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Ask HN: Has anyone else gotten the 'Turning Red' ad after Firefox update?

114 points by pmalynin 5y ago

A few days ago I updated Firefox to be greeted with a full page ad for 'Turning Red.' I don't understand how they think this is acceptable. Beside the moral issues, this undermines all the reason I would update altogether. Now every time there is a update I have to wonder if I will have Disney shit shoved down my throat?

pinewurst 5y ago
It’ll be whatever excrement paid Mozilla the most. And yes I received and resented it too.
perihelions 5y ago
Yes, and we're still fuming about it. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30608022 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30608022 ("Why am I seeing this adorable [sic] red panda?", 44 comments) The direct, targeted fix is to disable the "what's new" page after updates: (in about:config) browser.startup.homepage_override.mstone = "ignore" - "If browser.startup.homepage_override.mstone is set to "ignore", the browser's homepage will not be overridden after updates." https://kb.mozillazine.org/Startup.homepage_override_url https://kb.mozillazine.org/Startup.homepage_override_url The substantive parts of update release notes are still accessible here -- no ads here, so far: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/releases/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/releases/
- karaterobot 5y ago
  Just because I always forget and have to look it up, and maybe someone else does too: it's about:config (not configuration or settings or options or advanced or anything like that)
  - perihelions 5y ago
    Good point, I've updated my comment.
systemvoltage 5y ago
Here it is: https://web.archive.org/web/20220308222503/https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/98.0/whatsnew/?oldversion=97.0.1 https://web.archive.org/web/20220308222503/https://www.mozil... Those values are insane. “Chinese culture love”!??? What the actual fuck. This is infuriating. Billionaires of SV please fund a Philanthropic project for a web browser. Like Jeff Bezos funding Washington Post, we desperately need a window into the internet. The days are numbered.
- daemoens 5y ago
  The chinese culture love part isn't that crazy. It sounds so generic too, like it had to have a certain number of bullet points.
  - systemvoltage 5y ago
    It’s just weird. Imagine if they had plastered “American culture love”.
    - idiotsecant 5y ago
      Yes, it would be strange because it's basically the default unspoken position.
    - Barrin92 5y ago
      yes, just imagine if there was an entire movie franchise about a patriotic American super soldier dressed in an American flag motif, that'd be crazy right?!
    - throaway425119 5y ago
      Curious why you singled out that bit and not "Canada/Toronto love"? Turning Red is the first Pixar film solo-directed by a Chinese-Canadian woman Domee Shi (who also made the Academy Award winning Bao short). The film was inspired by her childhood in Toronto, hence the many Canadian references, and is told from a culturally and gender specific lens. It's a 2nd generation immigrant story. Remember, there are tons of Chinese people out there who have little or nothing to do with the authoritarian Chinese state. I should know. I'm one of them. This knee-jerk bias against anything Chinese is xenophobic and racist.
zmk5 5y ago
I did but didn't know what it's about so I closed the tab.
emerged 5y ago
Stop supporting Mozilla. They are controlled opposition at best, and are completely ideologically possessed and controlled by politics at this point.
- woodruffw 5y ago
  Controlled opposition to what, precisely?
  - pessimizer 5y ago
    Chrome
    - woodruffw 5y ago
      Who's controlling them? Is that a reference to the money Google pays them every year, presumably to ward off accusations of a browser monopoly? I think it behooves people to be precise and explicit when they accuse a large non-profit (with a wholly owned corporate subsidiary) of being "controlled opposition."
      - BonoboIO 5y ago
        Yep, only for the „we got no monopoly“ theater
      - emerged 5y ago
        Controlled opposition in the sense that they are literally funded by the opposition. That is plainly not a reasonable situation for healthy competition. Mozilla doesn’t exist without Google’s money and they don’t even allow users to fund the browser itself.
- 0des 5y ago
  To do this, one has to acknowledge that there are limited options at this point, and very limited potential for a viable browser alternative. Sure, there are 100 or more browsers out there, but the discriminator of viable makes it really tough. By viable, I mean no funny business, no basing it on chrome, no crypto-anythings attached, no bundled pockets. This might just be me showing my ignorance, but for the common person to be able to stand a chance of writing a full browser that people want to use, we will have to create something new that overlays or subverts the WWW portion of the internet. The current system of RFC's and even knowing which ones we acknowledge and which ones we silently dont, is so byzantine that someone born today could spend the next 30 years of their life trying and they won't be able to make a browser and keep up with web standards and expectations. This here is a big reason why only big and wasteful tech juggernauts can do this. Im old enough to remember the birth of the WWW, and I never thought things would or even could get this good and bad at the same time. This web needs to be taken out behind the barn so we can think about something new, and maybe this time protect it at all costs.
influx 5y ago
Download Brave.
- only4here 5y ago
  Yep. It's got all you could want from Firefox -- Mozilla free. (+more)
  - wryun 5y ago
    Except it's just another blink repackage. I think the really important thing is web standards, which means supporting gecko or webkit.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- doliveira 5y ago
