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Comment by scrollaway | Hacker News Reader

> My behavior on a site is now being sent to the browser author, an unrelated party.

But you're just assuming it is. It could also be "On uninstall and crash, report back which studies were enabled" to track how many people are uninstalling their browser when the flag stupid_feature="on" is set.

Be mad about the data collected [specifically, what type of data is collected], not about the concept of a/b testing. Set clear boundaries of what is and isn't acceptable. Otherwise you're fighting an ever-uphiller battle. Because if they want to know which sites you visit and the privacy boundary is "a/b testing isn't acceptable", they'll do it via history syncing instead.

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> But you're just assuming it is

Of course we are. We didn't consent to being experimented upon or to have our behavior analyzed, so we have no basis for trust.

> Set clear boundaries of what is and isn't acceptable

Acceptable depends on trust. Ask for permission, not forgiveness, and I am more inclined to trust. Without that, I assume the worst.

You're not assuming the worst if your assumption is that "some third-party I distrust will respect the checkbox they themselves control".

Mozilla has arbitrary code execution rights on your computer the moment you allow them auto-updates. They're also entirely free to ignore your opt-out or opt-in requests.

That's not a analogous situation. You can inspect and control what the code does on your device, but you can't inspect what is done with your data after it leaves it.

Yeah... no. If your claim is that the code on your own device can just be inspected, then you can inspect what data leaves your device instead of assuming Mozilla hoovers up everything including your porn stash, credit cards and the weed hidden in your cd tray.

Yeah... yeah. What data goes out and what is done with it after it leaves are absolutely not the same thing.

> Be mad about the data collected, not about the concept of a/b testing.

What does this sentence mean? A/B testing fundamentally requires data collection, so I don't understand how to be mad about the data collected but not A/B testing.

I think they're saying to be mad about what data is collected. For example, be mad if they're storing your IP address and location and not be mad if they're just storing a counter of how many people visited their marketing page.

A privacy first browser should be completely up front about what data is being collected. The simple fact that they did while implying something else means that they arent to be trusted to not abuse the privilege in the future.

That makes sense.

Don’t be mad _that_ data is collected, be mad about _what specific_ data is collected.

I don’t know that I agree, but it does help me understand the meaning of the previous post. Thanks!

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