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There was a time when Mozilla really did fight big tech. I loved working there. Internally the phrase "we fight for the user" was used, and it felt true. Now t

There was a time when Mozilla really did fight big tech. I loved working there. Internally the phrase "we fight for the user" was used, and it felt true. Now they're just using that same war-cry as marketing to get you to sign up and fill out surveys for their market research. They're doing exactly what they're mad big tech is doing (collecting data), but with a dose of moral superiority. It's sad that they've taken a message that resonates and just haphazardly use it for messaging anything they're building.

colordrops 5y ago
I installed firefox focus which is a privacy first mobile browser that advertises that it cuts out phoning home. I was irate when I dug into the settings and found out that "Studies" is on by default. Research data collection should always be opt-in rather than opt-out, especially for privacy focused software.
- scrollaway 5y ago
  Being mad about something like this is just choosing the wrong hill to die on, honestly. Studies (https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/shield https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/shield) are clearly just a/b testing of features for the browser. Doing this opt-in creates selection bias which corrupts the whole idea of running a/b tests. So instead of saying "you should run your a/b tests opt-in only", what you really mean is "in order to fight for privacy, you should never run a/b tests", which, again, totally wrong hill to die on. Why is it so important they not be allowed to try different features to figure out which ones work and which ones don't? Mozilla has made so many missteps they circled a small planet with them. This isn't one of them.
  - zdragnar 5y ago
    If you advertise a browser as being all about privacy, you absolutely should not be a/b testing users without their explicit consent. It is amazing to me that this needs to be said.
    - dleslie 5y ago
      It needs to be said because some folks are blinded by their belief in the virtuousness of themselves or their in-group. I may agree with the goals, but that doesn't mean I should blindly trust them to execute them, right?
    - scrollaway 5y ago
      Okay, why? What does a/b testing have to do with privacy? If I told you right now that HN is A/B testing the size of the vote arrows, and you see larger ones than I do, how exactly are your privacy rights violated?
      - jjnoakes 5y ago
        A/B testing implies extra tracking and reporting of behavior, to distinguish between the A group and the B group's response to the change. On a website, that isn't too much of a problem, because you expect your activity to be tracked since you are interacting with a web server. In a browser, the same tracking is more intrusive. My behavior on a site is now being sent to the browser author, an unrelated party.
        staticassertion 5y ago
        All A/B testing really implies to me is, at most, crash reporting, which shouldn't be much of a privacy concern.
        colordrops 5y ago
        I've never seen A/B testing used for crash reporting. Perhaps it could be used for this, but it's flabbergasting to me that you see it as only for crash reporting.
        staticassertion 5y ago
        You've never seen partial rollouts of a feature?
  - jazzyjackson 5y ago
    except for that one time they silently pushed an extension marketing a TV show, which is probably how anyone who's heard of Firefox studies found out about them. https://www.theregister.com/2017/12/18/mozilla_mr_robot_firefox_promotion/ https://www.theregister.com/2017/12/18/mozilla_mr_robot_fire...
    - scrollaway 5y ago
      Yes, I'm aware. This is one of their million missteps (and this was a particularly bad one). But that their marketing people are absolute idiots has no bearing on whether a/b testing as a concept infringes on privacy. They could have used any other thing, they're literally in control of what runs on your computer the moment you allow them auto-update rights.
      - whimsicalism 5y ago
        Why do marketing people have control over the a/b test?
      - iqanq 5y ago
        Marketing people are always absolute idiots. The failure here was allowing them to push that extension, and that wasn't their choice.
  - KerrAvon 5y ago
    Informed consent is a standard practice for human experimentation. It's a serious ethical lapse that the web companies have decided it doesn't apply to them simply because it's inconvenient. Here's some references: https://researchbasics.education.uconn.edu/ethics-and-informed-consent/ https://researchbasics.education.uconn.edu/ethics-and-inform... https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/conducting-ethical-user-research https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/conduc...
    - whimsicalism 5y ago
      Research ethics is way too deontologically focused, it needs reform. See: at minimum tens of thousands of deaths directly caused by failure to use challenge trials.
    - skybrian 5y ago
      This is often taken too far. If the research is "try out an experimental medicine" then yes, of course you need informed consent, because the patient is taking a risk. If it's "see which color blue people like best in your UI" then this is nonsense. Nobody is going to be harmed regardless of which color blue you pick, so they don't need to be informed. Some privacy zealots may want to be informed, but they don't have a reasonable argument for why they need to know.
