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.
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.
Well, they learned: they fuck up, backtrack & apologize (it is free, no real impact, so no worries), and life goes on.
Apart from a market share that is continuously tending towards zero.
> the ad industry is not going away
But users do. Let them have a great faking love affair with the ad industry.
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.
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.
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?
Firefox compromising heralds its own irrelevance.
You might believe that the advertisers get less of your data if you use Firefox.
Similarly: you might be less likely to have your house burgled if there are locks on the doors and a burglar alarm, even though people with those things still get burgled sometimes. You might be less cold outdoors in winter if you wear a parka, even though it's still cold. You might be less bored if you buy/rent/stream some interesting books, music and movies, even though having those doesn't guarantee never being bored. You might be less likely to lose your next chess game if you practice tactics and learn openings, even though you'll still lose if you play Magnus Carlsen. You might be less likely to have a heart attack or stroke if you take those antihypertensives the doctor prescribed you, even though those are still tragically things that can happen to anyone. Etc., etc., etc.
Very few things are absolute and perfect. It's usually a matter of "less" versus "more".
This latest thing gives advertisers more information about me than they would have if Firefox didn't do it. (Unless I turn it off, which in fact I have done.) It doesn't give them very much information about me. I'm pretty sure they would get much more information about me if I switched to using Chrome (e.g., because Firefox supports better adblockers).
For the avoidance of doubt, I do think Mozilla should have made more noise about what they were doing, I do think there's a repeated pattern of them putting things into Firefox that their users don't really want and hoping no one will notice[1], I do think that says something bad about how Mozilla is run, and I would be happier if the Firefox project were run by people less inclined to do such things. But none of that means that you might as well use Chrome instead of Firefox, if you happen to value the things that Firefox still does better than Chrome.
[1] Actually, I think they know perfectly well that some users will notice, and they've decided it's overall better PR to do the thing quietly, wait for people to complain, and then say "oh, whoops, we should have been more open about this, we're so sorry and will totally not do the same thing again in six months".
Shortly as Chrome implements Privacy Sandbox, both Chrome and Firefox will support the same levels of advertising tracking. For Chrome, this is a privacy upgrade of sorts, but for Firefox, this is a definite downgrade.
As Firefox converges on Chrome in this area, the privacy advantage evaporates.
Chrome forces extensions to use "Manifest v3" rather than "v2", which cripples some ad-blockers; in particular, the full version of uBlock Origin will run on Firefox but not on Chrome. (I'm not sure of the details about the v2->v3 migration; maybe that isn't universally true yet. If not, it will be soon.)
"Reduces" and "evaporates" are not the same thing. I see the case for the former, not for the latter.
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.
I’m willing to put up with slowness and incompatability when I feel like firefox is on my side. Now? I’m going back to Safari.
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.
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.
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.
No shit.
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.
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.
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?
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
No, let's be very clear here: what Mozilla/Firefox did here was default users in to a setting without good notice on how to opt out.
This is different from what was said in this thread, which is making the setting do nothing while still collecting the data. If you disable the setting/opt out, then the data isn't being collected.
As a user of Firefox, I feel like I'm in a constant battle with Mozilla/FF to disable every new bad idea they have. Every time I'm forced into a surprise update I didn't ask for/try_to_install, something gets worse. This isn't an unusual state for commercial software, but Firefox is supposed to try to not be commercial.
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.
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
“That’s just politicians getting money from financial criminals.”
“That’s just police getting money from organized violence.”
“This is fine.”
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.
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???
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.
Instead, we have had Mozilla sprawling in numerous directions secondary to the browser and failing in nearly all of them.
If you dont grow at double digit percentages year of year, are you even trying?
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.
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.
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.
But these days, Chrome is plenty good enough for most people. Even if Firefox had a perfect privacy story and focused on their core users’ every whim, I don’t think their market share would grow.
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.
You're presenting it as though any change would be met with hostility, but the alternative is that they're only met with hostility because they keep making changes that hurt the users. A little while ago they announced that they were working on properly supporting vertical tabs and tab groups; that wasn't met with any hostility. Of course, in the same announcement they said they were planning to dumb down the rest of the interface even more, which was. But the point stands; they can get a positive reaction by making changes their users actually like, they just don't do that as often as they do the other thing.
There would be value in being the only browser to actually stop when users tell them no. But they seem incapable of listening.
I don't see how trying to find a privacy-preserving way of dealing with the ad conundrum makes them not a privacy-focused browser/company.
You'd need to otherwise cite something re: undisclosed telemetry, considering the project is open source... so I'm not sure how exactly it'd be undisclosed.
IIRC, when Firefox started, it was very similar to the full Mozilla Suite with some features removed (which is not surprising, since it started as a Mozilla Suite derivative and they shared a lot of code). It has a long lineage going back to the old-school Netscape Navigator.
It’s quite narcissistic how so many comments here are written with the premise that Mozilla is concerned with the author’s desires, and those of those that agree with them, above all others.
There’s also a lot of hubris implied in the assumption that there aren’t a large number of people that are just coming along for the rage-fest ride, and won’t care about this in 6 months.
Nobody here is special.
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.
https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/1e45mih/firef...
HN is also not the only bunch of nerds like that.
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.
Firefox exists and reached its peak because of the people that idealogically cared about the Web and interoperable,security, privacy, etc who contributed to and advocated for Firefox.
There's no need to imply that people don't comprehend things here. ;P
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.
They are trying to find a funding model that makes them independent from Google.
- Building a fast, privacy-oriented browser that keeps up with web standards and fixes security bugs takes people, organisation and therefore money. Yes, much more than that CEO salary.
