Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Studying how Firefox can collect additional data in a privacy-preserving way

groups.google.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 450 posts

Re: Studying how Firefox can collect additional data in a privacy-preserving way

#181

Post by sp332 »

tjoff wrote: post #64
eli wrote: post #21

I think it's worth approaching this with an open mind and giving Firefox at least a little bit of the benefit of the doubt. It's pretty plain to see how such aggregate usage data would lead to a better product for everyone. How many people here use website/app analytics to improve products they work on?

It's pretty plain to see how such aggregate usage data would lead to a better product for everyone. No, it is not. Especially not for something such as a browser which is mostly transparent to the content.

Here's an example from Google. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8495939

Re: Studying how Firefox can collect additional data in a privacy-preserving way

#182

Post by froydnj »

dhimes wrote: post #118

I generally trust Mozilla, but I really don't understand what they are going to get out of the data. Their explanation leaves me scratching my head. Perhaps it's simply because I don't work on browsers? How does seeing which sites users use that need Flash drive their decision-making. Either they support Flash, or they don't. And- ditto for "Jank" (not sure I understand that term, frankly- why is it capitalized?). So…

(Disclaimer: I work for Mozilla.)

"Jank" is our internal term for slow, non-responsive interaction with the browser (the capitalization of it in the original message is a little peculiar). If you click your mouse button, and then a second or more later, the item that you were clicking on the screen responds? That's jank. That input form that's not keeping up with your typing? That's jank. And so on.

We can (and do) collect statistics on how much jank people are experiencing, and we can look for ways to improve those statistics, but knowing what particular sites (not complete URLs, just eTLD+1 sites) jank occurs on is much more actionable. Browser developers can go visit particular sites to experience and analyze the jank for themselves, or we can see what janky sites are particularly popular in a given region and focus our efforts on improving those sites--either by doing things more efficiently in the browser, or reaching out to the site developers and asking them to consider changing things to make their site work better in Firefox. (Complete URLs would be even more actionable, but we don't want to collect your complete browser history.)

The argument for Flash is similar: we can get aggregate usage numbers for Flash, and perhaps see how that correlates to jankiness (or crashiness, or what have you), but having some information on what sites are using Flash makes the data even more actionable, for similar reasons as those given above.

Re: Studying how Firefox can collect additional data in a privacy-preserving way

#183

Post by codedokode »

I don't really understand why it is necessary? Cannot they just take top 100 sites from a rating like Alexa? And if they want to evaluate the performace, they could buy a cheap Celeron or Atom-based laptop with Windows and browse those top 100 sites. I am sure that this will give more information than any statistics.

Re: Studying how Firefox can collect additional data in a privacy-preserving way

#184

Post by sp332 »

GhotiFish wrote: post #148
Yoric wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not "stating the plan", it's calling for feedback. If you disagree, provide feedback :)

People universally stated their feedback about pocket and it's still there. Why participate in a no-op?

Because the Pocket feedback I remember was about privacy concerns, and those were addressed.

Re: Studying how Firefox can collect additional data in a privacy-preserving way

#185

Post by kannanvijayan »

dannysu wrote: post #160
kannanvijayan wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the core disagreement here is not ideological per se, but on premises. I agree with the motivation of not collecting any data. That said, I don't feel that we have a choice but to compromise. If we don't build a better browser, then the other browsers will win by default, which means you lose all those privacy and security motivations anyway. This is not some gleeful romp down the yellow brick road of data co…

Why is the choice between opt-in vs opt-out of automatic behavior? If Mozilla wants perf data, collect it and then prompt the user "crash reporting" style. I would totally opt-in to prompts. Give it a threshold and ask, "This page seems to frequently perform less well on your computer, would you like to send us a report?"

Random sampling, basically. The value of random sampling is hard to overstate - it gives you a real picture of what's going on. A non-random sampling gives you a picture, but you have no way of confirming that the picture is a reflection of reality.

Random sampling and privacy run into conflicts not just in the browser space, but everywhere else. For example, recently the Canadian government went through a period where it allowed census respondents to optionally answer some questions that were previously mandatory (using privacy arguments). The result was several years of poor census information. The recent government reinstated the mandatory census questions.

The browser is just one arena where this everpresent conflict between knowledge and privacy plays out.

Re: Studying how Firefox can collect additional data in a privacy-preserving way

#186

Post by keithpeter »

kannanvijayan wrote: post #71

I can do a quick summary of what's being proposed and why. I work in the JS team at Mozilla and deal directly with the problems caused by insufficient data. Please note that I'm speaking for myself here, and not on behalf of Mozilla as a whole. Tracking down regressions, crashes, and perf issues without good telemetry about how often it's happening and in what context. Issues that might have otherwise taken a few day…

"This is a difficult compromise to make"

Then don't make the compromise.

As others have expressed here the reason few people opt in to data collection may be because they have chosen to use a Web browser that does not mandate the collection of data.

I'm assuming there will always be an opt out which I shall add to my list of things I have to do when installing Firefox.

Re: Studying how Firefox can collect additional data in a privacy-preserving way

#187

Post by qbrass »

binarymax wrote: post #59
embik wrote: post #14

This is ridiculous. I use and recommend Firefox for pure ideological reasons, because frankly, Chrome/Chromium is miles ahead of them. If they start opt-out tracking using the same approach as Google I do not see any reason to use it nor install it for my friends and family. That's some data for you, Mozilla.

Your stance is paradoxical, because Chrome has been improved based on data mined from users, and not in as nearly a considerate way as Mozilla is proposing. You want Firefox to succeed as a browser, but to be able to better compete it needs better usage data. Wouldn't you prefer for Firefox to be the best browser available, AND also be considerate towards your privacy rights?

Your stance is paradoxical, because you already stated Chrome is willing to go farther to improve their browser.

Re: Studying how Firefox can collect additional data in a privacy-preserving way

#188

Post by sp332 »

darrmit wrote: post #96

I still use Firefox specifically because of Chrome's privacy concerns and was under the impression after dropping FirefoxOS Mozilla was headed in the right direction. It seems they've convinced themselves that the only way to improve the product is to collect data on their users, rather than continuing to push the idea of privacy - which, in my opinion, if marketed correctly, could win over a lot of users. The browse…

It seems your premise is wrong since Firefox's market share has been steadily declining for years. Privacy apparently doesn't matter to that many people.

Re: Studying how Firefox can collect additional data in a privacy-preserving way

#190

Post by joosters »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #162
huhtenberg wrote: post #43

The single largest advantage of Firefox over other browsers is that despite all odds and occasional missteps they managed to respect users' desire for complete privacy. For Firefox we want to better understand how people use our product to improve their experience. Sure thing. But the fact that they are unhappy that some (many?) people are opting-out from the data collection is merely a sign that they don't want to u…

I'm not really sure what your concern is here. Let's assume for a moment that Firefox's implementation of differential privacy in this scenario is completely correct, and that as a result it's completely impossible (even in an information-theoretic sense) to learn anything about any individual user using this data; only about many users in aggregate. In this scenario, how exactly would Firefox's actions here compromi…

Why are they not letting people decide? If it is not harming anyone's privacy, and they make it clear that it isn't, then what is the problem with letting people opt-in to it?

Instead, it's telling that they are choosing to force people to opt-out. They know that their users don't want this, but don't care.

Post reply on HN