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> erode my trust in Mozilla a little Exactly where I'm at. I get the impression that there's an (probably unintentional/unconscious) attitude at Mozilla that t

> erode my trust in Mozilla a little Exactly where I'm at. I get the impression that there's an (probably unintentional/unconscious) attitude at Mozilla that they can use user devices for whatever they like providing they can justify it as providing _some_ future benefit to them. That's probably not actually the case, but it's certainly how their actions make it look. I don't exactly trust Google any further, but I at least feel they are more upfront about their intention and don't push seemingly arbitrary experiments out to users or involve third parties in the data collection.

cpeterso 9y ago
> I don't exactly trust Google any further, but I at least feel they are more upfront about their intention and don't push seemingly arbitrary experiments out to users How do you know what experiments Google is running on unsuspecting Chrome users right now? This conversation arose precisely because Mozilla announced it on a public mailing before the experiment started. You can see any current or past Firefox experiments that you've been in on Firefox's about:studies page. I work at Mozilla, but not on these experiments.
thristian 9y ago
A more charitable assessment might be that Mozilla is trying to serve too many use-cases. Chrome is quite happy doing the 20% work that gets them 80% of the userbase, and all the users that Chrome happily sidelines come running to Firefox. That's cool, but some of those users have wildly different priorities, like we see in this case. Some users want protection from interference by their government or their ISP, and couldn't care less if some of their metadata winds up in a database on the other side of the world. Other users are quite relaxed about their local government or ISP, but don't want any of their stuff entering US jurisdiction. And it's not practical to set up a world-wide infrastructure of DNS-over-HTTPS servers just to find out whether it's worthwhile. It's not so much that Mozilla feels "they can use user devices for whatever they like", as much as Mozilla's at a local maximum, and trying to improve anything for some part of their userbase means neglecting some other part, even if only temporarily. And then the neglected parts feel betrayed.

cpeterso 9y ago

> I don't exactly trust Google any further, but I at least feel they are more upfront about their intention and don't push seemingly arbitrary experiments out to users How do you know what experiments Google is running on unsuspecting Chrome users right now? This conversation arose precisely because Mozilla announced it on a public mailing before the experiment started. You can see any current or past Firefox experiments that you've been in on Firefox's about:studies page. I work at Mozilla, but not on these experiments.

thristian 9y ago

A more charitable assessment might be that Mozilla is trying to serve too many use-cases. Chrome is quite happy doing the 20% work that gets them 80% of the userbase, and all the users that Chrome happily sidelines come running to Firefox. That's cool, but some of those users have wildly different priorities, like we see in this case. Some users want protection from interference by their government or their ISP, and couldn't care less if some of their metadata winds up in a database on the other side of the world. Other users are quite relaxed about their local government or ISP, but don't want any of their stuff entering US jurisdiction. And it's not practical to set up a world-wide infrastructure of DNS-over-HTTPS servers just to find out whether it's worthwhile. It's not so much that Mozilla feels "they can use user devices for whatever they like", as much as Mozilla's at a local maximum, and trying to improve anything for some part of their userbase means neglecting some other part, even if only temporarily. And then the neglected parts feel betrayed.