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> The fact that no one with decision power at Mozilla saw it coming is worrying: either they have zero understanding of people’s concerns for privacy or they do

> The fact that no one with decision power at Mozilla saw it coming is worrying: either they have zero understanding of people’s concerns for privacy or they don’t care. Or the third option: they feel the tradeoff of HN & co's criticism style is not a big deal in the end. Criticism of Mozilla in general is very warranted right now, but the way(s) in which everyone is doing so just feels very out of touch with the actual situation. ;P They're - by their own words - trying to do something in a privacy preserving way because the ad industry is not going away. They might fuck it up at first, and that's why it's an experiment. It's also possible to disable it, it's not like you're trapped in it. This thread in general feels like it leaves Mozilla no room to experiment or find any form of growth. People want them to be "just a browser" but then also expect them to be stewards of the web - and then cry foul when they actually try to find a setup that fits into the current model of the web.

pdimitar 2y ago
> It's also possible to disable it, it's not like you're trapped in it. Or so they say, in order to make people be OK with it. They might play the waiting game and in a year or two will make the setting not do anything and still collect / send data, hoping that by that time people have forgotten.
- Klonoar 2y ago
  There is so much hypothetical-borderline-conspiracy-theory packed in to this single comment that I cannot find a charitable response. I'd be fine to continue the discussion if you can find a way to engage without assuming that the people who build one of the last checks on the open internet are somehow trying to maliciously invade your privacy.
  - closewith 2y ago
    The days of Mozilla having earned the benefit of the doubt are long gone for most people. The person you replied to made a reasonable point and your response reads as defensive and dismissive. Do you have an interest in Mozilla we should know about?
    - Klonoar 2y ago
      Eh, I don’t think my comment is defensive. I also could’ve just ignored the comment. I explained to them that I’m open to discussing but there’s nothing to be gained when the comment starts off in conspiracy theory. It’s an open source project, people will 100% notice if they tried to do what the parent comment is suggesting.
      - closewith 2y ago
        It certainly reads defensively. > It’s an open source project, people will 100% notice if they tried to do what the parent comment is suggesting. No-one thinks they'll lie about it. They'd announce it quietly just like this change, letting the fuss blow over. The average user would never even realise and Firefox would continue on its journey towards user hostility.
        Klonoar 2y ago
        You’re certainly welcome to read it however you’d like. OP specifically said “make the setting do nothing while still collecting the data”. I don’t know about you, but a setting that acts like that would be akin to lying. The comment chain is pretty clear here IMO.
        closewith 2y ago
        > OP specifically said “make the setting do nothing while still collecting the data”. I don’t know about you, but a setting that acts like that would be akin to lying. Well, that is what Firefox did here. They created a new feature, defaulted it to on, in direct contradiction to user choices. We know this because this Web Site Advertising feature defaults to on even where the user has the strictest level of tracking protection enabled and even when the DNT option is selected. Even so, Mozilla has decided that this form of tracking is not covered by those clear signals of user intent. So why not believe that Mozilla will do this again. Deprecate existing tracking choices and enable Web Site Advertising tracking for everyone. Like this change, it would be announced and decried and ultimately used by the majority of users who don't follow browser changelogs. What will happen is that privacy advocates like me will recommend not to use Firefox, as it's functionally equivalant to Chrome is this respect and far less supported, and Firefox will continue to die. This pains me as a former contributor and advocate, but it's almost inevitable now unless a privacy-focused non-profit can fork Firefox and leave Mozilla to it's decline. I would even pay for a Firefox fork, but I will never donate to or purchase again from Mozilla.
  - pdimitar 2y ago
    Firefox is dependent on Google for ages, that should tell you all you need to know about "conspiracies". I am not interested in a discussion with a person who gives the benefit of the doubt of a company who has clearly not only made a Faustian deal but is now looking to expand partnership with the people that nobody wants tracking their machines and activities. Because as we both know, in the entire history of humanity there were NEVER any conspiracies when there is money to be made, right? Wink wink.
