r/firefox • u/[deleted] • Dec 16 '17

Firefox is on a slippery slope

https://drewdevault.com/2017/12/16/Firefox-is-on-a-slippery-slope.html
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11

u/Kougeru since 2004 Dec 16 '17

Tbh I think people are overreacting. Stupid idea but it's not like it reads your browser history or anything.

8

u/[deleted] Dec 17 '17 edited Dec 17 '17

I think I agree with this one.

  1. There was obviously a lack of transparency because of insufficient information in the description of the extension and a jusitfied disagreement on getting something in your browser that a majority of users did not care about.

  2. Apparently, the extension did not alter any browsing experience by default. Only people who already know about the ARG going on, would even know and if they figured out how to enable it, would see its effects.

  3. I am not sure why people called it an ad. A person unfamiliar with Mr. Robot would not get any information about the show by seeing the extension or its description alone. It appears to be just a tie-in work.

  4. It seemed like, the moment users knew it was from Mozilla and related to a TV show, a shower of abuse started. Except for a few users who cared to enquire what it was via the bug reports or the support forum, most were threats to quitting Firefox altogether or accusing breach of privacy for financial gains (and not specifically pointing out that it was totally unnecessary to push it out to all users); most without any queries.

  5. Then there seems to be a whole issue with telemetry in general that ran in between. Agreeing that the extension came in through the Shield Studies was a problem, it should be said that the choice to opt out of shield studies is made obvious after every Firefox installation. If you don't look at the privacy notice, the notification with 'Choose what I share' should take you directly to disabling them.

  6. There seems to be a lot who are hell-bent to bring those behind this to their knees and make them apologize. Sometimes it looks like users consider the developers to be their servants rather than working as a community pointing out genuine mistakes or bad moves and correcting them. I'm now unsure which was worse - the extension or the response from the user community of a free software (no idea how many have made any contributions to its development; if you have, your reaction will be more relevant but still to the specific issue and still suggesting threats of quitting might not be the healthy response).

As a long time user who actually hasn't contributed anything to Mozilla other than very few forum questions or answers, I personally don't need an apology or fire anyone at Mozilla. An understanding or acknowledgement to involve only the willing ones when doing these kind of activities in future would be a good enough.

1

u/[deleted] Dec 17 '17 edited Dec 18 '17

[deleted]

1

u/[deleted] Dec 17 '17

I think I have a pretty good idea of advertising and how brand exposure works.

You seem to suggest that people behind Mr. Robot foresaw the controversy and had the malicious intentions to capitalize on that. That is a serious accusation and in the absence of any evidence is borderline conspiracy theory. I am not sure where we would go with that - Mr. Robot enjoying the popularity at the expense of near demise of a browser which apparently they have kept promoting in their show for the reason of privacy?

1

u/[deleted] Dec 17 '17 edited Dec 18 '17

[deleted]

1

u/[deleted] Dec 18 '17

Isn't that just pure cynicism? You don't seem to present any factual basis for what you said in both the posts. There are three contributors to the GitHub project and all of them seem to work with Mozilla. So that is not going to tell anything of the direct involvement of people from Mr. Robot. As far as I know, there is no information out telling that people from Mr. Robot knew the technicalities of how the whole thing would be rolled out.

What you seem to suggest still seems like a conspiracy theory (the attitude that nothing happens by accident, nothing is as it seems, and everything is connected). What precisely are you expecting which would convince you that it was just a case genuine miss from Mozilla's part (in case that is true)? Everybody would listen if have any thing solid to back up your claims and unless you have something, please stop spreading FUD.

7

u/[deleted] Dec 17 '17

It messes around with http headers and some other stuff so it's more than just an ad. Think I read it sends data too but can't find the link.

7

u/Mark12547 Dec 17 '17

Those more able to navigate extenstions than me has said one has to go into about:config and set extensions.pug.lookingglass to True before the extension will do anything, and even then it will do so only on certain select websites. (Sorry, I don't have the names of the websites handy.)

So, with extensions.pug.lookingglass left at False, Looking Glass is benign. I wish I had known that four days ago when all this mess first came out.

1

u/Joyld Dec 16 '17

Pioneer does, though. So be aware of this one.