> Excited to share the launch of @mozilla @firefox Tiles program, the first of our user-enhancing programs
To call advertisements "user-enhancing" is an affront and betrays values like privacy that Mozilla claims to espouse
I do not (now -- at the time that person made that tweet, I did, but not on the browser) work at Mozilla.
However. The "tiles" concept was literally an experiment in whether it's possible to construct an ad system that does respect privacy.
The basic idea was:
* Advertisers submit their ads to Mozilla. Mozilla wraps them up into "bundles", made up of a bunch of different ads along with metadata to use in determining which to show.
* The browser downloads the "bundles" from Mozilla, and caches them locally.
* The browser, based on local data only it has access to, and the metadata in the bundles, decides which ads to show.
In other words, unlike a Google-style model where the ads are stored remote, loaded on demand, and the decision of what to show is made on the server side, this stored all ad content locally and the decision of what to show was also made entirely locally. So neither the advertiser nor the distributor could know whether a particular person saw an ad or (if they happened to) why the decision was made to show them that ad rather than a different one.
You may not like that, and you're free not to like it. But to argue that it "betrays" privacy is simply factually false. And Mozilla's mission is, in large part, to find ways to advance and sustain the web in ways that respect the users. Trying to develop a privacy-respecting way to deliver ads -- since so much of the web is dependent on ads -- is entirely within that mission.
Running a company by polling random employees is not an established successful management style. Its only you who is suggesting it, and then claiming that because they didn't do it, its a bad sign.
A developer is not a subject matter expert on how to market a product. Maybe you can restate your opinion.
Most development experience I have had (open source, exclusively) comes with continual interaction with, and and feedback from, a subset of users who use the software. This subset is populated mostly by power users, those who rely on the software for work, and those who use it regularly. They are the ones who understand which needs the software is meeting and which it is failing to meet, and who ask for intelligent and sensible features to be added.
The marketing departments don't have this built in compass. They create ideas that they think will be profitable to the company, and they simply don't have the necessary connection with the users and with the software to know which of these ideas will be perceived as awful by the user.
The ones creating the software are the subject matter experts on what that software should do, how it should behave, and what the users will find most useful, in this instance.
The marketers are subject matter experts on... Other stuff? Advertisements and buzzwords and increasing revenues by targeting certain demographics of peoples? I have experience with the marketing side of business that has perhaps reflected poorly on that profession, so I'd love to hear from anyone that can fill my knowledge gap.
He's suggesting that the most simple, stupid check one could think of (polling random employees) would already have shown this to be a terrible idea. They didn't even go that far. That is indeed a bad sign.
What are you basing this on?
I'm just a FF user, and I don't think it was a terrible idea, even though I personally wouldn't have gone that route.
Sure, and not doing any of that isn't a "terrible sign" as the OP claimed. Which is the point I'm countering.
https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/08/09/the-joel-test-12-s...
That's brilliant!
"grab random people in your hallway and see if they approve of the new developer you hired" - HR
"grab random people in your hallway and see if they approve of the fan choice for the new cafeteria's HVAC system " - Building Management
"grab random people in your hallway and see if they approve of the calculations in the spreadsheets that the company CFO produced". - Finance department.
Hey, I think you're on to something here. We could eliminate entire departments here ! :)
Maybe it needs to cost $100k for someone in a suit to say "ask your employees, make use of their knowledge" before it sounds respectable?
This clearly wouldn’t work for a consumer product like a web browser.
They are due to poor understanding of your own userbase. Poor communication with users and employees. Complete lack of judgement.
These are sticks Mozilla puts in its own wheels. It's hard to make money, but it's easy to know what not to do. Simply asking your employees: "Is this a good idea?" would have yielded a clear "Fuck no". That they did not do that (or did, but chose to ignore it) is a terrible sign, open source or not.