      - colordrops 5y ago
        It doesn't need to be so life or death here. This is a privacy focused browser with the explicit message that it cuts out tracking, so the tracking without consent is pure hypocrisy.
      - marginalia_nu 5y ago
        It absolutely should apply to psychological experiments as well. If you can't see that treating fellow humans as lab rats for you to experiment on is deeply problematic, then you're an actual sociopath. I don't care how you rationalize it, as long as there is any sort of intervention, you need informed consent.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
eberkund 5y ago
What's wrong with filling out surveys? Data collection is an important way for product developers to improve their products. This can either be done without user consent through shady data collection practices or explicitly with the user's consent as is the case with surveys. You are free not to fill out the surveys but saying that any form of data collection is akin to "doing what big tech is doing" is an extremist position and undermines companies which are respecting users' privacy and requesting rather than forcibly extracting data about user behaviour.
- kodah 5y ago
  More directly, I think the point that I read from multiple comments here is that Mozilla is somewhat different, but not that different. In being not that different but using messaging like they are that different it comes off as equally egregious.
jdoliner 5y ago
Spot on, they lived long enough to see themselves become the villain.
zerocrates 5y ago
I see the current things they're running through this, and it's university studies on various topics that could use browsing data. So I see value in having a simpler route for researchers to get that, and one that respects users' choice in what to participate in and so on... but the "fight Big Tech" gloss is a turn-off. I suppose when you know your audience is dwindling down closer and closer to just "people who are ideologically opposed to Chrome" this is the messaging you go with. What I couldn't find was: does Mozilla get paid by the researchers for this data? There's language around users "donating" their data, and a sort of caveat-ed pledge not to "sell your data" but what the actualy structure of this program is was unclear to me. Their site isn't really clear about whether this falls under the auspices of the "corporation" or "foundation" side of Mozilla's operations. I also wonder for research purposes, the extreme opt-in nature of this program, you need to be using Firefox, you need to opt-in to Rally, and opt-in to the specific study. You have so much selection bias there that the data feels like it won't be terribly useful for extrapolating valid patterns about, say, COVID-19 information/misinformation (as one of the studies is examining).
slowmovintarget 5y ago
Heh... and Google's motto used to be "Don't be evil." That stuck hard enough they actually had to expunge it from their doc.
john_moscow 5y ago
It has nothing to do specifically with Firefox, but is all about the incentives. If someone puts a non-trivial amount of effort into developing a product, they could be motivated by: 1. Trying to make money off selling it to end users. 2. Trying to make money by selling the end users' attention to advertisers. 3. Vanity, if it's a side/hobby project. 4. Influence the audience (pushing things aligned with their values into the audience's attention span). 5. Being a loss leader of a sort. E.g., trying to grab a market share in expectations to make money later, or sell growth figures to investors. So, specifically to web browsers: * Chrome, the de-facto standard, is clearly sustained by option #2. * Because Chrome is free-to-use, option #1 is not viable for any competition. * Because web browsers are complex and require a lot of upkeep, #3 is also mostly out of the picture. So, if Mozilla wants to stay alive, they have no other choice than to treat their end users as the merchandise. And, to differentiate themselves from Google, they will keep making bullshit claims that will have nothing to do with reality. Even worse, as long as the current approach to antitrust doesn't change, there won't be any long-term alternatives to this model. All of this could be swiftly solved by deeming indirectly subsidized "free" products anti-competitive (e.g. cash flow coming from outside the direct users), and not allowing mergers above something like a 20% market share, but I can't see this happen anytime soon.
- romanows 5y ago
  They could just take that $400 mil/year and dump it entirely into the browser for as long as the money lasts. Ideally spending some money refactoring their codebase such that it could be more likely for the code to survive on after a loss of funding as an non-Mozilla open-source project. Follow the public radio route and take donations, build a sense of community. Possibly spin up a commercial Rust consultancy/side-business (I know this is hypocritical, it's just that Rust seems like the "git" to Mozilla's equivalent of "linux", out of all the things I've seen them try. Sorry Thunderbird lovers :P)

colordrops 5y ago

I installed firefox focus which is a privacy first mobile browser that advertises that it cuts out phoning home. I was irate when I dug into the settings and found out that "Studies" is on by default. Research data collection should always be opt-in rather than opt-out, especially for privacy focused software.

