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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.mo

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?
    - scrollaway 5y ago
      > My behavior on a site is now being sent to the browser author, an unrelated party. But you're just assuming it is. It could also be "On uninstall and crash, report back which studies were enabled" to track how many people are uninstalling their browser when the flag stupid_feature="on" is set. Be mad about the data collected [specifically, what type of data is collected], not about the concept of a/b testing. Set clear boundaries of what is and isn't acceptable. Otherwise you're fighting an ever-uphiller battle. Because if they want to know which sites you visit and the privacy boundary is "a/b testing isn't acceptable", they'll do it via history syncing instead.
      - ncallaway 5y ago
        > Be mad about the data collected, not about the concept of a/b testing. What does this sentence mean? A/B testing fundamentally requires data collection, so I don't understand how to be mad about the data collected but not A/B testing.
        _nothing 5y ago
        I think they're saying to be mad about what data is collected. For example, be mad if they're storing your IP address and location and not be mad if they're just storing a counter of how many people visited their marketing page.
  - ncallaway 5y ago
    A browser A/B testing and sending analytics data back home is different from a website. A _privacy marketed_ browser sending such analytics data back home is different from a regular browser doing so.
  - creata 5y ago
    Obviously you'd need to know how they're measuring the effect. And I think that's the problem: Firefox doesn't make that easy enough. If Firefox gave on installation * a short list of all the data they could collect, and * a promise that they won't collect anything else without asking for the user's consent again, then I doubt anyone would complain.
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.

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?
  - scrollaway 5y ago
    > My behavior on a site is now being sent to the browser author, an unrelated party. But you're just assuming it is. It could also be "On uninstall and crash, report back which studies were enabled" to track how many people are uninstalling their browser when the flag stupid_feature="on" is set. Be mad about the data collected [specifically, what type of data is collected], not about the concept of a/b testing. Set clear boundaries of what is and isn't acceptable. Otherwise you're fighting an ever-uphiller battle. Because if they want to know which sites you visit and the privacy boundary is "a/b testing isn't acceptable", they'll do it via history syncing instead.
    - ncallaway 5y ago
      > Be mad about the data collected, not about the concept of a/b testing. What does this sentence mean? A/B testing fundamentally requires data collection, so I don't understand how to be mad about the data collected but not A/B testing.
      - _nothing 5y ago
        I think they're saying to be mad about what data is collected. For example, be mad if they're storing your IP address and location and not be mad if they're just storing a counter of how many people visited their marketing page.
- ncallaway 5y ago
  A browser A/B testing and sending analytics data back home is different from a website. A _privacy marketed_ browser sending such analytics data back home is different from a regular browser doing so.
- creata 5y ago
  Obviously you'd need to know how they're measuring the effect. And I think that's the problem: Firefox doesn't make that easy enough. If Firefox gave on installation * a short list of all the data they could collect, and * a promise that they won't collect anything else without asking for the user's consent again, then I doubt anyone would complain.

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.