
Firefox is on a slippery slope - ddevault
https://drewdevault.com/2017/12/16/Firefox-is-on-a-slippery-slope.html
======
callahad
Most of us are on flights today, hence the slow response, but I want to
clarify two things:

1\. The study is not "still active and ongoing." It was pulled yesterday after
the backlash, though that may take up to 24 hours to propagate:
[https://gizmodo.com/after-blowback-firefox-will-move-mr-
robo...](https://gizmodo.com/after-blowback-firefox-will-move-mr-robot-
extension-t-1821354314)

2\. Even when "enabled" in the add-on manager, the add-on was _completely
inert_ unless a user _also_ manually dove into about:config and specifically
enabled a flag related to the add-on. Without taking that deliberate action,
it didn't do _anything_ but watch that flag. No headers, no word inversions,
etc.

If you'd like to verify my claims, the source lives at
[https://github.com/mozilla/addon-wr](https://github.com/mozilla/addon-wr),
and initialization is controlled by addon/bootstrap.js.

This doesn't excuse our actions, but I hope it adds some context.

~~~
leeoniya
i have a question: why do any of this?

yahoo and google pay hundreds of millions, is this not sufficient? have any of
these gimmicks actually helped gain users? it's likely that only Quantum - a
purely technical improvement (plus marketing dollars) - made any dent in your
user share. it's almost like mozilla keeps expanding into all the shady
corners to use up its budget so it can have a bigger budget next year.

many users use firefox for ideological reasons, even when Chrome is/was
technically superior. and these reasons are disintegrating at a ludicrous
speed. you are throwing away the very users that helped you grow. we are
telling you this here, directly and in plain language. much of the same group
uses firefox because they can make it work exactly how they want with exactly
0 surprises. some of this died with the web extension addon transition, but
it's at least justifiable from a technical & security perspective.

every time you force-feed what should be a visible and removable extension, i
have less and less control over my browser and less incentive to to use or
recommend it. it's heartbreaking, really. whoever is pushing forward on all
this farcical marketing spin and bundling stunts needs to be shown the door,
asap. call ads "ads", not "experience enhancements". it is not okay. you guys
need to stop this before you lose your most dedicated users that have stuck
with you through thick and thin. having been on firefox/nightly for over 10
years, deploying firefox on thousands of PCs, reporting many bugs, and making
donations to mozilla, i am _this_ close to saying "fuck it" and taking my
friends, relatives and coworkers with me. i'm gonna be one user that costs you
2000 more.

please get this to whoever needs to hear it [and gives enough fucks to
actually do something].

~~~
callahad
The core idea (deploy an easter egg via an add-on) seems pretty reasonable.
Looking Glass is a really cool idea _for users who want it._

But pushing it out broadly, even in an inert state, was not good.

I can assure you that there's an active internal discussion to that effect.
I'm hopeful that we'll learn from this.

~~~
ekianjo
> The core idea (deploy an easter egg via an add-on) seems pretty reasonable

Erm no. I don't use a browser to have fun. I certainly don't want any
surprises, and coming from Firefox/Mozilla this is very, very disappointing.
How can we trust you guys to do the right thing from now on?

~~~
jasonlotito
To be fair, Mozilla had a long history of easter eggs. So do other things that
you'd want to take seriously (Tesla and Google for example). Easter eggs are a
part of software culture whether you like it or not.

> How can we trust you guys to do the right thing from now on?

The same way you can continue to trust the GNU/Linux system which contains
easter eggs.

~~~
jodrellblank
Oh the same way I can trust Canonical to include advertisements in Ubuntu? (
[https://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2221490/eff-
urges-...](https://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2221490/eff-urges-
canonical-to-make-ubuntu-1210-amazon-ads-optional) )

Easter-eggs, to me, means something like "press a key combination, get a list
of developers" or "go through the levels in a fast time, unlock a secret
level" or "on march 14th there's a message about Pi day". It doesn't mean "if
you change xyz settings, we'll sell some control to your system to a third
party for our profit".

------
tfha
Shouldn't we consider it a giant, massive red flag that you need a corporation
backing you to maintain one of the most critical pieces of web software?

That's how we ended up in this mess. You can't compete in the web browser
battles unless you have hundreds of full time engineers behind you. That's a
failure of the web.

None of this new decentralized technology is going to mean anything if we
haven't learned that lesson. If you want free, open systems, competition needs
to be easy. We need to be able to respond to a abusive platforms by making our
own, and that means we need to live in an ecosystem where making our own
platforms is easy enough that you can have 10-20 viable options simultaneously
supported.

Linux distros are a fantastic example of this. It's easy enough to create a
viable linux distro that there are 5+ popular ones, and if you don't like
those there are 10+ less popular ones which are perfectly viable and
reasonable choices for an OS.

We need to take the web back in that direction.

~~~
sevensor
There are two internets now -- the internet of documents and the internet of
applications. For reading documents, including somewhat dynamic documents like
HN, all I need is w3m. But for the internet of applications you need a thin
client: a javascript VM and layout engine. I regard anything that runs
javascript as inherently malicious, out to violate my privacy and drain my
battery. Of these, shenanigans notwithstanding, Firefox is still the least bad
of the bad actors. Like most of the community, I'm disgusted but not surprised
by this stupid stunt.

~~~
dvfjsdhgfv
Actually it would be great - in the best interest of users - to make this
distinction more pronounced. The "document web" should be a relatively safe
space that you can comfortably browse with JS disabled. The "app web" is a
different beast, and the trust of the user to turn on the JS engine should be
earned. We could have "web browsers" and "app browsers", with the former being
much more safe and less resource-consuming.

~~~
brownbat
I really think there should be a .text TLD.

I don't know how you enforce it exactly, and maybe it's redundant with
pastebin.

It still nags at me that sometimes I want to go to the web to just read a
thing, measured in the tens of kilobytes, and all this other nonsense just
gets in the way.

It's my kooky nostalgia probably. Old man yells at cloud. But other times, for
fleeting moments, I think about applying for that TLD and feel just a bit like
Ray Kinsella...

~~~
panic
_I really think there should be a .text TLD._

That would be great -- I'm imagining a whole TLD full of sites like
[http://text.npr.org](http://text.npr.org) and
[http://lite.cnn.io/en](http://lite.cnn.io/en).

~~~
azernik
Doesn't have to be _that_ minimalistic - I could see up-to-date CSS being a
good member of a document-only web.

------
scrollaway
Watching the whole thing unfold has been heartbreaking. Most mozillians do not
support this. This Twitter thread is one insight into it:
[https://twitter.com/steveklabnik/status/941709048529014784](https://twitter.com/steveklabnik/status/941709048529014784)

Firefox 57 gained a ton of good will from a lot of users, and they pull this
crap right after. They absolutely should know better. They should have known
better with Pocket; they should have learned _from_ Pocket.

"Fork it" is not an acceptable answer. The problem is not with Firefox, it's
with _Mozilla_. Mozilla is a _good_ company at heart and they're an important
pillar of the web. Losing them to stupid stuff like this sucks, we should
fight for them. There's tons of Firefox forks, none of them get the point
though, you might as well use Chromium. If Firefox disappears and the fork
remains, the fork dies because maintaining a web browser is work that needs a
corporation's backing behind it (or a government's).

Mozilla's role goes beyond the web browser as well. Its mission was to "keep
the web open", "keep the web free". This goal was reflected in projects such
as Firefox OS, Hello and Persona (and to some extent, Thunderbird)... but
atrocious management made those projects a waste of time and money.

It's not Firefox you need to fork, it's Mozilla.

~~~
carussell
It's surprising that people are surprised by these things. Mozilla is not on a
slippery slope. That was true years ago, but it proceeded unmitigated. By now,
though, these things are the natural result of that decay.

There's a lot of power in branding, apparently. People keep saying things
like, "Mozilla is a _good_ company at heart", and I'm at a loss. Mozilla 2017
is nothing like the Mozilla that existed when the Foundation was established,
or when the Mozilla Manifesto was adopted. Tons of key people left in a few
different waves: first when Google pulled them off the project to go build
Chrome, and then lots more who trickled out over the years during and after
the Kovacs/FirefoxOS era. What remains is (a derivative of) the codebase + the
name "Mozilla" \+ and, like, Mitchell. But that's it. Keep calling it the same
thing, though, and somehow folks act like we're talking about the same thing.

Mozilla imploded—or rather, got Netscapified—years ago. To believe that
Mozilla or Firefox is your old friend who's still helping you fight the good
fight is incredibly naive and can only come from someone who hasn't actually
been paying attention and is easily fooled by (trivially contradicted)
surface-level details (like a name). I mean, it's not even like some
philosophically tricky ship-of-Theseus problem. _Mozilla is dead, people, and
this isn 't news._

~~~
scrollaway
Sorry but where's your evidence?

Mozilla is still today doing incredible work. The work on Quantum was
extremely forward-thinking in a way that most corporations cannot support; it
brought us Rust, which is a fantastic contribution to the ecosystem.

Furthermore, Mozilla has _always_ had troubles with judgement and
mismanagement, this is not new. The problems that have been surfacing are old
problems, they're just getting more severe.

~~~
tamriel
If the yardstick for Mozilla's mission is how fast they can make a browser,
why do we need Mozilla? There are arguably better equipped entities doing
that.

Their whole mission is to have better judgement and management, advocating for
the user instead of a corporation (or foundation). So it sounds like you're in
agreement with the GP that Mozilla's decay is not news.

~~~
bsder
> If the yardstick for Mozilla's mission is how fast they can make a browser,
> why do we need Mozilla? There are arguably better equipped entities doing
> that.

Are there? I see no evidence to support that assertion and a lot of evidence
against it.

Market share matters. The last vote at the W3C about DRM video being the most
recent example.

