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Comment by Causality1 | Hacker News Reader

Lots to see, like ads from "trusted partners" in the address bar. Funny how that wasn't a "highlight."

Hillarious that they said it was an opt in feature, then when I checked my settings all these boxes were checked already. Who opted in for me, mozilla?

And the insult to injury was the "will take 30 days to remove data".

I never accepted it. You force-upgraded me and opted in without consent. And then hang a 30 day window of data retention... If that's true at all.

Is that possibly because they’re including the backup age out period though?

Who knows.

There was no informed consent. No opt-in. It was just turned on without my knowledge. I had to find out on Twitter infosec to watch out for this.

Seems like they don't actually say opt-in. In any case:

Settings -> Privacy and Security -> Address Bar -- Firefox Suggest -> Contextual Suggestions -> Include Occasional Sponsored Suggestions

For me it's selected, so I deselected it. Still a good browser.

Edit: They do say opt-in, but the opt-in was in version 92.

if you click 'learn more' next to it, their description calls it opt in. Firefox is still way better than Chrome but this is definitely a scummy move

It seems like it is opt-in. Just that the opt-in happens with the pop-up described in the link you mentioned [0]. I recall both seeing the pop-up and opt-ing in now that I see the pop-up.

[0] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/navigate-web-faster-fir...

I got no such popup, I checked my settings after one of these articles and it was already there.

Same.

v.93 I don't even see Firefox Suggest in those settings.

Linux distro removed it? Or Firefox know apple, windows people will just put up with anything but linux people probably won't?

edit: Don't see it on an v.93 on an old mac laptop either. checkboxes for browsing history, bookmarks, open tabs, shortcuts, search engines only. I wanna yell fake news out of FF loyalty boosterism but I do actually believe you so I wonder what's going on?

I think it's windows only (at least for now).

Well anyone who agrees to what microsoft forces on you by running windows is hardly going to object to anything firefox does. Firefox isn't spyware, windows clearly is nowadays.

It is limited to the US for now.

Presumably they are trying to gauge the density of the resulting shitstorm before going all in.

I'm actually on V. 92.0.1 on Mac OS, in the US if that helps. Maybe they are AB testing this and gauging fallout. Here's a paste of what I have in my settings > privacy and security menu under address bar:

Address Bar — Firefox Suggest

Choose the type of suggestions that appear in the address bar:

Browsing history

Bookmarks

Open tabs

Shortcuts

Search engines

Contextual suggestions (this was checked when i became aware of these settings and went to look)

Learn more

Include occasional sponsored suggestions (this was also checked)

Helps fund Firefox development and optimization.

Change preferences for search engine suggestions

I am running version 92.0.1 on Mac OS by the way, so it still wasn't opt in on that version either.

And it's not like they need to sell ads to make money. This can only generate bad PR without getting anything in return. Whoever authorized this change is essentially working against Firefox.

Are you saying whoever they sold the ads to would give them the money whether or not they showed the ad?

It looks like you skipped over the first idea they presented; that Mozilla doesn't need the money in any case.

Didn’t Mozilla recently lay off a bunch of good engineers? Seems like the organization thinks it needs money, although you could debate whether they are spending it the right way.

True, but at the same time they also raised to 4x their top executive pay.

> And it's not like they need to sell ads to make money.

Not at the moment, but long term they need to diversify their income. They lose users and the management doesn't work for free.

Mozilla management promised they would diversify income in 2016. Mozilla management is a miserable failure.

And they've been trying to since 2016 at least. Every attempt was met with scorn and/or pitchforks. It's hard to be Mozilla.

Of course it is if they're going to embrace the very industry they proclaim to be fighting against.

The VPN thing was a nice idea but too niche to count. I don't want a VPN linked to my browser anyway.

I'd pay for Firefox Sync though. I'm surprised they never made that paid.

I worked on Sync. It's staffed with a skeleton crew. We had 3 people on our team and 5 bosses.

They deluded themselves into thinking they could somehow obtain Chrome's market share by making Firefox more like Chrome. They threw the ten percent of users who loved what Firefox was under the bus in order to chase the 40 percent they will never, ever sway.

Remember when you could make Firefox look and behave exactly like you wanted it to? Because I sure as hell do.

>management doesn't work for free.

Looks like they are very well paid. So much that they had to let go 250 engineers last year.

> And it's not like they need to sell ads to make money.

Actually, they likely do need to sell ads if they want to keep Firefox alive.

Not quite.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/sources-mozilla-extends-its-go...

Tl;Dr: Mozilla gets no less than $400 million yearly from Google just by keeping it as default search engine.

I was happy to donate to Mozilla in the past, and would do again even knowing about the agreement with Google; I want to support them. But I'm donating to support development and promotion, not to make some rich execs even more richer. If that's the case, then I'll use my wallet elsewhere.

No they don't. The way Mozilla is currently setup they need to sell ads, but there are other ways to manage firefox (note that separation between Mozilla and firefox!).

Former Mozilla employee here... I'm not sure you're correct unless you are talking about turning Firefox into a non-commercial open source project supported by volunteers.

Yes they do. Practically all revenue is from Google being a middle-man for selling ads in Firefox. Getting some of those adsales away from the middleman is a big deal for they financial independence.

Not exactly, the money is for Google being the default search provider. Nothing else.