    - Klonoar 2y ago
      Well, no, that doesn’t tell us anything about conspiracies. That’s just Mozilla getting money from Google. You can argue that it’s problematic from the stance of Google using Firefox to argue they don’t hold a monopoly - and I’d agree with you there. That deal with Google isn’t enough to leap to the conspiracy theory here though. The ad industry isn’t going away, Mozilla seems to want to try to make it work for all parties. If you want to let perfect be the enemy of good, though, go for it. shrug
      - thoroughburro 2y ago
        > That’s just Mozilla getting money from Google. “That’s just politicians getting money from financial criminals.” “That’s just police getting money from organized violence.” “This is fine.”
  - beeboobaa3 2y ago
    You're new to the internet and bigtech, huh? If not, what rock have you been living under?
  - yencabulator 2y ago
    If Firefox was the last check on the open internet, Librewolf wouldn't have to exist.
- closewith 2y ago
  They don't need to. Defaults are retained by the majority of users, who will never know about this change.
chiefalchemist 2y ago
> This thread in general feels like it leaves Mozilla no room to experiment or find any form of growth. Mozilla is welcome to experiment. The issue here is: - The default opts the client in instead of the client making that choice to be a Guinea pig in the experiment - I get emails almost weekly that amount to Mozilla playing the role of internet privacy police. They *are* well aware of the rights and wrongs. Are they going to call out themselves? - As for growth? How about paid pro-privacy email hosting? And a suite of applications (a la Google docs)? Advertising might not be going away but there are still opportunities that align with Mozilla's ideals and brand... And they're too busy being hypocritical internet police???
- Klonoar 2y ago
  > The default opts the client in instead of the client making that choice to be a Guinea pig in the experiment I think this is a reasonable critique, even if I personally don't find it a big deal. If it's privacy preserving, I don't necessarily give a shit if it's defaulted on - especially if there's a way to disable it. (IMO, defaulting it on and then widely announcing how to disable it is what they should have done, and their bungled communications on this is biting them) > I get emails almost weekly that amount to Mozilla playing the role of internet privacy police. They are* well aware of the rights and wrongs. Are they going to call out themselves?* Why would they call themselves out here...? They have stated, very bluntly, that they are trying to do something in a privacy preserving way. They are acting in line with their stated intentions/role/etc. > As for growth? How about paid pro-privacy email hosting? And a suite of applications (a la Google docs)? Advertising might not be going away but there are still opportunities that align with Mozilla's ideals and brand... And they're too busy being hypocritical internet police??? Those are wholly separate business ventures, whereas dealing with the advertising behemoth is an unfortunate part of the browser ecosystem today. Someone, somewhere, is going to have to contend with this - and Mozilla is somewhat uniquely positioned to explore here. If you think Apple or Google are going to do it without perverse incentives, then I don't know what to tell you.
  - et1337 2y ago
    We all lost our minds when Google tried to pull their privacy-preserving Federated Learning of Cohorts thing. I expect an even bigger outcry when Firefox, whose entire brand and reason for existence is privacy, quietly tries to do the same thing.
cqqxo4zV46cp 2y ago
[flagged]
- latexr 2y ago
  That is incredibly reductive and entirely misses the scope of the issue. It isn’t just HN. In case you’ve missed it, the article is not an HN page but a separate website. The comment I replied to linked to Reddit. It’s all over Mastodon. I’ve seen other blogs and publications commenting on it too. Yes, of course a large number of people won’t talk about this in six weeks, let alone six months. On the other hand you’ll have ex-hardcore fans complaining about it for over six years. I still see people talking about the Mr Robot debacle and the other crap Mozilla has pulled to this day. If anything, Mozilla is more susceptible to this backlash than the average tech company. Regular computer users don’t give a rat’s ass about Firefox. The people Mozilla needs to convince are exactly the ones they keep alienating.
- jeltz 2y ago
