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Form the related firefox post: "The tab discussing the importance of Privacy loads in the background, bringing along with it the Google Tag Manager and Google

Form the related firefox post: "The tab discussing the importance of Privacy loads in the background, bringing along with it the Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics. Hello, Google." The irony is palpable

diffeomorphism 7y ago
The irony is that nobody bothers to look at things past their face value but then claims to care. Mozilla has a custom contract protecting your privacy while using google's software: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=697436#c14 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=697436#c14
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  Honestly, for the amount of flak they still get because of it, they really should've dropped GA by now and wrote their own analytics backend. If they're serious about valuing privacy and preventing tracking, that custom backend wouldn't need to be complicated.
  - cameronbrown 7y ago
    Does it matter if they get flak for it if their contract does actually protect privacy? Or is privacy only for marketing and not an actual principle they care about? Writing an analytics backend is not a trivial thing, and more stuff like that means less resources for Firefox development. It's far more sensible to do what they did, which was negotiate a contract with those who know what they're doing.
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      From the point of view of their principles, the contract with Google is fine as long as it protects privacy. Some people will always be quick to jump to conclusions, but there's a practical problem when such people form a good chunk of your market (and can amplify their outrage via media). It's a practical problem. On the one hand, you have people turned off by the perception of Mozilla betraying its principles. On the other hand, you have resources to be directed to substitute the analytics backend. The right thing to do would be to pick an option that maximizes the amount of resources available for Firefox development/Mozilla's mission. My impression is that building and maintaining an analytics backend consistent with their mission would not require that much of resources, so the balance would fall in favor of doing it. But maybe (probably?) I'm wrong about this, and it's better to stick with Google for now.
      - BurnGpuBurn 7y ago
        From the point of view of their principles, the contract with Google is fine as long as it honored by Google. Hard to check that though, because you never know what Google really does with that data. Google also doesn't have a very good track record with privacy. So, yeah, the contract is fine, but there's also soo much wrong with it. Who trusts it? Mozilla? They seem to. Their target demographic? The people who are smart enough to understand that you can switch your browser, and who don't choose Chrome but Firefox? Those people, not so much.
- stonogo 7y ago
  Mozilla had a contract seven years ago. No idea what has happened since then -- and I note that not only is DNT not honored there, the suggestion to properly support it by conditionally loading GA if DNT is or is not enabled was ignored and the ticket was hastily closed "fixed by switching to GA." This does nothing to affect my faith in Mozilla's privacy practices, especially since GA is baked into the extensions page and cannot be disabled, even by installing extensions.
- rurounijones 7y ago
  I was more thinking about the fact that the loading of the tracking code, regardless of backend, is quietly loaded by the tab with the page discussing privacy

diffeomorphism 7y ago

The irony is that nobody bothers to look at things past their face value but then claims to care. Mozilla has a custom contract protecting your privacy while using google's software: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=697436#c14 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=697436#c14

TeMPOraL 7y ago
Honestly, for the amount of flak they still get because of it, they really should've dropped GA by now and wrote their own analytics backend. If they're serious about valuing privacy and preventing tracking, that custom backend wouldn't need to be complicated.
- cameronbrown 7y ago
  Does it matter if they get flak for it if their contract does actually protect privacy? Or is privacy only for marketing and not an actual principle they care about? Writing an analytics backend is not a trivial thing, and more stuff like that means less resources for Firefox development. It's far more sensible to do what they did, which was negotiate a contract with those who know what they're doing.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    From the point of view of their principles, the contract with Google is fine as long as it protects privacy. Some people will always be quick to jump to conclusions, but there's a practical problem when such people form a good chunk of your market (and can amplify their outrage via media). It's a practical problem. On the one hand, you have people turned off by the perception of Mozilla betraying its principles. On the other hand, you have resources to be directed to substitute the analytics backend. The right thing to do would be to pick an option that maximizes the amount of resources available for Firefox development/Mozilla's mission. My impression is that building and maintaining an analytics backend consistent with their mission would not require that much of resources, so the balance would fall in favor of doing it. But maybe (probably?) I'm wrong about this, and it's better to stick with Google for now.
    - BurnGpuBurn 7y ago
      From the point of view of their principles, the contract with Google is fine as long as it honored by Google. Hard to check that though, because you never know what Google really does with that data. Google also doesn't have a very good track record with privacy. So, yeah, the contract is fine, but there's also soo much wrong with it. Who trusts it? Mozilla? They seem to. Their target demographic? The people who are smart enough to understand that you can switch your browser, and who don't choose Chrome but Firefox? Those people, not so much.
stonogo 7y ago
Mozilla had a contract seven years ago. No idea what has happened since then -- and I note that not only is DNT not honored there, the suggestion to properly support it by conditionally loading GA if DNT is or is not enabled was ignored and the ticket was hastily closed "fixed by switching to GA." This does nothing to affect my faith in Mozilla's privacy practices, especially since GA is baked into the extensions page and cannot be disabled, even by installing extensions.
rurounijones 7y ago
I was more thinking about the fact that the loading of the tracking code, regardless of backend, is quietly loaded by the tab with the page discussing privacy