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Mozilla stops Firefox fullscreen VPN ads after user outrage

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Re: Mozilla stops Firefox fullscreen VPN ads after user outrage

#191

Post by netsharc »

slater wrote: post #7

Someone needs to make a "Firefox Marketing Department Greatest Hits" page; this isn't the first time, by far, they've tried to shoe-horn some absolutely user-hostile garbage into some release, followed by the usual "we will do better" back-pedalling non-apology

Yeah, something similar to "Killed by Google". Maybe we need a template on Github for such sites to catalog bullshit, lord knows there's a lot of categories of bullshit we can catalog...

Oh actually they do have their source available: https://github.com/codyogden/killedbygoogle

Re: Mozilla stops Firefox fullscreen VPN ads after user outrage

#192

Post by 0cf8612b2e1e »

tivert wrote: post #171
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.

> 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. IIRC, didn't Mozilla lay off some R&D team that was doing some promising work on modernizing and improving its browser engine?

My annoyance is more the half-brained projects which Mozilla pursues. Then surprised Pikachu when they have to cut budgets and Firefox is impacted.

Re: Mozilla stops Firefox fullscreen VPN ads after user outrage

#193

Post by Macha »

JohnFen wrote: post #115
logdap wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Each time they issue noncommittally apologies, if you can call them that, but it keeps on happening. An apology needs three parts: admission that you did wrong, expressing regret for your wrongdoing, and a change in your behavior so that you don't do it again. Mozilla's tendency to just do the first two and skip the third means that, in my view, those weren't real apologies.

It's hard to say they even do the first two. This one for example is not "sorry we added ads", but a "We're sorry you're concerned or confused".

Re: Mozilla stops Firefox fullscreen VPN ads after user outrage

#194

Post by Macha »

intelVISA wrote: post #128
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.

Note that KHTML is dead: https://github.com/KDE/khtml/tree/master

The writing was on the wall as KDE moved to first QtWebkit and then the Blink based QtWebEngine.

Re: Mozilla stops Firefox fullscreen VPN ads after user outrage

#195

Post by elaus »

sinistersnare wrote: post #141

I think that there needs to be a level of accountability here for the programmers who did this. Tech workers need to stand up against this kind of anti-user hostility. Firefox is an openly-developed project, who wrote the code to allow this kind of attack, and should we ask them to commit to not writing such code again?

I'm not sure what this would achieve? I mean, surely it wasn't some random developer who came up with this idea and implemented it. This is a management decision and management decisions are driven by the company culture.

Re: Mozilla stops Firefox fullscreen VPN ads after user outrage

#197

Post by eska »

elaus wrote: post #195
sinistersnare wrote: post #141

I think that there needs to be a level of accountability here for the programmers who did this. Tech workers need to stand up against this kind of anti-user hostility. Firefox is an openly-developed project, who wrote the code to allow this kind of attack, and should we ask them to commit to not writing such code again?

I'm not sure what this would achieve? I mean, surely it wasn't some random developer who came up with this idea and implemented it. This is a management decision and management decisions are driven by the company culture.

If I joined a company like Mozilla as a programmer rather than Google etc my motivation would probably be to create a privacy-protecting browser. If my company asked me to implement user-hostile features I’d just walk out. It’s not like someone like that can’t find a different job somewhere else.

Re: Mozilla stops Firefox fullscreen VPN ads after user outrage

#198

Post by handsclean »

postalrat wrote: post #173
LeoPanthera wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On KDE, Falkon. On Gnome, "Web". On macOS, Safari may not pass your "non-corporate" requirement, but it's spiritually non-corporate, and functionally "just a browser". It's also wicked fast and extremely light on your resources. On many platforms, "ungoogled-chromium" may satisfy your needs. It's under the name "eloston-chromium" in many repos. https://github.com/ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium

Safari is the MSIE 6 of this time period.

Safari is the fastest browser, the most standards compliant browser, and regularly updated, the only similarity to IE6 is it’s buggy. Chrome, on the other hand, followed IE’s whole playbook: leverage a platform monopoly to push the browser, then leverage browser monopoly to undermine standards, coercing devs into dropping support for the competition.

Re: Mozilla stops Firefox fullscreen VPN ads after user outrage

#199

Post by Zak »

pleb_nz wrote: post #84
fabrice_d wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it's not blocked by ad blockers, since this was not injected in pages but part of the browser UI (the "chrome").

I wonder why I have not seen the advert popup then. I run Firefox daily for 8 to 10 hours and I've not seen it once... Something must be blocking it for me.

As far as I can tell, it was run for a few hours and required Firefox to be left open and idle for 20 minutes before it appeared.

Re: Mozilla stops Firefox fullscreen VPN ads after user outrage

#200

Post by stjohnswarts »

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…

As long as they make it easy to turn off, I simply don't care. I also don't understand others acting like it's the end of the world. Like this is the equivalent of your most beloved partner turning out to be a complete hoax. Give me a break. If anyone is looking for a nice "new tab" filler I highly suggest the "tabbliss" plugin.
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