  It also has some obnoxious cryptocurrency ads...
  - charcircuit 5y ago
    Ads are turned off by default with Brave. If you do not want ads then don't turn them on.
- proactivesvcs 5y ago
  And then use software what for a web browser? Brave hasn't been a web browser for some time now.
  - AussieWog93 5y ago
    https://brave.com/ https://brave.com/ "Brave is one of the safest browsers on the market today."
  - JasonFruit 5y ago
    What on earth do you mean? I'm literally browsing the web with it right now.
monkeybutton 5y ago
Is it any worse than opening Firefox and seeing sponsored content from Pocket about how you should totally read this super organic blog post about meal kit subscription boxes?
- sp332 5y ago
  Yes, because it's much easier to turn that off. Just click the gear in the corner of the new tab page.
pizza 5y ago
Yep. What's the best fork? (Not Brave - didn't like it)
- LeoPanthera 5y ago
  Linux: Falkon (KDE) or GNOME Web Mac: Safari Windows: Tough choice. Firefox still probably the best, despite everything.
  - buzzert 5y ago
    I really like GNOME Web (aka Epiphany), especially the minimalist UI. But it’s just too slow for some reason. I’m not even sure why, considering how fast WebKit is in its other forms.
- amyjess 5y ago
  Pale Moon
- meesterdude 5y ago
  i've been happy with Waterfox
  - crocodiletears 5y ago
    Seconded. Idk that the maintainers are trustworthy, but at the very least you get a couple days notice to prep for any of Mozilla's shenanigans.
- dingdingdang 5y ago
  Easily LibreWolf in my optics!
woodruffw 5y ago
I didn't get any such ad. But I've have my homepage set to `about:blank` for a decade now.
BonoboIO 5y ago
Winifred Mitchell Baker earns over 3 million dollars per year as CEO of Mozilla. How many ads do they have to sell to earn only her salary. It’s mindboggling [1]. And she thinks she is „underpaid“. Browser share down to 3.45% and they only live off their Google Money for the default search engine. If that drys up ... [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitchell_Baker https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitchell_Baker
- woodruffw 5y ago
  I think it's funny to see the HN split brain on this: we have nearly daily threads where people soothe themselves by saying that their salary is justified by what people are willing to pay them and not their productivity, and weekly threads where a relatively small-fry CEO is disparaged for her salary. Is the CEO of Mozilla "worth" $3M/year? I don't know. But it's not clear why Mozilla's apparent executive valuation of her is held to a separate standard from every other shmuck in this industry.
  - bin_bash 5y ago
    Mozilla is a welfare company that exists so Google can point to another browser and claim they don’t have a monopoly
    - woodruffw 5y ago
      Even if this is true, I don't understand how it's material to the statement above.
      - bin_bash 5y ago
        > But it's not clear why Mozilla's apparent executive valuation of her is held to a separate standard from every other shmuck in this industry. Because they’re not a real company. The same rules don’t apply to Mozilla.
        woodruffw 5y ago
dessant 5y ago
There is no legally required disclosure anywhere about this being a paid endorsement, so we'll have to imagine that Mozilla engineers have spent their time on working to promote a Disney movie just because it's cool and it is available on Disney+. https://web.archive.org/web/20220308222503/https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/98.0/whatsnew/?oldversion=97.0.1 https://web.archive.org/web/20220308222503/https://www.mozil...
- Cpoll 5y ago
  Is disclosure legally required? If something can be understood to be an ad instead of a testimonial or endorsement, I imagined disclosure wasn't required in any jurisdiction. Regardless, there's precedent for "we'll have to imagine that Mozilla engineers have spent their time on working to promote a Disney movie just because it's cool and it is available on Disney+." > Mozilla wasn't paid for the "Mr. Robot" tie-in, [Mozilla's chief marketing officer] Kaykas-Wolff said. "We've enjoyed a growing partnership with the show and the show's audience," he said. https://www.cnet.com/news/privacy/mozilla-backpedals-after-mr-robot-firefox-misstep/ https://www.cnet.com/news/privacy/mozilla-backpedals-after-m...
GaveDrohl 5y ago
How much did everyone using Firefox pay for the privilege of using their browser? It's ironic to me that there is so much anger over a communist China ad, while at the same time they want to benefit from the hard work of others for free. TANSTAAFL people.
- indymike 5y ago
  If I could pay for it, I would.
- throwaway0x7E6 5y ago
  that would be a valid point if mozilla wasn't getting half a billion (?) a year from google and its remarkably incompetent CEO wasn't getting paid 3 million a year after having given herself a big raise while the only product that makes mozilla money is bleeding users.
blendergeek 5y ago
I find it weird that Mozilla would run ads for Disney+, a DRM infested site that gives Firefox users an intentionally subpar experience.
pwdisswordfish9 5y ago
> Every once in a while, something comes along that we can totally get behind. Like DRM’d media.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
politician 5y ago
We need to move away from HTML. It's a fully captured spec that's continuously bent towards the needs of its ad-supported patron. We don't need an alternative browser, we need an alternative interaction platform, built from the ground up for extreme resistance to third-party advertising, interactive experiences with a sensible layout model unencumbered by decades of cruft, with full support for end-user introspection and alteration from day 1.
- CodeGlitch 5y ago
  Was going to post something similar - but I think you capture my thoughts eloquently. I would add that HTTP itself needs to be redesigned, as it favours the client-server model too much. Something like IPFS? Although that doesn't seem to have caught on.
