5 ms·

I'm confused about a couple of things. First, the tech. So my browsing history is sent over the internet to a third party who comes up with recommendations via

I'm confused about a couple of things. First, the tech. So my browsing history is sent over the internet to a third party who comes up with recommendations via some magic opaque system? Can some recommendations be prioritized by how much you pay this third party? I have all sorts of questions about Laserlike's use of the data, but I guess I can dig for myself. Sure, you can say "well, don't use it" but this is more about the health of internet users in general, not just me. Second, the reasoning. Why? Is Mozilla altruistically trying to help people find new things similar to what they're looking at on the internet? Is this really a problem begging to be solved? What is the relationship with this third party company Laserlike? Which way is money changing hands and how? How do resources get allocated to projects like this as opposed to any other (i.e. curious about prioritization)? From the outside looking in, it seems to have little value, but of course that's why you test these things. It just seems like a strange direction to put resources in. I personally hope this experiment fails and people do not use their browsers for webpage-like things such as recommendations. This is not the browser's role and I'm becoming increasingly concerned at what larger companies think the browser's role is vs little ole me. My only reason for not wanting it to fail is I know that people put work into it.

clairity 8y ago
this is the market working as intended. search is overridden with advertising, corporate messaging, politics and other moneyed interests. in contrast, users are looking for authentic content and information. those two things are increasingly misaligned. mozilla is experimenting with a new way for users to find what they want, rather than deferring to google et al. to deliver subpar user experiences. it may work, it may not, but i’m glad they are trying. (edit: i probably won’t try it any time soon, due to the privacy concerns voiced here and elsewhere. hopefully mozilla addresses those with a v.2 release and maybe i will try it then)
- kodablah 8y ago
  > this is the market working as intended Is it? I would love for a transparent market-driven motivation to be presented. But in its absence, we can only guess. > mozilla is experimenting with a new way for users to find what they want Why? Because they don't like the existing ways? Because they believe it fits their mission? Because there is money on the line? My TV vendor also experiments with new ways to host apps and use the internet too. > it may work, it may not, but i’m glad they are trying I personally am not glad they are trying. In fact, these trials help solidify my beliefs in the Mozilla's ideals regarding the role of a browser and can potentially alienate me or at the least prevent them from maintaining an air of righteousness in my eyes.
  - clairity 8y ago
    you seem disillusioned by mozilla's actions. i can't help with that, other than to say that based on past actions, i believe mozilla will course-correct if necessary here. i'm not defending this new "advance" experiment/feature (i'm reserving judgement until i know more about it). i'm only expressing appreciation for them trying to address a user pain point (that search is crappy), while also responding to the general question "why?" posited by the GP post.
- GraemeL 8y ago
  Nothing on the Laserlike website indicates how they plan to make money from their service, but I wouldn't bet on it not being overridden with advertising, corporate messaging, politics and other moneyed interests.
- baq 8y ago
  i'll bite just a bit: you're concerned with sending your browser history to a third party but i assume are happy to send your search requests, hence search history, to a third party? i kinda understand the want to minimize the amount of third parties that know anything at all but otherwise don't see much of a difference in principal and history tells us that the search history may actually be worse.
  - Karunamon 8y ago
    The critical difference being that a search engine of any usefulness requires transmitting a search request to that third party. Pocket's recommendation feature does not require any such transmission, so it's definitely possible to work around.
  - clairity 8y ago
    yes, search history is juicy personal data. i'm willing to trust duckduckgo with that info for now. laserlike doesn't have a track record yet, so it's on the wait-and-see list. if anyone's made an affordable personal search appliance yet, let me know. =)
callahad 8y ago
Nick Nguyen's post on Context Graph¹ touches on the motivation, but in short, we think the health of the Web is threatened by existing players building experiences that, like a casino, you can link into easily, but which are deliberately difficult to navigate away from. For example, Instagram has historically restricted² which users are allowed to include external links in their posts. That harms the Open Web and concentrates power over what you can see and discover online. On the other hand, if the browser itself can offer links that break out of those walls, then we can sidestep the existing filter bubbles and make the Web a more competitive, plural medium. Per the announcement post³, if this proves useful, we'll look at alternative means of generating the recommendations; the current implementation (sharing history) is an opt-in shortcut while we figure out if recommendations are worth pursuing at all. While we are searching for privacy-respecting ways that we can diversify Firefox's revenue, and recommendations could play into that, that's not what this experiment is testing. Further, we will not pursue this outside of Test Pilot if we can't do it in a way that's private and which adds genuine end-user value. ¹: https://medium.com/firefox-context-graph/context-graph-its-time-to-bring-context-back-to-the-web-a7542fe45cf3 https://medium.com/firefox-context-graph/context-graph-its-t... ²: https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/10/instagram-will-now-let-creators-add-url-links-tag-friends-and-create-boomerangs-in-stories/ https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/10/instagram-will-now-let-cre... ³: https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2018/08/07/firefox-offers-recommendations-with-latest-test-pilot-experiment-advance/ https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2018/08/07/firefox-offers-reco...
- kodablah 8y ago
  Thanks for the response. I think by your phrasing that this experiment is not testing revenue generation you are also saying there is no revenue relation at all, correct? (well, maybe for Laserlike, heh) Disclosure of monetization of data in any form IMO should be a requirement, so I hope that its lack of disclosure means it is not occurring. While I agree in general that alternative web traversal techniques could be explored, I am not sure I want my browser vendor + third party doing it. I understand the places we put in our address bar may have restrictive rules, and it's why I don't enter those places into my address bar. In good faith, if this experiment is deemed successful enough to improve/continue, I would ask that the role that Laserlike plays be pluggable with an open protocol. I would also ask that if it's adopted more mainstream that it always remain opt-in. I know that it sometimes seems unfair to ask for all these freedom-respecting things while the other guys get away with so much. But what seems like a double standard is what endears trust.
mkenyon 8y ago
> Second, the reasoning. Why? Given how they've positioned Pocket and how Firefox's new tab page contains "Recommendations from Pocket", Mozilla seems to want you to enjoy browsing. They want you to enjoy using the Web and to enjoy it using Firefox. It's an interesting play and I'm excited to try it.
- xg15 8y ago
  Strangely, all their ideas to heighten our enjoyment of browsing seem involve giving third parties privileged access to the browser.

