5 ms·

> I have a reason to believe that it is a company wanting something beyond what many or most of the users would prefer. As an exmozillian I find this I have to

> I have a reason to believe that it is a company wanting something beyond what many or most of the users would prefer. As an exmozillian I find this I have to wonder about your reasons for this. From why you think crash reporting, render time, and privacy preserving analytics aren't giving benefits that users prefer, all the way to characterizing MoCo as "a company".

kreeben 4y ago
>> crash reporting, render time, and privacy preserving analytics Those aren't the only times FF wants to "phone home". Personally, what made me jump from FF to a fork of the same, is Firefox Suggest. To me, this is a disgusting feature. Firefox with this feature says to me, we, Mozilla, want to become more like Chrome/Google. It makes me not want to share even the tiniest bit of information with Mozilla.
- nl 4y ago
  I find Firefox Suggest pretty good. But if you want to turn it off you can here: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-suggest https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-suggest
  - kreeben 4y ago
    That doesn't even come close to addressing the point I was trying to make. All of these anti privacy features, default enabled as they are, tells me something about Mozilla. Something you might not even want to think about. If you're fine with sending to Mozilla everything you type into the address bar, then you probably don't care that much at all about privacy, which would be a shame, because privacy, online and offline, is nothing more and nothing less than a god damn human right. >> but you can turn it off, doh 99% won't, because they don't know what's the point. Perhaps they're right.
    - nl 4y ago
      This same thread has people complaining how Firefox is funded by Google (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32258663 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32258663). But when they try to develop alternative funding mechanisms like this they also get attacked. > All of these anti privacy features, default enabled as they are, tells me something about Mozilla. Something you might not even want to think about. Their goal isn't anti-privacy, it's that they need alternate revenue sources. I'm fine with that. >>> but you can turn it off, doh Please don't misquote me. My parent post was polite and informative and to mischaracterise it ("doh") is unnecessary.
      - kreeben 4y ago
        >> But when they try to develop alternative funding mechanisms like this they also get attacked. That's entirely besides the point. >> Their goal isn't anti-privacy That's sad. >> Please don't misquote me. Did not mean to but yes, I did and I apologize. Because that was rude of me to do so.
    - closewith 4y ago
      Is there a way to fund Firefox development directly (rather than Mozilla at large)?
    - tpm 4y ago
      >> 99% won't Which is why corporations should not really be able to decide for the 99%. I won't blame Mozilla for trying this in the environment where it's possibly their only way to survive. It's really quite telling Firefox Suggest is only available in the USA.
    - bkberry352 4y ago
      > If you're fine with sending to Mozilla everything you type into the address bar... That ability is opt-in only. By default, Mozilla does not see anything typed in the address bar. One has to manually turn on "Improve the Firefox Suggest experience" in about:preferences. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-suggest?as=u&utm_source=inproduct#w_what-setting-is-opt-in https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-suggest?as=u&ut...
pessimizer 4y ago
> why you think crash reporting, render time, and privacy preserving analytics aren't giving benefits that users prefer, I think that preferences are things that people express clearly, and you can either agree to honor them, or refuse to honor them. Or you can change the subject to render time, or to whether a corporation is a company.
- jonathankoren 4y ago
  You do realize that the noisy users complaining about this isn't even a sizable minority of Firefox users. It's a cost-benefit analysis
- jonathankoren 4y ago
  To double reply You said, "I have a reason to believe that it is a company wanting something beyond what many or most of the users would prefer." You have not articulated any reason. Just an unsupported conclusion, and then quickly switched to saying that preferences could be ignored. (which clearly your preference is ignored), while then trying to throw a bomb saying that the very real (and documented!) benefits that telemetry provides to all users, aren't actually some distraction. State the nefarious secret reason you believe Mozilla has rather bland anonymous data, and what threat that identifying a CPU and operating system provides. And for the record, my quip about Mozilla not being a company, was a facetious remark about how poorly managed Mozilla is, and the fact that was originally a nonprofit, but now has this a very unusual architecture of being for-profit corporation that is wholly owned by a nonprofit foundation, due to US tax laws dictating that a minimum percentage of the revenue must come from donation, and the search deals were way out stripping that, and B-corps didn't exist when it was founded.
kmeisthax 4y ago
I have a pet theory for this: it pisses off the Open Source Tea Party. So, one of the problems with power users is that they not only demand weirdly specific features, but that they all want different features from one another. And they will be very loud about how that particular feature is critical to their workflow. So the net effect is that they overcomplicate software. Let's say you're a developer and you want to uncomplicate your software. How do you do that? Well, yeah, you could cut features, hide them in a junk-drawer menu, or redesign your UI to guide people to the most common options. But here's the problem: how do you know what the common options even are? Telemetry. You put in something in your software that counts up how many times users actually use each feature, and then it pings your server with the counts. You count how many active installations there are and bam, you get the data you need. Then you release your fancy new redesign only to get assaulted with all sorts of abuse that could only be charitably described as "negative criticism". Oh my god, how could they have removed the "heat CPU when spacebar is pressed" feature!? They have telemetry, don't they know how many times I hit the spacebar?! Everyone else is just happy the app no longer flattens their battery, but the power users shout over them. If you're a power user, telemetry has zero upside for you. Why the hell would you want the 7zip developers to know that you're the only person who has ever used the "Compress directory and e-mail" shell extension? You don't want the software to be easier to use! You already know how to use it, and screw anyone else who doesn't! "Professional" software runs the risk of accumulating garbage in their designs and interfaces for exactly this reason. This goes for everything from Photoshop to git to MySQL. (And yes, there's totally an inverse of this where the developer rounds off all the edges to the point where the software is more useful as a practical demonstration of gaslighting than an actual app.)
- trasz 4y ago
  >how do you know what the common options even are? This might sound crazy, but bear with me: have about simply using the software you write?
closewith 4y ago
Your attitude and reply makes me wary of Mozilla as a whole. No matter the benefit to the user or the company, telemetry should be opt-in. If the user doesn't opt-in, then all the potential upsides don't matter.
- jonathankoren 4y ago
  We both know no one opts in to stuff. More importantly, when dealing with self-selection bias, you don't know if the data you're collecting is representative of the entire population of users, or just the volunteers. So if you don't have a large enough data sample, there are no benefits to anyone. (e.g. "Everything must be fine. No crashes." Little do they know, it immediately crashes when visiting any of the top-100 domains by requests, but the volunteers never visit any of them.) I would take your claims more seriously, if you could speak to something concrete about deficiencies of what is collected, and how, and what steps were taken to anonymize the data, how it's retained. (Fun fact: You can! It's all documented.), and articulate something beyond, "I just don't wanna, and I think my minority opinion should be imposed on everyone."
  - closewith 4y ago
    > We both know no one opts in to stuff. That should tell you something, then. > (Fun fact: You can! It's all documented.), or articulate something beyond, "I just don't wanna, and I think my minority opinion should be imposed on everyone." It's actually that I want Mozilla and the developers there to respect my fundamental human rights as a data subject. The idea that you think I should have to justify my rights to you is absurd. I honestly don't think you understand the damage that your attitude and your comments are doing to Firefox. Why would anyone ever trust software written by someone with your attitude. It's abhorrent. If the information at https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/telemetry-clientid https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/telemetry-clientid is correct, then it seems that this data collection may be unlawful for EU residents. Even IP address, even if never stored, is too much telemetry to be collected without consent or other lawful basis, which doesn't seem to be present. It's sad to see Mozilla throw away their reputation because of telemetry.