I mean, I probably qualify as reasonably savvy, and I have used exactly 4
browsers in the last 10 years: Firefox, Chrome, IE/Edge, and Safari.

~~~
Endy
> I mean, I probably qualify as reasonably savvy, and I have used exactly 4
> browsers in the last 10 years: Firefox, Chrome, IE/Edge, and Safari.

I probably don't count as savvy, but my browser experience over the last 10
years has been a somewhat broader list. Having started with Firefox at V2, I
switched (around '06) to my primary browser being Opera, with SeaMonkey as a
secondary - especially when I want IRC; Firefox, K-Meleon, and Links are all
in the background ready to go. I also used QtWeb for a brief period.

When Opera switched to being a Chrome clone, I jumped ship. SeaMonkey didn't
provide the ease-of-use I wanted for an everyday browser, so I went back to
Firefox. I'm now more often on Pale Moon.

------
ar0
And the article doesn’t even mention the Cliqz controversy [1]. How can you
try to promote your browser as the privacy-oriented, user-first alternative
and at the same time run into shitstorms like this all the time? Shouldn’t
there be someone who can properly judge the effect of decisions like this?

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15421708](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15421708)

~~~
naner
They're ruining their brand image. It's hard to be considered trustworthy when
it appears like you compromise your values due to financial hardship. It
reminds me of the Ubuntu Amazon integration thing as well. One of the Cardinal
rules of free software seems to be don't sell your users by forcing 3rd party
integration nobody asked for.

~~~
rdiddly
Yeah I get impatient with the "they need to make money" apologist argument.
Oh, I get it, you're saying I should trust them because they're in it for the
money like everybody else. _Makes sense thanx._

~~~
marten-de-vries
No, they're not in it for money. In the end (the foundation owns the
corporation), Mozilla is a non-profit.

They need money to achieve their mission though: maintaining a browser (in a
landscape of evolving security challenges, performance & web standards) and
research (e.g. projects like Rust, Servo & pdf.js originated that way) is not
cheap. And currently it mostly comes from search engine deals. If they cannot
get a similar one, it all collapses.

I can see why they try to diversify their income. That said, I don't agree
with the way they do it here.

~~~
jessaustin
"Non-profit" just means that shareholders don't profit. Nonprofits offer many
opportunities for executives to personally profit.

------
torstenvl
I am deeply disappointed in so much software lately, especially by the folks
who once championed software freedom, privacy, and quality.

A lot of people thought the Mr. Robot stunt meant that they had been hacked.
Well, you know what? They _were_ hacked. Someone installed software on their
systems without their knowledge or explicit consent.

(Side note: I also discovered last night that Firefox Quantum does not use or
support userContent.css - maybe this is a Stylo thing but it really annoyed
me.)

(EDIT: per the below, my experience with userContent.css doesn't seem to be
shared. I may have messed it up on my end. Will report back when I get a
chance.)

~~~
sounds
Perhaps Stallman and the FSF are right?

We can fork Firefox, but I agree with many other commenters that a fork isn't
sufficient.

It is the underlying concept I am trying to shine a light on: software should
serve the user. When Mozilla becomes user-hostile, we can establish new guards
for our future security. But if we, the software writers, become user-hostile,
then there will be no one left.

~~~
figurehe4d
Do people actually think Stallman was wrong?

~~~
enraged_camel
Stallman's issue is that he comes across as a fundamentalist extremist, and
most of his suggestions require making huge sacrifices to one's quality of
life.

Take Stallman's own website[1]. It is mostly text. While this makes it fast,
it doesn't make it readable at all. And finding specific stuff is nearly
impossible. Yeah, there is a search feature, but is extremely rudimentary and
very user-hostile.

If it were up to Stallman, the entire Internet would look and work like this.
This was OK in 1990. It no longer is. Sorry.

[1][https://stallman.org/](https://stallman.org/)

~~~
jgamman
>It is mostly text [...] doesn't make it readable at all.

that is the weirdest comment ever. On HN no less which is literally just text.

~~~
chefandy
HN has a coherent layout, nice spacing, a sensical grouping of content and
functionality per component and view or page. stallman.org is a pile of
unstyled textual content which was clearly assembled without actually being
designed. Regardless of the validity of his site as an example of what he
thinks everybody else on the internet needs to do, the two examples are not
not in the same ballpark for readability. Between the two, the ratio of
structural elements to textual elements isn't even close.

------
ben0x539
It would be cool if someone with insight into the mozilla community's
structure could elaborate on how consensus to deploy experiments like this is
established. I know that mozilla is very open, but as a fairly huge community
it's still somewhat opaque to outsiders like me and I wouldn't know where to
start looking. Are there pertinent mailing lists? Are things like this hatchd
out on bug comments filed against the Shield product on bugzilla?

~~~
lucideer
I'm pretty curious about this as well. I sent an email to their governance
list[0] a number of months ago that never got any reply. As someone who's not
involved in day-to-day, it would be extremely entitled if me to expect my
views to be automatically taken on board, but the absolute silence (and
general low level of activity) gave me the vague impression there must be
discussion taking place elsewhere.

I've also tried lurking on a few IRC channels, which were similarly lacking in
content on this (beyond idle chat, or helping out beginners new to the
channels).

If the answer is that I need to email some individual to get into some private
group to participate in (or even just to observe) discussion on governance,
then that really isn't very transparent. Certainly public mailing lists I've
checked don't seem to contain enormous amounts of contextual content on these
kinds of things.

[0]
[https://groups.google.com/forum/m/#!forum/mozilla.governance](https://groups.google.com/forum/m/#!forum/mozilla.governance)

------
alkonaut
Did anyone actually see this extension _run_ rather than just be downloaded?

When the article says “it was sideloaded without consent [...] this is what it
looks like” etc - does that mean _that’s what it looks like to users that did
not opt in_?

I get that just having it listed is creepy and wrong, but I fail to see why
we’d scream about forking Firefox unless anyone actually had an extension _do_
anything without their consent.

I don’t want unwanted extensions downloaded either but as long as they aren’t
being _run_ I’m not switching back to Chrome over it.

~~~
JackC
For me (beta channel FWIW) the extension was installed and enabled. Apparently
the code wouldn't modify page contents unless an additional setting was set,
but yes it was installed and run without permission.

------
orblivion
Let's not forget that the whole idea of a FOSS company making it in the
marketplace is sort of squaring a circle. It's amazing that we got this far.
Unless we have better ideas, we should expect more things like this.

I personally think we should all try to come up with better ideas. In the mean
time, we should have some tolerance for things like the privacy respecting
advertising scheme they came up with. I agree that this Mr. Robot thing
crosses some sort of line. But I don't think our response should look anything
like "How dare you try to make money!" lest our critique be useless.

~~~
dhimes
I think your response is reasonable. People will be happy to play games with
their browsers as long as they trust the game and have control over when to
play and not. Maybe firefox becomes the "fun" browser and we end up with a web
version of a pokemon go type game. (Would be cool, huh? Websites would "trend"
as people flocked to find $pattern and shared their discoveries.) Or some
other game. Or a game-of-the-week, that advertisers can sponsor.

But transparency, opt-in, and ease of use are all key to this working.

------
jimrandomh
At this point, I think we should all slow down and wait until Mozilla does
their internal investigation and makes some sort of statement. It's clear that
a screwup occurred, but not clear precisely what the screwup was.

From the outside, it looks like something that was unfinished and supposed to
be opt-in was accidentally rolled out to everyone, which suggests a problem
with release management or code review process, combined with human error. But
this is speculation. Whatever happened, scaring people with something that
looks kinda like malware and having a PR shitstorm was clearly not the intent.

~~~
hellcow
Mozilla's CMO already defended their behavior in a statement to Gizmodo [1],
claiming in effect that the malware they silently injected into people's
browsers didn't harm people's privacy, and thus was OK. Mozilla's CMO believes
that Mozilla did nothing fundamentally wrong.

That shows a cultural disconnect between Mozilla's management and Firefox
users.

Privacy is one important feature, but trust is what was violated here.

[1]: [https://gizmodo.com/mozilla-slipped-a-mr-robot-promo-
plugin-...](https://gizmodo.com/mozilla-slipped-a-mr-robot-promo-plugin-into-
firefox-1821332254)

~~~
hayyyyydos
> claiming in effect that the malware they silently injected into people's
> browsers

It's not malware - please stop calling it that.

~~~
0xffff2
Can you give a reasonable definition of malware that doesn’t include this
plugin?

~~~
simooooo
"software which is specifically designed to disrupt, damage, or gain
authorized access to a computer system."

Not malware for me. Definitely confidence shaking bloatware and adware though.

~~~
vntok
Disrupting webpages was specifically what that thing was designed to achieve,
right?

------
macawfish
Damn. This sound like the actions of a few inside Mozilla... Cause it's
definitely not in line with the organization's stated goals. So where's the
accountability? The people who made these decisions should be held
accountable.

Also, even since 57, this week Firefox ("stable" build) consistently gets hung
up with just one tab open and spins 100% CPU on one thread. I hope it isn't
trying to invert the word "robot" when the thread gets stuck.

~~~
DaveWalk
I am also concerned about the accountability. It's been some time -- 48 hours
or so, and not even a brief statement from management?

This is like PR 101 to me. The most shocking thing so far is their silence --
Mozilla is not a new organization!!

~~~
zone411
Here is the closest I've seen to a statement: [https://support.mozilla.org/en-
US/kb/lookingglass](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/lookingglass). I
don't think the explanation that "The Mr. Robot series centers around the
theme of online privacy and security" is what the users were looking for...

~~~
rdiddly
So ironic. "Hey the show's about privacy, WE'RE about privacy! Let's invade
everybody's privacy to talk about privacy!"

Not uninstalling or anything but now I'm keeping an eye on my
about:preferences

~~~
hedonistbot
Well, I am uninstalling and switching to Iridium right now and it's not JUST
because of this Mr Robot thing. I wasn't happy with the direction of Firefox
for a while but waited for Quantum to see if things would change. The
technology improved, but everything else got worse. So it's time for me to say
'bye, bye' to a browser I've used for more than a decade.

