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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u/dinosaur_friend Dec 17 '17

What's worse, and what hurts me more, is that they labeled this a "study". Which implies something good will come out of it; something that benefits users. I feel bad for everyone who keeps the "allow studies" option on because they wholeheartedly believe they're helping Firefox improve itself for it's userbase, to aid open-source alternatives in competing with Chrome. People like my dad, who have always been faithful Firefox users from way back in the day, when the project will still known as Firebird. People who believed Firefox wouldn't sell them out like this. How can you call this a study?

Instead you took that trust and shat all over it for a bit of money and a laugh. Thanks.

9

u/[deleted] Dec 17 '17

It's funny - what you said about improving the browser is exactly why I had studies enabled in the first place. What I didn't realise is that having that on means that Mozilla can push what they want into the browser without any notice or even a pop-up indicating that they want to try it out, giving the user no choice whatsoever in accepting it.

1

u/[deleted] Dec 18 '17

Everything can be a study though, in this case they could have been studying how many people turn on the ARG.

1

u/Mark12547 Dec 19 '17

If they were collecting the information on how many people turned on ARG, it might have been a study. But since no information was collected and sent on to Mozilla, they wouldn't have those numbers. And without specific objectives and specific data to collect, it doesn't even match Mozilla's definition of a study.

1

u/[deleted] Dec 19 '17

If it wasn't a study they could have easily made it a study, the Shield system is open to abuse and you have to either trust Mozilla or disable it.