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Mozilla pulls Bypass Paywalls from Firefox add-ons store

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Re: Mozilla pulls Bypass Paywalls from Firefox add-ons store

#231

Post by jacques_chester »

logfromblammo wrote: post #148
laktak wrote: post #2

I don't want to subscribe, I also don't want to see ads or be tracked. I wish there was a universal micropayments way of paying for what I read.

The economics and game theory of this suggests that newspapers should be forced to cooperate with each other. Cartelize on-line journalism. Make the 4th estate official. Create a pseudo-governmental entity like the US post office, Fannie Mae, or the Fed. If you have an Internet connection, you have the option, through your ISP, to pay $X towards journalism on the web. Your ISP will then cryptographically vouch for an…

It so happens I designed a scheme a lot like this: clients send an opaque payload which the service provider wraps and forwards to an authenticator. The authenticator simply replies with a yes/no statement of whether the user is a legitimate participant in the scheme. The payloads are compared offline to validate that the versions of events given by the user and service provider are the same. There's a lot more needed to make it trustworthy, though.

It took me most of 5 years to obtain a patent on it: https://patents.google.com/patent/US9853964B2

To me the primary advantage would be to open up an untapped segment. There are readers who will never pay, they see ads. There are readers who love a source so much they will pull out their credit card and deal with the hassle of having yet another subscription. In the middle is a large, untapped group who would pay if the transaction costs (pulling out the card, hassle of multiple subscriptions, worrying about how much they're spending etc) were approximately nil.

Re: Mozilla pulls Bypass Paywalls from Firefox add-ons store

#232

Post by JadeNB »

oconnor663 wrote: post #225
Endy wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea might be good. The execution is harmful to users, and they refuse to roll it back. That's all that matters. Mozilla has shown this pattern consistently - they have an idea they think will be good for people, and when it ends up being hurtful and damaging not only the core product but the userbase - driving more people to alternate browsers - they steadfastly refuse to see what's going on around them. Frankly…

> The execution is harmful to users Do you have a source for that? Moz has a ton of data about how harmful to users it was to have an ecosystem full of trashy spam extensions. The leap from "this solution has some downsides" to "this solution's downsides outweigh its upsides" is skipping the most important part of the question.

> Moz has a ton of data about how harmful to users it was to have an ecosystem full of trashy spam extensions.

I wish that this data were available somewhere—not this specific data, but in general. Mozilla's response to community push-back is always "trust us, the data show that this is what's best". If you trust them already, then that might be good enough; but, when this is always their first, and often their only, response to push-back, it's hard to distinguish it from the empty response of someone with no data who wants to avoid questions.

Re: Mozilla pulls Bypass Paywalls from Firefox add-ons store

#233

Post by AnaniasAnanas »

znhy wrote: post #44

Mozilla shooting themselves in the foot again? Really, these people can't take a break. What's worse is that both Google and Mozilla are equally vile, so what browser am I supposed to use? In the end I guess I'll go with Brave.

A lot of my friends have moved to qutebrowser.

Re: Mozilla pulls Bypass Paywalls from Firefox add-ons store

#234

Post by nowarninglabel »

iagooar wrote: post #182
kbrosnan wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was the old model and it put a lot of pressure on the volunteer add-on reviewers and their were times where the delays stretched out to several months.

It's not like Mozilla has no funds. Why not hire a couple of people for the reviews?

Or at least hire review coordinators who can manage the program effectively. Our volunteers review 15,000+ loans a month. Happy to share insights with Mozilla on how to run an effective volunteer community and keep the pipeline flowing.

Re: Mozilla pulls Bypass Paywalls from Firefox add-ons store

#235

Post by SilasX »

zeveb wrote: post #184
zaarn wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC you can install unsigned extensions in the dev and nightly as well as unbranded versions of firefox (usually the last option means compiling it yourself). Mozilla is, to some extend understandably, concerned with the image of Firefox and patrolling what Addons are available in the store is part of that. Apple does the very same thing.

> Apple does the very same thing. As my dear old mom used to say, 'if everyone else were jumping off a bridge, would you?' The fact that Apple constrain their users doesn't justify Mozilla doing the same. My browser belongs to me, not to Mozilla and not to anyone else: I should be able to load any extension into it that I wish to, just as I should be able to load any program onto my phone or install any root cert in…

Also, Apple doesn't ground their existence in "we want software to be Free (as in Freedom) and we want you to be able to control your own device to do what you want". If anything, they want something that's mostly opposite.[1]

Mozilla does claim to live up to that standard.

[1] This isn't to say they're wrong; there are legit reasons to want a device with good defaults that are hard to bypass.

Re: Mozilla pulls Bypass Paywalls from Firefox add-ons store

#236

Post by rhizome »

rrix2 wrote: post #219
Endy wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm glad that all of the addons you use are the ones they've approved of and which haven't been made incompatible by any of the major breaking changes they've introduced in the last few years.

Those seem like two entirely unrelated issues

I don't know the whole story, but I'm inferring that the signing change affected the ability for people to sideload plugins.

Re: Mozilla pulls Bypass Paywalls from Firefox add-ons store

#237

Post by zeta0134 »

tux1968 wrote: post #179
superkuh wrote: post #157

This would not be an issue at all if Firefox had not jumped the shark in version 37 by implementing anti-user features like requiring Mozilla approval (signed) to run add-ons.

The idea is to protect users, not hurt them in any way. Anyone can sign and run their own add-ons, or offer those add-ons for others to use. The only thing being restricted now is who can distribute their addons via addons.mozilla.org, which seems more than fair.

If it was just distribution through the add-on app store, that would be one thing. As of Firefox 48 however, in stable builds of Firefox, unsigned addons (which haven't gone through Mozilla's review process) cannot be installed. Period. The about:config setting meant to override signature checks (and allow third-party extensions), `xpinstall.signatures.required`, is plainly ignored in stable versions from this point forward, so it's AMO or bust.

The only way to install an unsigned extension is to install the Beta or Developer builds of Firefox, which still honor the above setting. Or, I suppose, to use one of the many forks of the Firefox codebase that restore user choice.

Re: Mozilla pulls Bypass Paywalls from Firefox add-ons store

#239

Post by ben509 »

iagooar wrote: post #182
kbrosnan wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was the old model and it put a lot of pressure on the volunteer add-on reviewers and their were times where the delays stretched out to several months.

It's not like Mozilla has no funds. Why not hire a couple of people for the reviews?

Having funds is not the same as having unallocated funds.

Re: Mozilla pulls Bypass Paywalls from Firefox add-ons store

#240

Post by gsich »

superkuh wrote: post #157

This would not be an issue at all if Firefox had not jumped the shark in version 37 by implementing anti-user features like requiring Mozilla approval (signed) to run add-ons.

Probably better so. Toolbar shit can't install their crapware anymore this way.
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