scrollaway 5y ago
Being mad about something like this is just choosing the wrong hill to die on, honestly. Studies (https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/shield https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/shield) are clearly just a/b testing of features for the browser. Doing this opt-in creates selection bias which corrupts the whole idea of running a/b tests. So instead of saying "you should run your a/b tests opt-in only", what you really mean is "in order to fight for privacy, you should never run a/b tests", which, again, totally wrong hill to die on. Why is it so important they not be allowed to try different features to figure out which ones work and which ones don't? Mozilla has made so many missteps they circled a small planet with them. This isn't one of them.
- zdragnar 5y ago
  If you advertise a browser as being all about privacy, you absolutely should not be a/b testing users without their explicit consent. It is amazing to me that this needs to be said.
  - dleslie 5y ago
    It needs to be said because some folks are blinded by their belief in the virtuousness of themselves or their in-group. I may agree with the goals, but that doesn't mean I should blindly trust them to execute them, right?
  - scrollaway 5y ago
    Okay, why? What does a/b testing have to do with privacy? If I told you right now that HN is A/B testing the size of the vote arrows, and you see larger ones than I do, how exactly are your privacy rights violated?
    - jjnoakes 5y ago
      A/B testing implies extra tracking and reporting of behavior, to distinguish between the A group and the B group's response to the change. On a website, that isn't too much of a problem, because you expect your activity to be tracked since you are interacting with a web server. In a browser, the same tracking is more intrusive. My behavior on a site is now being sent to the browser author, an unrelated party.
      - staticassertion 5y ago
        All A/B testing really implies to me is, at most, crash reporting, which shouldn't be much of a privacy concern.
        colordrops 5y ago
        I've never seen A/B testing used for crash reporting. Perhaps it could be used for this, but it's flabbergasting to me that you see it as only for crash reporting.
        staticassertion 5y ago
        You've never seen partial rollouts of a feature?
- jazzyjackson 5y ago
  except for that one time they silently pushed an extension marketing a TV show, which is probably how anyone who's heard of Firefox studies found out about them. https://www.theregister.com/2017/12/18/mozilla_mr_robot_firefox_promotion/ https://www.theregister.com/2017/12/18/mozilla_mr_robot_fire...
  - scrollaway 5y ago
    Yes, I'm aware. This is one of their million missteps (and this was a particularly bad one). But that their marketing people are absolute idiots has no bearing on whether a/b testing as a concept infringes on privacy. They could have used any other thing, they're literally in control of what runs on your computer the moment you allow them auto-update rights.
    - whimsicalism 5y ago
      Why do marketing people have control over the a/b test?
    - iqanq 5y ago
      Marketing people are always absolute idiots. The failure here was allowing them to push that extension, and that wasn't their choice.
- KerrAvon 5y ago
  Informed consent is a standard practice for human experimentation. It's a serious ethical lapse that the web companies have decided it doesn't apply to them simply because it's inconvenient. Here's some references: https://researchbasics.education.uconn.edu/ethics-and-informed-consent/ https://researchbasics.education.uconn.edu/ethics-and-inform... https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/conducting-ethical-user-research https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/conduc...
  - whimsicalism 5y ago
    Research ethics is way too deontologically focused, it needs reform. See: at minimum tens of thousands of deaths directly caused by failure to use challenge trials.
  - skybrian 5y ago
    This is often taken too far. If the research is "try out an experimental medicine" then yes, of course you need informed consent, because the patient is taking a risk. If it's "see which color blue people like best in your UI" then this is nonsense. Nobody is going to be harmed regardless of which color blue you pick, so they don't need to be informed. Some privacy zealots may want to be informed, but they don't have a reasonable argument for why they need to know.
    - colordrops 5y ago
      It doesn't need to be so life or death here. This is a privacy focused browser with the explicit message that it cuts out tracking, so the tracking without consent is pure hypocrisy.
    - marginalia_nu 5y ago
      It absolutely should apply to psychological experiments as well. If you can't see that treating fellow humans as lab rats for you to experiment on is deeply problematic, then you're an actual sociopath. I don't care how you rationalize it, as long as there is any sort of intervention, you need informed consent.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

