Why am I seeing this adorable red panda? | Hacker News Reader

Why am I seeing this adorable red panda?

mozilla.org

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I put enormous effort into blocking as much advertising and marketing from my life as is humanly possible. I have written my own browser plugins and scripts, I have created network-wide blockers, I do not listen to the radio, I do not watch television, I do not look at billboards.

I use Firefox to protect my privacy from advertisers and to block ads. So you may be able to imaging my rage when Firefox updated and automatically loaded this full-page ad from Our Dark Lord Disney:

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/98.0/whatsnew/?oldvers...

It's no secret that Mozilla needs cash. But I imagine this move is counter-productive as a lot of people like me, who support them monetarily as much as I can by purchasing their various apps and services, are driven away by loathsome ads.

you_have_become_the_very_thing_you_swore_to_destroy.meme

I (based in Europe) see a page presenting Mozilla VPN. Are you saying you see an ad for Disney?

[edit] I used a United States VPN now. Indeed a Disney ad for a movie. In Europe it's a static page with some text about Mozilla VPN.

Interesting. Yes; it is a slimy bait-and-switch ad for Disney's newest animated series - ultimately an ad for their streaming service. I will not support them by posting links here.

Every day I consider saying 'to hell with it' and going back to Safari.

Vivaldi, by one of the creators (and former CEO of the original Opera, still seems decent, they don't have any bullshit like a "buy now pay later" extension or a rendering engine that inserts ads.

Safari does not seem to have a robust adblocker solution. I could be mistaken but it seems like you can only install extensions through their app store? So convoluted compared to Chrome. It is blazing fast though. :/

I've been using an adblocker on Safari in combination with either NextDNS or PiHole. Works not too bad. Only reason I use Firefox/Chrome is because I'm a frontend dev.

for those of us outside the US and without VPN, archive.org also captured it from the US: https://web.archive.org/web/20220308222503/https://www.mozil...

EDIT: vs screenshot what EU sees: https://i.imgur.com/S1ueBQn.png

Even the page with Mozilla VPN is an ad, although first-party and not third party.

I'm in the US but still see the VPN page. I use VPN though so maybe VPN out-points are excluded for some reason.

Glad to know I'm not the only anti-ad person who was incensed.

Can you open that page, hit F12 and look for the trackers, analytic scripts etc?

I hate this "We forced you to update, also we are the privacy, also we absolutely can fingerprint you because we forced you to see this page you didn't asked to look".

Absolutely infuriating.

I think this kind of mentality can only be properly appreciated when you've attempted it for yourself. It's a lot of work, but I think that reclaiming the ability to better regulate your focus/attention is absolutely worth it.

It's honestly like quitting your drug of choice (e.g. even just coffee or alcohol) and observing the affect it has on you after using it again for a long time. Only in this case, there is no "upside" to these (forced) capitulations.

Advertising has become so entrenched that it acts as if it has absolute right to your hijack your attention, and this landscape respects no boundaries. Apple in particular drives me nuts doing the same thing: pitching their arcade or wifi hot-spot partnerships with absolutely no opt-out mechanism.

Do you mean regulating your own focus in face of ads?

Because it does not get better. As you begin to adapt to them, the ads change.

I find it intolerable that every high-end device comes with less control and more ads than ever before. Therefore I no longer buy such devices.

I am happy on my barebones Linux desktop and my second-hand Android phone that is not logged into anything - because I have control.

> Do you mean regulating your own focus in face of ads?

Quite the opposite. I have really poor ability to tune them out, especially any audio portions. Once in front of me, they get under my skin easily and this isn't something I feel comfortable trying to just accept, despite how much "easier" it'd make things.

> Because it does not get better. As you begin to adapt to them, the ads change.

Agreed 100%, thus why zero tolerance is the only permissible option for me.

Here is a wager I don't wanna win: the "apps are constantly force-updated" world merges with the marketing world so that downtime is filled with ads. It's devilishly perfect: you're eagerly waiting to use the thing, so you're already a captive audience.