------
bshimmin
I am reminded of when Apple stuck U2 into everyone's iTunes library (though I
actually think this is weirder and worse). It seems like an inviolable,
cardinal rule is "don't push things on me that I didn't ask for".

------
TAForObvReasons
> updates have been known to re-enable it if you turn it off ... But it
> doesn’t matter - you’re going to re-enable it on the next update.

It's surprising how ... trustworthy Chrome is in this regard. My default
search engine is set to DDG and through countless updates Chrome has never
once attempted to reset it to Google.

~~~
CodeWriter23
I know it’s kind of the opposite action, but I lost trust in Chrome over it
persistently and repeatedly deleting my extensions. Searching for help reveals
I have to “sign in” to keep my extensions. When a browser built by an
advertising company wants me to sign in, the only conclusion I can make is
they want to track my browsing behavior. I probably consented to that through
the click wrap agreement, or maybe not. Who knows? I’m not about to spend a
whole day reading 10 miles of legalese to find out.

~~~
nasredin
Try

Firefox 24 in a VM

It's insecure, slow, but it's the last good version of Firefox.

Anything after 24, has Australis, which is the beginning of the end of Mozilla
IMHO.

~~~
whoopdedo
You'll have to deal with warnings from websites that you're using an
"insecure" browser. And eventually it will stop working at all because it
lacks features that web developers assume everyone has.

------
danso
> _Mozilla and Fox Entertainment did a “collaboration” (read: promotion) for
> the TV show Mr. Robot_

This is just a side issue (I agree with the OP's main point) but Jesus, how do
you make an error like this in the beginning of the post? Mr. Robot is from
USA Network, which is owned by NBC Universal. Fox has nothing to do with it.
The technical problem here is clear to me as a techie. I was going to post
this to r/mrrobot but realized it'd have no credibility among show's fans --
would you read past such a major error on a topic you cared about even if it
eventually got to a correct core point? e.g. a rant about YouTube censoring
videos of a certain political bent that began with "YouTube, a subsidiary of
Baidu..."

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
Shit. I'll get that fixed ASAP. I don't know why I thought it was Fox.

~~~
porky
too much simpsons?

------
digdigdag
I think it's time there was a legitimate, organized fork of Firefox. None of
this Iceweasel nonsense, but a proper, mature, organized initiative to diverge
from Mozilla's codebase. They've made it very clear with the addition of
Pocket, suggested sites, and now this addon that their calling has been
diluted in pursuit of sustaining their own existence.

~~~
jjawssd
It is impossible to fork Firefox and survive. If you destroy Mozilla all the
users will migrate to Chrome. There is no successful financial model for
browser development. Browser development is a financial black hole and
requires alternative revenue streams for developers to put food on the table.

~~~
onli
A real fork might be impossible, but a soft fork that just disables features
like this should be possible.

~~~
Pete_D
Indeed, this is how IceCat works: by taking the Firefox ESR release and
sed'ing out things like EME and telemetry.

[https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/gnuzilla.git/tree/makeicec...](https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/gnuzilla.git/tree/makeicecat)

------
ohazi
How many years of work did it take to get to the surge in good will around
Firefox 57 in recent months?

All that can disappear overnight if they're not careful. Don't fuck this up,
Mozilla.

~~~
kuschku
For the first time since monthly browser usage statistics exist, Firefox is
not the #1 browser in Germany anymore.

CliqZ alone has cost them 5% of the market share – 15% of Firefox users –
within of 2 months.

This, too, will just accelerate that.

~~~
jeltz
And this despite the push for Firefox 57, meaning the loss was probably even
higher.

------
madez
I've been looking for some time now for an alternative to Firefox. The
integration of Pocket was the big red flag that made me start to doubt
Mozillas intentions.

\- My focus is not on performance or compatibility, but usability, privacy and
security.

\- The interface must be graphical.

\- Native cookie management. I can't fathom how bad FireFox is at that.

\- Support for JavaScript is not necessary. It's mostly used against my
interest anyways.

\- I don't want want my Browser to make any unsolicited access to check for
updates or metrics or anything of that sort, at all.

\- Of course, it must be free software.

Any ideas?

~~~
Tharkun
What's your beef with Firefox's cookie management? :-/

~~~
madez
I can't whitelist/blacklist domains for cookies.

~~~
Tharkun
You can. At least my version of FF can. There's an "Exceptions" button next to
the "Accept cookies from sites" button.

~~~
madez
I thought unmarking the option to accept cookies would just completely disable
cookies. Now, it makes sense. My fault.

------
downandout
From the article:

 _Frankly, whoever was in charge should be fired over this_

They won’t be. But do you know who was forced out there? Its former CEO,
Brendan Eich, for making a $1,000 donation to a conservative political cause
years before he became CEO. Yet this kind of thing, which actually has an
impact on their user base and their market prospects, was allowed to happen
and it is likely nobody will pay for it.

If priorities are this out of whack at all Silicon Valley companies, the world
that relies on them is in serious trouble.

------
cseelus
Whats all the hate for Pocket anyway?

Isn't it just like the Reading List feature of Safari (or other Browsers) only
more open (syncs with various devices, even some eBook readers which I think
is quite nice). Also its owned by Mozilla[1].

1) [https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2017/02/27/mozilla-acquires-
po...](https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2017/02/27/mozilla-acquires-pocket/)

~~~
degenerate
"We've putting this thing that nobody asked for in everyone's toolbar, with no
option to remove it, because we think everyone should use it"

That was the hate. If they released it as an official extension, fine, but
they baked it into the browser and didn't let you opt out.

~~~
kowdermeister
But they bought the company, now they are an extension to the company. What
the hell is the difference?

~~~
gkya
I still don't understand that move. If Mozilla needs money, why spend whay
they already have on these useless thigs?

~~~
kowdermeister
What did they have before buying pocket?

~~~
gkya
I mean the money they spent to buy Pocket could've been spent on other things.

~~~
kowdermeister
Yeah but they didn't. Money in the bank doesn't do any good, I'm glad they
moving it around. Do you think it halted other things because they did this
purchase? This year they advanced pretty well so I don't really see what could
they be missing.

~~~
Guest9812398
If they had money in the bank, maybe they wouldn't need to run these kind of
NBC promotions? Maybe they wouldn't need to place advertisements in the new
tab window?

~~~
kowdermeister
Why not? More exposure => more users => more ad income => ROI => GOTO 10

~~~
Guest9812398
If you honestly think the old saying, "all publicity is good publicity"
applies here, then I'm going to strongly disagree. I think this is going to be
a black mark on their reputation for the next decade. The worst part is that
it hurts one of their biggest selling points over the competition, and that's
the trust of the community.

------
darrmit
Mozilla must believe that privacy conscious users make up a small percentage
of their user base. There's no other explanation for moves like this and their
"differential privacy" fiasco from August.

Between that, broken U2F support in FF57, and pages that are broken in FF but
work fine in Chrome (I assume due to devs catering to the huge market share)
it's becoming increasingly difficult to stick with Firefox.

~~~
TAForObvReasons
Or that the privacy conscious people don't bring in revenue. As soon as the
foundation/corporation split happened, some people warned that the end game
would be the corporation seeking profits at all costs.

~~~
skinnymuch
Seeking profits at all costs is a bit much. Mozilla isnt great here or in
several past instances, but they are still above many other corporations.

------
trts
It's hard to identify with the vitriol in response to this thread, yeah it was
dumb and silly but, without reading Hacker News, it would have been a
completely invisible event for me. I've been totally in love with FF57 since
release and this doesn't really detract from it at all. Very happy to have a
fast, open browser that keeps me from needing to rely on Google, Apple, or
Microsoft for web browsing, even if Mozilla doesn't always act perfectly.

~~~
twblalock
Some people think Mozilla is different than the other browser makers, that it
protects the internet in some way.

Personally I don't see how Mozilla could have any impact on important
decisions about internet governance, DRM, etc. with such a small marketshare,
and I believe the internet would have turned out the same even if Mozilla had
never existed. I can't think of a single case in which Mozilla prevented some
standard from being adopted when Microsoft and Google wanted it to happen.

In any case, Mozilla differentiated itself because of that image, and that was
one of a small number of reasons people stuck with Firefox through the past
several years. I bet a lot of those people are now thinking that they might as
well use Chrome because Mozilla is the same as every other commercial vendor.

------
interfixus
Last time I took a peek at Chromium (yeah, not even Chrome. Chromium!) I was
still getting pummelled with nonsense about the need for me to open some sort
of Google or AppStore (or whatever they call it) account. I'm not joining that
universe.

So where to go? At the moment I'm happy with my Waterfox. And there's the
somewhat similar Basilisk-project from the Pale Moon camp. But I realize these
are overwhelmingly likely to be dead ends in the slightly longer run. There'll
come a day when recent uMatrix et alia will no longer work. And a day when the
dev-teams themselves throw in their towels.

The FF57-thing is just depressing in its own right, even without this added
round of Mozila idiocy. They couldn't offer us just the option of an extra
toolbar, or any customization worth the name, really. Firefox of ten years ago
had vastly better UI than this latest, dumbed-down iteration.

But I suspect I shall sooner or later have to return.

[Edit: typo]

~~~
shak77
Chrome pushes you to create a Google account to sync. Firefox pushes you to
create a Firefox account to sync. You'll tell me where the difference is.

At least Google does not also push you to create a Pocket account... ;^)

~~~
AsyncAwait
> Chrome pushes you to create a Google account to sync. Firefox pushes you to
> create a Firefox account to sync. You'll tell me where the difference is.

With Firefox account, Mozilla is not selling any of your data data, a Google
account not only is a goldmine of data to sell, but you're signing for a lot
more services than just Sync itself.

