4 ms·

The people most likely to use these features I imagine are also the ones most likely to turn off telemetry. Making decisions to remove long-standing features ba

The people most likely to use these features I imagine are also the ones most likely to turn off telemetry. Making decisions to remove long-standing features based on telemetry seems short-sighted to me because of this reason.

Sharlin 8y ago
In a sense those users explicitly opt out from having their voices heard. Any other way to gather information on feature usage would most likely be massively more biased than direct telemetry.
- dsr_ 8y ago
  In my anecdotal experience, this is a common problem: if your open-source project has an option for spying on users, the ones who pay attention to privacy and security opt out. Debian's popcon survey has a worse version of this problem: it reports back the packages in use -- and nobody setting up a bunch of servers wants to leak that information, so they only get home users reporting in.
Vinnl 8y ago
Also the ones most likely to be able to install an extension to do the same job. That said, if you want Mozilla (or other organisations, for that matter) to make decisions based on how you're using their products, then it doesn't seem like an unreasonable expectation from their side that you tell them about that usage, i.e. through telemetry.
- quadrangle 8y ago
  It's a trust issue. Too many companies cannot be trusted to make software that truly, effectively, anonymizes data before it leaves your device. I trust Mozilla, but I understand others don't. And it's part of the way that we lose trust in general when abuse is so common.
- SllX 8y ago
  There are other means of getting usage data than just telemetry. Depending on it when you know some percentage of your userbase has turned it off is disregarding those users completely. At the same time, people disable telemetry because as we've come to understand much more clearly as a society (and some of us already knew long before "recently"), there is too much data floating around about us as it is. Not all of it stored in a secured, anonymized fashion even if the organization in question claims to. People are skeptical of automatic telemetry data collection for good reason.
  - Vinnl 8y ago
    As I said in another comment: this is a valid concern, but not one that has a better way to deal with it other than what Mozilla is doing now, i.e. ignoring telemetry-disabled users. Or at least, there's no better way of dealing with that that I know of.
- xg15 8y ago
  Except that telemetry is no open-ended conversation where I can present suggestions. It's more them asking specific questions for preexisting objectives - and my browser answering them, often without me even knowing the questions.
  - Vinnl 8y ago
    That's a valid criticism, but not one that has a better solution than "just ignore people with telemetry turned off". Which I am afraid is the best way to deal with this so far.
    - krageon 8y ago
      "Don't use telemetry and use literally anything else" is the best way to deal with it, due to the nature of telemetry and the level of trust you are asking of your users (which is frankly insulting, given the nature of the news the past few years).
    - torstenvl 8y ago
      Please provide your sources for this highly questionable claim? From where I'm standing, your comment is straight out of Kafka. You just apologetically ("I'm afraid") keep insisting that the hostility being experienced is "the best way to deal with this." What is your source for the proposition that Firefox gains from removing RSS? What is your source for the proposition that telemetry is superior to randomized user surveys?
- digi_owl 8y ago
  Mozilla has already crippled Firefox's extension system, so why bother?
CJefferson 8y ago
Out of interest (and this isn't a sarcastic question), how to you propose they should choose instead? I think removing little used features is a good idea, else you slowly build up more and more things, and one thing I've learnt is that these little used features can end up upsetting more users who accidentally activate them, and are confused, than they have happy users.
- xg15 8y ago
  Make it an extension API. The GP noted that the more concerning thing going away isn't Firefox presentation of feeds (the live bookmarks) bit the discovery. So far, you can use the orange button to learn which page supports RSS or even learn that RSS exist in general. Without that button, even if there are extensions, only people who already know what RSS is will be motivated to install them. Now we get that kind of default discoverability instead for proprietary services like Pocket... A low-maintenance compromise would be to keep the button, but make it strictly extension-only. Provide an API/manifest entry where an extension can register as RSS reader. If the button is clicked, that extension gets a callback. If no extension is installed, open the Browse Extensions tab and offer an option to hide the button. The Firefox devs would still need to maintain the button and feed discovery logic (which mostly checks for a specific meta tag, I think) but could still throw out live bookmarks, the Atom parser, etc.
  - robin_reala 8y ago
    The button went away by default ages ago though. Sure, you can manually add it to your menu bar, but who does that and doesn’t know about RSS already.
    - xg15 8y ago
      Fair point.