To answer my own question: there is a Google Tag Manager at least, along with Mozilla's own telemetry and Sentry.

This is disgusting. I mean, if they said "ok, you know what, we can't survive without ads. So here go the ads" - I'd be sad, but I'd understand. But they make it look like "oh no, we still hate ads, and are totally independent, but this new $INSERT_OUR_SPONSOR_PRODUCT_HERE is so good, we can't help but advertising it anyway!". They are capitalizing on their accumulated image of non-commercial independent entity to push Disney products. I hope at least they got some really good money from it, because this is something you can only sell once, after this it's worthless.

This is very sad. I understand WHY Mozilla is here. But this is an act of absolute degradation: "Every once in a while, something comes along that we can totally get behind."

When Mozilla "gets behind" something, I tend to think of the ethics they state here:

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/

Of course, no one believes for a second that Mozilla gives a shit about Disney's latest disposable childhood friend. The words on the page are completely meaningless and insincere, and the copy was probably not even written by someone who's ever worked at Mozilla. They're in front of us because Disney sends armies of marketeers, each with wheelbarrows of money, to promote each of their movies. Everyone knows that. But it's still embarrassing to see.

I feel even worse about this than I would if they had a big Facebook ad up. Say what you will about the likes of Meta, but Disney is some sort of ancient Lovecraftian horror manifested in corporate form.

I updated my browser and when it finished I was greeted by this ad. Now I'm figuring out how to disable notifications that an update is available and prevent checking for them entirely so that I don't get shown an ad because I made the mistake of updating a piece of software.

Doesn't this sort of endorsement require disclosure? Not a lawyer but I would expect there to be something marking the content of the page as an advertisement. Some cursory browsing of what looks like relevant FTC pages (I and Mozilla are both American) seems to support this[1].

[1] https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/ftc...

- "Now I'm figuring out how to disable notifications that an update is available and prevent checking for them entirely so that I don't get shown an ad because I made the mistake of updating a piece of software."

I haven't tested it, but this page describes an about:config flag that apparently inhibits the /whatsnew/ page:

https://kb.mozillazine.org/Startup.homepage_override_url

    If browser.startup.homepage_override.mstone is set to "ignore", the browser's homepage will not be overridden after updates.

It's depressing how it's becoming almost impossible to avoid inbuilt advertising in web browsers.

I still am annoyed at Google for adding ads onto the new tab page of Chrome. Yes, it's possible to use an extension to replace the new tab page, but I don't want a new new tab page, I want the stock one without ads.

This is why my new homepage is about:blank.

The submitted title ("Mozilla Now Hitting Us with Full Page Ads") broke the site guideline against editorializing.

"Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

If you want to say what you think is important about an article, that's fine, but do it by adding a comment to the thread. Then your view will be on a level playing field with everyone else's: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

Shouldn’t it be reverted to the original title? I remember that was the usual follow up.

I think we did that—what original title are you seeing?

Odd - guessing there was some client-side caching at play in my HN reader app.

Mozilla is clearly circling the drain, as stunts like this show they are desperate for cash. Worse, stunts like this drive away the core users who love and promote Firefox.

The world will be a lot poorer when Firefox light is extinguished, which seems all but inevitable, unless Mozilla can get back to delighting users instead of abusing them.

And an official announcement about this: https://whatsondisneyplus.com/mozilla-announces-new-campaign...

Vile.

On the one hand Mozilla needs to make money somehow, on the other hand, this does feel tacky. What other alternative is there that would actually be sustainable for them?

I'm always a fan of the donation drive. I'd take a tab pop-up of https://donate.mozilla.org/en-US/ over an occasional ad like this one any day.

I'd love to do a shameless plug for radioparadise.com as a wonderful model of someone who does an extremely tasteful periodic reminder to donate :).

Does Greenpeace need to "make money"?

