. I'd love to be using firefox instead of chrome, but after this most recent update I get several tab crashes a day and I've finally given up as it's become a hindrance to productivity. I wish it weren't so.