clairity 8y ago

this is the market working as intended. search is overridden with advertising, corporate messaging, politics and other moneyed interests. in contrast, users are looking for authentic content and information. those two things are increasingly misaligned. mozilla is experimenting with a new way for users to find what they want, rather than deferring to google et al. to deliver subpar user experiences. it may work, it may not, but i’m glad they are trying. (edit: i probably won’t try it any time soon, due to the privacy concerns voiced here and elsewhere. hopefully mozilla addresses those with a v.2 release and maybe i will try it then)

kodablah 8y ago
> this is the market working as intended Is it? I would love for a transparent market-driven motivation to be presented. But in its absence, we can only guess. > mozilla is experimenting with a new way for users to find what they want Why? Because they don't like the existing ways? Because they believe it fits their mission? Because there is money on the line? My TV vendor also experiments with new ways to host apps and use the internet too. > it may work, it may not, but i’m glad they are trying I personally am not glad they are trying. In fact, these trials help solidify my beliefs in the Mozilla's ideals regarding the role of a browser and can potentially alienate me or at the least prevent them from maintaining an air of righteousness in my eyes.
- clairity 8y ago
  you seem disillusioned by mozilla's actions. i can't help with that, other than to say that based on past actions, i believe mozilla will course-correct if necessary here. i'm not defending this new "advance" experiment/feature (i'm reserving judgement until i know more about it). i'm only expressing appreciation for them trying to address a user pain point (that search is crappy), while also responding to the general question "why?" posited by the GP post.
GraemeL 8y ago
Nothing on the Laserlike website indicates how they plan to make money from their service, but I wouldn't bet on it not being overridden with advertising, corporate messaging, politics and other moneyed interests.
baq 8y ago
i'll bite just a bit: you're concerned with sending your browser history to a third party but i assume are happy to send your search requests, hence search history, to a third party? i kinda understand the want to minimize the amount of third parties that know anything at all but otherwise don't see much of a difference in principal and history tells us that the search history may actually be worse.
- Karunamon 8y ago
  The critical difference being that a search engine of any usefulness requires transmitting a search request to that third party. Pocket's recommendation feature does not require any such transmission, so it's definitely possible to work around.
- clairity 8y ago
  yes, search history is juicy personal data. i'm willing to trust duckduckgo with that info for now. laserlike doesn't have a track record yet, so it's on the wait-and-see list. if anyone's made an affordable personal search appliance yet, let me know. =)

callahad 8y ago

Nick Nguyen's post on Context Graph¹ touches on the motivation, but in short, we think the health of the Web is threatened by existing players building experiences that, like a casino, you can link into easily, but which are deliberately difficult to navigate away from. For example, Instagram has historically restricted² which users are allowed to include external links in their posts. That harms the Open Web and concentrates power over what you can see and discover online. On the other hand, if the browser itself can offer links that break out of those walls, then we can sidestep the existing filter bubbles and make the Web a more competitive, plural medium. Per the announcement post³, if this proves useful, we'll look at alternative means of generating the recommendations; the current implementation (sharing history) is an opt-in shortcut while we figure out if recommendations are worth pursuing at all. While we are searching for privacy-respecting ways that we can diversify Firefox's revenue, and recommendations could play into that, that's not what this experiment is testing. Further, we will not pursue this outside of Test Pilot if we can't do it in a way that's private and which adds genuine end-user value. ¹: https://medium.com/firefox-context-graph/context-graph-its-time-to-bring-context-back-to-the-web-a7542fe45cf3 https://medium.com/firefox-context-graph/context-graph-its-t... ²: https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/10/instagram-will-now-let-creators-add-url-links-tag-friends-and-create-boomerangs-in-stories/ https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/10/instagram-will-now-let-cre... ³: https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2018/08/07/firefox-offers-recommendations-with-latest-test-pilot-experiment-advance/ https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2018/08/07/firefox-offers-reco...

kodablah 8y ago
Thanks for the response. I think by your phrasing that this experiment is not testing revenue generation you are also saying there is no revenue relation at all, correct? (well, maybe for Laserlike, heh) Disclosure of monetization of data in any form IMO should be a requirement, so I hope that its lack of disclosure means it is not occurring. While I agree in general that alternative web traversal techniques could be explored, I am not sure I want my browser vendor + third party doing it. I understand the places we put in our address bar may have restrictive rules, and it's why I don't enter those places into my address bar. In good faith, if this experiment is deemed successful enough to improve/continue, I would ask that the role that Laserlike plays be pluggable with an open protocol. I would also ask that if it's adopted more mainstream that it always remain opt-in. I know that it sometimes seems unfair to ask for all these freedom-respecting things while the other guys get away with so much. But what seems like a double standard is what endears trust.

mkenyon 8y ago

> Second, the reasoning. Why? Given how they've positioned Pocket and how Firefox's new tab page contains "Recommendations from Pocket", Mozilla seems to want you to enjoy browsing. They want you to enjoy using the Web and to enjoy it using Firefox. It's an interesting play and I'm excited to try it.

xg15 8y ago
Strangely, all their ideas to heighten our enjoyment of browsing seem involve giving third parties privileged access to the browser.