Comment by criley2 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by criley2 | Hacker News Reader

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Does "No Surprises" mean I won't find unwanted Firefox extensions pre-installed by Mozilla that are impossible to remove and only serve to reduce privacy by opening up new unwanted avenues to access my input and broadcast it over third party non-mozilla private networks? Shouldn't I at least be able to opt-out of a private video service running on a third party server that I have no terms of use or privacy policy covering?

"All changes must be ‘opt-in’, meaning the user must take non-default action to enact the change."

Right, just like I "opt-ed" in to Firefox Hello.

I can't even "opt out" of Firefox Hello!

"Uninstalling the add-on restores the user’s original settings if they were changed.

I wish. Just goes to show that they're pushing an uneven playing field where Firefox Extensions are auto-installed, can't be removed, and can break all the rules. But hey, at least everyone ELSE can't break all the rules.

Funny that they won't even apply this philosophy to their own products and services that they are forcing into user installations without an opt-in or opt-out.

Firefox Hello is opt-in. If you don't use it, it will just be a button in your toolbar, it will do absolutely nothing before you opt-in, by making a call.

As a bonus: You can make video calls without ever having to create an account.

>"Firefox Hello is opt-in. If you don't use it, it will just be a button in your toolbar, "

Are you being serious right now?

Ok, how about this, We auto-install the Ask Toolbar on every single Firefox installation, 100%, everyone gets the Toolbar.

But don't worry!

If you don't click on the Toolbar which automatically installs and appears in your browser, you won't use it!

It's "Opt in"!

The funny part is, can you tell me how to uninstall Firefox Hello completely?

Mozilla's NO SURPRISES policy says I should be able to uninstall unwanted extensions with no loss to my browser.

So, can you help me achieve NO SURPRISES by removing the surprising and unwanted third party Hello feature?

Your reply changes the definition of "opt-is". He's not saying "Hello is opt-in because you can choose not to use an active feature if you don't want to", he's saying it's not enabled unless you actually use it by clicking on it, otherwise it is an inert feature that isn't doing anything. You have to take actions (opt in) in order for it to be active. If Firefox included an extra theme with the download, but I had to specifically go in and choose that theme, it would be analogous. Ask Toolbar is not analogous, because it is operational as soon it is installed.

Sorry, but mildly put, your definition of opt-in seems to be an unrealistic one. If you think Mozilla should ask whether people want to have a change or not for every single change, then that's your prerogative, it has nothing to do with practical software development though.

My definition of opt-in is:

"Click INSTALL to install this third party software"

I did not realize that this community had become so adverse to traditional software that asking a user before installing new software was now considered "revising definitions" and weird.

That's all I want: To be asked before third party software is automatically installed.

We used to call that adware/malware when a company bundled third party software without permission.

Now I guess we call it normal.

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