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Unknown Mozilla dev addon "Looking Glass 1.0.3" on browser

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Re: Unknown Mozilla dev addon "Looking Glass 1.0.3" on browser

#311

Post by jordigh »

So, a lot of people in this thread are saying that Mozilla is a non-profit. There are in fact two Mozillas. One is the Mozilla Foundation, which is the non-profit. They are not involved with Firefox development, as I understand it. The Mozilla Corporation, which I think is owned by the non-profit, does the development. I think the foundation just does cute videos and outreach and other things not directly related to writing software. I also understand that if you donate money to the Mozilla foundation, the money would not make it to Mozilla corp and thus would not pay for the salary of any Firefox hacker.

I've never quite understood how exactly does this financial arrangement work and I would be grateful to anyone who could explain this to me.

Re: Unknown Mozilla dev addon "Looking Glass 1.0.3" on browser

#312

Post by leeoniya »

TheRealPomax wrote: post #306
leeoniya wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i'm on nightly and the default was to opt me in. that's some shady shit. i'm pissed. mozilla is rapidly burning through over a decade of hard-earned trust and goodwill. i install firefox on other people's machines. i'm not a good user to piss off. am i gonna have to wait for servo to mature and make an unmozillad servo? what a sad reality that would be. this is not the browser we were looking for.

if you're on Nightly, this is literally what you signed up for: all the experimental settings and all new functionality turned on by default so that you can be part of the test bed of users and devs that can report back to the larger developer community through Bugzilla when things aren't working the way they should be. Complaining about the fact that Nightly did exactly what it's supposed to is kind of ridiculous.

> if you're on Nightly, this is literally what you signed up for

no, it is not, because i signed up for nightly a decade ago when mozilla still had my trust and admiration. i signed up to help mozilla find bugs before they hit end users. i signed up for new web platform features and bug fixes. i signed up to see the perf and ui improvements.

what i get force-fed now is an additional mystery platter of ad experiments, privacy erosion, forced third-party integration, random auto-addons and who knows what else at this point - they can literally push anything behind my back. the absence of all of these things is the exact reason i have stuck with firefox. i guess this relationship is not meant to last.

as another comment says in this thread, it's literally the "Windows 10 of browsers". Want faster perf and more security? Just sign up for the next version with more ads, less privacy and random third party services we auto-push to you. I know Chrome does this too, which doesnt make it ok for mozilla - it just leaves me with 0 options. if i had other viable options, i would leave quietly and never post this comment.

Re: Unknown Mozilla dev addon "Looking Glass 1.0.3" on browser

#313

Post by Grollicus »

rnhmjoj wrote: post #255
benbenolson wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What browser are you going to use instead?

If you like Firefox but don't trust Mozilla anymore there are plenty of forks to choose from: Waterfox, Pale Moon, Basilisk, GNU IceCat. Personally I build Firefox from source and maintain a set of patches largely based on these: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/firefox-esr-privacy/

I think about doing this as well but heard a lot of bad things about the firefox build process. How long does it take to build for you?

Re: Unknown Mozilla dev addon "Looking Glass 1.0.3" on browser

#314

Post by ryukafalz »

revelation wrote: post #289
ryukafalz wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The extension only starts up if the config option "extensions.pug.lookingglass" is set to "true" though: https://github.com/gregglind/addon-wr/blob/da464ac8f1c3b0894... (It defaults to "false.")

We already have a mechanism for disabling or enabling addons, it's not installing them in the first place. Why on earth would we put it to addons to self-police them.

It's behind a preference flag because it's installed automatically, and Mozilla's the only one who can do that. That's also why there's a lengthy approval process before such an addon can be pushed out:

https://mozilla.github.io/shield-studies-docs/study-process/

Re: Unknown Mozilla dev addon "Looking Glass 1.0.3" on browser

#315

Post by CommieBobDole »

jordigh wrote: post #311

So, a lot of people in this thread are saying that Mozilla is a non-profit. There are in fact two Mozillas. One is the Mozilla Foundation, which is the non-profit. They are not involved with Firefox development, as I understand it. The Mozilla Corporation, which I think is owned by the non-profit, does the development. I think the foundation just does cute videos and outreach and other things not directly related to…

It's the other way around - the foundation owns the corporation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation

Re: Unknown Mozilla dev addon "Looking Glass 1.0.3" on browser

#316

Post by DarronWyke »

kuschku wrote: post #242
DarronWyke wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hahaha. You gave them permission when you agreed to their TOS. But you didn't read it, did you?

