5 ms·

I'm very disappointed that although using Studies (Normandy) is briefly mentioned, it is treated as just an unusual option rather than a breach of policy. I was

I'm very disappointed that although using Studies (Normandy) is briefly mentioned, it is treated as just an unusual option rather than a breach of policy. I was really hoping for an explanation of why they felt they could break their promise to users that Studies would only ever be used for, well, studies. * All Shield Studies must be designed to answer a specific question - Shield is a tool for evaluating ideas and features in the product. If you are not trying to evaluate a proposed feature or idea there are other means of shipping your code. Shield studies will always respect user privacy in accordance with our data collection policies * All Shield studies will adhere to the scientific method for answering complex questions - Generate a hypothesis, test, collect and analyze data, validate or refute hypothesis, refine, repeat.. * All Shield studies require a PHD (Product Hypothesis Doc) - A PHD or Product Hypothesis Doc outlines the overarching research question the study is trying to answer. It requires the study author to think critically about the problem and the outcomes long before the study ships. These guidelines (https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Shield/Shield_Studies#Guiding_Principles https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Shield/Shield_Studies#Guidi...) were created after the beach of trust represented by the Mr Robot cross-promotion as a means to restore confidence. Yet now they have been ignored, and again "Studies" has been used as a convenient backdoor.

Deimorz 7y ago
Imagine you run a very popular website, and you have a policy that says "we will never modify any site data by accessing the database directly", to try to ensure that everything goes through site functionality and can be properly logged/etc. One day, some weird data gets into the database somehow, the site's completely unable to handle it, and it crashes and goes totally down. You're faced with two options: 1. Rewrite a major section of the site code to be able to handle the bad data. This is expected to take at least two days to complete. 2. Break the policy, fix the data in the database, and have the site back up in 5 minutes. Do you truly believe that Option #2 needs to be treated as completely out of the question?
- gilrain 7y ago
  Not nearly analogous. First, the policy was not about accountability, it was about privacy and specifically restoring a trust already broken. Second, it would only have taken a worst case of 24 hours vs the 6 hours of using Studies to follow that policy. I think the integrity of a company that trades on that very thing is worth 18 hours.
  - dralley 7y ago
    > it was about privacy Yes, and adblockers, umatrix/noscript, Tor, and other add-ons were universally broken. That has an impact on privacy too.
    - gilrain 7y ago
      So how many of Mozilla's policies need to be appended with "unless we think it's important enough"? All of them? Just the ones violated this time?
      - quanticle 7y ago
        The implied distinction is that adherence to principle is what distinguishes Mozilla from Google. If Mozilla is willing to sell out its principles on this instance, then when else will it be willing to sell out its principles?
    - Mirioron 7y ago
      It's not like people didn't tell Mozilla about the potential for problems like this when signing was added.
calcifer 7y ago
> I was really hoping for an explanation of why they felt they could break their promise to users that Studies would only ever be used for, well, studies. It's literally there: > Because we had a lot of users who were affected, getting them fixed was a very high priority, which made Studies the best technical choice. Which makes perfect sense to me. When you have a worldwide critical degradation of service, you fix that as soon as humanly possible, ideological pearl clutching be damned.
- gilrain 7y ago
  I mean, really? Mozilla's whole thing is integrity and principals. The Mozilla Manifesto is literally an ideology they probably don't want to be damned. I'd have very much preferred them wait just 18 more hours and not have violated their privacy policies. What exactly is Firefox's selling point if their principals can be traded for speed and convenience? That's just another tech company.
  - outworlder 7y ago
    > What exactly is Firefox's selling point if their principals can be traded for speed and convenience? That's just another tech company. If everyone cared as much as you do about this issue, then they'd have likely waited. The fact that they were jumping through hoops tells me that the users don't care, they want their crap fixed _right now_.
    - JadeNB 7y ago
      > The fact that they were jumping through hoops tells me that the users don't care, they want their crap fixed _right now_. Surely what that tells you is that Mozilla thinks that users don't care, and want their crap fixed; in which case the policy might as well say "These policies will be applied unless their abrogation is necessary to fix your crap", or some appropriately dignified re-wording.
  - mimimi31 7y ago
    They didn't remotely enable telemetry/studies though, right? If you were fine with waiting, you could have just not enabled it. I don't see how anything they did violated their privacy policies.

Deimorz 7y ago

Imagine you run a very popular website, and you have a policy that says "we will never modify any site data by accessing the database directly", to try to ensure that everything goes through site functionality and can be properly logged/etc. One day, some weird data gets into the database somehow, the site's completely unable to handle it, and it crashes and goes totally down. You're faced with two options: 1. Rewrite a major section of the site code to be able to handle the bad data. This is expected to take at least two days to complete. 2. Break the policy, fix the data in the database, and have the site back up in 5 minutes. Do you truly believe that Option #2 needs to be treated as completely out of the question?

gilrain 7y ago
Not nearly analogous. First, the policy was not about accountability, it was about privacy and specifically restoring a trust already broken. Second, it would only have taken a worst case of 24 hours vs the 6 hours of using Studies to follow that policy. I think the integrity of a company that trades on that very thing is worth 18 hours.
- dralley 7y ago
  > it was about privacy Yes, and adblockers, umatrix/noscript, Tor, and other add-ons were universally broken. That has an impact on privacy too.
  - gilrain 7y ago
    So how many of Mozilla's policies need to be appended with "unless we think it's important enough"? All of them? Just the ones violated this time?
    - quanticle 7y ago
      The implied distinction is that adherence to principle is what distinguishes Mozilla from Google. If Mozilla is willing to sell out its principles on this instance, then when else will it be willing to sell out its principles?
  - Mirioron 7y ago
    It's not like people didn't tell Mozilla about the potential for problems like this when signing was added.

calcifer 7y ago

> I was really hoping for an explanation of why they felt they could break their promise to users that Studies would only ever be used for, well, studies. It's literally there: > Because we had a lot of users who were affected, getting them fixed was a very high priority, which made Studies the best technical choice. Which makes perfect sense to me. When you have a worldwide critical degradation of service, you fix that as soon as humanly possible, ideological pearl clutching be damned.

gilrain 7y ago
I mean, really? Mozilla's whole thing is integrity and principals. The Mozilla Manifesto is literally an ideology they probably don't want to be damned. I'd have very much preferred them wait just 18 more hours and not have violated their privacy policies. What exactly is Firefox's selling point if their principals can be traded for speed and convenience? That's just another tech company.
- outworlder 7y ago
  > What exactly is Firefox's selling point if their principals can be traded for speed and convenience? That's just another tech company. If everyone cared as much as you do about this issue, then they'd have likely waited. The fact that they were jumping through hoops tells me that the users don't care, they want their crap fixed _right now_.
  - JadeNB 7y ago
    > The fact that they were jumping through hoops tells me that the users don't care, they want their crap fixed _right now_. Surely what that tells you is that Mozilla thinks that users don't care, and want their crap fixed; in which case the policy might as well say "These policies will be applied unless their abrogation is necessary to fix your crap", or some appropriately dignified re-wording.
- mimimi31 7y ago
  They didn't remotely enable telemetry/studies though, right? If you were fine with waiting, you could have just not enabled it. I don't see how anything they did violated their privacy policies.