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

Mozilla stops Firefox fullscreen VPN ads after user outrage

bleepingcomputer.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 227 posts

Re: Mozilla stops Firefox fullscreen VPN ads after user outrage

#101

Post by letsdothisagain »

evv wrote: post #63
0cf8612b2e1e wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read a conspiracy that Google has paid off Mozilla management to specifically sabotage the browser development. Actions like this make it hard to dispute the moves that frequently seem deliberately anti-user.

It's not a conspiracy that Google pays Mozilla for default search engine placement. Maybe that arrangement led to the stagnation of Firefox, without malicious intent from any party. Hanlon's razor, yadda yadda

Hanlon's razor only makes sense if you're a teenager posting on reddit. Just world theory and all that.

Once you get into corporate politics it's the exact opposite.

God help you if you ever get into the nuts and bolts of governmental, or gasp intergovernmental politics.

Re: Mozilla stops Firefox fullscreen VPN ads after user outrage

#102

Post by JohnFen »

VTimofeenko wrote: post #25
comice wrote: post #15

it's a bit unclear what they intended here but I see a lot of people assuming the absolute worst intent. That Firefox would fully intend to insert full page unskippable adverts of it's own into unrelated websites is a major accusation and there is evidence this was an accident. Looks more to me like bleepingcomputer purposefully sensationalized the issue as clickbait.

Bugzilla links in yesterday's post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36077360 seem to indicate that Mozilla intended for the popup to be shown if the user is AFK for 20 minutes but that timer malfunctioned

> seem to indicate that Mozilla intended for the popup to be shown if the user is AFK for 20 minutes

Wow, that would have been a whole lot worse than what actually happened!

Re: Mozilla stops Firefox fullscreen VPN ads after user outrage

#103

Post by 0x457 »

comice wrote: post #45
devmor wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not the first time Mozilla has injected an ad campaign into the browser chrome. They did this a couple years ago as well to similar backlash, that time with a plugin that they force-installed for users.

That sounds pretty bad but what do you mean by "browser chrome"? Isn't the claim here that they injected an ad into an actual page?

No, browser chrome is the part that isn't the web page (i.e. browser UI itself).

Re: Mozilla stops Firefox fullscreen VPN ads after user outrage

#104

Post by [deleted] »

uo21tp5hoyg wrote: post #62
kramerger wrote: post #39

"The advertisement boosts Mozilla VPN, a paid open-source VPN service that constitutes a crucial revenue source for the not-for-profit company." In 2021, Mozilla CEO received $5M in compensation. I don't really consider them a non-profit.

It's intentionally confusing but "not-for-profit" and "non-profit" are two very different things and it seems the article gets them confused.

[deleted]

Re: Mozilla stops Firefox fullscreen VPN ads after user outrage

#105

Post by warkdarrior »

mozman wrote: post #88
dehrmann wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Th other conspiracy I've heard is Google subsidizes Mozilla so they have a credible claim there's competition in the market.

This is the correct answer

Why would Google try to prop up Firefox as a competitor? Both Safari and Edge on desktop are twice the market share of Firefox, so the browser market is competitive enough without Firefox.

https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/desktop/worl...

Re: Mozilla stops Firefox fullscreen VPN ads after user outrage

#106

Post by slater »

pwdisswordfishc wrote: post #19

> The most recent relevant report on Mozilla’s bug tracking platform received the "RESOLVED WORKSFORME" tag Typical Mozilla. At this point I don’t know why they even allow bug submissions from the public at all.

Now changed from WORKSFORME to FIXED

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1835158

Nothing to see here, folks!

(until marketing comes up with its next blunder)

Re: Mozilla stops Firefox fullscreen VPN ads after user outrage

#107

Post by Sunspark »

Animats wrote: post #96
lelanthran wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people who greenlighted this were the people who ousted those who built Firefox. The current crop of "leaders" have a vision that does not include Firefox being the best browser it can be. Trust me, they're politically aware of what they are doing, and are only gauging outrage now. Give it some time and they'll figure out how to leverage the outrage, as they did before. Never let a good crisis go to waste, and al…

> The people who greenlighted this were the people who ousted those who built Firefox. Mozilla got rid of their founder, Brendan Eich, for donating to a California initiative against gay marriage. Now we see what that costs us.

There would have been a cost to keeping him as well. There is a significant percentage of tech workers who are gay or trans, which would have reduced the hiring pool available to Mozilla.

Re: Mozilla stops Firefox fullscreen VPN ads after user outrage

#108

Post by xuancanh »

sandyarmstrong wrote: post #3

I noticed this yesterday. I've been using Mozilla/Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox as my primary browser for over 20 years. They've made some questionable calls, sure, but most of the recent things that have bothered people (like Pocket integration) haven't really irked me. This is the first time where I got a visceral feeling that maybe this isn't the browser I knew and loved anymore. It's not like I'm uninstalling and swit…

The downturn of Firefox began a long time ago when Brendan Eich was forced to leave Mozilla in 2014. I highly recommend giving Brave browser a try, as Brendan Eich now serves as its CEO.

Re: Mozilla stops Firefox fullscreen VPN ads after user outrage

#109

Post by warkdarrior »

the_duke wrote: post #17
sandyarmstrong wrote: post #3

I noticed this yesterday. I've been using Mozilla/Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox as my primary browser for over 20 years. They've made some questionable calls, sure, but most of the recent things that have bothered people (like Pocket integration) haven't really irked me. This is the first time where I got a visceral feeling that maybe this isn't the browser I knew and loved anymore. It's not like I'm uninstalling and swit…

Firefox at least exposes an endless amount of toggles to tweak pretty much every behaviour the browser has. This is includes settings for removing or disabling all the integration with Mozilla services and their ads. See for example: https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js

Yes, but the default should be to show no ads. If I want ads, I'll use Chrome or Edge with no ad blocker.

Re: Mozilla stops Firefox fullscreen VPN ads after user outrage

#110

Post by wongarsu »

dehrmann wrote: post #68
0cf8612b2e1e wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read a conspiracy that Google has paid off Mozilla management to specifically sabotage the browser development. Actions like this make it hard to dispute the moves that frequently seem deliberately anti-user.

Th other conspiracy I've heard is Google subsidizes Mozilla so they have a credible claim there's competition in the market.

Doing both makes sense. Google has a clear motive to keep Firefox in the market, at the same time they have repeatedly shown that they want Firefox to have the smallest market share possible. For antitrust purposes it might be enough to show "people could to Firefox", even if nobody does.
Post reply on HN