  - politician 5y ago
    Agreed, but also: HTTP 3.0 is so far removed from HTTP 1.1 that they shouldn't be share the same name.
- userbinator 5y ago
  We just need to move back to an earlier version before Google kept "pushing the web forward" out of everyone else's reach.
userbinator 5y ago
For those like me not familiar with this area of popular culture, and thus not heard of Turning Red, I wonder what you guessed it would be about upon reading the title. My thoughts were, in order: the Republican party, and then communism. Firefox is basically adware at this point.
- spencerflem 5y ago
  Except unlike the targeted ads that track everything about you, this is just, an ad. It pops up once and never again.
- Doctor_Fegg 5y ago
  I was guessing Project(RED) or whatever it’s called.
lostgame 5y ago
Jesus. For real? This is existentially disappointing. I’m not sure what ethical profit looks like for FireFox, but as a 15-20-year user I’m finally out.
spencerflem 5y ago
Honestly, who cares? Unlike other ads, it's not invading my privacy and it's not really in my way. They're not tracking me or selling my data or doing anything creepy. Firefox continues to be the ONLY major browser run by a non-profit, and the ONLY major browser not a shim over chromium. It's still a great product. If this is what they have to do to keep the lights on, then cool, whatever. How many of y'all who use Firefox donate or buy their VPN anyways.
- Doctor_Fegg 5y ago
  Safari is not a shim over Chromium.
  - spencerflem 5y ago
    ok, you're right, not on mac so I forgot about that one :p It's better than Chrome, by a lot, but I'd trust Mozilla over Apple any day.
- naoqj 5y ago
  I don't want Mozilla to let Disney use my personal computer as a billboard.
  - millzlane 5y ago
    I clicked the ad to support Mozilla.
  - spencerflem 5y ago
    I mean, it's a little tacky, but holy hell, I don't get why hackernews seems so up in arms about everything Mozilla tries to do. They don't want to be purely funded by Google's whims. Them being independent would, if anything, be better for their real mission of being privacy focused.
    - krapp 5y ago
      > I don't get why hackernews seems so up in arms about everything Mozilla tries to do Because they "gave in to cancel culture" WRT Brendan Eich and his political views. That's at least 90% of it.
tamaharbor 5y ago
Can someone explain why so many are infuriated by a single ad?
- perihelions 5y ago
  Because we live in ad-less Edenic gardens. I hadn't seen an internet ad in years! It's not possible to express how unusual and miserable a modern ad looks, from the point of view of someone not acclimatized to them.
- wolverine876 5y ago
  When people feel anger they find the easiest outlet for it. Right now, Firefox/Mozilla is a socially acceptable outlet, and thus easy. For example, we don't see posts like this about Tesla's or SpaceX's failings.
robbrown451 5y ago
Well it is a red panda, i.e. a firefox. In fact, "Turning Red" could be seen as a metaphor for switching from Chrome to Firefox (in addition to, uhhh, the advent of menstruation). Maybe if they had managed to sneak some product placement for Firefox into the movie it would balance things out and make it seem better. In all seriousness, I don't like it either, but I wish the question wasn't so unnecessarily hostile ("Disney shit") toward a Pixar movie that I and my young daughter found quite delightful. That kinda makes me want to defend Mozilla.
- spencerflem 5y ago
  It's wild the amount of rage hackernews seems to have for Mozilla while it is still the only major privacy-focused browser.
  - userbinator 5y ago
    That's precisely because Mozilla is supposed to be the "good guys", but they keep doing stupid things like this to anger their userbase.
    - spencerflem 5y ago
      Their engineers need to get paid. Mozilla isn't completely perfect, but they are very good, and getting more independent funding seems like a positive thing to me.
    - lamontcg 5y ago
      "Mozilla isn't fully perfect and unflawed, so I guess I have no choice but to let Google run the whole web without any competition." Don't we have posts on here every other day about getting over perfectionism and how its bad?
- userbinator 5y ago
  Red is also associated with communism --- which especially given the recent events in Ukraine, seems rather unfortunate of a coincidence.
rexf 5y ago
This may have been more useful as a poll https://news.ycombinator.com/newpoll https://news.ycombinator.com/newpoll As a FF desktop user, I honestly have not seen any full page ads for Turning Red. Haven't noticed full page ads for anything (yet) to be honest.
- OrderlyTiamat 5y ago
  Huh, that's interesting, I haven't seen a poll on hn before. This site continues to surprise.
Yaina 5y ago
IMO this is one the least offensive ways for Firefox to get revenue. Mozilla employs, what, over 700 people to constantly maintain a Browser that is not financed through ad-tech and tracking (Google) or skimming developer revenue (Apple). Having a tab open with a Disney collaboration, that includes some colorful themes, every couple months seems fair to me. I mean this does not interfere with your day to day browsing, there is no ad-tracking and the partnering with Disney does not create a conflict of interest in terms of Firefox's privacy features. To be clear, this is not my favorite thing in the world and I agree, these campaigns should not happen monthly, but I'm okay with it for the reasons above :)
- password4321 5y ago
  > not financed through ad-tech and tracking (Google) wut? https://frankhecker.com/2020/08/13/mozillas-uncertain-future https://frankhecker.com/2020/08/13/mozillas-uncertain-future | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24166385 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24166385 > The Mozilla Corporation’s customers are large corporations like Google that pay for things that will help them make money