~~~
kuschku
You mean, except for shipping CliqZ, a cooperative project between Mozilla,
and the German ad, tracking and publishing house Burda, which receives all the
URLs your visit (as a test, this was bundled with 1% of German Firefox
installs)?

~~~
AsyncAwait
While bundling CliqZ was certainly a poor decision that does not inspire
confidence, my comment above fast specifically in regards to Firefox Sync.

If you honestly believe that Google is less or equal in terms of user data
privacy as Mozilla, then I'm not sure I can convince you otherwise, but
despite all the recent blunders, I still trust Mozilla more in this regard, be
it with a watchful eye.

~~~
kuschku
Well, I don't have a choice, do I?

about:addons uses Google Analytics, and yes, I know Google promised Mozilla
not to look at that data.

But either I have to trust Google that they don't use the data from Chrome's
Enterprise and Chromium builds. Or I have to trust Google that they don't use
the data from Firefox' about:addons and Firefox Focus, and that CliqZ doesn't
use the data from Firefox.

If I have to trust Google anyway, I can just use Chrome.

------
muraiki
Mr Robot is created by Universal, which is owned by Comcast, who helped
destroy net neutrality. Besides the fact that Mozilla abused my trust in "user
studies" to show me advertising -- when Mozilla's lack of connection to
advertising is precisely why I use Firefox -- support for this show funds the
very people Mozilla has been fighting! On top of that, Jascha Kaykas-Wolff's
non-apology is a whole other level of disdain for users. How am I supposed to
explain to people who trusted my knowledge of tech that they should install
Firefox because of Mozilla's ideals, but to be sure to say no to user studies
because Mozilla uses it for advertising?

------
dbatten
What makes this really stupid is that Mozilla is compromising user trust for
what is undoubtedly a tiny payment from Mr. Robot. At least Google and friends
are the wealthiest companies the world has ever seen as a result of their data
shenanigans...

~~~
AsyncAwait
Apparently, there wasn't even any payment involved, which is probably even
worse, since it's pushback for nothing.

------
whyenot
I was a very strong supporter of Mozilla in the early days when it was a
scrappy nonprofit dependent on donations of time and money from its users (I
proudly gave them both). Today's Mozilla by comparison comes across as bulky
and wasteful and to have lost its way. It doesn't in any meaningful way depend
on code contributions from outside the organization anymore. It is opaque and
unengaged with it's users compared to the old days -- remember the success of
the spread Firefox campaign?

I'm not sure what the solution is, but from outside, it seems like Mozilla
should become a much leaner, more focused organization. Move out of that cushy
building on the SF waterfront to somewhere where your neighbors are ordinary
people, have employees want to work for you because they believe in open
source and and the open web, not for the trips to Paris and the fat pay
packages. Trim down management and all the other fat that has accumulated over
the years. It won't happen, of course.

------
r1b
I still don't understand why this is such a big deal - here's what it reads on
my `about:studies` page:

looking-glass-2 Active • MY REALITY IS JUST DIFFERENT THAN YOURS.

Looking Glass is a collaboration between Mozilla and the makers of Mr. Robot
to provide a shared world experience. Are you a fan of Mr. Robot? If so, join
the hunt for answers!

Participating in this shared world experience requires explicit user opt in.
If you are not actively participating in the ARG no modifications will be made
to firefox.

[https://support.mozilla.org/kb/lookingglass](https://support.mozilla.org/kb/lookingglass)

\---

Here's more about shield studies: [https://support.mozilla.org/en-
US/kb/shield](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/shield)

It also lists some previous studies that ran on my browser. I have never
noticed any of these.

~~~
r1b
On my `about:addons` page under `Extensions` I see an entry for `Looking
Glass`. It has no icon. If you click it, it expands to read:

Looking Glass

By PUG Experience Group (list of names) <a contact email>

MY REALITY IS JUST DIFFERENT THAN YOURS.

Looking Glass is a collaboration between Mozilla and the makers of Mr. Robot
to provide a shared world experience. Are you a fan of Mr. Robot? If so, join
the hunt for answers!

Participating in this shared world experience requires explicit user opt in.
If you are not actively participating in the ARG (Augmented Reality Game) no
modifications will be made to Firefox.

[https://support.mozilla.org/kb/lookingglass](https://support.mozilla.org/kb/lookingglass)

\---

I do think they should have added an icon and NOT used the extensions as a
delivery channel but I also don't think it screams malware. There is a contact
email and a link to a page explaining the extension.

~~~
detaro
As I said, they added the additional information _after_ people started
complaining. It only said "Looking Glas - MY REALITY IS JUST DIFFERENT THAN
YOURS" as the description, no clear reference to the show, no link to
additional info, ...

------
staunch
Mozilla is an embarrassment of an organization run by people paying themselves
$1 million/year for years of gross mismanagement.

------
mnd999
Given they'd just one a lot of people back with 57, this was a pretty dumb
thing to do.

~~~
djsumdog
I gave it a good strong shot when 57 came out (I had been on Vivaldi for a
while). The performance was way better for sure, but it still wasn't quite
there. I also hate how default zoom level still requires a plugin and isn't
built into the browser.

~~~
buu700
Same, I had it as my default browser for a few weeks and it was a huge
improvement, but ultimately I had to switch back to Chrome.

No default zoom or pinch-to-zoom were my biggest pain points, then performance
(mostly comparable with Chrome, except videos consistently spike the CPU above
100%), and the last straw was the ridiculous number of OS X kernel panics I
was getting. Beyond that, a lot of little enhancements would make a huge
difference, like support for pasting without formatting, support for whatever
clipboard APIs Google Docs needs, U2F support, and top-level await in the
console.

I generally love the new Firefox and got my configuration in a state where I
was sad to leave the UI/UX for Chrome's, but there were too many downsides to
the point where it was becoming an obstacle to doing my job. Really hoping
these issues can all be sorted out relatively soon.

~~~
seba_dos1
Sorry, but how are kernel panics related to userspace software? Isn't it just
the indicator that your operating system is somehow broken?

~~~
buu700
Yeah, that part is more OS X's fault, but either way it makes Firefox unusable
for me. It seems like it may be related to Firefox's video CPU spiking issue.

------
bitonio
I pledge to give $20 to Mozilla once: \- they apologized for the fuck-up \-
they pledge to stop doing that kind of stupidity \- they reconsider the
employment of those really responsible for it. Not just the ones that wrote
the code, the ones that asked for it which are likely more paid than the
coders anyway.

#firefoxpledge

Many of us here are Firefox users, but I'm sure most of us are really happy to
use it for free.

If Mozilla is desperate enough to agree to some big cable companies, or some
big search engine marketing contracts. Why do the users blame them? Maybe we
should support them instead and help them to get out of that vicious circle so
we can all enjoy a less corporate internet.

~~~
zamazingo
> I pledge to give $20 to Mozilla once: - they apologized for the fuck-up -
> they pledge to stop doing that kind of stupidity - they reconsider the
> employment of those really responsible for it.

I was indeed considering making a recurring donation after their work on
Quantum. But I won't bribe an organization into abiding by its own mission
statement and I won't give money to an organization that cannot keep its
promises.

I wish the technical folk at Mozilla, who are literally building the browser,
would split out, join in with FSF or EFF, and create the fork that we all
would switch over to in an instant.

------
voidmain
It's really an astounding accomplishment to make a browser developed by a non-
profit less trustworthy in this respect than the one developed by the world's
largest advertising company.

~~~
wolco
I don't think firefox is spying on you in the same way. Let's remember the
bigger picture.

~~~
Karunamon
No, they just show less respect for me.

------
singularity2001
"Not only are these experiments enabled by default, but updates have been
known to re-enable it if you turn it off."

are you kidding me? Mozilla risks our opsec and I did't even know?

------
mnm1
The author really gets the underlying issue, and it's an issue that is
extremely common amongst software, hardware, and vendors, tech and non-tech
alike: trust. Almost every major issue with software boils down to trust. Do I
trust this browser, or more specifically, the people that develop it? Do I
trust this database / people that develop it? Do I trust technology X? These
are the types of decisions we have to make everyday and that the tech world is
forcing upon billions of people, most of whom are simply not informed enough
to make them. Free software is about trust. Open source is about trust.

So many "tech" issues boil down to trust, that I'd say trust is the primary
issue in tech and has been for quite awhile. Therefore, it's interesting to
see that companies simply ignore this issue, don't care about it, and openly
violate the trust of their customers, employees, partners, etc. I see very few
organizations that consider the implications of lost trust to their business.
Just like car mechanics who lie and say they fixed something they didn't,
companies break users' trust by hiding malware in their products, spying on
them, collecting data without their knowledge, releasing bad products etc.

In the end, it doesn't matter how trust is broken because once it's broken,
it's extremely difficult, if not impossible to reestablish. That's something a
lot of companies don't think about with the philosophy being that lost
customers will be replaced by new waves of ignorant customers who don't know
any better and don't know who to trust. Then they wonder why their market
share slips when the company's main purpose is to scam people.

------
wolco
I'm I the only one who thought the little easter egg was interesting. I am a
fan of the show.

~~~
loopbit
I haven't seen the series, but I also find the idea of ARGs interesting.

What it's being discussed here is not if the addon is interesting or not, it's
the fact that Mozilla, a supposedly freedom and privacy advocate has installed
something in all of our computers, without our knowledge or permission as a
publicity stunt for a different company and, when found out, the best
explanation we've received is "Oops! You guys shouldn't have seen that".

~~~
floatboth
I don't agree with the "without our permission" thing. You installed Firefox —
you gave them permission.

~~~
scott_karana
If they roll out the "Firefox user affluence survey" and start reading all
your bank account balances (or do whatever _you_ would find objectionable)
I'll make sure to remind you of this post.

------
carlsborg
Let me propose an experiment: fire up wire shark and start your favourite
browser and revel in the boatload of encrypted traffic that gets phoned home
on startup.

Now turn off updates, telemetry and a bunch of other built in features and do
the same with Mozilla: the tcp connections out of your system are zero, nada.
You can literally turn off everything.

