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

Promoted Add-ons Pilot

blog.mozilla.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 138 posts

Re: Promoted Add-ons Pilot

#31

Post by the_duke »

There are currently 21,100 add-ons on the store.

Considering the relatively small market share of FF, I feel like the amount of companies that would pay for review could be pretty small (The ad model also creates an awkward conflict of interest: the add-ons most willing to pay good good money for placement are probably ones that you shouldn't install and Firefox should not promote. Think tracking, ads, .... Or commercial ad blockers trying to always appear above Ublock Origin.

It will be detrimental to open source/hobby add-ons in general, unless Mozilla includes those in the review program for free.

Overall, I can't see how this will bring in any considerable amount of revenue, not even considering the labour cost of manual review. At least while keeping shady actors out.

I can imagine this just to be an effort to balance out the costs of curating the store, while still bringing in a bit of additional money.

I'm tentatively supportive, assuming they provide free reviews for non-commercial open source extensions and are strict with the promotions they allow.

Re: Promoted Add-ons Pilot

#32

Post by Gys »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #26
Gys wrote: post #21

Maybe a first step of turning the add-ons into a kind of paid app store? Worked well for some others ;-) If eventually some kind of payments would be possible, Forefox could transform into a kind of platform and bring completely new possibilities.

It's the opposite of a paid app store. Instead of users paying to download apps, developers are paying to list them.

Apple and Google require a fee just to register. It is also possible to pay them for more exposure.

Just saying this might only be a first step. Tipping their toes, see what is possible. Might work out differently. Or not at all, or the same ;-)

Re: Promoted Add-ons Pilot

#33

Post by feanaro »

ffpip wrote: post #23
feanaro wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bit of a tangent, but I noticed the developer says this on the website: > By using it, you explicitly allow websites to do whatever they want with cookies they set on your computer (which they mostly do anyway, whether you allow them or not). Taking GDPR into account, this seems wrong, since GDPR enforces opt-in, not opt-out. Therefore, a notification only gives you an opportunity to opt in and blocking the notific…

GDPR enforces opt in if you read the banner. Not if you hide it. Sites like Facebook and Ghacks automatically opt you in if you start scrolling down, because they said they would do this in the banner they show. You didn't read it, because you were blocking it with the extension. The dev is just trying to save himself from silly lawsuits.

> GDPR enforces opt in if you read the banner. Not if you hide it.

Do you have a source on this? I'm pretty certain this right is not dependent on reading the banner nor even the existence of a banner.

Re: Promoted Add-ons Pilot

#34

Post by gnicholas »

I don't understand what exactly it means to be reviewed. I have an addon and they review every time I update it. [1] I provide them with source code, and they often have issues with this or that, and we make changes to satisfy them.

If this isn't reviewing, what is? It makes it seem like this new program is less about actually reviewing (which they already do) and more about pushing for advertising revenue. That's a fair thing to do, but it's weird to frame it as if reviewing isn't already happening.

1: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/beelinereader...

Re: Promoted Add-ons Pilot

#35

Post by netsharc »

pkaye wrote: post #30

What is the difficulty in accepting payment from more countries. Don't most of the payment providers like Stripe support a broad range of countries.

If you take money in exchange for services in a country, then you have to deal with taxes and regulations of that country...

Re: Promoted Add-ons Pilot

#39

Post by aaomidi »

marsrover wrote: post #37
hartator wrote: post #36

I don’t fully understand the positivity here. Isn’t Firefox sell itself as a non-profit?

I think the positivity comes from the fact that Mozilla has struggled to survive since its inception and is generally a good company.

Except when they fired basically all their talent. I don't really have any love for them after this.

Mozilla should've always been structured as a co-op.

Re: Promoted Add-ons Pilot

#40

Post by PeterisP »

ffpip wrote: post #23
feanaro wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bit of a tangent, but I noticed the developer says this on the website: > By using it, you explicitly allow websites to do whatever they want with cookies they set on your computer (which they mostly do anyway, whether you allow them or not). Taking GDPR into account, this seems wrong, since GDPR enforces opt-in, not opt-out. Therefore, a notification only gives you an opportunity to opt in and blocking the notific…

GDPR enforces opt in if you read the banner. Not if you hide it. Sites like Facebook and Ghacks automatically opt you in if you start scrolling down, because they said they would do this in the banner they show. You didn't read it, because you were blocking it with the extension. The dev is just trying to save himself from silly lawsuits.

The only thing that a banner "by scrolling down you opt in to something" means according to GDPR is that the people who wrote that banner are liars.

Quoting GDPR definitions (Art 4.12), '‘consent’ of the data subject means any freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous indication of the data subject’s wishes [..]'.

If the site owner wants to assert that the user provided consent, it's up to them to demonstrate that they fulfilled all these criteria. If they assert that a particular action (e.g. scrolling in this case) indicates consent, then they have the burden of proof to convince the regulator or the court that the action was unambiguous, that it's clear that reasonable people would only take that action with the intent to opt-in, and not because of some unrelated reason such as wanting to read the content below. The legality of various opt-in 'dark patterns' has been tested in EU courts already before GDPR, and it's not considered legally valid if it systematically misrepresents the actual user intent and wishes.

The appropriateness of any technical measure can be trivially tested with a user survey - get 100 random people to use the site for 5 minutes, and after the "opt in" action is completed, ask them whether they know that they "opted in", whether they know to what they opted in, and whether they really intended to opt in or not - and if not, then your method for "collecting consent" does not work and the things you recorded - actions, clicks, even physical signatures in a 'meatspace' setting - do not give you any legal permission whatsoever, they're meaningless.

The one thing they can do with that banner and scrolling is to cover their information requirements, where they have the right to do some thing even if the user disagrees (much less opts in), but they are required to notify the users that they are doing that thing. But there it makes all sense that the user can choose to delete that banner if they want to, it's like the notifications in supermarkets that they have cameras - they're required to display them, but the users don't need to read them if they don't care.

Post reply on HN