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The fact that an easter egg about a TV show makes the list of the worst things they've ever done speaks volumes. It was a bad decision, but it was not malicious

The fact that an easter egg about a TV show makes the list of the worst things they've ever done speaks volumes. It was a bad decision, but it was not malicious and it had negligible impact on users. Google does something 10x worse every single day.

ragnese 3y ago
I was about to post this comment. I can't BELIEVE people are still hung up on the Mr. Robot thing. This is exactly what we're talking about in this thread when we say that HN has a strong anti-Mozilla bias for some reason.
- mostlysimilar 3y ago
  Whenever I see this I just assume it's people that are against Firefox/Mozilla anyway and are looking for any possible excuse to shit on them. Yes, it was bad, and an ideal organization would not have done it. But it is orders of magnitude less severe than what Google does to us every day. Not even a comparison.
  - donkeybeer 3y ago
    No but things like hiding the favicon when the audio playing notification is on the tab, changing UIs for no good reason, removing features for no good reason...these are the things that piss people off. Mostly designers making life shit for no good reasons, and then the CEO whining about low pay and constantly increasing her salary (after firing the rust team)
- VancouverMan 3y ago
  In a situation like that, it's not just about any direct harm that may have arisen. It's also about the loss of trust. That particular incident, for example, was completely unnecessary. It involved a significant display of unbelievably poor judgment, and a total lack of foresight. It shouldn't have happened. The fact that it did happen, despite it being such an obviously bad idea, raised a lot of questions and doubt. It causes people to wonder what other incidents, which could potentially be far worse, might happen in the future. It's remembered years later because it involved such a major loss of trust for so many people.
  - FireBeyond 3y ago
    I look at it similarly to the iPhone / U2 debacle. It's remembered now only by a very small, though vocal, minority.
  - skeaker 3y ago
    If anything, shouldn't the fallout reinforce trust that it won't happen again? Kind of like how plane crashes actually make planes safer.
    - VancouverMan 3y ago
      Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to work that way in this case. For example, there was an incident just a couple of months ago that was discussed here: "Firefox displayed a pop-up ad for Mozilla VPN over an unrelated page" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36077360 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36077360) "Mozilla stops Firefox fullscreen VPN ads after user outrage" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36085642 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36085642) That's another incident that just shouldn't have ever happened to begin with, in my opinion.
      - skeaker 3y ago
        That's not great, but it's not the same as the Mr Robot thing. That much has already stopped. This is a different thing that similarly won't happen again now that backlash has occurred. A different cause of a plane crash that has now been analyzed to prevent in the future, going back to that analogy.
        VancouverMan 3y ago
        The underlying cause in both of those cases seems to me to be them doing something that fundamentally should not have been done in the first place. It's the lack of foresight and the lack of good judgment that I don't see getting fixed. Both of those incidents should have been completely avoidable with even the most minimal of forethought.
  - 3y ago

ragnese 3y ago

I was about to post this comment. I can't BELIEVE people are still hung up on the Mr. Robot thing. This is exactly what we're talking about in this thread when we say that HN has a strong anti-Mozilla bias for some reason.

mostlysimilar 3y ago
Whenever I see this I just assume it's people that are against Firefox/Mozilla anyway and are looking for any possible excuse to shit on them. Yes, it was bad, and an ideal organization would not have done it. But it is orders of magnitude less severe than what Google does to us every day. Not even a comparison.
- donkeybeer 3y ago
  No but things like hiding the favicon when the audio playing notification is on the tab, changing UIs for no good reason, removing features for no good reason...these are the things that piss people off. Mostly designers making life shit for no good reasons, and then the CEO whining about low pay and constantly increasing her salary (after firing the rust team)
VancouverMan 3y ago
In a situation like that, it's not just about any direct harm that may have arisen. It's also about the loss of trust. That particular incident, for example, was completely unnecessary. It involved a significant display of unbelievably poor judgment, and a total lack of foresight. It shouldn't have happened. The fact that it did happen, despite it being such an obviously bad idea, raised a lot of questions and doubt. It causes people to wonder what other incidents, which could potentially be far worse, might happen in the future. It's remembered years later because it involved such a major loss of trust for so many people.
- FireBeyond 3y ago
  I look at it similarly to the iPhone / U2 debacle. It's remembered now only by a very small, though vocal, minority.
- skeaker 3y ago
  If anything, shouldn't the fallout reinforce trust that it won't happen again? Kind of like how plane crashes actually make planes safer.
  - VancouverMan 3y ago
    Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to work that way in this case. For example, there was an incident just a couple of months ago that was discussed here: "Firefox displayed a pop-up ad for Mozilla VPN over an unrelated page" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36077360 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36077360) "Mozilla stops Firefox fullscreen VPN ads after user outrage" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36085642 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36085642) That's another incident that just shouldn't have ever happened to begin with, in my opinion.
    - skeaker 3y ago
      That's not great, but it's not the same as the Mr Robot thing. That much has already stopped. This is a different thing that similarly won't happen again now that backlash has occurred. A different cause of a plane crash that has now been analyzed to prevent in the future, going back to that analogy.
      - VancouverMan 3y ago
        The underlying cause in both of those cases seems to me to be them doing something that fundamentally should not have been done in the first place. It's the lack of foresight and the lack of good judgment that I don't see getting fixed. Both of those incidents should have been completely avoidable with even the most minimal of forethought.
- 3y ago