~~~
lucideer
Mostly. There are some exceptions, mostly not easily detectable by wireshark
while Firefox is idling. These are things like extra requests made _while
browsing_ ancillary to the requests you're explicitly making, certain browser
functions needlessly requiring an internet connection when they could well
work fine without, and also in the form of "bugs" that slipped into the
browser largely out of a lack of consideration for users' privacy by devs.

The point here is that, while competitors' browsers might be worse, this
doesn't mean that being "almost private" should be good enough for Firefox.

Saying "but Firefox is still better than X at privacy" doesn't mean they can't
be better. X is setting a very low bar.

~~~
Sylos
>and also in the form of "bugs" that slipped into the browser largely out of a
lack of consideration for users' privacy by devs.

Tor Browser is based on Firefox. Human lifes would be at risk, if Tor Browser
were to send additional data over the net that it's not supposed to send. So,
Firefox is going to be very well vetted for whatever kind of bugs you imagine
to be there.

~~~
lucideer
If Tor browser sends additional data over the net, it does so via the Tor
network, so you are at no more risk than any other explicit requests you make
via Tor browser. Unless you're using uMatrix in advanced mode with extra
strict content settings enabled, Tor browser won't keep your session
completely private. It isn't designed to do so. It's designed to keep a single
session isolated and - if you're careful - anonymous within itself, but any
activity within that session can still be easily associated with other
activity within that session, unless you're selectively blocking 3rd parties.
NoScript (bundled with TorBrowser) does this partially but not fully.

Beyond the above (that TorBrowser isn't designed to protect from what we're
discussing here, and as such their vetting won't be overly concerned with it),
there's also the fact that they track ESR which is likely to have less of
these issues since they'll usually be fixed before feature releases are
backported.

 _Edit:_ In case you're still of the view these bugs are "imagined", here's
two small (related) examples: [0], [1] though not the only ones. The "lack of
consideration" I referred to in my above post that imo causes these bugs is
the language seen in the second one of those bugs:

> _It 's not tracking but I'd imagine users who were uncomfortable submitting
> usage data from the app to GA also don't want to log their errors in Sentry_

This is a Mozilla developer who seems to fundamentally disagree with (I'd
guess most) users on what tracking means.

[0]
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1380754](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1380754)

[1] [https://github.com/mozilla/addons-
frontend/issues/2802](https://github.com/mozilla/addons-frontend/issues/2802)

------
natch
Did they actually acknowledge that it was a paid advertising campaign?

~~~
outsidetheparty
I’m not sure if there was an official announcement, but:

> We didn't make any money off of this; it was intended as an easter egg in
> Firefox for fans of the show. [https://www.metafilter.com/171227/Your-
> Reality-Is-Driven-By-...](https://www.metafilter.com/171227/Your-Reality-Is-
> Driven-By-Marketing#7265127)

~~~
empath75
That’s even dumber then.

------
bitL
That's what you get when technologists no longer run companies, but trendy
"cool gals/guys". Mr. Robot is on decline as well; maybe one Mozilla exec
knows another at Mr. Robot production and decided to return a favor? Can't
wait to get Watchdogs 2 on WebAssembly playing in Firefox next...

------
nkkollaw
I've given money to FOSS projects before (last time $5 for a really basic
color picker for elementary OS).

I'm sure people would give something if Mozilla asked--kind of like Wikipedia
do it with a message on their site.

Why can't they just do that? It doesn't look like it could hurt more than
this.

~~~
dingaling
> I'm sure people would give something if Mozilla asked--kind of like
> Wikipedia do it with a message on their site.

They do ask, I have a Mozilla request for donations today on FF57's
about:newtab, yes every time I open a a new tab.

There is a blue button to 'make a donation' once I have selected the
appropriate amount ( 50, 25, 10 or 3 Euros ). Apparently this goes towards
protecting my privacy on the Internet.

There is no button to say 'no thanks' or 'already did' or 'that's a bit
hypocritical given your latest stunt'

~~~
nkkollaw
Ah. Never seen that.

So, I assume the donation strategy is not working.

------
tannhaeuser
I hope this incident makes people realize what a farce the Web has become
given the incentives for Web browsers and sites. And we're working hard to
make the Web even more complicated, so it's becoming impossible to develop a
new browser from scratch.

------
pbhjpbhj
Unfortunately I've not had time to do browser research, what are people
switching to?

~~~
Laaas
Drew changed to qutebrowser

Source: the blog post

~~~
Pete_D
Interestingly, the qutebrowser repo has a list of similar projects:
[https://github.com/qutebrowser/qutebrowser#similar-
projects](https://github.com/qutebrowser/qutebrowser#similar-projects)

------
Asdfbla
Very strange to see that. Are the managers responsible at Mozilla not aware
that a significant part of the appeal of Firefox is user autonomy and privacy?
No reason to gamble away your reputation by violating user trust like that.

I understand they need money to develop a browser, but surely there must be
better ways to promote partnerships. I personally probably wouldn't have a
problem with Firefox asking me to opt-in to ads and promotions in the new tab
page at first startup to support Firefox, for instance.

------
n1vz3r
While I can agree with author on some points, I don't understand why everyone
bashes Mozilla for Pocket so much, they have bought it and I thought it is
part of Mozilla now: [https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2017/02/27/mozilla-
acquires-po...](https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2017/02/27/mozilla-acquires-
pocket/) Plase correct me if I'm wrong.

~~~
scott_karana
When Pocket was first added, it was an independent company with no signs of
any acquisition by Mozilla.

It was not added to the browser as an "add-on" but as core code. Sure, you
could hide the button, but... it's still there, attack surface and all.

Plus, it's a product in a competition-rich field. Adding first class support
almost certainly affected adoption for competitors like Instapaper, Pinboard,
etc, who still had to play by the rules. Hardly what you'd expect from a
"choice centric" company like Mozilla, and it screamed of a cash bribe.

------
kgraves
Agreed, I now NEVER trust any company or startup anymore with my data.
Everyone is involved with spyware of some sort.

I thought Mozilla was an exception, Oh well. :/

~~~
Roritharr
What do you use to browse the web? A self compiled version of curl? wget?

~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
May I suggest dillo where possible, and icecat everywhere else?

------
dbolgheroni
While I understand the technical merits of the switch to the
Quantum/Rust/WebExtensions/Electrolysis thing, and while I also understand
that this "ad" add-on is not enabled by default, I can't stop thinking that in
one month or so, I went from having very useful add-ons to one that is
completely useless and pushed to its users without consent.

------
xab9
"Study" is doublespeak for "ad". Let me write that down into my dictionary,
thanks Mozilla for the info!

------
robbrown451
I agree with the complaints but I also wonder how else Mozilla is supposed to
financially support their work.

It is an unfortunate reality that donations alone don't tend to work on things
of this scale. Humans don't work like that....most people are not going to
send a significant amount of money to make an insignificant impact on browser
quality. (i.e. if I donate $5000, would I even be able to tell the difference
between the Firefox without my donation, and the Firefox with my donation?)

This is pretty basic game theory (Tragedy of the Commons, Prisoners' Dilemma,
etc). Nobody wants to be the sucker when most people are being freeloaders.

So we have things like this. They are trying whatever they can do to get
revenue. Bake shit in that increases their corporate sponsor's bottom line.
Ugggh.

I don't have a solution (short of government grants and the like) but I wish
more smart people would work on this sort of problem.

------
BuckRogers
I've always left "Allow Firefox to send technical and interaction data to
Mozilla" and "Allow Firefox to send crash reports to Mozilla" enabled, and
I've been using Firefox since it was Phoenix (beta) in the early oughts.

I just like to make sure they get the info they need to improve it and also,
advocate in that way for the features within the browser that I use- so they
don't remove them. After this study add-on, I disabled all of those settings.

I'm not moving to Chrome (and I never did all these years, FF has features
that Chrome never will like toolbar RSS feed support), but now I'm probably
withholding legitimately helpful information from Mozilla. I'm willing to do
that because I don't feel like they can be trusted right now.

------
bitmapbrother
Mozilla needs to get rid of the people responsible for this and specifically
the rogue marketing team members that have been the source for much of
Mozilla's missteps such as the tone def attack ads on Chrome which deeply
embarrassed a lot of the Mozilla engineers.

------
zaro
So much Mozilla bashing in the comments here. And in general.

Mozilla doesn't improve Firefox: FF is so slow I am using only Chrome now.
Mozilla improves Firefox: why did you break my extensions. Mozilla add data
collection: you are no better than Chrome. And so on...

Meanwhile Google is doing most of these things with Chrome and nobody
complains.

