16 ms·
> We’ve been motivated by the improvements we’re seeing in our telemetry data, and we’re convinced that our efforts this year are having a positive effect on Fi
by Doches 3y ago
> We’ve been motivated by the improvements we’re seeing in our telemetry data, and we’re convinced that our efforts this year are having a positive effect on Firefox users.
Mozilla gets a lot of flak (especially around here!) for their sometimes heavy-handed usage analytics, but it's nice to see that used for its stated purpose! Great use of data here.
- StableAlkyne 3y agoI'm not a fan of telemetry in any browser (I love Lynx because of this), but Mozilla is definitely more trustworthy than Google or Microsoft. Edit: I'm not saying that Lynx should be a daily driver or that it's more secure, but it's a neat little project that avoids some of the bad patterns in modern browsers.
- smegsicle 3y ago> Mozilla definitely hold a public perception of being more trustworthy than Google or Microsoft 100% true, definitely
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- noman-land 3y agoMozilla, the legally registered non-profit foundation with a mission statement[0], for sure is more trustworthy than a for-profit data behemoth whose sole revenue comes from collecting as much data a possible, or a for-profit tech company with a history of corporate abuse and user hostile behavior. [0] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/
- footlose_3815 3y agoI'm not trying to be a contrarian, but Google paid Firefox lots of money to force Google as the default search. Likely an offer they would refuse at their own peril, but I really liked how my search engine settings persisted when I reinstalled. Now it defaults to google. There's also a ton of promoted garbage on your homepage and privacy switches that need to be toggled off by default. Those settings don't carry-over when you sync your account settings. I still prefer Firefox, but they are not immune to the encroaching enshittification.
- PaulHoule 3y agoThere was the “thoroughly pizzled” pocket https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autofac https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autofac on the other hand Microsoft and Facebook are doing this all the time.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- noman-land 3y agoI agree they're not immune whatsoever. In fact I hold them to a higher standard than the others because it's their mission to do it, so their failures sting much harder. But I hold the others to zero standard. There is less than zero trust there. I expect to be abused by them because their mandate requires them to ignore my wishes. It's not a failure but a success to them.
- tapoxi 3y agoThat's the Mozilla Foundation, the Mozilla Corporation is the for-profit developer of Firefox that's owned by the Foundation. If Mozilla never established the Corporation I'd give them more slack, but from a "it's nonprofit" perspective it's on the same level as IKEA, which is also owned by a nonprofit foundation.
- kbelder 3y agoFunny that I trust the Mozilla Corporation more than I trust the Mozilla Foundation.
- barbariangrunge 3y agoTechnically, google doesn't sell people's data. It uses data to train AIs to predict people's behaviour, modify that behaviour, modify attitudes/beliefs (it's an ad company), and eventually replace people
- noman-land 3y agoThanks, I updated my original post because how they profit from the data is immaterial to the fact that they want it and they coax people into letting them collect it.
- shawnz 3y agoDoesn't that more general statement now apply to anyone that collects telemetry, even for "noble" purposes, like Mozilla?
- noman-land 3y agoYes, opt-in by default telemetry is unethical.
- kortilla 3y agoIt sells a direct derivative of the data though, which is targeted ads.
- astrange 3y ago"Non-profits" are still just as motivated to increase revenue as "for-profits". Most US hospitals are non-profits but you still see people complaining about them.
- pseudalopex 3y agoDid they remove public perception or did you quote something they didn't say?
- jeffbee 3y ago> I love Lynx because of this Pseudonymous user so concerned about privacy that they use the browser with by far the greatest density of exploitable flaws.
- StableAlkyne 3y agoFriend, it is okay to enjoy things. Lynx is just a cool project :)
- tombert 3y agoWell wait, I don't think jeffbee was saying it's bad to enjoy things, but rather that the person they were responding to was implying something, namely "Lynx is (in some way) better than Firefox because it doesn't take telemetry data." Lynx definitely takes less telemetry data than Firefox, but it also gets substantially fewer updates, including security updates. I think text-based browsing is pretty fun but I don't really use it in no small part because of the infrequency of updates.
- StableAlkyne 3y agoI can see how the post could be interpreted that way. I've added an edit at the bottom to clarify that I'm not suggesting people actually use it as they main one.
- s3p 3y agoThe person you are replying to is the same person that they are replying to. you can just say "you".
- tombert 3y agoI didn't see that! Silly me!
- JadeNB 3y ago> Pseudonymous user so concerned about privacy that they use the browser with by far the greatest density of exploitable flaws. "I love Lynx" is different from "I use Lynx for security-sensitive browsing," and "greatest density of publicly documented exploitable flaws" is, even if true (I don't know), not the same as "greatest density of exploitable flaws."
- kwanbix 3y agoHow do you expect companies to understand how their products are used for improvement purposes without telemetry? Honest question.
- mftrhu 3y agoThey could ask their users.
- mo_42 3y agoOr observe people how they interact with the browser. If they would observe my parents, they could learn a lot that cannot be captured by telemetry.
- kwanbix 3y agoSo how many users do you have to ask for it to be statistically relevant for a user base of 360 million users?
