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Temptations of an open-source Chrome extension developer (2021)

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Re: Temptations of an open-source Chrome extension developer (2021)

#91

Post by wintermutestwin »

collaborative wrote: post #56

I don't know what the solution to this is, but I know a few trusted/legitimate companies that sell their user data for around £20/year even after having monetized their users with actual money I will never do this because violating privacy goes against the core of my beliefs, but there is a conflict I can't seem to work out. On the one hand, I KNOW that the vast majority of users prefer to sell their privacy than pay…

>They would gladly click on a "sell my data" over a "pay money" button any day of the week.

You don't know that because no one is given a clear choice like you present (and even saying "data" is opaque to joe average user). And this is what regulations like EU's and CA's should be enforcing. Imagine if the choice was: We have this data about you (a comprehensive list of all the fruits of our creepy stalking: a,b,c,d, etc...), if you let us violate your privacy in a myriad of ways, we will let you have this little trinket for free. Otherwise, it will cost you x. How many people would select privacy violation?

>Most people don't expect to get things for free in the real world, why should the internet be any different? Why does everyone (myself included) always look for free stuff on the internet?

Most of the internet is communication in some form or another. I get a lot of communication for free in the real world. My question is: why does everyone assume that the purpose of the internet is their platform to get rich selling trinkets to clueless natives? Maybe some things are better off run as a non-profit?

Re: Temptations of an open-source Chrome extension developer (2021)

#92

Post by camdat »

jabradoodle wrote: post #83
gregschlom wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This matches the audio signature of the TV ad - basically, it's like Shazam, but for TV ads. It's currently not economically possible to listen to user's conversations, transcribe them to text, and serve ads based on that. It would cost orders of magnitude more in processing power than you could get from the extra sales. This might change in the future, of course

Wouldn't cost that much if the transcribing is done on device

This would be immediately obvious in a cursory analysis of performance. On-device transcription is not only computationally infeasible, it would also require model capabilities far beyond what is currently SOTA.

Google had (and has afaik) significant challenges implementing multiple wake-word detection for precisely this reason.

Transcribing a couple of words accurately on-device without a major performance penalty (so that it can be running in the background always) is just _barely_ coming out now.

Re: Temptations of an open-source Chrome extension developer (2021)

#93

Post by c7DJTLrn »

GeekyBear wrote: post #61

Things have gotten bad enough that I've stopped using extensions that haven't been through a code vetting process. > Recommended extensions differ from other extensions that are regularly reviewed by Firefox staff in that they are curated extensions that meet the highest standards of security, functionality, and user experience. Firefox staff thoroughly evaluate each extension before it receives Recommended status. h…

What does that mean in reality? Pretty sure Chrome Web Store extensions are reviewed, but since they're all minified and obfuscated garbage, I wonder how easily malicious code could slip through. I'm surprised there hasn't been a mass cookie stealing attack yet.

Re: Temptations of an open-source Chrome extension developer (2021)

#94

Post by cal85 »

FWIW, and since a few of you probably use it… I own the JSON Formatter extension [0], which I created and open-sourced 12 years ago and have maintained [1] ever since, with 2 million users today. And I solemnly swear that I will never add any code that sends any data anywhere, nor let it fall into the hands of anyone else who would.

I’ve been emailed several tempting cash offers from shady people who presumably want to steal everyone’s data or worse. I sometimes wish I had never put my name on it so I could just take the money without harming my reputation, but I did, so I’m stuck with being honourable. On the plus side I will always be able to say that I never sold out.

[0] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/json-formatter/bcj...

[1] low effort tbh

Re: Temptations of an open-source Chrome extension developer (2021)

#95

Post by afavour »

tjoff wrote: post #88
afavour wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two different things. The popular conspiracy theory is that the phone listens to and presumably transcribes your conversations, sending them to a third party. The example the OP gave is specifically listening for TV content: they’ll have hashes of known ads/shows/whatever to compare against rather than do something like live transcription. Don’t get me wrong it’s shitty and gross. But they are different things.

The only reason they don't do that is because our devices aren't powerful enough to do it all the time.

I don’t disagree with you but the fact remains: they aren’t doing it.

Re: Temptations of an open-source Chrome extension developer (2021)

#96

Post by theandrewbailey »

butz wrote: post #41

Nuking all extensions that use any of the listed "monetization platforms" would make Chrome extension store a safer place for everyone.

They will just rename everything and operate under a new shell company. Then everything will be back to the status quo.

Re: Temptations of an open-source Chrome extension developer (2021)

#97

Post by extesy »

justsid wrote: post #87
extesy wrote: post #76

Maintainer here. My extension is pretty much unmonetizable so any offer I receive would require some degree of a moral sacrifice. The least intrusive offer I've seen so far is to put a reciprocal link to somebody else's extension inside of mine, kind of like DarkReader is doing on their website. Even though it won't compromise any of my users data, the reason I'm not doing this is because it indirectly endorses that…

I really appreciate the transparency from you. I don't use Chrome anymore, but back in the day I absolutely loved Hover Zoom+ and my wife is still loving it to this day. It's a great extension and having read your comment and the linked Github issue, I feel even better about it. Thanks for your hard work.

Thank you for the kind words. I actually publish hoverzoom+ to Firefox and Edge as well (links are in the repo's readme) so you can use it there too.

Re: Temptations of an open-source Chrome extension developer (2021)

#98

Post by Y_Y »

cal85 wrote: post #94

FWIW, and since a few of you probably use it… I own the JSON Formatter extension [0], which I created and open-sourced 12 years ago and have maintained [1] ever since, with 2 million users today. And I solemnly swear that I will never add any code that sends any data anywhere, nor let it fall into the hands of anyone else who would. I’ve been emailed several tempting cash offers from shady people who presumably want…

What size cash offers? Not that I want some of it, but then I do think there could be an industry re-scamming these people and want to know how much we're talking about.

Re: Temptations of an open-source Chrome extension developer (2021)

#99

Post by alyandon »

spiderice wrote: post #81
jstanley wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But every time this comes up the threads are flooded with people saying it doesn't actually happen and the ad companies just work out what you're interested in by what you're browsing.

Your phone notifies you when an app accesses the microphone. If this is happening so much, how is it not blatantly obvious?

Android phones that are 8 major versions out of date because the OEM won't support them probably don't have that feature.

Re: Temptations of an open-source Chrome extension developer (2021)

#100

Post by r1ch »

cal85 wrote: post #94

FWIW, and since a few of you probably use it… I own the JSON Formatter extension [0], which I created and open-sourced 12 years ago and have maintained [1] ever since, with 2 million users today. And I solemnly swear that I will never add any code that sends any data anywhere, nor let it fall into the hands of anyone else who would. I’ve been emailed several tempting cash offers from shady people who presumably want…

I used to have an extension that promised to never be sold or even updated beyond the initial release, since it was a one-liner that can't possibly ever need to change. The Chrome Web Store took it down after 5+ years, presumably because I never published an update so the the now-mandatory fields were empty.
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