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Comment by wongarsu | Hacker News Reader

Firefox is a well-known project that I've followed for one and a half decade, with roots much older than that and an established an well-known governance structure. I'd certainly trust them as much if not more than Google.

Unlike this project, which is very much from "internet randos"

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> with roots much older than that and an established an well-known governance structure

such a well-known governance that keeps putting back telemetry and ads when users dont want them.

The term "telemetry" can mean anything from automatic crash reports to click tracking to transmitting your browsing history along with your social security number. Google is far closer to the end of that spectrum, Mozilla is somewhere in the lower first half.

As for ads - where? I haven't seen any and I've been using Firefox on multiple platforms for many years.

Both ends of the telemetry spectrum are evil, explicitly because the term means nothing except "data about you".

That's...not what telemetry means...

Even if it did, we're again back at the point of "X is a spectrum". "evil" is a spectrum which, according to you, includes anonymous crash reports and then goes on to include serial killers and war criminals. Even then, anonymised usage data used to guide development is far less evil than collecting highly personal and identifying data and using it for targeted psychological manipulation to get you to buy things.

I get it, Mozilla isn't the poster child FLOSS org that we'd like it to be, but it's still orders of magnitude better than the competition.

> the term means nothing except "data about you".

No, crash reports are primarily data about the program, with very little if anything about you.

Very few applications take pains to make sure no personal information is submitted in crash dumps. Generally it is just a bald memory dump that you're supposed to ship out - definitely not a good idea if you care about your privacy.

So they will do stuff like show you ads. They won't do stuff like steal your credit card details, passwords, or identity which an internet rando might do.

Mozilla has tested our patience with Pocket, a horrible service that’s more or less abused by Moz.

Is a pre-installed clipboard addon somehow as bag as siphoning all your private data and browsing habits? I don't think we're comparing equivalent evils here. It's also easy to not use Pocket.

Yes, there's a lot to be desired with Mozilla, and I don't think they do a particularly good job. With "I trust them as much if not more than Google" I wasn't setting a particularly high bar.

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