The title is correct, Firefox is on a slippery slope. But this is slippery
slope to oblivion. Whatever Mozilla does is wrong. But see now, the game is
very different nowadays. The browser is not simply a renderer for Html. The
browser has turned into the TV from 1984. And the Web game is very very
different. So no need to be angry at Mozilla, they are just a player trying to
adapt to this new reality.

~~~
MikkoFinell
The fact that FF users are so critical is a positive feature of the community
in my opinion. It's the only thing putting the breaks on Mozilla's campaign to
turn FF into a clone of Chrome.

------
eitland
After how they have locked down the marketplace to prevent malware this is
really ironic.

FTR: Usually a huge Firefox fan and still thinks it is better than sending
everything wholesale to Google like Chrome does.

But wow, this seems like an amazingly dumb move..!

------
deftnerd
Firefox keeps acting like they desperately need money, but there are clear
paths to monetization with a freemium model.

The simplest method is to limit the browser sync capabilities (bookmarks,
passwords, settings, etc) and charge a small fee for improved sync. Limitation
might be sync frequency or storage space.

For Thunderbird, they could roll in an advanced spam blocker system and make
it subscription-based. Or they could create a single button in commercial
buttons to automatically unsubscribe from the content.

Or, for the simplest model, just charge $10 a year for access to binaries from
the beta + nightly + dev channels

------
disordinary
Building a web browser is potentially the most complicated application to
build nowadays, it can't be sustained just by a community of volunteers and
Firefox has to maintain a payroll of at least a thousand extremely highly paid
engineers.

They're needed for a proper free and open internet which is independent from
the needs of corporations but they also need to pay their bills.

It's a fine line that they have to tread, maybe they overstepped the boundary
this time but I'd rather there was a firefox that can afford to innovate and
push forward the web platform as a whole than not one.

------
LeoPanthera
My search for a "just a browser" browser lead me to this:
[https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-
chromium](https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium)

It's a fork of Chrome, with all links and connections to Google compiled out.

I'm not a fan of using a fork of a major browser for the same reason that a
fork of Firefox relies on the continued existence of Mozilla - but I guess I
trust Google to continue existing more than I trust Mozilla.

It's a shame. I want to like Firefox. But I'm finding it hard to find the
trust.

------
adventured
I've been an overly faithful Firefox user since the first versions, through
all of its performance problems and lagging behind Chrome. 12+ or whatever
years of daily use. I was thrilled with the quantum update, finally Firefox
was competitive again.

I agree with the article. Whoever signed off on this obvious user _abuse_ ,
should be immediately fired. It's inexcusable. I use Firefox so I don't have
to use Google's Chrome as my primary browser. If Mozilla keeps behaving badly,
I have no reason to use Firefox, it's that simple.

------
oconnor663
I think arguments like this would go better if they created some space for the
other side. Like, we all know that there's arguments on the other side about
making money to pay the bills, and about experimenting with new ideas about
how to do that. Almost no one thinks that Mozilla shouldn't try to make any
money at all. But this argument doesn't explicitly lay out any space for that.
So then it's hard for someone to talk about that side of the question, without
feeling defensive from the very beginning.

------
overgard
Gah, the worst part of this is Firefox 57 is good enough that I want to switch
to it. I wish they would at least issue a "that was dumb we won't do it again"
statement or something.

------
unstatusthequo
I'd happily pay to use a Firefox that doesn't do this. There's the Mozilla
monetization problem solved and upholds trust and supports more good
development like 57.

------
z3t4
Lets compare Firefox with Windows or Mac or any other popular software that
you guys pour money on. What I find most interesting is why you pay premium to
get locked into a propriety closed source platform, getting "updates" pushed
to your systems all the time, like force feeding chickens. While I'm most
likely wrong I think this is actually a PR stunt, that somewhat backfired. At
least they got you talking about these issues.

------
dahdum
Eich says Mozilla is interested in integrating their BAT token into Firefox in
the future too. His ability to make that happen is partly why they got so much
funding and token sale proceeds.

[https://mobile.twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/94211584408716...](https://mobile.twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/942115844087169024)

------
shp0ngle
We now get ads bundled with OS (Windows 10, Android sort of, Amazon with
Ubuntu), ads bundled with browsers is just a little step further...

------
_Codemonkeyism
Everyone in Mozilla management has to go.

Mozilla again needs to be about a browser not about making money.

If $500M per year from G is not enough you're doing it wrong.

~~~
kowdermeister
How on earth is this related to money?

------
Fiahil
> Mozilla, this is not okay. This is wrong on so many levels. Frankly, whoever
> was in charge should be fired over this - which is not something I call for
> lightly.

Whoho, calm down cowboy. Some of us don't live in the far west, and have
better, proper, and more civilized ways of dealing with work issues than your
"All-American-Fire-Everyone-Style".

------
shawn-butler
Maybe instead of a litmus test on their political donations, Mozilla needs one
on whether its executives respect users.

------
xnx
With behavior like this (and previous acts) I view Mozilla as less trustworthy
than Google.

Wouldn't Chromium be a better option for those who still don't like Google?

I'm still glad that Firefox mobile is available since Chrome mobile doesn't
support extensions (e.g. for ad blocking).

------
yuhong
As it happens, I posted [http://yuhongbao.blogspot.com/2017/12/google-mozilla-
and-deb...](http://yuhongbao.blogspot.com/2017/12/google-mozilla-and-debt-
based-economy.html) around the same time.

------
damontal
Is there anything wrong with pocket itself? Or is it just that it was forced
into the browser?

~~~
AsyncAwait
I don't think people have much problems with Pocket itself, especially now
that it's owned by Mozilla, it was mostly about it being a default addon. I
don't personally mind it, since it's a lot better than just having a full
bookmarks bar, but can see why some people would.

~~~
scott_karana
It was never an add on. It's built into the core of the browser.

You can hide its button, but all the code is still there.

------
sverige
I've used FF since the beginning. I've installed it on a lot of computers for
friends and family.

Today I uninstalled it, and that was before I found out about this latest
sneaky trick.

------
daodedickinson
Completely unacceptable. But with how much disrespect Windows 10 gives users
in terms of forcing distracting ads into faces, I can see why they think it's
open season on us.

------
asimpletune
I get that everyone is pissed, but can someone explain what looking glass
does? After reading the article and the comments I get that it’s like an
ad/game, but that’s it.

------
mdip
I've been a die-hard Firefox guy for a _long_ time ... I stuck around while
the browser was being surpassed in performance by Chrome[0]. I left _briefly_
when developer edition was updated in a manner that prevented my most relied
upon add-ons from working.

This move, when I first read about it, rubbed me the wrong way. As things have
settled out, though, I'm a lot less quick to want to jump ship. In the context
of a simple "easter egg" kind of thing, it's actually somewhat cool (I'm a fan
of Mr. Robot, personally, so hey -- that helps a little)[1]. I think what
bugged me the most is the lack of communication. Upon first reading about the
"bug", it sounded like it was something that was "on by default" and
potentially being used to collect data. It at least _sounds_ like it was
disabled unless you intentionally turned a setting on in about:config. OK, I
guess. It would have been nice if there was better communication once the crap
hit the fan and The Internet started panicking.

The "easter egg" idea isn't something most of us would complain about if a
_very_ clear explanation was available upon discovery, but the fact that it
was a promotion with NBC Universal, I think, is where a lot of folks got
seriously upset. I know it was the first red flag I latched onto. Frankly,
it's hard to imagine a _worse_ company to enter into this kind of an agreement
with and the way this was implemented just _looks really bad_ \-- as an add-on
that appears to be a telemetry-type service.

I think NBC Universal and the first two things that come to mind are the MPAA
and their desire to burn down the internet if it keeps people from downloading
movies ... and Comcast -- bandwidth caps, JavaScript injection, abysmal
customer service, ever rising Internet bills (especially if -- as is often the
case -- you live in an area where they are the only provider). It's a shame
they had to suffer such a poor lapse of judgement at a time when the press
around Firefox was turning so heavily in its favor. This was, hopefully, a
painful enough shot in the foot that something like this won't happen, again.
But who knows? Out of the options, available, I'm sticking with Firefox for
now.

[0] Part of this was my stubborn refusal to import my bookmarks mixed with the
convenience of sync being setup everywhere I used it, part of it was a general
dirty feeling I got from using a browser from a company (Google) who's
becoming increasingly aggressive in asserting their monopoly positions.

[1] And there's no irony lost about the fact that a show that would _directly
appeal_ to security engineers was being promoted in a way that would cause a
security engineer to lose his/her mind.

------
OverThere
Thanks for writing this to inform the community. I had no idea this was even
going on before reading your article. What browser do you use now?

~~~
scott_karana
The author mentioned [http://qutebrowser.org/](http://qutebrowser.org/) in the
article :-)

------
brightball
Brave browser looks more appealing all of a sudden

------
beerbaron23
Waaaay too much false information (or lack of) by the author and respondents
here.If people would read before installing things they would be aware of
this. It is right out in the open in plain comprehendbale wording (not bunched
together like a legal doc). So anyone that took the time to read the small
paragraph would be fully aware of what's going on, or at least know they will
be guinnea pigs for testing out the new tech...

#1 If you download the Developers Edition, Beta or Nightly edition, you agree
to share crash data, new feature rollouts and participate in sheild test
(which you can still opt out of). They tell you flat out these things will
happen by participating in these previews (Which what this addon was part of
and was tested by a measy 1% of the user base)

#2 By the screenshot provided, this user has "Legacy Extentions" enabled,
which means they have to be using a Nightly build, as that is the only way you
can still enable this feature. Hence they did not read the details on the
possible trials they might be joined in. If they were part of say the
Electrolysis trial I doubt there would be concern like this.

#2 In a full public release you are opted out of these by default, but can opt
in if you wish.

#3 If you download the official release you are not subjected to any of this
unless you decide to manually opt-in. It's not hidden, it's on the privacy
page in the main preferences. For the pioneer experiments you have to go
manually download a full extention to opt-in.

#4 If you downloaded the beta to check things out, then when 57 rolled out and
you decided to stay on the release channel, you would have to manually go and
switch the experimental pioneer off manually or refresh your profile as it
keeps all your custom profile data. Same if you shared a single profile
between all your installs instead on creating multipile profile.

#5 Firefox keeps a list of which experiements are on the way, details about it
and you can see which ones you are taking part in in your about:support and
also in about:studies

Info about this study taken from their study page:
[https://www.dropbox.com/s/vu2n2llbfyyyv1x/Screen%20Shot%2020...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/vu2n2llbfyyyv1x/Screen%20Shot%202017-12-16%20at%201.10.07%20PM.png?dl=0)

Info detailing how to opt-in:
[https://www.dropbox.com/s/sk48o3fgookin4i/Screen%20Shot%2020...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/sk48o3fgookin4i/Screen%20Shot%202017-12-16%20at%201.06.47%20PM.png?dl=0)

Proof of my default settings on Nightly which opts me in my default:
[https://www.dropbox.com/s/blar0u0jdrzw37b/Screen%20Shot%2020...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/blar0u0jdrzw37b/Screen%20Shot%202017-12-16%20at%201.03.11%20PM.png?dl=0)

An finally proof you are opted out by default on the public release of 57:
[https://www.dropbox.com/s/3zpwunknngy71pw/Screen%20Shot%2020...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/3zpwunknngy71pw/Screen%20Shot%202017-12-16%20at%201.01.26%20PM.png?dl=0)

~~~
greyhat
You aren't even comparing the same setting in your screenshots.
app.shield.optoutstudies.enabled is set to true in stable and nightly.

