Firefox Offers Recommendations with Latest Test Pilot Experiment: Advance • Hacker News Board

Re: Firefox Offers Recommendations with Latest Test Pilot Experiment: Advance

#81

Post by baq » Wed, Aug 08, 2018, 9:23 PM UTC

megaman22 wrote: post #36

smacktoward wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The really mystifying part is that one of the key value propositions of Firefox is "here is a browser that respects your privacy," and yet Mozilla keeps flirting with bolting things on to Firefox that actively undermine that value proposition. They repeatedly sabotage the success of their only product! It's astounding.

It's too much to hope that products could just focus on doing what they do, and doing it well, rather than bodging on miscellaneous shit until it resembles the Homermobile. Build a browser. Implement the standards fully. Make it scream. That's your job.

so the thing is they're building a browser but they also care about having an internet to browse on.

Re: Firefox Offers Recommendations with Latest Test Pilot Experiment: Advance

#82

Post by Karunamon » Wed, Aug 08, 2018, 9:25 PM UTC

baq wrote: post #77

clairity wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is the market working as intended. search is overridden with advertising, corporate messaging, politics and other moneyed interests. in contrast, users are looking for authentic content and information. those two things are increasingly misaligned. mozilla is experimenting with a new way for users to find what they want, rather than deferring to google et al. to deliver subpar user experiences. it may work, it m…

i'll bite just a bit: you're concerned with sending your browser history to a third party but i assume are happy to send your search requests, hence search history, to a third party? i kinda understand the want to minimize the amount of third parties that know anything at all but otherwise don't see much of a difference in principal and history tells us that the search history may actually be worse.

The critical difference being that a search engine of any usefulness requires transmitting a search request to that third party. Pocket's recommendation feature does not require any such transmission, so it's definitely possible to work around.

Re: Firefox Offers Recommendations with Latest Test Pilot Experiment: Advance

#83

Post by clairity » Wed, Aug 08, 2018, 9:34 PM UTC

baq wrote: post #77

clairity wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is the market working as intended. search is overridden with advertising, corporate messaging, politics and other moneyed interests. in contrast, users are looking for authentic content and information. those two things are increasingly misaligned. mozilla is experimenting with a new way for users to find what they want, rather than deferring to google et al. to deliver subpar user experiences. it may work, it m…

i'll bite just a bit: you're concerned with sending your browser history to a third party but i assume are happy to send your search requests, hence search history, to a third party? i kinda understand the want to minimize the amount of third parties that know anything at all but otherwise don't see much of a difference in principal and history tells us that the search history may actually be worse.

yes, search history is juicy personal data. i'm willing to trust duckduckgo with that info for now. laserlike doesn't have a track record yet, so it's on the wait-and-see list.

if anyone's made an affordable personal search appliance yet, let me know. =)

Re: Firefox Offers Recommendations with Latest Test Pilot Experiment: Advance

#84

Post by Vinnl » Wed, Aug 08, 2018, 9:35 PM UTC

ve55 wrote: post #40

fpgaminer wrote: post #33

Let's talk about the knee-jerk reaction we are all probably having right now: "Muh privacy!" It's hard not to have that reaction. A couple days ago there was a front page post on HN about the DNS-Over-HTTPS features that Mozilla is experimenting with. Mozilla has this storied history of community reactions. So perhaps we can all be forgiven for being on edge with Firefox. Our news feed makes it seem like Mozilla is o…

Yes, Firefox is held to a higher standard of user privacy than Chrome. This is how it should be given that Chrome is a product made by one of the largest for-profit surveilliance and advertising companies that has ever existed. Firefox has constantly violated my expectations of privacy in many ways, by removing important features, adding tracking in many locations (including Google Analytics on internal browser pages…

> This is how it should be

Well, that depends. What if the effect is that Firefox's market share dwindles, it disappears, and everyone is forced to use e.g. Google's browser? All of a sudden your higher standards have resulting in only being able to choose lower standards...

Re: Firefox Offers Recommendations with Latest Test Pilot Experiment: Advance

#85

Post by Vinnl » Wed, Aug 08, 2018, 9:36 PM UTC

callahad wrote: post #50

kodablah wrote: post #7

I'm confused about a couple of things. First, the tech. So my browsing history is sent over the internet to a third party who comes up with recommendations via some magic opaque system? Can some recommendations be prioritized by how much you pay this third party? I have all sorts of questions about Laserlike's use of the data, but I guess I can dig for myself. Sure, you can say "well, don't use it" but this is more a…

Nick Nguyen's post on Context Graph¹ touches on the motivation, but in short, we think the health of the Web is threatened by existing players building experiences that, like a casino, you can link into easily, but which are deliberately difficult to navigate away from. For example, Instagram has historically restricted² which users are allowed to include external links in their posts. That harms the Open Web and con…

The comments always look the same when Mozilla announces something like this. Perhaps the content team should have a specific checklist they run through when announcing third-party collaborations, answering questions like:

- is anyone making money off of this?

- what is the motivation for the third party to take part?

- is this the default, and if not, what extra demands would it have to fulfil to ever become default?

- what user actions, if any, can trigger interaction with this third party?

Re: Firefox Offers Recommendations with Latest Test Pilot Experiment: Advance

#86

Post by Vinnl » Wed, Aug 08, 2018, 9:39 PM UTC

mgbmtl wrote: post #17

The important bit: "[...] we want people to clearly understand that Laserlike will receive their web browsing history before installing the experiment. We have also included controls so that participants can pause the experiment, see what browser history Laserlike has about them, or request deletion of that information." So, this is basically a better Stumble Upon, where you can delete the data they have on you. How…

> How are they monetizing the service?