  They might be correct but this thinking is also how Mozilla lost most of their German market share due to Cliqz. They assumed people would not care but they did. Also this is trending on /r/all on Reddit right now. https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/1e45mih/firefox_enables_adtracking_for_all_users/ https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/1e45mih/firef...
- ahartmetz 2y ago
  This bunch of nerds creates software, including for the web, and sometimes there's an option to test it on Firefox or not. Nerds also recommend browsers to friends and family. HN is also not the only bunch of nerds like that.
- pdpi 2y ago
  If this were, say, Adobe, I’d agree with you. HN as a community doesn’t have much clout in the design or video space. This is Mozilla we’re talking about, though. HN is exactly the sort of audience they need on their side. That bunch of nerds is the same group they relied upon to evangelise for them during the IE era.
phicoh 2y ago
Firefox market share is going down. One reason is that the people who would be promoting Firefox aren't. Personally I feel mostly ashamed to admit I'm using Firefox. In theory Firefox is great. In practice they coming up with new ways to treat their core user base badly.
- Klonoar 2y ago
  > One reason is that the people who would be promoting Firefox aren't. Individual promotion of Firefox worked very well when the browser(s) it was trying to displace were effectively frozen in time. Chrome (et al) and Safari are not those browsers. The average user isn't going to get a markedly different experience by switching to Firefox.
  - phicoh 2y ago
    That is because Mozilla has consistently moved Firefox in the direction of a Chrome clone. When Firefox started is was not a copy of existing browsers. There is no reason it would have to be now. But they have rejected their core users. So now the only option left is a Chrome clone because that is what people are used to.
    - Klonoar 2y ago
      Even if it was a credible idea, how exactly do you think that Firefox - the browser that the minute anything changes, the internet blows up over - would significantly alter their product in a way to differentiate themselves from Chrome? This isn’t even getting into base level stuff like available engineering resources, or the scenarios where the other vendors often control or have deals to give them favorable distribution on platforms. This isn’t the IE6 era. It’s a significantly different and harder problem.
      - Karunamon 2y ago
        For one, not throwing out their only differentiated advantage versus Chrome. For two, not taking the option that removes user control and customization whenever there is an option to do so. They could have been the privacy-focused browser, but it is still full of crap like this and various bits of undisclosed telemetry. There would be value in being the only browser to actually stop when users tell them no. But they seem incapable of listening.
latexr 2y ago
> Or the third option: they feel the tradeoff of HN & co's criticism style is not a big deal in the end. That’s the second option: they don’t care. > This thread in general feels like it leaves Mozilla no room to experiment If you you’re going to experiment with something that’s going to cause this amount of backlash (and my criticism is that they didn’t take the obvious reaction into account), you show a dialog on first run that tells you what the feature is, perhaps include a “Learn More” link, and have an option to accept or deny. You can even have the former as the default. And do it in your betas first. Would that still cause some backlash? Possibly. But it would’ve been significantly milder and you would have seen a lot more defence of Mozilla for not doing without asking. Mozilla in particular is frequently pulling crap like this and getting flak for it. They have to constantly apologise and back track. After a while you’d expect they learned something.
- vetinari 2y ago
  > Mozilla in particular is frequently pulling crap like this and getting flak for it. They have to constantly apologise and back track. After a while you’d expect they learned something. Well, they learned: they fuck up, backtrack & apologize (it is free, no real impact, so no worries), and life goes on.
  - latexr 2y ago
    > no real impact Apart from a market share that is continuously tending towards zero.
    - account42 2y ago
      That hasn't impacted their salaries so far though, especially that of the leadership.
      - AwaAwa 2y ago
        Which is all that matters, in Google's schema of things.
  - 2y ago
consp 2y ago
> the ad industry is not going away That's the start of full blown stockholm syndrome. No data is ever fully anonymous, don't pretend otherwise. So no data should be send at all.
- Klonoar 2y ago
