Firefox Personal Data Promise • Hacker News Board

Re: Firefox Personal Data Promise

#61

Post by wayneftw » Sat, Jun 08, 2019, 2:10 PM UTC

feanaro wrote: post #57

wayneftw wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. Just trying to live my life without constantly being pitched to. Are you advocating for mob-mentality?

No, I'm advocating for plurality of opinion, exposure to new information and constant challenging of my own viewpoints. My reasoning is that, at any given point in time, I am wrong about a great number of things. I fear that any algorithm that learns to present me exclusively with the content I like (i.e. which elicits the least emotional objection) is going to hide all things that might correct my current errors.

> No, I'm advocating for plurality of opinion, exposure to new information and constant challenging of my own viewpoints.

Good for you! Now, how about letting people get challenged and exposed to new information at a time and place when they choose to instead of constantly? I like camping and hiking...but I'm glad I get to go home to my comfortable house most of the time.

People are currently starting to gravitate more towards small group chats on WhatsApp and similar and away from places like Twitter and Facebook. I wonder why? Could it be it's because they don't want what you want 24/7?

I think so.

And the system you're advocating for, the current one, is obviously way more susceptible to being gamed. As you can see here all it takes is a small mob and a marketing push to get your unpopular browser on the front page 5 times this week. The system I want isn't susceptible to that in the slightest (but if I want to go look at things that I might not agree with, I'm still able to - that's my whole point: User in control, not some timely mob).

Re: Firefox Personal Data Promise

#62

Post by wayneftw » Sat, Jun 08, 2019, 2:14 PM UTC

afiori wrote: post #53

wayneftw wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. Just trying to live my life without constantly being pitched to. Are you advocating for mob-mentality?

It is not a dicothomy. While there are obviously trends at all times, they evolve over time and new ones emerge. I do not know your positions but it could simply be that someone with the right formulation able to start a trend is yet to come. Mob mentality is not the same as a popular idea or opinion, could be that popular assumption are indeed wrong and many people either do not care (maybe for principles or maybe b…

> Mob mentality is not the same as a popular idea or opinion...

Firefox isn't popular and that's my point. A browser with less than 10% market share got on the front page of many places this week because of a marketing push that was helped by a group supporters, a mob, who helped push it there.

A system that was optimized more towards my own dislike and distrust of Firefox and Mozilla wouldn't have shown me this bullshit.

Re: Firefox Personal Data Promise

#63

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jun 08, 2019, 2:22 PM UTC

wayneftw wrote: post #61

feanaro wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I'm advocating for plurality of opinion, exposure to new information and constant challenging of my own viewpoints. My reasoning is that, at any given point in time, I am wrong about a great number of things. I fear that any algorithm that learns to present me exclusively with the content I like (i.e. which elicits the least emotional objection) is going to hide all things that might correct my current errors.

> No, I'm advocating for plurality of opinion, exposure to new information and constant challenging of my own viewpoints. Good for you! Now, how about letting people get challenged and exposed to new information at a time and place when they choose to instead of constantly? I like camping and hiking...but I'm glad I get to go home to my comfortable house most of the time. People are currently starting to gravitate mo…

[deleted]

Re: Firefox Personal Data Promise

#64

Post by feanaro » Mon, Jun 10, 2019, 7:57 AM UTC

wayneftw wrote: post #62

afiori wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not a dicothomy. While there are obviously trends at all times, they evolve over time and new ones emerge. I do not know your positions but it could simply be that someone with the right formulation able to start a trend is yet to come. Mob mentality is not the same as a popular idea or opinion, could be that popular assumption are indeed wrong and many people either do not care (maybe for principles or maybe b…

> Mob mentality is not the same as a popular idea or opinion... Firefox isn't popular and that's my point. A browser with less than 10% market share got on the front page of many places this week because of a marketing push that was helped by a group supporters, a mob, who helped push it there. A system that was optimized more towards my own dislike and distrust of Firefox and Mozilla wouldn't have shown me this bull…

It's not popular, but it's better. The recent series of unfavourable events around Chrome and Google led people to talk about it more.

Re: Firefox Personal Data Promise

#65

Post by feanaro » Mon, Jun 10, 2019, 8:10 AM UTC

wayneftw wrote: post #61

feanaro wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I'm advocating for plurality of opinion, exposure to new information and constant challenging of my own viewpoints. My reasoning is that, at any given point in time, I am wrong about a great number of things. I fear that any algorithm that learns to present me exclusively with the content I like (i.e. which elicits the least emotional objection) is going to hide all things that might correct my current errors.

> No, I'm advocating for plurality of opinion, exposure to new information and constant challenging of my own viewpoints. Good for you! Now, how about letting people get challenged and exposed to new information at a time and place when they choose to instead of constantly? I like camping and hiking...but I'm glad I get to go home to my comfortable house most of the time. People are currently starting to gravitate mo…

> People are currently starting to gravitate more towards small group chats on WhatsApp and similar and away from places like Twitter and Facebook. I wonder why? Could it be it's because they don't want what you want 24/7?

Are they and does this have anything to do with exposure to conflicting opinions? Proper studies would be needed to determine this conclusively. After all, this is how it used to be, before Facebook and Twitter appeared and became widely popular not that long ago.

> And the system you're advocating for, the current one, is obviously way more susceptible to being gamed.

I'm not advocating for any system, this is just how life is: you undoubtedly encounter opinions which are not aligned with your own. You will also be wrong a lot of the time. That's nothing to be afraid of. You certainly don't need to build a sheltered city to hide from this.

> The system I want isn't susceptible to that in the slightest (but if I want to go look at things that I might not agree with, I'm still able to - that's my whole point: User in control, not some timely mob).

Except this doesn't really work in the general case. It's both intuitively familiar and well researched that it is really hard to change someone's mind and opinions are very inert.

Furthermore, I don't really see why it would be useful to expend significant energy to shelter yourself from opposing opinions. Simply to avoid emotional discomfort? If you're not in the mood for it in a certain moment, simply not reading online forums and going for a walk or picking up a book seems like a better option.