
Mozilla Mr. Robot promo backfires after installing extension without permission - joeyespo
https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/15/mozillas-mr-robot-promo-backfires-after-it-installs-firefox-extension-without-permission/
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dang
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15940144](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15940144)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15931730](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15931730)

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nkkollaw
Mozilla was doing so well with Firefox 57, I almost thought there would be a
come back.

This is bad. Very bad.

How can they claim they care about privacy, now? Privacy and control was how
they sold the product, now they've proven user have absolutely no control, and
Mozilla doesn't respect its users.

This could be the final nail in the coffin.

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mariusmg
They had the fucking permission, that's actually part of the problem. They
ship Firefox with the "Allow Firefox to install and run studies" permission
already enabled (bad bad bad).

And they did this shit for some promotion for a TV show. What a clusterfuck
Mozilla, hope you learned your lesson.

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scrollaway
> Here is Mozilla’s response, courtesy of Chief Marketing Officer Jascha
> Kaykas-Wolff [...]

A tone-deaf response that doesn't acknowledge the issue with their approach,
after two days of official silence.

Mozilla, it's time for some serious introspection.

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mlinksva
Those responsible need to be fired or resign.

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endymi0n
The amount of chuzpah, ignorance and insensitivity in that CMO's response is
staggering and completely out of touch with their core audience.

Looks like they didn't have a look at what happened to Patreon lately.

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O1111OOO
This is how it starts. One show, opt-in.

I happen to like Mr. Robot but what happens when a show I dislike is pushed on
me. Later on, it's 5 shows with a forced opt-out. After that, it's a bunch of
other stuff with a convoluted way of opting out (similar to "installing" a
3rd-party search engine).

Mozilla says it's a show it's users like... This is the scariest statement
from Mozilla so far. It's the kind of thing the Facebooks, the Googles and all
the others are doing via their surveillance mechanisms.

After a while, the browser will be littered with Kardashian stuff because the
majority will dictate the lowest common denominator.

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akerro
Technically it was with permission, because people had shild program enabled
in Firefox, it's a different story who enabled it, and why it re-enables after
upgrade.

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detaro
Does participating in a program to study potential improvements in Firefox
equal permission to roll out advertising? I guess one could construe it as
"experiment how people react to ads", but I doubt that's what those
responsible had in mind.

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roflc0ptic
I really don’t understand the negative sentiment. You’re trusting Mozilla to
run code on your machine, and automatically push updates. Is there a
substantive difference between updating FF binaries directly vs calling it an
add on? Just not grokking it

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nkozyra
Because it was arbitrary and opaque? It was not apparent that there was a
promotion being implemented by a feature of the browser not explicitly used
for marketing. It introduces an trust problem.

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kfrzcode
So, who can we trust with our web browsing, if not Mozilla? In your opinion,
of course. Just curious.

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nkozyra
I think that's the point, isn't it? This is one of those groups we felt
somewhat confident with.

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djhworld
It sounds like the marketing department has been left to run amok with little
or no oversight