  What you call Stockholm syndrome, I call reality. ;P This is an area that we are stuck contending with. Legal solutions are needed here but that path is mired by complex and powerful lobbying. If Mozilla can push for a more private or more protective - even if not fully private or fully protective - then I’d like to see where it goes.
  - freeone3000 2y ago
    Or they could just not do this shit. Completely refuse to help your enemies. Actually support their users.
    - Barrin92 2y ago
      Firefox has 3% market share. Completely refusing to engage with your enemies only works when you have the actual guns to back that attitude up. If you refuse to engage with the ad industry they just ignore you. Oh and the company that owns a large part of the world's ad industry and owns the browser that has 65% market share also pays like 90% of your bills. I mean, what's step two of your glorious plan to charge fists raised into battle?
      - nubinetwork 2y ago
        Maybe they would have a better market share if they weren't constantly pulling this shit every two or three years...
        lucianbr 2y ago
        I know it feels right to say that. But really, do you think the majority of people who switched from Firefox to Chrome did it because FF did not address their privacy concerns? Seems ridiculous. However bad FF is, Chrome is much worse. It seems far more likely that the remaining 3% are the few people who care, and therefore, "pulling this shit" did not cause the current market share.
arepublicadoceu 2y ago
> Or the third option: they feel the tradeoff of HN & co's criticism style is not a big deal in the end. Well, right now, with their dwindling market cap, I feel like their only userbase is HN & co's type of user. They repeatedly failed to increase their user base with non privacy conscious adjacent communities. So antagonizing the ONLY folks that go through the trouble of installing a non default browser to have a worse user experience seems like a big brain moment.
- closewith 2y ago
  I wonder what the market share in that segment is? From my experience, startup types almost exclusively use Chrome or Safari. Firefox doesn't even register with most devs.
- bee_rider 2y ago
  It seems somewhat questionable whether or not it is possible to sustain something as complex as Firefox based on users like us. There might not be enough, or enough people willing to pay. They’d be really screwed if Google didn’t give them a good deal. Somewhat wondering if Google just keeps them around to stave off the appearance of being a monopoly. The web seems to have gotten pretty unsustainable in general. Might consider upgrading to Lynx or something like that.
  - arepublicadoceu 2y ago
    > It seems somewhat questionable whether or not it is possible to sustain something as complex as Firefox based on users like us. I have this crazy theory that Firefox could be completely sustained by users willing to pay for it. I mean... Mozilla Co definitely couldn't be sustained by users money only, but Firefox could. The only path I can see for a healthy web (if this is even possible right now) is to completely liberate Firefox from Mozilla's shackles and mismanagement. A free and open-source browser should be treated more like a public good, such as a Linux distribution, than a money-making machine.
  - pixxel 2y ago
    >Somewhat wondering if Google just keeps them around to stave off the appearance of being a monopoly. No shit.
beeboobaa3 2y ago
> trying to do something in a privacy preserving way because the ad industry is not going away they're bending for the ad industry because they want their money. they could also just keep blocking their tracking and call it a day.
mihaaly 2y ago
They introduced quite a bit of privacy aware of measures, quite effective ones, so pretending they are stupid is not really beleivable. > the ad industry is not going away But users do. Let them have a great faking love affair with the ad industry.
account42 2y ago
Yes, Mozilla should not be experimenting on users without explicit consent. Have things really gotten so bad that this is incomprehensible?
- Klonoar 2y ago
  I have already noted in my other comments that I think the desire for opt-in and/or way more notice with how to opt out is a very reasonable take, even if I don't necessarily agree with it. There's no need to imply that people don't comprehend things here. ;P
Y_Y 2y ago
> People ... expect them to be stewards of the web Do people really expect that? I'm glad they're part of whatwg etc., but I'd much prefer they just made a good browser instead of tooting their own horns about how much good they're doing for society. In the end I think society would have been better off if they'd just focus on good tech like Gecko/Servo and Rust and not bothered with all their side stuff.
jonaustin 2y ago
or y'know make it _opt in_ instead of making basically hiding it so if you don't know, you're just gonna be part of the experiment