Mozilla is a nonprofit. They need income obviously but it feels like they are taking a very different approach than most nonprofits.

What is the approach that most nonprofits that you're referring to take?

The American Cancer Society convinced professional sports teams to wear pink for an entire month, the Goodwill collects people's unwanted junk and sells it, the YMCA recorded a song and choreographed a dance...the only approach I'm aware of that non profits take is the one that generates the most money..

The fact that Mozilla is a non profit and have built a product that performs on-par with products built by two of the most valuable companies in the world (Microsoft and Google) is astonishing. The engineers building Firefox cost the same amount as the engineers building Chrome and Edge. But balk all you want at seeing an adorable red panda fill up your screen

Can I just pay for firefox instead.

Who would pay more - you or Disney?

I could imagine a lot of people (like me) would make recurring donations/payments to fund Firefox development on their platform of choice. Sadly, that isnt possible with Mozilla's structure.

This is just shown once after a browser upgrade right? And not even baked into the browser? And for a first party product?

Are we really complaining about something as little invasive as that?

Yes. It’s obnoxious, shabby, and needs to be shut down—swift and hard—before Mozilla gets the idea that turning its browser into a billboard is an acceptable method of making money. Because believe me, if this kind of thing turns out to be profitable for them, that garbage will not be limited to a mere static image shown just once.

Given Mozilla’s current financial problems, and who their core users tend to be, this was a very stupid experiment on their part. Genuinely sad to see this grubby crap from them.

It is important to keep Firefox solvent and operational as it is the last real independent browser. Everything else is built on Chromium (or Webkit), which are owned and spied upon by Google (and Apple?)

I definitely agree. I’m just incredibly suspicious—and sick—of obnoxious ads, especially when they’re being pushed by companies whose products play a pretty major role in what I do online. We’ve seen how disgusting some of those smart TV manufacturers were willing to get: unremovable home screen ads, selling user data, etc. I think that happened in large part because some marketing weasel was like “hey, what if we…” and the rest of us didn’t say “no, never, we will punish you for that.”

At least, not in time. Right now, Mozilla is dipping a toe in the water, and it needs to be made unignorably clear to them that mistreating what remains of their userbase is not the answer.

Independent of what? The ad-o-sphere? If they are showing ads, they are not independent of them.

Independent of Google since a vast majority of browsers are Chrome or built on Google's Chromium platform - which means they can spy on users.

Yes. I'm sure a similar conversation happened during the first radio show, or the first magazine. Now the slippery slope has given us ads on billboards, on the radio, every three minutes on television, each inch of public space including right in your face at the urinal, on blimps, pulled behind airplanes, written in the sky, on the inside and outside of taxis and buses and trucks, in every store on every shelf, you are barraged while trapped at the gas pump, before a movie you already paid to see, they hire people to wave signs in your face while waiting at stoplights, and advertising is baked in to every electron of the Internet... you get the point; it's extremely bad for your personal mental health and that of society in general.

If we don't complain and let them know that subjecting us to sleazy ads is intolerable, where will it end?

A browser is a tool that we have to use for work. It is impossible to block bait-and-switch ads built in like this. It's bait-and-switch because the expected behavior is to display the changelog, not an advertisement for Disney.

> And for a first party product?

This seems to depend on what country you load it from. This web archive link shows you what we get in the US.

https://web.archive.org/web/20220308222503/https://www.mozil...

Firefox V89 was last 'not actively terrible' version in my opinion. I've disabled updates and I'll continue using it until it breaks or becomes too insecure. At that point I'll jump ship to Waterfox or another browser.

Disabling updates was not straightforward. Settings in about:config and GPO are ignored, I had to create a policies.json as described here, https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1304175.

That version almost certainly has exploitable CVEs. You can't just not update a browser.

I don't think I'd personally suggest lagging behind any more than the ESR channel[1] does, for safety's sake.

1: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/choosing-firefox-update...

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