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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)

#251
post #243
post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

uBlock Origin is also an incredible success story here!

and you are essentially trusting the moral integrity of the current maintainer. why can't there be a method for making sure that such trust cannot be abused? Is this a tractable problem at all?

You'd still have to rely on the trust of the original maintainer, but they could set up something like a warrant canary[0], but for if they sold it or if they added tracking items.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrant_canary

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

#252

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…

Mozilla's review process is much more strict than Chrome's: they required me to produce original source code for all libraries that I am using (like jquery), forced me to get rid of some leftover eval's in javascript, etc. I don't think they read all source code, but they definitely look for some patterns.

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

#254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the ad companies just work out what you're interested in The word "just" doesn't belong in that sentence. The ad companies being able to know things about you without actually listening to you is even more scary. Evil-Ad-Company Neo: "You're telling me I can know things about my customers by secretly listening to them?" Evil-Ad-Company Morpheus: "No Neo, I'm telling you that with the right license agreements, data…

I mean showing you ads for diapers because you googled "best diapers" falls under that same category and I daresay isn't evil at all

No no no. First we start with trusted brands you know and love. We use the trust you have in them to slowly build a market around them. With our ad strategy, you’ll start seeing our product as related to Trusted Brand A. You will start seeing comments and reviews for our Brand in the same browsing contexts more and more until our Brand is now correlated enough to Trusted Brand A to remove purchase inhibitions.

After that, we just wait. We know we have you. It’s just a matter of time till you need a product like ours (you’re already our target demo), or an impulse buy occurs.

Without evening knowing it. You’ve been manipulated into trusting our brand, and you’ll think it was all an organic choice.

Nothing malicious or dangerous here.. move along.

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

#255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't true. Originally advertising was designed around the premise of explicitly highlighting utility and functionality of goods/content. It wasn't until Bernays came along and adapted his uncle Sigmund Freud's theories into practice by designing advertising to manipulate people into believing that they actually need the product. Modern advertising is not just "showing a product to induce demand". Car adverts do…

The documentary "Century of Self" by Adam Curtis [0] certainly opened my eyes to the damage that Bernays has inflicted on society in general. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ3RzGoQC4s

Two years after the 'Century Of Self', Adam released 'The Power Of Nightmares' (2004): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yK3wz-OyR1U

It explores the power fear has to shape behavior.

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

#256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi, I used to love hoverzoom... was there a malware scare a while back or am I thinking of a similarly named plugin ? At the time I switched to imagus & adjusted to it. Either way, thanks for turning away the monetization attempts :)

that was hover zoom (the original) not hover zoom+ (the fork by GP)

ah okay, thanks :)

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

#257
post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean showing you ads for diapers because you googled "best diapers" falls under that same category and I daresay isn't evil at all

Advertising, by its very nature, is emotional manipulation with the goal of getting you to give up some of your money for something you most likely don't really need and won't improve your life all that much, if at all. To me, that's evil. Sure, there are varying degrees of this evil, but IMO even the least-objectionable advertising out there still can't be called "good". In my experience, the case where advertising…

>you most likely don't really need and won't improve your life all that much, if at all

People are spending money because they see that they are getting value from something. If people didn't want it or thought it was worthless they would not buy it.

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

#258
post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

8 major versions, that is surely less than 5% of the Android population. I'm sure the security flaws in those non-updated phones is far more serious than the lack of microphone indicator.

According to https://source.android.com/docs/core/permissions/privacy-ind... , the microphone indicator is only in there since Android 12. Android 12 and 13 cover only 50% of Android phones, according to https://gs.statcounter.com/os-version-market-share/android/m... . There were some "access to the microphone is restricted for background apps" changes earlier, reported for Android 9. But I wouldn't rely on them, and…

It seems highly inefficient to listen to users 24/7 given the other more specific signals that are available. Rather have a transaction data point around everything someone has purchased then what they talk about.

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

#259

And if you run a website you get constant emails like this: Hey There, I wanted to reach out and see if accepts guest post contributions or link insertion in existing posts? If so, I'd love to hear more about your guidelines and any specific topics of interest. Thank you for your time, and I'm looking forward to your response. Best Regards, These ones are definitely spammed out en-masse, my site doesn't even have a b…

We run an educational blog for our saas product and we get some legit emails from readers but also a lot of the spam and some of it is scary good.

They feed in so much context that it does appear to be a real person and it ends up wasting a lot of time and honestly it's quite hurtful. We spend a lot of time sharing our stuff and these fake connections are a major turnoff.

Recently we encountered a wave of "awards shortlist" sort of emails written by AI with deep context that will cosider us for award for one easy payment! Except they always forget to tune the topic as we're not running software security service, we cover web scraping.

I feel like AI will kill email communication between strangers. It's getting so exhausting.

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

#260
post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Why do you think iOS and Android now prompt for microphone usage?

iOS has prompted for microphone usage since 2013
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