How are they monetising Firefox bookmarks? How are they monetising the awesomebar? Which is to say: Mozilla doesn't necessarily add features to monetise them. (Although indirectly, most of their money does come through Firefox - and also their influence, in terms of being able to fulfil their mission. The motivation hence is most likely to be that they simply want more people to use Firefox. Another motivation might be that they want less people to be dependent on e.g. Facebook for the discovery of websites.)

Re: Firefox Offers Recommendations with Latest Test Pilot Experiment: Advance

#87

Post by Vinnl » Wed, Aug 08, 2018, 9:40 PM UTC

O2F2 wrote: post #62

This can not realistically end up as a addon and also will not gain any traction as opt-in option, it needs to be opt-out. So it's either going to be abandoned or end up baked in. So, unless a considerable part of the userbase is "throwing a tantrum", this will be yet another thing I have to remember to turn off on fresh installs. Not fighting this kind of erosion tooth and nail at every step endangers the only viabl…

It might be opt-out, but it needn't necessarily send your data to a third party or even Mozilla if it ever does get baked in. They're also experimenting with finding ways to do machine learning client-side.

Re: Firefox Offers Recommendations with Latest Test Pilot Experiment: Advance

#88

Post by bscphil » Wed, Aug 08, 2018, 9:57 PM UTC

callahad wrote: post #50

kodablah wrote: post #7

I'm confused about a couple of things. First, the tech. So my browsing history is sent over the internet to a third party who comes up with recommendations via some magic opaque system? Can some recommendations be prioritized by how much you pay this third party? I have all sorts of questions about Laserlike's use of the data, but I guess I can dig for myself. Sure, you can say "well, don't use it" but this is more a…

Nick Nguyen's post on Context Graph¹ touches on the motivation, but in short, we think the health of the Web is threatened by existing players building experiences that, like a casino, you can link into easily, but which are deliberately difficult to navigate away from. For example, Instagram has historically restricted² which users are allowed to include external links in their posts. That harms the Open Web and con…

I'm sorry, and I respect your work, but I think this is nonsense. Let's say Mozilla moves forward with this project. Assuming that it will be a source of revenue at all, the "recommendations" are going to be based on whoever has the money to pay Mozilla for ad placement (and let's be honest that it is ad placement; if it's keyed to the specific interests of each user that just makes it targeted ad placement). That results in the opposite of the supposed goal of decentralizing power online. To be honest I'm not convinced that adding "genuine end-user value" is not just a paper-thin justification for accepting new sources of revenue that are antithetical to Mozilla's historical values. [1]

But let's assume the most charitable and best case scenario, in which Mozilla continues the program but doesn't accept any money for payed spots or higher placement. How are they going to automatically determine what is valuable? If the algorithms go by what is popular, then it's just a new version of any other content aggregator with all the associated problems. (The listicle and click-bait articles shown in the screenshot on the blog.mozilla link are very telling in that regard.) On the other hand, if the algorithms tailor content closely to a user's particular interests and views, that is the very definition of a filter bubble. [2]

Even putting aside these two worries, I find it deeply counterintuitive to expect automated content to better provide what a user wants to see than they are able to find themselves - e.g. with search engines. This is entirely counter to any previous experience I have had with automatic suggestions. I would very much like to see any justification for optimism here. And even if it were largely successful here, I don't see how it would avoid leaving very small sites, bloggers, and their ideas in the dust. I'm sceptical that a centralized source of recommendations is going to provide a solution to concentrated power on the web.

[1] This is the sort of line we got about recommendations from Pocket. "Bringing valuable content to the attention of users" is the kind of BS marketing-speak I expect from corps which run on ad revenue, but not from Mozilla.

[2] "A filter bubble is a state of intellectual isolation that can result from personalized searches when a website algorithm selectively guesses what information a user would like to see based on information about the user, such as location, past click-behavior and search history." - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter_bubble

Re: Firefox Offers Recommendations with Latest Test Pilot Experiment: Advance

#89

Post by sanbor » Wed, Aug 08, 2018, 10:40 PM UTC

I don't like this kind of features. I understand that the rationale behind sites like Youtube is to feed you more content to be able to show you more ads, but I see it as a DoS attack to my productivity. Curiously, Google is starting to implement "Wellbeing" on Android to cut so many distractions.

I have commented this a couple of times already. I would like Mozilla to focus on fundamental things for a web browser like a good print dialog or syncing your search engines.

Re: Firefox Offers Recommendations with Latest Test Pilot Experiment: Advance

#90

Post by phobosdeimos » Wed, Aug 08, 2018, 10:43 PM UTC

callahad wrote: post #50

kodablah wrote: post #7

I'm confused about a couple of things. First, the tech. So my browsing history is sent over the internet to a third party who comes up with recommendations via some magic opaque system? Can some recommendations be prioritized by how much you pay this third party? I have all sorts of questions about Laserlike's use of the data, but I guess I can dig for myself. Sure, you can say "well, don't use it" but this is more a…

Nick Nguyen's post on Context Graph¹ touches on the motivation, but in short, we think the health of the Web is threatened by existing players building experiences that, like a casino, you can link into easily, but which are deliberately difficult to navigate away from. For example, Instagram has historically restricted² which users are allowed to include external links in their posts. That harms the Open Web and con…

Not the job of a browser. But neither was DRM and an integrated search engine and yet here we are... There is a nice fork of FF for android that removes the Mozilla if anyone is interested

https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.mozilla.fennec_fdroid/