pdimitar 2y ago

> It's also possible to disable it, it's not like you're trapped in it. Or so they say, in order to make people be OK with it. They might play the waiting game and in a year or two will make the setting not do anything and still collect / send data, hoping that by that time people have forgotten.

Klonoar 2y ago
There is so much hypothetical-borderline-conspiracy-theory packed in to this single comment that I cannot find a charitable response. I'd be fine to continue the discussion if you can find a way to engage without assuming that the people who build one of the last checks on the open internet are somehow trying to maliciously invade your privacy.
- closewith 2y ago
  The days of Mozilla having earned the benefit of the doubt are long gone for most people. The person you replied to made a reasonable point and your response reads as defensive and dismissive. Do you have an interest in Mozilla we should know about?
  - Klonoar 2y ago
    Eh, I don’t think my comment is defensive. I also could’ve just ignored the comment. I explained to them that I’m open to discussing but there’s nothing to be gained when the comment starts off in conspiracy theory. It’s an open source project, people will 100% notice if they tried to do what the parent comment is suggesting.
    - closewith 2y ago
      It certainly reads defensively. > It’s an open source project, people will 100% notice if they tried to do what the parent comment is suggesting. No-one thinks they'll lie about it. They'd announce it quietly just like this change, letting the fuss blow over. The average user would never even realise and Firefox would continue on its journey towards user hostility.
      - Klonoar 2y ago
        You’re certainly welcome to read it however you’d like. OP specifically said “make the setting do nothing while still collecting the data”. I don’t know about you, but a setting that acts like that would be akin to lying. The comment chain is pretty clear here IMO.
        closewith 2y ago
        > OP specifically said “make the setting do nothing while still collecting the data”. I don’t know about you, but a setting that acts like that would be akin to lying. Well, that is what Firefox did here. They created a new feature, defaulted it to on, in direct contradiction to user choices. We know this because this Web Site Advertising feature defaults to on even where the user has the strictest level of tracking protection enabled and even when the DNT option is selected. Even so, Mozilla has decided that this form of tracking is not covered by those clear signals of user intent. So why not believe that Mozilla will do this again. Deprecate existing tracking choices and enable Web Site Advertising tracking for everyone. Like this change, it would be announced and decried and ultimately used by the majority of users who don't follow browser changelogs. What will happen is that privacy advocates like me will recommend not to use Firefox, as it's functionally equivalant to Chrome is this respect and far less supported, and Firefox will continue to die. This pains me as a former contributor and advocate, but it's almost inevitable now unless a privacy-focused non-profit can fork Firefox and leave Mozilla to it's decline. I would even pay for a Firefox fork, but I will never donate to or purchase again from Mozilla.
- pdimitar 2y ago
  Firefox is dependent on Google for ages, that should tell you all you need to know about "conspiracies". I am not interested in a discussion with a person who gives the benefit of the doubt of a company who has clearly not only made a Faustian deal but is now looking to expand partnership with the people that nobody wants tracking their machines and activities. Because as we both know, in the entire history of humanity there were NEVER any conspiracies when there is money to be made, right? Wink wink.
  - Klonoar 2y ago
    Well, no, that doesn’t tell us anything about conspiracies. That’s just Mozilla getting money from Google. You can argue that it’s problematic from the stance of Google using Firefox to argue they don’t hold a monopoly - and I’d agree with you there. That deal with Google isn’t enough to leap to the conspiracy theory here though. The ad industry isn’t going away, Mozilla seems to want to try to make it work for all parties. If you want to let perfect be the enemy of good, though, go for it. shrug
    - thoroughburro 2y ago
      > That’s just Mozilla getting money from Google. “That’s just politicians getting money from financial criminals.” “That’s just police getting money from organized violence.” “This is fine.”
- beeboobaa3 2y ago
  You're new to the internet and bigtech, huh? If not, what rock have you been living under?
- yencabulator 2y ago
  If Firefox was the last check on the open internet, Librewolf wouldn't have to exist.
closewith 2y ago
They don't need to. Defaults are retained by the majority of users, who will never know about this change.

chiefalchemist 2y ago

> This thread in general feels like it leaves Mozilla no room to experiment or find any form of growth. Mozilla is welcome to experiment. The issue here is: - The default opts the client in instead of the client making that choice to be a Guinea pig in the experiment - I get emails almost weekly that amount to Mozilla playing the role of internet privacy police. They *are* well aware of the rights and wrongs. Are they going to call out themselves? - As for growth? How about paid pro-privacy email hosting? And a suite of applications (a la Google docs)? Advertising might not be going away but there are still opportunities that align with Mozilla's ideals and brand... And they're too busy being hypocritical internet police???

Klonoar 2y ago
> The default opts the client in instead of the client making that choice to be a Guinea pig in the experiment I think this is a reasonable critique, even if I personally don't find it a big deal. If it's privacy preserving, I don't necessarily give a shit if it's defaulted on - especially if there's a way to disable it. (IMO, defaulting it on and then widely announcing how to disable it is what they should have done, and their bungled communications on this is biting them) > I get emails almost weekly that amount to Mozilla playing the role of internet privacy police. They are* well aware of the rights and wrongs. Are they going to call out themselves?* Why would they call themselves out here...? They have stated, very bluntly, that they are trying to do something in a privacy preserving way. They are acting in line with their stated intentions/role/etc. > As for growth? How about paid pro-privacy email hosting? And a suite of applications (a la Google docs)? Advertising might not be going away but there are still opportunities that align with Mozilla's ideals and brand... And they're too busy being hypocritical internet police??? Those are wholly separate business ventures, whereas dealing with the advertising behemoth is an unfortunate part of the browser ecosystem today. Someone, somewhere, is going to have to contend with this - and Mozilla is somewhat uniquely positioned to explore here. If you think Apple or Google are going to do it without perverse incentives, then I don't know what to tell you.
- et1337 2y ago
  We all lost our minds when Google tried to pull their privacy-preserving Federated Learning of Cohorts thing. I expect an even bigger outcry when Firefox, whose entire brand and reason for existence is privacy, quietly tries to do the same thing.

