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Comment by Ajedi32 | Hacker News Reader

That's not how it works. Most users don't care and will simply use whatever the default is; and when it comes to anonymous usage statistics, "most users" is _exactly_ the group of people you want to be collecting them from; otherwise your results will be skewed heavily in favor of a small minority of power users.

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I aways have a problem with this aurgument.

Most users do not care because they do not understand the true ramifications of their not caring. It is not like that looked at all the data, then made made an informed choice to share everything.

FF should be at the heart of caring for users privacy EVEN IF THEY THEMSELVES DO NOT.

The average person does not understand technology, how much data they are leaking about themselves and how this data can be used against their interests

Taking advantage of that ignorance for any type of gain is unethical IMO, most companies willfully exploit this collective ignorance Mozilla should be better than most companies.

Why would optimising for the power users be wrong though? In most cases if it's good enough for the power users who tend to break things more often than regular people it is perfect for the regular users.

Quite the opposite if the focus too much on the regular users they might get too much noise and never notice issues in the more complex features that only power users tend to use.

You want the heavy users of your product sending in reports not the average Joe because he is less likely to even notice a issue.

Higher level features are less likely to be covered by tests and more likely to break just because of their complexity however you wont have many average people using them.

Because there's much less power users than normal users, and browsers that only cater to power users are useless because they end up not working on any websites. That's webcompat for you.

Former Opera people can tell a few stories there.

Precisely. Most people don't have an explicit preference. And collecting data on every possible human would give better results -- useful even if they don't plan on justifying running any specific test. We should probably use our expertise in computer networks to create universal, unjustified surveillance. As long as there is an opt-out option (hopefully we can use a complex tracking method so people don't understand the implications of not opting out -- oh, wait, RAPPOR already does that! Mozilla really stepped up their game here).

[EDIT: Firefox branding used to use the word privacy a lot. I can't find it on their website much at all anymore.]

When I browse to firefox.com I get [1] which has this text:

  More privacy
   
  Firefox doesn’t sell access to your personal information  
  like other companies. From privacy tools to tracking 
  protection, you’re in charge of who sees what.
  Here’s how Firefox protects your privacy

So yes they still advertise with that as one of the major features.

[1] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/?utm_medium=referral&u...

Indeed, I didn't find the subpage until later. I also like how, it isn't that you _have privacy_, but _more privacy_, because access isn't being sold like other companies. Someone must have noticed that they should only make promises they'll keep and toned down the language.

For instance, from the same page 8 years ago: "we have experts around the globe working around the clock to keep you (and your personal information) safe."

https://web.archive.org/web/20090827204813/http://www.mozill...

Or this quote from the equivalent site 6 years ago:

"And, as a non-profit organization, protecting your privacy by keeping you in control over your personal information is a key part of our mission."

https://web.archive.org/web/20110902025003/http://www.mozill...

> Most users don't care and will simply use whatever the default is

These users will be installing Chrome, not Firefox.

I hope not. If that's true, then Firefox is in serious trouble. There aren't nearly enough power users and privacy enthusiasts around to make Firefox a significant player in the browser market all on their own.

That’s exactly why Firefox is around 5% global marketshare. Only the powerusers are left.

And this move will also drive them away.

Why not?

The switch barrier is non existent. Most of the replies in this thread are ideological. Nobody is arguing CSS rendering speed comparisons and such.

People use Firefox because they like it.

People are irrational but like is huge. Toyota over Hyundai. Vacations at the sea instead of skiing. Firefox over Chrome.

The like is a habit, but if all things are equal and free, a very flexible one.

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