- No one wants to buy for a browser.
- No one wants to pay a subscription fee for a browser.
So you are left with ads. Mozilla is trying to find a balance there between privacy and ads with a clearing house approach. People who hate ads out of principle scream. How should browser development be funded?
The one funding model they haven't experimented with at all is actually asking people to pay for Firefox. Donations or subscription, they haven't even tried it once.
And yet people will over and over again insist that that would never work. Doesn't that strike you as odd? They're willing to flail about trying thing after thing after thing that their users hate and yell about and they end up having to pull back, they're willing to burn credibility over and over again, but the one funding model that their users keep telling them they want they refuse to even try on the grounds it would never work.
I do expect that's the next step at Mozilla - locking features behind paywall with some premium plan. Cloud sync probably will fall into that basket. And if that eventually won't work - they'll surely announce it's time to "sunset".
Because it won't. And there is mountains of data to back it up. People will not pay if they don't have to.
Some people will, for sure, but to get those some people to carry the weight of "all the people" is totally untenable.
Besides, Chrome is "free".
They could easily gate off certain features behind a paid build, so either you pay or compile it yourself from source. Downstream packagers could of course do whatever they want (eg Debian). However, it creates a minor amount of friction for a relatively large fraction of the user base, and moreover sets the baseline expectation that this is not really "free as in beer", even though it remains "free as in freedom".
See also: Sublime Text, which, despite being closed-source, is 100% free-as-in-beer to use in perpetuity, and yet somehow they make enough money To not only continue development, but even start developing other products (Sublime Merge), even as their brand recognition wanes and their competitive advantage shrinks.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_C...
You can even donate money today: https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/donate/ From memory, Mozilla's spent years trying to get donations through asking people nicely and in relatively unobtrusive ways in-browser for years. You can even give monthly - a subscription, if you will.
Not only have they tried both donations and subscriptions, but their efforts have been resoundingly ignored. To the point where you are far from the first person to fault them for supposedly choosing to not do what they demonstrably do.
Perhaps people suggest that donations and subscriptions don't work well or reliably because there's history showing that.
I don't want a VPN. And I don't want to pay money to a Mozilla VPN of which some unspecified percentage will actually get used to pay for Firefox development (with the rest actually paying for the VPN). I honestly feel my money does more harm than good paying for the VPN because it creates a false impression of where the demand is.
I don't want a subscription to an unrelated service, I want a subscription to Firefox. I want my money to go into a stream that unambiguously shows my support for the single Mozilla project that I care about.
> You can even donate money today
That money will not (and I believe cannot) go to Firefox. As presently structured the corporation does all Firefox development, and the corporation cannot receive money from the foundation, so donations to Mozilla do nothing for Firefox.
> Not only have they tried both donations and subscriptions, but their efforts have been resoundingly ignored.
Not ignored, for the reasons stated above they haven't actually done what you say they've done.
Not really. Perhaps they know enough about this that they believe it wouldn't work. How much would you pay for Firefox per year? How many people would pay that figure?
It's like email. You need to get people over the mental hump. But then if you offer a good product, buyers will be happy they got over it.
Here you go! Insert credit card here.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30665913
If the Mozilla foundation creates a donation button with the condition that the money goes solely to browser development (no CEO salary or political activism) I will donate.
One of the most common Mozilla complaints I see on the web is that you cannot fund Firefox development directly. People want to give money to it, but cannot.
Which makes sense, I guess. Anecdotally, Mozilla is by far the company I know with the most vocal users that get completely ignored.
https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/2/24147007/google-paid-apple...
I've seen enough of:
Step 1 - outrageous move Step 2 - apologize, progressively pull back Step 3 - people spread word they made it better Step 4 - stick to still outrageous but comparatively better "middle" move
To really give it any excuse anymore. And so have you. If "Unity" tells you nothing... I'd like that rock, please, I'll need it to survive the incoming 4 years of social media.
I'm not saying its impossible for apologies to be in bad faith, just that if it becomes impossible to apologize and move on after making a mistake, it becomes impossible to do anything productive.
Society will not collapse if we start holding these monsters to account; the opposite.
Otherwise this is just vengence. If you never forgive there is no rational reason for corporations (or anyone) to stop doing whatever objectionable things they are doing, since it would already be a sunk cost.
We always see the decisions that blow up, but we dont notice the thousands of decisions nobody cares about. Sometimes it really does look like just another minor feature request at coding time.
Agreed in general, disagreed in the specific Mozilla case. They’re an internet-related company where “privacy” is one of the stated core goals, yet they’ve stuck their foot in their mouth so often they could open a shoe shop. Failing to see this one is at best incompetence.
"We should have communicated more" seems like a passive-aggressive way of saying "Oh, you poor simpletons... We should have talked slower, used more, simple words, and been more persuasive. We failed to properly explain why you're wrong. If only we did that, you'd more readily accept what we're giving you."
Please. This is never about learning and better communication. This is universal corporate English for: "you got us, but we really don't give a flying ef and we will fulfill our goals step by step - no matter what you say".
Oh maaaaaaaaaaaan do I despise hearing variations on this "non-pology."
It's never "Wow, we fucked up by doing something harmful to you." It's always, "My bad, I failed to explain exactly why you're wrong to think this is harming you. I take total responsibility for not explaining why this is actually good for you. I'll try again."
One possibility is they knew there would be an outcry but estimated that the loss in user support because of it would be limited enough that the upside of having the majority of users with the setting left on wins.
What isn’t clear, in retrospect or otherwise, is why companies/apps/services need to keep learning this lesson. The user outcry was utterly predictable from even before the first web article was out. 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. Neither is good.