ToS terms that aren’t either expected by the user, or explained in plain text without having to click through anything, are considered null and void in the EU. By that definition, this would be unallowed modification of the computer of the user, and fall under the various hacking acts. The more interesting thing is that this has also been rolled out to german government computers, which mostly used to use Firefox, bu…

>ToS terms that aren’t either expected by the user, or explained in plain text without having to click through anything, are considered null and void in the EU.

You mean like the TOS and EULA you agree to when you install the browser? That would qualify as "expected by the user" and "explained in plain text" both.

Re: Unknown Mozilla dev addon "Looking Glass 1.0.3" on browser

#317

Post by revelation »

ryukafalz wrote: post #314
revelation wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We already have a mechanism for disabling or enabling addons, it's not installing them in the first place. Why on earth would we put it to addons to self-police them.

It's behind a preference flag because it's installed automatically, and Mozilla's the only one who can do that. That's also why there's a lengthy approval process before such an addon can be pushed out: https://mozilla.github.io/shield-studies-docs/study-process/

You can just not install (and enable) addons automatically. Those addons should only be delivered to users who have 1) opted into the study process and 2) opted into the study in the first place.

Re: Unknown Mozilla dev addon "Looking Glass 1.0.3" on browser

#318

Post by kelnos »

TheRealPomax wrote: post #245
tamriel wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. I merely challenge the notion that a nonprofit -- which proudly tumpets its benevolence and non-profitness -- should get a free pass for covertly installing advertising arrangements, just because they need to "make money". Their charter and marketing is all about defending the internet from the companies doing shady things to make money, so they can't have their cake and eat it.

That would be a valid complaint if this was an advertising arrangment, rather than one where if you watch the TV show, you learn that you can activate a firefox addon to participate in an small AR game that changes your normal web experience into a Mr Robot style web experience for the duration. The addon itself does not advertise for Mr. Robot, Mr. Robot advertises for this addon.

Sure, but why install it on random people's installs, even in some sort of disabled state? Viewers should be called on to install it themselves. I'd be cool with, say, an about: page that makes it easy for users to discover it, but pre-installing the addon in people's browser's seems a bit much.

Re: Unknown Mozilla dev addon "Looking Glass 1.0.3" on browser

#319

Post by hitekker »

1) Mozilla uses weird, spooky language in an add-on.

2) Users are justifiably concerned.

3) Mozilla explains that the add-on is actually anodyne; the developers responsible were having fun with an opt-in research service.

4) Some users try to justify their initial overreaction by painting Firefox as mysterious, dangerous entity, fabulating conspiracy theories about one of the most forthright and open OSS companies in the world.

Really, guys. If Mozilla was hellbent on invading your privacy, do you really think they would proudly entitle their tracker "Looking Glass". Or would they call it debugservice_1223?

Re: Unknown Mozilla dev addon "Looking Glass 1.0.3" on browser

#320

Post by sincerely »

john_moscow wrote: post #281
kryptiskt wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The major problem is that they installed an add-on without properly communicating what it was. A somewhat smaller problem but still a big problem is that was an utterly frivolous add-on that shouldn't have been pushed to people who didn't explicitly want it. But the biggest problem is that Mozilla seems to have trouble understanding why any of those two would be a problem, I want my browser vendor to be serious and n…

Being serious is quickly becoming a lost art. I don't know if the majority of the userbase really enjoys it, but I can't wait till the current fashion of treating your users like 3-year-olds blows through.

agreed. nothing is more frustrating to me than when my windows computer delivers an error message with a “ :( “
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