cqqxo4zV46cp 2y ago

[flagged]

latexr 2y ago
That is incredibly reductive and entirely misses the scope of the issue. It isn’t just HN. In case you’ve missed it, the article is not an HN page but a separate website. The comment I replied to linked to Reddit. It’s all over Mastodon. I’ve seen other blogs and publications commenting on it too. Yes, of course a large number of people won’t talk about this in six weeks, let alone six months. On the other hand you’ll have ex-hardcore fans complaining about it for over six years. I still see people talking about the Mr Robot debacle and the other crap Mozilla has pulled to this day. If anything, Mozilla is more susceptible to this backlash than the average tech company. Regular computer users don’t give a rat’s ass about Firefox. The people Mozilla needs to convince are exactly the ones they keep alienating.
jeltz 2y ago
They might be correct but this thinking is also how Mozilla lost most of their German market share due to Cliqz. They assumed people would not care but they did. Also this is trending on /r/all on Reddit right now. https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/1e45mih/firefox_enables_adtracking_for_all_users/ https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/1e45mih/firef...
ahartmetz 2y ago
This bunch of nerds creates software, including for the web, and sometimes there's an option to test it on Firefox or not. Nerds also recommend browsers to friends and family. HN is also not the only bunch of nerds like that.
pdpi 2y ago
If this were, say, Adobe, I’d agree with you. HN as a community doesn’t have much clout in the design or video space. This is Mozilla we’re talking about, though. HN is exactly the sort of audience they need on their side. That bunch of nerds is the same group they relied upon to evangelise for them during the IE era.

phicoh 2y ago

Firefox market share is going down. One reason is that the people who would be promoting Firefox aren't. Personally I feel mostly ashamed to admit I'm using Firefox. In theory Firefox is great. In practice they coming up with new ways to treat their core user base badly.

Klonoar 2y ago
> One reason is that the people who would be promoting Firefox aren't. Individual promotion of Firefox worked very well when the browser(s) it was trying to displace were effectively frozen in time. Chrome (et al) and Safari are not those browsers. The average user isn't going to get a markedly different experience by switching to Firefox.
- phicoh 2y ago
  That is because Mozilla has consistently moved Firefox in the direction of a Chrome clone. When Firefox started is was not a copy of existing browsers. There is no reason it would have to be now. But they have rejected their core users. So now the only option left is a Chrome clone because that is what people are used to.
  - Klonoar 2y ago
    Even if it was a credible idea, how exactly do you think that Firefox - the browser that the minute anything changes, the internet blows up over - would significantly alter their product in a way to differentiate themselves from Chrome? This isn’t even getting into base level stuff like available engineering resources, or the scenarios where the other vendors often control or have deals to give them favorable distribution on platforms. This isn’t the IE6 era. It’s a significantly different and harder problem.
    - Karunamon 2y ago
      For one, not throwing out their only differentiated advantage versus Chrome. For two, not taking the option that removes user control and customization whenever there is an option to do so. They could have been the privacy-focused browser, but it is still full of crap like this and various bits of undisclosed telemetry. There would be value in being the only browser to actually stop when users tell them no. But they seem incapable of listening.

latexr 2y ago

> Or the third option: they feel the tradeoff of HN & co's criticism style is not a big deal in the end. That’s the second option: they don’t care. > This thread in general feels like it leaves Mozilla no room to experiment If you you’re going to experiment with something that’s going to cause this amount of backlash (and my criticism is that they didn’t take the obvious reaction into account), you show a dialog on first run that tells you what the feature is, perhaps include a “Learn More” link, and have an option to accept or deny. You can even have the former as the default. And do it in your betas first. Would that still cause some backlash? Possibly. But it would’ve been significantly milder and you would have seen a lot more defence of Mozilla for not doing without asking. Mozilla in particular is frequently pulling crap like this and getting flak for it. They have to constantly apologise and back track. After a while you’d expect they learned something.

vetinari 2y ago
> Mozilla in particular is frequently pulling crap like this and getting flak for it. They have to constantly apologise and back track. After a while you’d expect they learned something. Well, they learned: they fuck up, backtrack & apologize (it is free, no real impact, so no worries), and life goes on.
- latexr 2y ago
  > no real impact Apart from a market share that is continuously tending towards zero.
  - account42 2y ago
    That hasn't impacted their salaries so far though, especially that of the leadership.
    - AwaAwa 2y ago
      Which is all that matters, in Google's schema of things.
- 2y ago

consp 2y ago

> the ad industry is not going away That's the start of full blown stockholm syndrome. No data is ever fully anonymous, don't pretend otherwise. So no data should be send at all.

