Mozilla stops Firefox fullscreen VPN ads after user outrage • Hacker News Board

Re: Mozilla stops Firefox fullscreen VPN ads after user outrage

#121

Post by avereveard » Fri, May 26, 2023, 6:01 PM UTC

logdap wrote: post #4

wlesieutre wrote: post #2

Makes you wonder how someone thought this was a good idea in a browser that was an early pioneer of popup blockers. Imagine if Firefox in the 2000's had seen popup ads and said "Yeah let's get in on that action!" At least it was a small scale experiment and not something that rolled out to the whole install base, I use Firefox on a couple of computers and didn't see it myself. But should you really need user feedback…

Mozilla management are malicious snakes. This isn't the first time they've tried something like this and it won't be the last. Each time they issue noncommittally apologies, if you can call them that, but it keeps on happening. They're testing the water for even more ads in Firefox, trying to normalize this until people stop complaining. Keep the heat on them, don't give them an inch or they'll take a mile.

To be fair I've notice that apologies for company screwups have gone up in quality significantly afte r the introduction of chatgpt, and I await their with interest to see if the trend holds.

Re: Mozilla stops Firefox fullscreen VPN ads after user outrage

#122

Post by eep_social » Fri, May 26, 2023, 6:03 PM UTC

JohnFen wrote: post #111

lolinder wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What did you switch to?

I'm using Brave right now as a stopgap until/unless I can find a better one. Brave isn't fantastic, but it works better for me than FF.

Have you tried Vivaldi? I am still not switched over for various reasons but it seems to be well aligned for me.

Re: Mozilla stops Firefox fullscreen VPN ads after user outrage

#123

Post by tezza » Fri, May 26, 2023, 6:04 PM UTC

Happened to me today.

It mostly caused mild exasperation.

I want FF to survive so this gave me mixed feelings.

First off: they are allowed to try things!

Great they are trying to keep the income incoming.

Bad that they don’t know their users enough that they are attempting this tack. It screams of expensive external consultants building a campaign… Depleting the funds for FF.

Re: Mozilla stops Firefox fullscreen VPN ads after user outrage

#124

Post by zerocrates » Fri, May 26, 2023, 6:05 PM UTC

AlexandrB wrote: post #79

jaredandrews wrote: post #30

Wow, I experienced this yesterday while I was absentmindedly using my computer.... I assumed I had clicked something without realizing it. The idea that it was an intentional pop up didn't even enter my head.

For me it hit as a double-whammy. I tried opening a new tab, but had to stop what I was doing to restart Firefox instead because of a Snap[1] update, then I got this immediately after Firefox started back up. A really nasty snapshot of where free software is at in 2023. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snap_(software)

I went through the song-and-dance for several versions to remove the Snap firefox and go back to the deb, and now that the deb is gone I just downloaded it directly from mozilla so it can use its own internal autoupdate feature. It works better that way anyway.

Re: Mozilla stops Firefox fullscreen VPN ads after user outrage

#125

Post by 93po » Fri, May 26, 2023, 6:08 PM UTC

warkdarrior wrote: post #109

the_duke wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Even Edge with adblocker shows a ton of ads and Microsoft shit that on one wants as part of the default browser behavior.

Re: Mozilla stops Firefox fullscreen VPN ads after user outrage

#126

Post by godshatter » Fri, May 26, 2023, 6:09 PM UTC

I keep hoping some of the laid off devs will fork the project and we can get back to a mostly volunteer model focused on just the browser. I'd much rather donate to something like that than the Mozilla foundation, at least as it currently stands.

Re: Mozilla stops Firefox fullscreen VPN ads after user outrage

#127

Post by orangecat » Fri, May 26, 2023, 6:09 PM UTC

letsdothisagain wrote: post #101

evv wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Eh, from my experience in several large companies there's some malice, but there's way more incompetence.

Re: Mozilla stops Firefox fullscreen VPN ads after user outrage

#128

Post by intelVISA » Fri, May 26, 2023, 6:10 PM UTC

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…

Same boat, used it since Win XP but they've been bleeding out badly since Eich left with no signs of recovery.

I do want to like Brave, as it is Firefox II in spirit, but the combo of web3 crap, Chromium and the fact that it still pings outbound (with it all 'off') puts me off entirely.

Maybe it's time for me to fork KHTML and do what needs to be done.

Re: Mozilla stops Firefox fullscreen VPN ads after user outrage

#129

Post by intelVISA » Fri, May 26, 2023, 6:13 PM UTC

MiddleEndian wrote: post #81

wlesieutre wrote: post #2

Makes you wonder how someone thought this was a good idea in a browser that was an early pioneer of popup blockers. Imagine if Firefox in the 2000's had seen popup ads and said "Yeah let's get in on that action!" At least it was a small scale experiment and not something that rolled out to the whole install base, I use Firefox on a couple of computers and didn't see it myself. But should you really need user feedback…

Microsoft basically got in on this with a lot of their recent Windows stuff. With Windows 7, suddenly you saw people's PCs were no longer full of adware. Then by 8 or 10, Microsoft thought, "Wait, people put up with adware for decades, let's get on that and put it into the OS ourselves."

Now now, it's just Good and Proper Business to Milk Your Customer Dry.

Re: Mozilla stops Firefox fullscreen VPN ads after user outrage

#130

Post by 93po » Fri, May 26, 2023, 6:13 PM UTC

Sunspark wrote: post #107

Animats wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Jeff Bezos donated more than Eich in 2018 to Cory Gardner, who is anti-equal marriage, anti-LGBT+ discrimination laws, and against same-sex adoption. It's interesting we don't hold the same standard to Bezos, or speculate that Bezos' donation affected his hiring pool.