- eviks 3y agoHundreds? Increasing user base doesn't matter much for sample size
- JohnFen 3y agoOthers have answered this, but I just wanted to point out the software devs have been managing to understand how their products are used for improvement purposes from long before telemetry was a realistic possibility. Telemetry doesn't make it possible, it makes it less expensive.
- kwanbix 3y agoDo you think it is the same asking a small subset of users than having info on all the users? I work as a Product Manager, and trust me, it is not the same.
- 3y ago
- Zekio 3y agoEspecially considering that google and microsoft probably collects 10x the data
- chrisjc 3y agoWhile you're probably right and we should be concerned, I'd say what is more concerning that than the quantity is the content. Whenever I hear that an app is collecting telemetry I feel conflicted between leaving it on for maintainers to gain a better understanding of performance and potential issues, or off so that it's not used to profile me. It would be nice if telemetry was somehow simply differentiated through some app options.
- kccqzy 3y agoChromium is open source. And unsurprisingly all the data collection bits are open source too. (They call it UMA metrics in the codebase.) Search in the codebase for things like UMA_HISTOGRAM_ENUMERATION or SCOPED_UMA_HISTOGRAM_TIMER and with a free afternoon you'll have a pretty good idea what kind of telemetry Google really collects. Example: https://source.chromium.org/chromium/chromium/src/+/main:base/metrics/histogram_macros.h;l=297?q=SCOPED_UMA_H&sq=&ss=chromium https://source.chromium.org/chromium/chromium/src/+/main:bas...
- pornel 3y agoChrome is closed-source though. There’s no way to make a reproducible build of Chrome (the Google binary adds DRM and could be adding more). I’m mentioning this, because this open-closed ambiguity is a typical Google strategy. Similarly, Android in the AOSP flavor is open, but the OS that actually ships on phones is different.
- lxgr 3y agoHappy to see the top comment on a Mozilla/Firefox article not being somebody grinding their axe with Mozilla (and I say that as somebody definitely having a few) :)
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- g-b-r 3y agoSure it really led to great things on Firefox Android :facepalm:
- g-b-r 3y agoI invite people who downvoted to try it, I can't believe you have
- user3939382 3y agoI just don't like being bullshitted. Constant marketing about privacy while they're phoning home a bunch of data when you start and stop the browser. I did at some point find a doc page with a zillion steps to disable all of it but that doesn't remediate the hypocrisy IMHO.
- ceejayoz 3y agoA zillion? Preferences > Privacy > Firefox Data Collection and Use. Uncheck a couple boxes.
- user3939382 3y agoThat's some of it but not all of it. If you uncheck those and proxy FF when it's starting you'll see the chatter. I have the doc page I'm talking about somewhere but I have no idea where it is. Fully disabling it is a long complex process involving about:config. * Found this: https://github.com/K3V1991/Disable-Firefox-Telemetry-and-Data-Collection https://github.com/K3V1991/Disable-Firefox-Telemetry-and-Dat... I haven't compared their list to the one I've used before but it's along the same lines and explains the discrepancy between the config settings and Firefox's actual behavior.
- ceejayoz 3y agoThose largely appear to affect local collection of telemetry. https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/7k3r9u/mozilla_is_collecting_your_data_even_you_disabled/ https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/7k3r9u/mozilla_is_... > Telemetry data is stored locally by default. As long as the relevant options in the settings' UI are unchecked, or datareporting.healthreport.uploadEnabled is set to false in about:config, this data won't be sent. <https://medium.com/georg-fritzsche/data-preference-changes-in-firefox-58-2d5df9c428b5 https://medium.com/georg-fritzsche/data-preference-changes-i...> There's likely to still be some non-telemetry chatter, like checking for available Firefox/plugin updates etc.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 3y ago
- ad404b8a372f2b9 3y agoI don't think that data gave them anything more than what testing on a few consumer computers in different price ranges would have. (Edited, original comment read: "What more information does that give them than just buying a few computers at different price points?")
- lolinder 3y agoA vastly larger variety of different computers and computer setups than they could have come up with on their own.
- ad404b8a372f2b9 3y ago(Sorry I edited my comment before I saw your reply.) That doesn't seem very useful for the metrics shown in that article. For hard to find bugs sure, for 95th percentile calculations and so on you can just buy a few computers at a retail store and get the same information.
- astrange 3y agoNew computers don't behave like old computers, and it's not worth trying to guess why that might be. Could be anything running in the background, old NAND, old battery, low disk space, satellite internet… Once you do have a model of badness I agree it's better to try to set that up yourself.
- lolinder 3y agoThat can get you 95th percentile calculations for brand new computers that you bought from the store in 2023 that are running Firefox alone, but that doesn't help you understand what your performance will look like when you're running on a 10-year-old machine running Windows 7 while the user is also running Microsoft Word, Excel, and Outlook at the same time. Your P95 numbers aren't especially meaningful if you've only tested ~10 different PC configurations.
- sefeng 3y agoMaybe you get the same result, but with the real user data, you can confidently say the performance has been improved without an disclaimer saying the data was collected in-house.
- eviks 3y agoWhat's great about it? They can't tie to a specific website, the data is dirty with other factors (as they acknowledge themselves), so what's the benefit vs just testing in on an sample of actual websites to see what is slow?