Klonoar 2y ago
What you call Stockholm syndrome, I call reality. ;P This is an area that we are stuck contending with. Legal solutions are needed here but that path is mired by complex and powerful lobbying. If Mozilla can push for a more private or more protective - even if not fully private or fully protective - then I’d like to see where it goes.
- freeone3000 2y ago
  Or they could just not do this shit. Completely refuse to help your enemies. Actually support their users.
  - Barrin92 2y ago
    Firefox has 3% market share. Completely refusing to engage with your enemies only works when you have the actual guns to back that attitude up. If you refuse to engage with the ad industry they just ignore you. Oh and the company that owns a large part of the world's ad industry and owns the browser that has 65% market share also pays like 90% of your bills. I mean, what's step two of your glorious plan to charge fists raised into battle?
    - nubinetwork 2y ago
      Maybe they would have a better market share if they weren't constantly pulling this shit every two or three years...
      - lucianbr 2y ago
        I know it feels right to say that. But really, do you think the majority of people who switched from Firefox to Chrome did it because FF did not address their privacy concerns? Seems ridiculous. However bad FF is, Chrome is much worse. It seems far more likely that the remaining 3% are the few people who care, and therefore, "pulling this shit" did not cause the current market share.

arepublicadoceu 2y ago

> Or the third option: they feel the tradeoff of HN & co's criticism style is not a big deal in the end. Well, right now, with their dwindling market cap, I feel like their only userbase is HN & co's type of user. They repeatedly failed to increase their user base with non privacy conscious adjacent communities. So antagonizing the ONLY folks that go through the trouble of installing a non default browser to have a worse user experience seems like a big brain moment.

closewith 2y ago
I wonder what the market share in that segment is? From my experience, startup types almost exclusively use Chrome or Safari. Firefox doesn't even register with most devs.
bee_rider 2y ago
It seems somewhat questionable whether or not it is possible to sustain something as complex as Firefox based on users like us. There might not be enough, or enough people willing to pay. They’d be really screwed if Google didn’t give them a good deal. Somewhat wondering if Google just keeps them around to stave off the appearance of being a monopoly. The web seems to have gotten pretty unsustainable in general. Might consider upgrading to Lynx or something like that.
- arepublicadoceu 2y ago
  > It seems somewhat questionable whether or not it is possible to sustain something as complex as Firefox based on users like us. I have this crazy theory that Firefox could be completely sustained by users willing to pay for it. I mean... Mozilla Co definitely couldn't be sustained by users money only, but Firefox could. The only path I can see for a healthy web (if this is even possible right now) is to completely liberate Firefox from Mozilla's shackles and mismanagement. A free and open-source browser should be treated more like a public good, such as a Linux distribution, than a money-making machine.
- pixxel 2y ago
  >Somewhat wondering if Google just keeps them around to stave off the appearance of being a monopoly. No shit.

beeboobaa3 2y ago

> trying to do something in a privacy preserving way because the ad industry is not going away they're bending for the ad industry because they want their money. they could also just keep blocking their tracking and call it a day.

mihaaly 2y ago

They introduced quite a bit of privacy aware of measures, quite effective ones, so pretending they are stupid is not really beleivable. > the ad industry is not going away But users do. Let them have a great faking love affair with the ad industry.

account42 2y ago

Yes, Mozilla should not be experimenting on users without explicit consent. Have things really gotten so bad that this is incomprehensible?

Klonoar 2y ago
I have already noted in my other comments that I think the desire for opt-in and/or way more notice with how to opt out is a very reasonable take, even if I don't necessarily agree with it. There's no need to imply that people don't comprehend things here. ;P

Y_Y 2y ago

> People ... expect them to be stewards of the web Do people really expect that? I'm glad they're part of whatwg etc., but I'd much prefer they just made a good browser instead of tooting their own horns about how much good they're doing for society. In the end I think society would have been better off if they'd just focus on good tech like Gecko/Servo and Rust and not bothered with all their side stuff.

jonaustin 2y ago

or y'know make it _opt in_ instead of making basically hiding it so if you don't know, you're just gonna be part of the experiment