jchw 5y ago

In theory this sounds like a decent way to rebuke this point, however there are two important things to consider: 1. Your average software developer employee just simply doesn’t have that much control over their own salary. I believe I may have greater than average control over my own salary, and that doesn’t even compare to the kind of control that high level executives of a company have over their own salaries. Because of this, developers lack the conflict of interest that a CEO has. 2. Though developers may be “overpaid,” especially in the more extreme ends, and other employees may be underpaid, the difference between developers and CEOs is not even in the same wheelhouse. It’s not just a mere discrepancy that can be explained with market rates alone. Data I’ve heard repeated paints a picture that shows CEOs pulling far away of basically everybody, even considering other executive wages being quite high too: > In 2020, the ratio of CEO-to-typical-worker compensation was 351-to-1 under the realized measure of CEO pay; that is up from 307-to-1 in 2019 and a big increase from 21-to-1 in 1965 and 61-to-1 in 1989. (Source: https://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-pay-in-2020/ https://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-pay-in-2020/) I don’t think the question is whether the CEO is 351 times more important than the average employee below them. I think the question is, how is it even possible that it’s worth it, in terms of outcomes, to have a CEO make this much more than the average employee? Do you actually think that, if accountability were at least as tied to salary as it was for other employees, it would have been possible for things to get this disparate? Even if it was actually leading to better outcomes for companies, this kind of income inequality is definitely leading to worse outcomes for society.