Sharlin 8y ago

In a sense those users explicitly opt out from having their voices heard. Any other way to gather information on feature usage would most likely be massively more biased than direct telemetry.

dsr_ 8y ago
In my anecdotal experience, this is a common problem: if your open-source project has an option for spying on users, the ones who pay attention to privacy and security opt out. Debian's popcon survey has a worse version of this problem: it reports back the packages in use -- and nobody setting up a bunch of servers wants to leak that information, so they only get home users reporting in.

Vinnl 8y ago

Also the ones most likely to be able to install an extension to do the same job. That said, if you want Mozilla (or other organisations, for that matter) to make decisions based on how you're using their products, then it doesn't seem like an unreasonable expectation from their side that you tell them about that usage, i.e. through telemetry.

quadrangle 8y ago
It's a trust issue. Too many companies cannot be trusted to make software that truly, effectively, anonymizes data before it leaves your device. I trust Mozilla, but I understand others don't. And it's part of the way that we lose trust in general when abuse is so common.
SllX 8y ago
There are other means of getting usage data than just telemetry. Depending on it when you know some percentage of your userbase has turned it off is disregarding those users completely. At the same time, people disable telemetry because as we've come to understand much more clearly as a society (and some of us already knew long before "recently"), there is too much data floating around about us as it is. Not all of it stored in a secured, anonymized fashion even if the organization in question claims to. People are skeptical of automatic telemetry data collection for good reason.
- Vinnl 8y ago
  As I said in another comment: this is a valid concern, but not one that has a better way to deal with it other than what Mozilla is doing now, i.e. ignoring telemetry-disabled users. Or at least, there's no better way of dealing with that that I know of.
xg15 8y ago
Except that telemetry is no open-ended conversation where I can present suggestions. It's more them asking specific questions for preexisting objectives - and my browser answering them, often without me even knowing the questions.
- Vinnl 8y ago
  That's a valid criticism, but not one that has a better solution than "just ignore people with telemetry turned off". Which I am afraid is the best way to deal with this so far.
  - krageon 8y ago
    "Don't use telemetry and use literally anything else" is the best way to deal with it, due to the nature of telemetry and the level of trust you are asking of your users (which is frankly insulting, given the nature of the news the past few years).
  - torstenvl 8y ago
    Please provide your sources for this highly questionable claim? From where I'm standing, your comment is straight out of Kafka. You just apologetically ("I'm afraid") keep insisting that the hostility being experienced is "the best way to deal with this." What is your source for the proposition that Firefox gains from removing RSS? What is your source for the proposition that telemetry is superior to randomized user surveys?
digi_owl 8y ago
Mozilla has already crippled Firefox's extension system, so why bother?

CJefferson 8y ago

Out of interest (and this isn't a sarcastic question), how to you propose they should choose instead? I think removing little used features is a good idea, else you slowly build up more and more things, and one thing I've learnt is that these little used features can end up upsetting more users who accidentally activate them, and are confused, than they have happy users.

xg15 8y ago
Make it an extension API. The GP noted that the more concerning thing going away isn't Firefox presentation of feeds (the live bookmarks) bit the discovery. So far, you can use the orange button to learn which page supports RSS or even learn that RSS exist in general. Without that button, even if there are extensions, only people who already know what RSS is will be motivated to install them. Now we get that kind of default discoverability instead for proprietary services like Pocket... A low-maintenance compromise would be to keep the button, but make it strictly extension-only. Provide an API/manifest entry where an extension can register as RSS reader. If the button is clicked, that extension gets a callback. If no extension is installed, open the Browse Extensions tab and offer an option to hide the button. The Firefox devs would still need to maintain the button and feed discovery logic (which mostly checks for a specific meta tag, I think) but could still throw out live bookmarks, the Atom parser, etc.
- robin_reala 8y ago
  The button went away by default ages ago though. Sure, you can manually add it to your menu bar, but who does that and doesn’t know about RSS already.
  - xg15 8y ago
    Fair point.