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What the GP was saying was that there was no essential technical reason for Firefox to send telemetry data to Mozilla (unless you're connecting to Mozilla). An

What the GP was saying was that there was no essential technical reason for Firefox to send telemetry data to Mozilla (unless you're connecting to Mozilla). And yet, Firefox does this: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/telemetry-clientid https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/telemetry-clientid

weikju 5y ago
1) that's whataboutism 2) people complain about Firefox as well and many are avoiding Firefox as a result, blocking Firefox's connection to Mozilla with various tools, etc.
- IshKebab 5y ago
  > people complain about Firefox as well Not nearly as vehemently as with Audacity.
  - Ygg2 5y ago
    Look mate, the ten people that use Firefox are not going to be as vocal.
  - skinkestek 5y ago
    If Firefox had told people they would collect data for law enforcement there would be more noise there as well. There are good and legitimate reasons for collecting user data, but many of us think it should be voluntarily, minimal and at least not shared with anyone for anything but its original purpose. In fact we had a very interesting court case in Høgsterett (kind of Supreme Court) here last week where it was finally decided that the police could not aquire biological samples from the university of Oslo to help in a missing person investigation as the person in question had not agreed to it, so obviously some very influential judges in one civilized country do agree. ----- That said, between the I Robot extension, mandatory data collection and the gutting of the extension system Mozilla seems to be on a multi year marathon effort to play all their cards into Googles hands. Firefox is still my main browser though but to a large degree because the alternatives aren't quite there for me as a power user.
    - hackerfromthefu 5y ago
      Yes it certainly seems as though Mozilla (or at least their executives) have been bought and sold by Google. At this stage they seem to be toeing the line for plausible deniability of Google's monopoly, while being thoroughly defanged from doing anything to reduce the actual monopoly.
      - skinkestek 5y ago
        Just for thr record: I'm not saying anyone should drop Firefox for a Chromium browser - that would be even worse. I am saying I want - authorities to look into these dealings - someone to create a (paid?) unborked version of modern Firefox - or a "vetted" safe version of Pale Moon or something - Google to be split into number of chunks
        Ygg2 5y ago
        Google needed to be split up decades ago.
    - IshKebab 5y ago
      > If Firefox had told people they would collect data for law enforcement there would be more noise there as well. Erm... Firefox has told people that they would hand data to law enforcement. They have to! Everyone has to! https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/ > When do we share your information with others? > When the law requires it. We follow the law whenever we receive requests about you from a government or related to a lawsuit.
- csmpltn 5y ago
  > "that's whataboutism" So what? The counter argument is that people are being hypocritical with their criticism towards Audacity here. Why are you okay with some applications collecting telemetry, but not with others?
- chaosite 5y ago
  Yeah, I agree. Mozilla toes the line, and there are many instances where they got push back for straying too far. But wouldn't you agree that HN would go apeshit if Mozilla tried to introduce a "law-enforcement" clause like Audacity did?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
laurowyn 5y ago
Yes, and I agreed with that in my comment. My point is that the software already hands out some data by its core function, so users are generally accepting of losing a little more data as long as it seems reasonable. It's the psychology of "well, it's already sharing some data. what's the harm in a little more?" There will always be people that want minimal data sharing, and I'm one of them, but the vocal minority are exactly that - the minority. The majority of users don't actually care, which is why the data harvesting industry is as big as it is - plenty of data out there to harvest.
- chaosite 5y ago
  Agreed, we are conditioned to have different expectations from software which inherently deals with the network, like a web browser, than software which is inherently offline like a audio editing program.
- blooalien 5y ago
  > "The majority of users don't actually care" … They don't care until it directly affects them personally somehow, and then suddenly they instantly forget that it happened because they allowed it to happen, and they make a huge noise about it as if it's the first time they heard about it.

weikju 5y ago

1) that's whataboutism 2) people complain about Firefox as well and many are avoiding Firefox as a result, blocking Firefox's connection to Mozilla with various tools, etc.

IshKebab 5y ago
> people complain about Firefox as well Not nearly as vehemently as with Audacity.
- Ygg2 5y ago
  Look mate, the ten people that use Firefox are not going to be as vocal.
- skinkestek 5y ago
  If Firefox had told people they would collect data for law enforcement there would be more noise there as well. There are good and legitimate reasons for collecting user data, but many of us think it should be voluntarily, minimal and at least not shared with anyone for anything but its original purpose. In fact we had a very interesting court case in Høgsterett (kind of Supreme Court) here last week where it was finally decided that the police could not aquire biological samples from the university of Oslo to help in a missing person investigation as the person in question had not agreed to it, so obviously some very influential judges in one civilized country do agree. ----- That said, between the I Robot extension, mandatory data collection and the gutting of the extension system Mozilla seems to be on a multi year marathon effort to play all their cards into Googles hands. Firefox is still my main browser though but to a large degree because the alternatives aren't quite there for me as a power user.
  - hackerfromthefu 5y ago
    Yes it certainly seems as though Mozilla (or at least their executives) have been bought and sold by Google. At this stage they seem to be toeing the line for plausible deniability of Google's monopoly, while being thoroughly defanged from doing anything to reduce the actual monopoly.
    - skinkestek 5y ago
      Just for thr record: I'm not saying anyone should drop Firefox for a Chromium browser - that would be even worse. I am saying I want - authorities to look into these dealings - someone to create a (paid?) unborked version of modern Firefox - or a "vetted" safe version of Pale Moon or something - Google to be split into number of chunks
      - Ygg2 5y ago
        Google needed to be split up decades ago.
  - IshKebab 5y ago
    > If Firefox had told people they would collect data for law enforcement there would be more noise there as well. Erm... Firefox has told people that they would hand data to law enforcement. They have to! Everyone has to! https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/ > When do we share your information with others? > When the law requires it. We follow the law whenever we receive requests about you from a government or related to a lawsuit.
csmpltn 5y ago
> "that's whataboutism" So what? The counter argument is that people are being hypocritical with their criticism towards Audacity here. Why are you okay with some applications collecting telemetry, but not with others?
chaosite 5y ago
Yeah, I agree. Mozilla toes the line, and there are many instances where they got push back for straying too far. But wouldn't you agree that HN would go apeshit if Mozilla tried to introduce a "law-enforcement" clause like Audacity did?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

laurowyn 5y ago

Yes, and I agreed with that in my comment. My point is that the software already hands out some data by its core function, so users are generally accepting of losing a little more data as long as it seems reasonable. It's the psychology of "well, it's already sharing some data. what's the harm in a little more?" There will always be people that want minimal data sharing, and I'm one of them, but the vocal minority are exactly that - the minority. The majority of users don't actually care, which is why the data harvesting industry is as big as it is - plenty of data out there to harvest.

chaosite 5y ago
Agreed, we are conditioned to have different expectations from software which inherently deals with the network, like a web browser, than software which is inherently offline like a audio editing program.
blooalien 5y ago
> "The majority of users don't actually care" … They don't care until it directly affects them personally somehow, and then suddenly they instantly forget that it happened because they allowed it to happen, and they make a huge noise about it as if it's the first time they heard about it.