> An finally proof you are opted out by default on the public release of 57:
> [https://www.dropbox.com/s/3zpwunknngy71pw/Screen%20Shot%2020...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/3zpwunknngy71pw/Screen%20Shot%2020..).

This actually seems to mean that you are opted in. The setting is extremely
poorly named. "app.shield.optoutstudies.enabled" must mean "Are Studies, which
are "opt-out", enabled"?

Here's a brand new profile on firefox stable, downloaded a few moments ago:

[https://i.imgur.com/kZiGAjG.png](https://i.imgur.com/kZiGAjG.png)

Or see this privacy guide which recommends false for this setting:
[https://aaronhorler.com/articles/firefox-
privacy.html](https://aaronhorler.com/articles/firefox-privacy.html)

------
ggg9990
I disagree that they are on a slippery slope. They were on a slippery slope,
then they slipped on it and fell into the crevasse.

------
foobarbecue
Why are people not calling this adware? This is silently installed, extra-
creepy adware, promoting a TV show. Disgraceful.

------
jaequery
Being able to switch between Google accounts in Chrome is so huge to me now
that I can't use anything else.

~~~
foepys
You can do that in Firefox, too. Use this [1] addon and you can create as many
containers as you'd like and log into different Google accounts.

1: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-
account...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account-
containers/)

------
vim_wannabe
Has there ever been a desktop browser you could buy instead of using these ad
supported/os bundled ones?

~~~
smhenderson
Opera?

~~~
vim_wannabe
Thank you, interesting.

>Up to this point, Opera was trialware and had to be purchased after the trial
period ended. Version 5.0 (released in 2000) saw the end of this requirement.
Instead, Opera became ad-sponsored, displaying advertisements to users who had
not paid for it. Later versions of Opera gave the user the choice of seeing
banner ads or targeted text advertisements from Google. With version 8.5
(released in 2005) the advertisements were removed entirely and primary
financial support for the browser came through revenue from Google (which is
by contract Opera's default search engine).
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opera_(web_browser)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opera_\(web_browser\))

~~~
red_admiral
Does Opera still do the thing where the new tab page contains sponsored links,
and if you try and edit the source for that page it refuses to start because
it'll only accept a new tab page with an Opera digital signature?

------
wangii
i don't understand why folks are upset. opensource + nonprofit can't prevent
corruption. it has nothing to do with technology, management, personality,
good will or anything. it's about power. given enough power and time, what
left is either marketing or corruption.

------
qwerty456127
I am actually very sad IceWeasel has been discontinued. We the people really
need a community-maintained reasonably up-to-date no-nonsence (without hidden
extensions built-in, proprietary stuff hard-coded, legacy features (like Java
plug-in - my government still requires me to use it!) force-disabled, random
stuff testing etc.) version of Firefox IMHO.

~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
Isn't that icecat?

~~~
qwerty456127
Perhaps. But does it incorporate the recent improvements that make Firefox
fast again (this is an important part of what I mean under "reasonably up-to-
date")? I don't think so.

~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
It's built on ESR releases, so you're currently correct, but in a few more
months it will jump from version 52 to 59 (IIRC) and get all of that. It still
gets security updates, so I view it as "reasonably" up-to-date. So it mostly
comes down to what your definition of reasonably up-to-date in this context
is.

------
linuxhansl
I just checked and studies seems to be default off - as it should be. 57.0.1
on Linux.

------
_Codemonkeyism
If you want to know why they need all this money:

"Every six months, Mozilla gets all of its employees from around the world
together in one place, for a week."

[http://words.steveklabnik.com/user-agent-
moz-a](http://words.steveklabnik.com/user-agent-moz-a)

They just act like RichCorp.

~~~
makecheck
Their employees are mostly or entirely remote workers, I think. Even bringing
them all to one place once a year may be cheaper than maintaining office
space, _and_ you can pay everyone local salaries (since many will be in cities
with sane costs of living instead of northern California, they’re probably
cheaper to hire).

In other words, I seriously doubt they’re spending more, they are most likely
using money more wisely than your average tech company.

~~~
a_imho
Paying salaries according to a local index in a remote context is externalized
discrimination.

------
Animats
It's become so bad that F-Droid won't even distribute Firefox on Android any
more. They have their own fork, called Fennec. It still has "Firefox
accounts", Pocket (which can be turned off) and Sync.

Pocket is now an ad channel. There are Pocket "suggestions".

~~~
steckerhalter
Fennec is actually Mozilla's name for the Android version of Firefox:
[https://wiki.mozilla.org/Mobile/Fennec/Android](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Mobile/Fennec/Android)

See also the filename of the latest release:
[https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mobile/releases/57.0.1/android-x...](https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mobile/releases/57.0.1/android-x86/en-
US/fennec-57.0.1.en-US.android-i386.apk)

~~~
Animats
"Fennec F-Droid" is a browser fork that F-Droid uses. It gets rid of some of
Mozilla's junk in Firefox. They avoid mentioning Mozilla or Firefox, and use a
different icon.

------
ENGNR
This is hacker news... and it was a stunt related to Mr Robot

Have you considered using Edge?

------
itaysk
In light of recent Net Neutrality events, is the browser the next frontier?

------
KindOne
I'm a fan of Mr. Robot and this add-on went well over my head.

------
mshenfield
You either die a hero, or live long enough to become a villain. They made a
small mistake and HN is taking this opportunity to villanize people making a
real product and usually thoughtful decisions to support it. Slippery slope my
ass.

------
alex_duf
That story triggered a lot of angriness towards Mozilla.

Maybe if instead we'd all give a bit of money to Mozilla they wouldn't be
trying to do questionable promotional campaigns.

You haven't lost my trust Mozilla, keep up the good work.

------
kpwagner
Does anyone know if the Developer Edition was affected?

~~~
foepys
I run Nightly as my daily driver and I don't have this addon installed.

Edit: Apparently some have:
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1424977#c0](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1424977#c0)

------
feketegy
I was going to switch from Chrome back to Firefox after the Quantum update,
but seeing this I've changed my mind.

Firefox is a good browser, but pulling stunts like this make me loose faith in
it.

Sticking with Chrome for now.

------
madez
With the new Privacy Regulation in the EU, and since Mozilla is distributing
FireFox globally, would there soon be a way to sue Mozilla in the case of
privacy invading updates?

~~~
AsyncAwait
I'm not sure depleting their budget would achieve the desired result, but in
any case, I don't believe this would make for a very strong case. It doesn't
compromise privacy, you're probably already accepting auto-updates, it's just
not a way to go about things if you respect your users.

~~~
madez
Auto-updates can not do data collection without new consent, under the new
regulation. Consent must be given for each collection _and purpose_
individually. Service cannot be denied for refusing to give consent.

I'm not saying sueing Mozilla is what should be done. But I'm very much
interested if it will be possible.

~~~
AsyncAwait
I don't think this addon did data collection. The backslash is about pushing
unwanted code onto the user's machine, not about the addon itself doing
something malicious.

~~~
madez
But FireFox is on a slippery slope. So, I think it is very much interesting if
there are limits one can enforce legally, or not.

------
thangngoc89
I uninstalled Firefox after seeing this. I have spent to last month to use
Firefox (partly because of project Quantum), but this is unacceptable to me.
Good bye!

------
vesak
Is this malevolence or incompetence?

~~~
tomcooks
I assume incompetent marketing focusing on EPIC MEMES du jour instead of
focusing on what users want, but these PR deals when your browser is at ~6%
usage worldwide really smell like corporate agreements.

------
znpy
Too bad, I just switched back to Firefox and now they are delivering this
crap... Oh well, I guess it's Chromium time.

------
EugeneOZ
This way they are also risking the Rust language. Please don’t do it, it’s
important fir humanity to evolve this language.

------
kindfellow92
I fully support Mozilla for doing this. Developing a browser is expensive and
money doesn’t grow on trees. Cheers Mozilla

------
banku_brougham
I was _this_ close to migrating back to firefox and investing time in
customizing it to meet my workflow.

------
megaman22
Mozilla is chasing the money cock, it's that simple.

I don't see a point in enduring the friction of not using Chrome

------
dmh2000
if they don't do this, how do they make any money? (just asking)

~~~
Sylos
Taking money from Google, which people dislike as well.

Basically Mozilla is supposed to develop a browser that's faster than Chrome,
more customizable than anything out there, doesn't allow even the vaguest
conspiracy theory of something being privacy-infringing even if it's not, and
do all of that without money.

~~~
kuschku
So, you know, basically the same as every other open source project in
existence, from Wikipedia to Linux, the countless distros and Linux desktops
to Krita, GIMP and Blender.

Completely Impossible /s

~~~
Sylos
Wikipedia is completely different, because pretty much any user can contribute
at any point in time. There's very little money involved for actually
developing it, they mainly just need to maintain the infrastructure.

And well, Linux is not different at all, it really isn't, as there's just as
well a shitton of money going into Linux. Canonical, Red Hat, SUSE, Google,
Facebook, heck even Microsoft, they all put a lot of money into Linux.

Krita, GIMP, Blender, and the Linux desktops do not have anywhere close to the
same need for development velocity, as there's much less competition in the
space and as a result of that, but also just as a result of the things that
they do, there not being as rapidly shifting requirements.

~~~
kuschku
And yet, none of them, not Linux, not Kubernetes, not even Chromium shovel ads
for a TV show into my face. Or cooperate with German ad, tracking and
publishing comoany Burda, and their subsidiary CliqZ. None of them use Google
Analytics in their browser, like about:addons did. Not even Chromium.

~~~
Sylos
Yeah, because developing those pays off in other ways.

