Comment by gtf21 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gtf21 | Hacker News Reader

I know there have been a lot of people who were quite angry about the Pocket integration (and more so about some of Mozilla's more recent experiments with Mr. Robot), but I don't think this is a bad thing (what is mentioned in the post).

> While advertising is the business model of the web, it has evolved into one that doesn’t put the user first. We believe the current model of web advertising is broken because it doesn’t respect user privacy, isn’t transparent, lacks control, all the while trending towards click-bait and low-quality content.

Well, they're right there. The problem is that things don't function without money (and I don't know that relying on Google paying a huge amount for being the default search provider is a good business model). If Mozilla really can do this while protecting the privacy of the user (and avoiding clickbait), then I think it might be a worthwhile experiment.

For my part, I'm going to see how it works, but will disable if it's not satisfactory.

Of course, someone will probably have to audit their code to ensure they really are protecting our privacy...

> It’s important to us to get this right.

Especially these days ;)

Here is more information (linked from the article) about how the sponsored stories are personalized while respecting user privacy. The client will download an unpersonalized list of sponsored stories and then filter the list on the client-side by comparing it to the user's browsing history. So the user sees relevant sponsored stories without Mozilla or publisher servers seeing personally identifiable information.

https://help.getpocket.com/article/1142-firefox-new-tab-reco...

Huh. That's incredibly simple and seems pretty effective. Of course, the sponsored sites could try to track user preferences themselves by fingerprinting Firefox visitors across distinct sites, but at least Firefox does have some anti-tracking features enabled by default.

> Of course, someone will probably have to audit their code to ensure they really are protecting our privacy

Not doable, because despite declaring (at the time that Mozilla merged with them) that Pocket would become open source, that never happened. To put it another way, we're a month away from the one year anniversary of the date that Mozilla decided to begin operating a closed source, for-profit service.

PS: This is your periodic reminder that the thing you're probably thinking of when you hear the name "Mozilla" actually went away years ago and doesn't exist anymore.[1] It's got the same name and looks kind of the same, like an alien in a human suit, but it's silly to give this any more weight than it deserves. If it helps, think of Mozilla as having undergone a reverse takeover. (It's more complicated than that, and most of it actually predates the Pocket stuff, but if it helps, it helps.)

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15940727

Yeah, the Mr Robot adware is more proof of that.

The only advertising in that was directing people from Mr. Robot to Firefox. The extension was bungled to hell but it wasn't adware. It wasn't intended to be seen by anyone that didn't specifically enable[1] it. It also did nothing unless you specifically enabled[1] it.

[1] To be very clear, the extension was 'enabled' by default, but only loaded a function to check for an about:config value. Without that value, it shut down and did nothing at all.

I can only imagine the outrage if Google or Apple or Microsoft attempted to do the same. But for whatever reason, because it's Mozilla many people are willing to give them a pass in violating the core values that they allegedly believe in.

> despite declaring (at the time that Mozilla merged with them) that Pocket would become open source

https://github.com/Pocket

Pocket itself isn't open source, they just have an org on GH which has some tools inside.

They started this some weeks ago, and it's supposed to retrieve the missing parts over time. I assume they are just busy checking which parts are legal to open source.

DuckDuckGo has some open source extensions and SDKs to integrate with their service. DuckDuckGo itself, however, is not open source. Do you realize how misleading it would be if someone said this, and then I showed up with a link to their open source extensions, and how misleading it would be to try and appear as if I'm refuting something that I'm not actually refuting? That's exactly what you've done here with regard to my comment about Pocket.

There's a reason why nobody else posted the link you did in the 12 hours between my comment and yours, including the dozens of Mozilla/Pocket employees who saw what I wrote. It's because that's not Pocket, and what I wrote about Pocket still not being open source is true.

Anecdotal of course but here goes:

I'm one of those people angry at the mandatory pocket integration: I don't really have a problem with how they described they're integrating this into the recommendations while keeping user data private (I still have a problem with the mandatory integration but that's a different issue). Hell, I can even imagine it providing some value to the user if it's handled correctly.

No.

I want a browser. I don't want Pocket. They bundle them. => This is bad and I will be angry.

I don't think anyone believes companies can operate without money.

However, Mozilla said we should use their software because they care about users and user privacy.

It makes sense to therefore complain when they break that promise arguing that they need money. Then, they're like everyone else and we might as well use Chrome.

Pocket integration is bad (and yes, I use Pocket every day) because you're forcing bloatware on your users without any advantage over an extension (for those who like me would install it). Then, there's the Mr. Robot fiasco. There goes their "users/user's privacy first" presumed competitive advantage.

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