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Comment by mtmail | Hacker News Reader

Last year Firefox displayed a Disney ad (for the movie 'Turning Red') on the whats-new tab, the tab gets diplayed by default after you upgrade to a new Firefox version I think. US users only.

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

HN discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30608022

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Don’t forget the Mr. Robot debacle: https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/16/16784628/mozilla-mr-robo...

They pull this crap all the time and never learn their lessons.

Or how about how they still replace pinned shortcuts in the new page with sponsored ads. Like the magical top left one that I don't even look at before clicking because it's a link to my mail.

Two years later and they're still doing it.

https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/ppludl/since_when_...

Not to defend Firefox, but I believe Mr Robot is what caused them to make a visible toggle for experiments. Sadly it's not off by default, but once it's turned off, you don't really have to worry about it. That said, I never saw this VPN popup.

I can sort of live with that? The what’s new page is not my content that is being invaded with ads.

When they start popping it up all over the place is when I draw the line.

I bet that more than a few users were "turning red" --- with anger --- when they saw that shit. "Did I get infected with something?" No, it's just Firefox itself being the adware.

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