kreeben 4y ago

>> crash reporting, render time, and privacy preserving analytics Those aren't the only times FF wants to "phone home". Personally, what made me jump from FF to a fork of the same, is Firefox Suggest. To me, this is a disgusting feature. Firefox with this feature says to me, we, Mozilla, want to become more like Chrome/Google. It makes me not want to share even the tiniest bit of information with Mozilla.

nl 4y ago
I find Firefox Suggest pretty good. But if you want to turn it off you can here: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-suggest https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-suggest
- kreeben 4y ago
  That doesn't even come close to addressing the point I was trying to make. All of these anti privacy features, default enabled as they are, tells me something about Mozilla. Something you might not even want to think about. If you're fine with sending to Mozilla everything you type into the address bar, then you probably don't care that much at all about privacy, which would be a shame, because privacy, online and offline, is nothing more and nothing less than a god damn human right. >> but you can turn it off, doh 99% won't, because they don't know what's the point. Perhaps they're right.
  - nl 4y ago
    This same thread has people complaining how Firefox is funded by Google (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32258663 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32258663). But when they try to develop alternative funding mechanisms like this they also get attacked. > All of these anti privacy features, default enabled as they are, tells me something about Mozilla. Something you might not even want to think about. Their goal isn't anti-privacy, it's that they need alternate revenue sources. I'm fine with that. >>> but you can turn it off, doh Please don't misquote me. My parent post was polite and informative and to mischaracterise it ("doh") is unnecessary.
    - kreeben 4y ago
      >> But when they try to develop alternative funding mechanisms like this they also get attacked. That's entirely besides the point. >> Their goal isn't anti-privacy That's sad. >> Please don't misquote me. Did not mean to but yes, I did and I apologize. Because that was rude of me to do so.
  - closewith 4y ago
    Is there a way to fund Firefox development directly (rather than Mozilla at large)?
  - tpm 4y ago
    >> 99% won't Which is why corporations should not really be able to decide for the 99%. I won't blame Mozilla for trying this in the environment where it's possibly their only way to survive. It's really quite telling Firefox Suggest is only available in the USA.
  - bkberry352 4y ago
    > If you're fine with sending to Mozilla everything you type into the address bar... That ability is opt-in only. By default, Mozilla does not see anything typed in the address bar. One has to manually turn on "Improve the Firefox Suggest experience" in about:preferences. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-suggest?as=u&utm_source=inproduct#w_what-setting-is-opt-in https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-suggest?as=u&ut...