woodruffw 5y ago
> Even if it was actually leading to better outcomes for companies, this kind of income inequality is definitely leading to worse outcomes for society. No disagreement here. I think CEOs should be paid no more than 10 times their lowest paid employee, and that should be made enforceable by law. Using 150k as a random number[1], Baker is overpaid by roughly a factor of two based on my "ideal" scheme. But I have the sneaking suspicion that HN would gripe even if she took a 50% pay cut. [1]: https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Mozilla-Salaries-E19129.htm https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Mozilla-Salaries-E19129.htm

kelnos 5y ago

I think it's a lot easier to criticize Mozilla here because the metrics are obvious. You can draw a chart going up and call that a graph of Baker's salary over time, and then superimpose a chart going down and call that Firefox's market share over time. And from there it's very easy to ask why Mozilla's CEO keeps getting raises (hell, and hasn't been fired yet) while their main product keeps doing worse and worse by really the only metric that matters for this type of product.

passivate 5y ago
>You can draw a chart going up and call that a graph of Baker's salary over time, and then superimpose a chart going down and call that Firefox's market share over time. Certainly that is the metric you seem to be focusing on, but maybe the board rewarded her for something else, like reducing debt or improving cash flow or some other metric that might be also very important to Mozilla's long term survival.
- kelnos 5y ago
  Then that's bullshit. Firefox doesn't need Mozilla Corporation to succeed. They should wind down the corp, give any remaining money to the Mozilla Foundation, and run things like most other open source projects that are backed by foundations.
  - passivate 5y ago
    >They should wind down the corp, give any remaining money to the Mozilla Foundation, and run things like most other open source projects that are backed by foundations. Specifically which project are you referring to and why do you think their success would transfer to Mozilla?
woodruffw 5y ago
If we're doing charts, you should probably superimpose a third: the average compensation of a CEO at a firm with a similar number of MAUs. Baker is probably underpaid, on average, for the size of Firefox's user base. Does this mean that she's actually undercompensated? No. $3M/year is an obscene amount of money to pay anyone. But her public position is factually correct[1]: she could go somewhere else and make significantly more money, and it's up to the Mozilla board to determine whether that's a bluff or not. [1]: https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/paradise/money/ https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/paradise/money/
- toyg 5y ago
  > she could go somewhere else and make significantly more money With all due respect, that statement elicits a massive DOUBT reaction. It's the sort of thing that the C class spouts to justify their backscratching, but it's hardly a fact for most of them - and for Baker in particular, at this point.
  - woodruffw 5y ago
    In that case, her board should call her bluff. It's no problem to me if they do! I wonder how much they'll need to pay her replacement.
    - BonoboIO 5y ago
      The board of directors probably has a nice cozy salary ... and the downfall is going for more than a decade. They don’t care, why bother.
    - toyg 5y ago
      You just have to glance at their bio to get your answer: they have no idea what they are doing. The role is not compensated and clearly treated as a no-profit club. The whole system of boards and execs is broken, generally speaking, but at MozCorp it looks more broken than average.
- kelnos 5y ago
  Given how terribly Firefox has done under her watch, the board absolutely should call that bluff. If she quits, it's a win. If she accepts a lower salary, it's a win.
- BonoboIO 5y ago
  I think Mitchell should pay Mozilla. Not the other way around. Not because she is a woman, because she is doing a terrible job. Mozilla will stay afloat so Google can tell their “we have no browser monopoly” story. Mozilla gets 1.2 BILLION$ for 3 years. Mind blowing ... and they handle a product as a side project. Unbelievable.
boomboomsubban 5y ago
>hell, and hasn't been fired yet) Are you aware that she became CEO in December 2019? The previous walked away presumably as he knew that layoffs were coming and people would be after his job, making it one of Baker's first acts as CEO. I get why people are unhappy with her, but most of the problems predate her becoming CEO and the executive budget overall has shrunk as nobody has replaced her ole position to my knowledge.