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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

#411

Post by scott_karana »

hitekker wrote: post #319

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…

> 3) The developers responsible were having fun with an opt-in research service.

Having fun at whose expense, though? Widely deployed platforms used for extremely sensitive, personal materials shouldn't be subjected to "for fun experiments". That's the height of unprofessionalism.

What if the add-on had a bug, or an unintended side effect? Come on.

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

#412

Post by bigbugbag »

pweissbrod wrote: post #292
zie wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have fun in Lynx. that's probably the only browser that wouldn't do something like this. Well maybe Safari, not because Apple wouldn't, but because they just don't care enough about ad revenue. Chrome: They leech everything they can get away with, granted it goes only to Google, but you know it's just to feed their never-ending ad-revenue goal. MS: They bypassed IE only ads, and went on to build ads into the entire O…

Software companies are like music bands. You might like their current album but next year they could totally sell out and go pop :) Me, I keep it underground (qutebrowser at the moment) but I'm constantly in search of something better

At the moment I'm using waterfox, but also uzbl, netsurf, otter.

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

#414

Post by franga2000 »

Karunamon wrote: post #237
palunon wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Every unnecessarily-bloated download tears through data plans and costs people money to their ISP Only in third internet world countries like the US... Elsewhere, we don't have limited data plans.

This is going to put me in weird company but I really don't see why metered billing is such a terrible thing. Most other utilities are pay-for-amount-used. And as a bonus, this creates an incentive for developers (via customer pressure) to not use insane amounts of data.

It is because data, unlike water or electricity, isn't a finite resource. Your electricity bill includes the generation in the power plant and the transmission over the power lines. When it comes to Internet access, you're paying for the transmission (bandwidth), but there isn't a "packet generation plant" that you should have to pay for.

Also, data caps mean people will use less data, meaning using less bandwidth, meaning ISPs will have less of an incentive to upgrade their already ancient infrastructure. It would be giving them more money to use less of what they provide.

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

#415

Post by bigbugbag »

pweissbrod wrote: post #288
benbenolson wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What browser are you going to use instead?

Firefox 57's sweeping changes ruined most of my vim-like ui customizations (vimperator, vimfx). For 2 months I've switched to qutebrowser and palemoon as a backup and dont miss firefox at all. If you're looking for a browser with first-class vim compatibility qutebrowser is outstanding. I've also found palemoon to be a perfectly boring/stable/functional variant of firefox without all the drastic/breaking changes (vim…

If you were a vimperator aficionado you might want to have a look at uzbl.

Pale moon is not as good as waterfox, at least for me.

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

#416

Post by bigbugbag »

whatshisface wrote: post #282
geofft wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In my opinion, it doesn't really matter since the code is coming from Mozilla - they're building the whole browser, so they could introduce functionality anywhere. If someone distrusts their add-ons, why trust their browser at all? An appropriate response here would be to decide that you no longer trust their browser at all. It's hard to quantify trust exactly. I'm fine with trusting the partly-closed-source Google…

> I technically have no grounds to complain that they abused their access. I would argue that since they knew you were giving them access on the assumption that they would not do things like that, you would have grounds to complain. Similarly, I installed Firefox on the understanding that it would not phone home with opt-out telemetry, advertise third party products, or syntergise with acquired properties. Mozilla ha…

Just switch to waterfox, you'll get the best of firefox and none of the mozilla nonsense. This is what I did after finally getting fed up with mozilla not caring about user and just doing as they please to try to get more revenue and marketshare.

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

#417

Post by [deleted] »

WhitneyLand wrote: post #344
skymt wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking for myself here, but I'm not concerned that Mozilla might push malware into Firefox installations. I'm concerned about the lack of judgement in pushing an extension with a vague, scary-sounding name and description simply for a cross-marketing tie-in, and I'm worried that it could have damaged the trust ordinary users have in Firefox.

I don’t see the harm in a good organization contributing lot of value to this world having a little fun. Some of the comments are mentioning IT managers banning firefox, those will be the same IT managers doing all the other pennywise/pound foolish things that make you try not to work on their team in the first place. Maybe it’s actually good to put something scary sounding in there to raise awareness. It could help…

[deleted]

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

#418

Post by Crespyl »

WhitneyLand wrote: post #407
ryanisnan wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't look to my browser's implementation to "have a little fun". This is a foolish decision on Mozilla's part.

poor argument. ostensibly the only reason to separate business from pleasure is out of practical concerns. without stating practical concerns there’s no way consider the validity of your comment. who knows, you may totally change my mind, but as it stands it makes it difficult to disagree or agree with you.

How about this:

I opted into FF telemetry and "studies" with the understanding that some extra data would be collected and experimental features or specialized debugging tools might get pushed to my browser (like the last "study" I saw for collecting JS errors).

This addon is none of those things. It is an advertisement. Call it an "alternate reality game" if you like, but it's an advertisement for a television show. It has nothing to do with making FireFox a better browser.

Using the Shield Studies program to deploy extensions and advertisements that have nothing to do with the original stated purpose is an abuse of the tool and a breach of trust.

That's all aside from the fact that there's been numerous reports of people receiving the addon who never opted in to Shield Studies in the first place.

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

#419

Post by bigbugbag »

leeoniya wrote: post #312
TheRealPomax wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

I was in your boots when mozilla dropped ALSA and announced they were dropping extensions.

I have since found waterfox and have been very happy with it.

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

#420

Post by franga2000 »

Simon_says wrote: post #42
positivecomment wrote: post #11

Out of literally all the software vendors I know, including the one I'm working for, Mozilla is the one I'd have least expected to allow such a thing. I'm very surprised (Negatively, needless to say)

I would have said the same thing until they integrated the W3C Encrypted Media Extensions. It's clear they lost their way some time ago.

I don't like EME either, but not implementing it would've killed any chance of regaining users: "Oh look, Firefox Quantum looks awesome, I should try it. ... Never mind, it doesn't play Netflix". Implemeting it, but disabling it by default was a good choice. People will have to consciously click "I accept DRM" to use it, which might get them to read more about what it is and ultimately raise awareness about how terrible it is.
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