eberkund 5y ago

What's wrong with filling out surveys? Data collection is an important way for product developers to improve their products. This can either be done without user consent through shady data collection practices or explicitly with the user's consent as is the case with surveys. You are free not to fill out the surveys but saying that any form of data collection is akin to "doing what big tech is doing" is an extremist position and undermines companies which are respecting users' privacy and requesting rather than forcibly extracting data about user behaviour.

kodah 5y ago
More directly, I think the point that I read from multiple comments here is that Mozilla is somewhat different, but not that different. In being not that different but using messaging like they are that different it comes off as equally egregious.

jdoliner 5y ago

Spot on, they lived long enough to see themselves become the villain.

zerocrates 5y ago

I see the current things they're running through this, and it's university studies on various topics that could use browsing data. So I see value in having a simpler route for researchers to get that, and one that respects users' choice in what to participate in and so on... but the "fight Big Tech" gloss is a turn-off. I suppose when you know your audience is dwindling down closer and closer to just "people who are ideologically opposed to Chrome" this is the messaging you go with. What I couldn't find was: does Mozilla get paid by the researchers for this data? There's language around users "donating" their data, and a sort of caveat-ed pledge not to "sell your data" but what the actualy structure of this program is was unclear to me. Their site isn't really clear about whether this falls under the auspices of the "corporation" or "foundation" side of Mozilla's operations. I also wonder for research purposes, the extreme opt-in nature of this program, you need to be using Firefox, you need to opt-in to Rally, and opt-in to the specific study. You have so much selection bias there that the data feels like it won't be terribly useful for extrapolating valid patterns about, say, COVID-19 information/misinformation (as one of the studies is examining).

slowmovintarget 5y ago

Heh... and Google's motto used to be "Don't be evil." That stuck hard enough they actually had to expunge it from their doc.

john_moscow 5y ago

It has nothing to do specifically with Firefox, but is all about the incentives. If someone puts a non-trivial amount of effort into developing a product, they could be motivated by: 1. Trying to make money off selling it to end users. 2. Trying to make money by selling the end users' attention to advertisers. 3. Vanity, if it's a side/hobby project. 4. Influence the audience (pushing things aligned with their values into the audience's attention span). 5. Being a loss leader of a sort. E.g., trying to grab a market share in expectations to make money later, or sell growth figures to investors. So, specifically to web browsers: * Chrome, the de-facto standard, is clearly sustained by option #2. * Because Chrome is free-to-use, option #1 is not viable for any competition. * Because web browsers are complex and require a lot of upkeep, #3 is also mostly out of the picture. So, if Mozilla wants to stay alive, they have no other choice than to treat their end users as the merchandise. And, to differentiate themselves from Google, they will keep making bullshit claims that will have nothing to do with reality. Even worse, as long as the current approach to antitrust doesn't change, there won't be any long-term alternatives to this model. All of this could be swiftly solved by deeming indirectly subsidized "free" products anti-competitive (e.g. cash flow coming from outside the direct users), and not allowing mergers above something like a 20% market share, but I can't see this happen anytime soon.

romanows 5y ago
They could just take that $400 mil/year and dump it entirely into the browser for as long as the money lasts. Ideally spending some money refactoring their codebase such that it could be more likely for the code to survive on after a loss of funding as an non-Mozilla open-source project. Follow the public radio route and take donations, build a sense of community. Possibly spin up a commercial Rust consultancy/side-business (I know this is hypocritical, it's just that Rust seems like the "git" to Mozilla's equivalent of "linux", out of all the things I've seen them try. Sorry Thunderbird lovers :P)