pessimizer 4y ago

> why you think crash reporting, render time, and privacy preserving analytics aren't giving benefits that users prefer, I think that preferences are things that people express clearly, and you can either agree to honor them, or refuse to honor them. Or you can change the subject to render time, or to whether a corporation is a company.

jonathankoren 4y ago
You do realize that the noisy users complaining about this isn't even a sizable minority of Firefox users. It's a cost-benefit analysis
jonathankoren 4y ago
To double reply You said, "I have a reason to believe that it is a company wanting something beyond what many or most of the users would prefer." You have not articulated any reason. Just an unsupported conclusion, and then quickly switched to saying that preferences could be ignored. (which clearly your preference is ignored), while then trying to throw a bomb saying that the very real (and documented!) benefits that telemetry provides to all users, aren't actually some distraction. State the nefarious secret reason you believe Mozilla has rather bland anonymous data, and what threat that identifying a CPU and operating system provides. And for the record, my quip about Mozilla not being a company, was a facetious remark about how poorly managed Mozilla is, and the fact that was originally a nonprofit, but now has this a very unusual architecture of being for-profit corporation that is wholly owned by a nonprofit foundation, due to US tax laws dictating that a minimum percentage of the revenue must come from donation, and the search deals were way out stripping that, and B-corps didn't exist when it was founded.

kmeisthax 4y ago

I have a pet theory for this: it pisses off the Open Source Tea Party. So, one of the problems with power users is that they not only demand weirdly specific features, but that they all want different features from one another. And they will be very loud about how that particular feature is critical to their workflow. So the net effect is that they overcomplicate software. Let's say you're a developer and you want to uncomplicate your software. How do you do that? Well, yeah, you could cut features, hide them in a junk-drawer menu, or redesign your UI to guide people to the most common options. But here's the problem: how do you know what the common options even are? Telemetry. You put in something in your software that counts up how many times users actually use each feature, and then it pings your server with the counts. You count how many active installations there are and bam, you get the data you need. Then you release your fancy new redesign only to get assaulted with all sorts of abuse that could only be charitably described as "negative criticism". Oh my god, how could they have removed the "heat CPU when spacebar is pressed" feature!? They have telemetry, don't they know how many times I hit the spacebar?! Everyone else is just happy the app no longer flattens their battery, but the power users shout over them. If you're a power user, telemetry has zero upside for you. Why the hell would you want the 7zip developers to know that you're the only person who has ever used the "Compress directory and e-mail" shell extension? You don't want the software to be easier to use! You already know how to use it, and screw anyone else who doesn't! "Professional" software runs the risk of accumulating garbage in their designs and interfaces for exactly this reason. This goes for everything from Photoshop to git to MySQL. (And yes, there's totally an inverse of this where the developer rounds off all the edges to the point where the software is more useful as a practical demonstration of gaslighting than an actual app.)

trasz 4y ago
>how do you know what the common options even are? This might sound crazy, but bear with me: have about simply using the software you write?

closewith 4y ago

Your attitude and reply makes me wary of Mozilla as a whole. No matter the benefit to the user or the company, telemetry should be opt-in. If the user doesn't opt-in, then all the potential upsides don't matter.

jonathankoren 4y ago
We both know no one opts in to stuff. More importantly, when dealing with self-selection bias, you don't know if the data you're collecting is representative of the entire population of users, or just the volunteers. So if you don't have a large enough data sample, there are no benefits to anyone. (e.g. "Everything must be fine. No crashes." Little do they know, it immediately crashes when visiting any of the top-100 domains by requests, but the volunteers never visit any of them.) I would take your claims more seriously, if you could speak to something concrete about deficiencies of what is collected, and how, and what steps were taken to anonymize the data, how it's retained. (Fun fact: You can! It's all documented.), and articulate something beyond, "I just don't wanna, and I think my minority opinion should be imposed on everyone."
- closewith 4y ago
  > We both know no one opts in to stuff. That should tell you something, then. > (Fun fact: You can! It's all documented.), or articulate something beyond, "I just don't wanna, and I think my minority opinion should be imposed on everyone." It's actually that I want Mozilla and the developers there to respect my fundamental human rights as a data subject. The idea that you think I should have to justify my rights to you is absurd. I honestly don't think you understand the damage that your attitude and your comments are doing to Firefox. Why would anyone ever trust software written by someone with your attitude. It's abhorrent. If the information at https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/telemetry-clientid https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/telemetry-clientid is correct, then it seems that this data collection may be unlawful for EU residents. Even IP address, even if never stored, is too much telemetry to be collected without consent or other lawful basis, which doesn't seem to be present. It's sad to see Mozilla throw away their reputation because of telemetry.