And Mozilla has a contract with Cliqz that requires them to deanonymize the
data and with Google to not use the data for anything else. It's perfectly
possible to cooperate with companies that otherwise disrespect privacy in a
privacy-respecting way, believe it or not.

And just because Chromium doesn't have Google Analytics in it, doesn't mean
it's not worse for privacy. Google for example uses your browsing history and
bookmarks for profiling you, if you sign up to Chrome Sync.

~~~
kuschku
> It's perfectly possible to cooperate with companies that otherwise
> disrespect privacy in a privacy-respecting way, believe it or not.

Yes, and the Google Chrome versions for Enterprises and Education have the
exact same contractual clause that Mozilla has w.r.t. Google Analytics.

So either you trust this clause, or you don’t – in both cases, you need to
trust Google.

~~~
Sylos
Right.

What relevance does Chrome for Enterprise/Education having this clause when
neither Chrome for normal people nor Chromium have this clause?

I do mostly trust Google, if they're legally bound to not do the things that I
don't want them to do.

The sanctions for privacy law violations being essentially nonexistent makes
it often hard to, because those sanctions are then usually just yet another
bullet point in their cost calculations, but contractual violations have much
higher sanctions, so I don't see a particular problem there.

~~~
kuschku
From May 2018 on, the sanctions for privacy law violations of EU citizen is 4%
of global revenue, or 20 million, whatever is larger.

And when governments and universities switch to Chrome, people stick with what
they're used to, and will use that at home, too.

In the last 2 months 15% of Firefox' German userbase left for Chrome.

------
djcjr
Developers often have bills to pay.

Griping should be weighted by how much money YOU have sent, no?

------
codeisawesome
How disappointing:(

------
HugoDaniel
Fork it ?

------
electic
The show Mr. Robot rails against corporate greed, corrupt government
officials, and other unethical practices that's rife in our society. In a
twist of fate, in one episode someone at E Corp gets arrested for secretly
installing malware in products without the user's knowledge. He is prompted
arrested by the FBI after a tip-off from Elliot.

They create a global revolution over this behavior. To do what's just. For the
people to have a say once again.

It is highly ironic that USA Network and Mozilla did the exact opposite of
what the show is all about and promoted it this way. In fact, Mozilla's
principles about creating a no-fuss browser runs counter to this very
behavior.

~~~
digi_owl
As Lenin put it, the capitalist will sell you the rope you use to hang him
with. Basically big media will produce all kinds of "anti-establishement"
entertainment, carefully tailored to be just this side of risky.

Damn it, they managed to sanitize and mainstream punk!

~~~
angel_j
You can't manage, sanitize, nor mainstream punk; you can _name_ something
managed, sanitized, and mainstreamed, punk, but that doesn't make it punk

------
junkscience2017
Mozilla has taken on all of the worst qualities of a modern
University...ostensibly for the "public good", but really just a vehicle for
the whims of a few "enlightened intellectuals" who will "save us all" (from
ourselves apparently)

but hey, Mr Robot uses Kali Linux (they only show us this about twenty times
per episode) so he should be fine

~~~
gator-io
I thought he used Mint.

------
659087
Mozilla does seem to be trying very hard to make those of us who have been
trying to lead people away from Google/etc and onto their browser look like
hypocrites.

------
alexasmyths
A lot of demands for someone who wants a few thousand people to work for us,
for free.

I think if everyone who used MZ paid $2 a year, these issues might be resolved
...

------
z0ltan
This is what happens when you mix SJWism with technology. I hardly ever use
Firefox, but I am uninstalling it pronto anyway.

------
rgrieselhuber
I got massively downloaded about a month ago for complaining about the
direction that Firefox was going. I was hoping I'd be wrong about the general
direction they seem to be taking in this article doesn't give me much hope for
that prospect.

~~~
pessimizer
Just post and damn the internet points. There are hundreds of firefox
employees browsing every firefox thread, and a far larger proportion of them
are going to downvote than would a more representative group of technologists
or firefox users. Bad PR for firefox could potentially financially affect them
personally, so it's totally understandable and human (though annoying.)

------
shak77
Mozilla died the day they forced Eich out.

~~~
dang
We detached this subthread from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15940778](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15940778)
and marked it off-topic.

You've already managed to post a lot of flamebait and many unsubstantive
comments to HN. That's exactly what this site is not for, so would you please
read
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)
and take them to heart from now on?

~~~
humanrebar
For what it's worth, the Eich incident has been in the back of my mind reading
these comments. I was surprised it wasn't coming up more in all the "et tu
Mozilla?"

To be clear, moderating for trolling is fair, but past PR disasters are pretty
on topic assuming they are earnest thoughts on the news.

~~~
dang
I don't quite agree, because as the HN guidelines have pointed out for years,
classic flamewar topics rarely involve anything new to say. And boy is that
one a classic.

~~~
humanrebar
Yes, I understood as much.

It's also useful for people to understand that longstanding disagreements are
still there. People have been sharing their estimations of the Mozilla
organization and for many people, that estimation took a huge hit with the
Eich business.

If we're not willing to keep talking about controversial issues, even at the
risk of flamewars, we just retrench in our old us vs them mentalities and
bubbles. And that has proven to be bad in all sorts of ways in recent history.

Anyway, I thought it would be useful to register another opinion explicitly. I
hope it is taken well.

~~~
dang
For sure and no problem! And I think you make some fine arguments. In cases
like what we're discussing, though, we need to remember the focus of the site:
intellectual curiosity. Knowing what HN is trying to be and what it is not
trying to be is critical.

Keeping intellectual curiosity as the top priority has surprisingly strong
consequences if you think about it. It means, for example, that any social
benefits are side effects—welcome side effects, but not the purpose of the
site.

------
mlinksva
Fire the people responsible for making this decision. Or they can resign.

This is against Mozilla values in a very different way, but as fundamentally,
as what led to Eich leaving. The solution is the same in both cases.

------
solomatov
That's horrible. When I saw pocket suggestions, I thought, that it's made by
Firefox, and it's a new feature which preserves my privacy, and not a
commercial company. I removed Firefox, from my computer, and returned to
Chrome.

~~~
Sylos
Mozilla owns Pocket...

~~~
solomatov
Then, I was wrong.

------
Yoric
So, people are angry because of an easter egg in Firefox?

It did not collect any data, it did not have any effect on the browser (unless
you turned on the preference) except look spooky if you look at your list of
add-ons.

So yeah, it was spooky, and it could certainly have been done better, but come
on, it was an easter egg dedicated to a spooky tv series.

~~~
ineedasername
Yeah, that attemp at positive spin won't fly here, not with this audience.
Silent sideload of a paid-placement extension that changes headers and page
content is not an easter egg. Maybe if it were activated by a ctrl sequence,
but even then... this is a hole in perimeter security. It's the sort of thing
that makes me reconsider my institution's security policy to sanction Firefox
as a supported and authorized browser. Not cool Mozilla, we can get by with
chrome and IE / Edge... MS might not be bleeding edge in browsers but at least
they understand this sort of Enterprise requirement. MS might pull some ad
placement bs on windows home, but they were smart enough to avoid it with pro.

~~~
Sylos
Well, thankfully the extension did not actually do anything at all. You would
have had to manually enable it in about:config, before it would have done what
you described.

------
Jeaye
I've addressed this post with a response here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15942647](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15942647)

In short, I'm worried that folks will pick up on this anti-Mozilla train and
brashly jump to other browsers without considering the security and privacy
impact.

~~~
scott_karana
I'm told that Chrome has been faster fixing security problems for quite some
time (and their sandboxing model was better by default until e10s rolled out
globally), so the only valid concern is likely to be Privacy. :-(

------
jsrjenkins
Anyone looking for a browser project that disables these add-ons should look
at the 'waterfox project'.

[https://www.waterfoxproject.org/](https://www.waterfoxproject.org/)

Full discloser: I use waterfox as a renderer for conkeror
[[http://www.conkeror.org/](http://www.conkeror.org/)].

------
reacharavindh
This is just really sad. I was among those thinking about switching to Firefox
from Safari on my work machine. If Firefox is going to act creepy, I might as
well get better battery life with Safari. Does anybody here known of better
open alternatives than Firefox? I don't mind if it is slightly slower, or not
as feature rich, or if it means I have to compile it myself. But, it has to be
truly open and sane.

------
elmalto
I am trying to switch from Chrome to FF, but FF is making it really hard. Some
sites freeze regularly. Facebook the other day was trying to open a YouTube
link. 30 seconds of complete unresponsiveness. Google products work unreliable
as well (inbox freezes, black tab on google maps). Just very frustrating
overall and I keep finding myself back on Chrome until I realize what I am
doing and conscientiously switch back

------
porky
With all the right criticism, if we try to be constructive, I think this is an
opportunity for a change. Mozilla/FF might not yet be Google/Chrome and we can
change the course of the future of FF

Let's not be fundamentalists - people make mistakes, and we can give Mozilla a
chance to fix it and be 100% transparent next time.

If they can't make it without these tricks, then they should say that it's not
the FF we are used to and want, and they can share the user space with Chrome.
But if it's not like that, then great, let's do it together

------
pmarreck
Firefox devs need to eat.

Chrome is sponsored by one of the largest companies in the world. How will a
free open-source project ever compete with that? _Of course_ they’re trying to
make money.

~~~
hellcow
Mozilla silently injecting ads into the content of websites through the
browser is unacceptable. Full stop.

This is the same type of scummy shit that ISPs have been pulling for years.
But unlike ISPs, there's competition in the browser space. Mozilla must hold
themselves to a higher standard if they want to survive.

~~~
sfink
The article was misleading here. Zero people unexpectedly had content change
as a result of this. The only way that could happen is if you edit an
undocumented config option. That is not what the controversy is about. It's
about Firefox adding an addon with a name that sounded suspicious to many, and
whose purpose was marketing-related and did not provide any functionality
benefit to the user.

Present or not, enabled or not, it didn't actually _do_ anything without
explicit user action. But that's not the point, for people whom this bothered.