It's a difference without a distinction. They're paying to be the default search engine so that they can show Firefox users ads in their search results. Either way, they're a middle man selling ads and giving a small percentage of their profits to Mozilla when Mozilla helps them show more ads (mainly to avoid anti trust, mind you ).

Given Mozilla management is a bit misguided, is it realistic to try a hard fork and fund it without selling ads / user data?

Realistic, maybe not. But if we skip the whole funding part, fork out from v92, skip all new features and cherry-pick security patches and nothing but, then I'm in!

I've often thought this myself. As I'm reluctant to donate money to Mozilla knowing they have a record of firing developers and splurging on executive salaries.

What if a fork was funded in a kickstarter like way, enough ideally to pay the salaries of the development team.

I'd happily pay ~$20 per month knowing that the money was going where it should.

wow, that should indeed be highlighted!

https://support.mozilla.org/kb/navigate-web-faster-firefox-s...

It's even worse then I thought - every website you visit and every search query will be sent to them! They can basically create a whole shadow profile of you based on your browsing data (like Google already does when you enable search suggestion):

> To help you find information faster, Firefox Suggest uses a service provided by us to offer relevant suggestions for what you’re typing. When you opt-in to improve Contextual suggestions, Mozilla receives your search queries. When you see or click on a Firefox Suggest result, Mozilla collects and sends your search queries and the result you click on to our partners through a Mozilla-owned proxy service.

Wow, that last bit. Would have been easier to swallow if Mozilla did the ad brokering and promised to not store them, but no, they do actually ship off the queries to partners.

So if a person decides to opt in to this feature, they get to use said feature?

Oh wow, stop the presses everyone.

It's not opt-in, many people here have reported it was on already.

I don't see it myself at all but that's because it was only enabled in the US so far

Looks like my pihole will be getting some new entries. I have no doubt I won't be able to police all of my family's devices.

Not just every search query: apparently location data too.

>When contextual suggestions are enabled, the feature uses your city location and search keywords to make contextual suggestions from Firefox and our partners, while keeping your privacy in mind.

Says Opt-In.

I think the comments have merit if it was on by default but it's not. You have to explicitly give permission. I honestly don't see an issue with that.

Obviously a lot of HN people would probably prefer it not exist at all, but if you accept that the train has left the station on all this tracking on the Internet being here to stay, then explicit opt-in is still a massive improvement to the current status quo.

I checked my settings and it was on by default for me too. I had to opt out.

Interesting. I updated and yeah I had to opt out too. So get the pitchforks, I was wrong. Could be the installer on linux?

I was opted in without permission on macOS, so not just a linux thing.

Who the hell at Mozilla thinks that:

1) this is a good idea? 2) that they can sneak this by all of Firefox's tech-savvy users?

I mean, it just seems like such a low risk:reward ratio, what's the point? There's no way that this makes them enough money that it could be worthwhile.

Yeah this is unacceptable.

I'm running 92.0.1 on Mac OS.

It's not opt-in, it was turned on by default in an update (at least for me and everyone else in this thread).

Sleazy PMs tell the devs it'll be "Opt-In" to get them on board, then when it comes time to roll it out whoopsy everyone's opted in by default!

No, it doesn't say that. It says it's on by default. Go read the support article.

The best version of Firefox is the Tor Browser with Tor disabled. Avoids the “features” Mozilla insists on.

As I pointed out in the other thread, Chrome has been doing this for a long time.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28781981

Doesn't make it a good idea. Chrome is a user hostile browser.

The browser with a hard-coded DoubleClick backdoor doesn't respect privacy?

People don't use Chrome because they care about privacy. They use it because they don't care.

Big difference and they can't be held to the same standards.

Then they have the audacity to open to this when the update loads: https://i.imgur.com/EohIanD.png

There is no war on privacy. It's gone, the war is over and we lost. This is a true "Et tu, Brute?" moment. I'm really disgusted.

> Beginning in Firefox version 92, you will also receive new, relevant suggestions from our trusted partners based on what you’re searching for.

Maybe that's why it isn't highlighted for new things for version 93.

From the v93 release notes: "Introducing Firefox Suggest"

For now, it's possible to use Firefox ESR version (Firefox 91 with security patches) and avoid this 'feature'. A year from now, when ESR loses support, I'll have to see whether FF will still be worth using.

Has anyone looked at maintaining a patch set to yank it out? FF is still open source.

That's US only right? So it won't affect most users?

I'd be surprised if the US didn't have the largest amount of firefox users, even if it isn't the majority of all users worldwide. I couldn't find any data to back that up, though, since the public site[0] has no per-country statistics.

0: https://data.firefox.com/

There's a combo box on the top right corner.

Thanks.

Firefox is slowly losing users in all the countries in that list except in China. It's slowly growing there.

Pretty sure these latest changes are going to make them lose users a bit faster once more..

They really don't seem to understand the community that still supports them is exactly the community they're alienating with this.

They said the current roll-out is for a subset of US users, but who knows what their future plans are.

(I'm going from memory here -- they deleted the relevant text on mozilla.org, replacing it with the apology paragraph).

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/navigate-web-faster-fir...

edit: Found an archive snapshot:

https://archive.is/E7opj

"Firefox Suggest is currently available for a limited number of users in the U.S. only" (deleted text)

Very late second reply comment to you: I've found confirmation that

>"In the future Firefox Suggest online will likely be expanded to other locales/populations."

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1723860#c5

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