<story><title>Firefox is on a slippery slope</title><url>https://drewdevault.com/2017/12/16/Firefox-is-on-a-slippery-slope.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>bholley</author><text>My impression (without any internal knowledge on the subject) is that this was intended as a way to promote Firefox to Mr Robot viewers. A lot of people in this thread seem to have this backwards, IIUC - it&amp;#x27;s not an ad for Mr Robot, it&amp;#x27;s the onboarding experience of an ad for Firefox that ran in Mr Robot.&lt;p&gt;The folks behind this presumably wanted this experience to be seamless, and were also trying to keep it under wraps to preserve the surprise factor. This meant that they bypassed the usual processes by which Firefox engineers would have had the opportunity to (a) raise concerns about the deployment approach, and (b) suggest other mechanisms that would have achieved the desired experience while keeping deployment appropriately scoped.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s really heartbreaking that it ended up this way. The marketing team was trying to think outside the box to bring new users to Firefox, which is crucial if Quantum is to succeed. Surprises and stealth are the bread and butter of marketing, but they didn&amp;#x27;t think through the dangers of applying those things to engineering. Moreover, the very nature of surprise and stealth meant that they missed the chance for internal feedback before it went live.&lt;p&gt;A lot of us inside Mozilla are hurting right now. We poured our lives into Quantum for two years for the long-shot dream of giving Firefox a fresh start and saving the web from monopoly. It&amp;#x27;s frustrating to feel that all our hard-earned goodwill might be squandered by a few people and a botched marketing stunt. But the people behind that stunt were only trying to help, and I&amp;#x27;m sure they feel especially terrible right now too.&lt;p&gt;Mozilla will learn from this. But the mistakes here are probably less sinister than they may appear, and it would be sad if they caused our most closely-aligned users to switch to Chrome.</text></item><item><author>simias</author><text>&amp;gt;The core idea (deploy an easter egg via an add-on) seems pretty reasonable&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t understand why you believe that, especially when it&amp;#x27;s not an &amp;quot;easter egg&amp;quot; but actually an ad.&lt;p&gt;When&amp;#x27;s the last time I upgraded my linux kernel and it came bundled with an &amp;quot;easter egg&amp;quot; kmod, loaded by default, which made lightsaber noises if I wrote 1 to &amp;#x2F;sys&amp;#x2F;class&amp;#x2F;ad&amp;#x2F;starwars&amp;#x2F;enabled? Would you think that&amp;#x27;s appropriate?&lt;p&gt;You&amp;#x27;re developing a web browser, a critical piece of software. Almost an OS within an OS these days. You got rid of &amp;quot;cookies are delicious delicacies&amp;quot;[1] (an actual easter egg) because you deemed that the joke wasn&amp;#x27;t worth obfuscating an important piece of information. 15 years later you&amp;#x27;re adding stealthy extensions that look like backdoors. What changed?&lt;p&gt;I can assure you, people who want novelty extensions know where to find them.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;bugzilla.mozilla.org&amp;#x2F;show_bug.cgi?id=213186&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;bugzilla.mozilla.org&amp;#x2F;show_bug.cgi?id=213186&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>callahad</author><text>The core idea (deploy an easter egg via an add-on) seems pretty reasonable.  Looking Glass is a really cool idea &lt;i&gt;for users who want it.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;But pushing it out broadly, even in an inert state, was not good.&lt;p&gt;I can assure you that there&amp;#x27;s an active internal discussion to that effect. I&amp;#x27;m hopeful that we&amp;#x27;ll learn from this.</text></item><item><author>leeoniya</author><text>i have a question: why do any of this?&lt;p&gt;yahoo and google pay hundreds of millions, is this not sufficient? have any of these gimmicks actually helped gain users? it&amp;#x27;s likely that only Quantum - a purely technical improvement (plus marketing dollars) - made any dent in your user share. it&amp;#x27;s almost like mozilla keeps expanding into all the shady corners to use up its budget so it can have a bigger budget next year.&lt;p&gt;many users use firefox for ideological reasons, even when Chrome is&amp;#x2F;was technically superior. and these reasons are disintegrating at a ludicrous speed. you are throwing away the very users that helped you grow. we are telling you this here, directly and in plain language. much of the same group uses firefox because they can make it work exactly how they want with exactly 0 surprises. some of this died with the web extension addon transition, but it&amp;#x27;s at least justifiable from a technical &amp;amp; security perspective.&lt;p&gt;every time you force-feed what should be a visible and removable extension, i have less and less control over my browser and less incentive to to use or recommend it. it&amp;#x27;s heartbreaking, really. whoever is pushing forward on all this farcical marketing spin and bundling stunts needs to be shown the door, asap. call ads &amp;quot;ads&amp;quot;, not &amp;quot;experience enhancements&amp;quot;. it is not okay. you guys need to stop this before you lose your most dedicated users that have stuck with you through thick and thin. having been on firefox&amp;#x2F;nightly for over 10 years, deploying firefox on thousands of PCs, reporting many bugs, and making donations to mozilla, i am &lt;i&gt;this&lt;/i&gt; close to saying &amp;quot;fuck it&amp;quot; and taking my friends, relatives and coworkers with me. i&amp;#x27;m gonna be one user that costs you 2000 more.&lt;p&gt;please get this to whoever needs to hear it [and gives enough fucks to actually do something].</text></item><item><author>callahad</author><text>Most of us are on flights today, hence the slow response, but I want to clarify two things:&lt;p&gt;1. The study is not &amp;quot;still active and ongoing.&amp;quot; It was pulled yesterday after the backlash, though that may take up to 24 hours to propagate: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;gizmodo.com&amp;#x2F;after-blowback-firefox-will-move-mr-robot-extension-t-1821354314&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;gizmodo.com&amp;#x2F;after-blowback-firefox-will-move-mr-robo...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;2. Even when &amp;quot;enabled&amp;quot; in the add-on manager, the add-on was &lt;i&gt;completely inert&lt;/i&gt; unless a user &lt;i&gt;also&lt;/i&gt; manually dove into about:config and specifically enabled a flag related to the add-on. Without taking that deliberate action, it didn&amp;#x27;t do &lt;i&gt;anything&lt;/i&gt; but watch that flag. No headers, no word inversions, etc.&lt;p&gt;If you&amp;#x27;d like to verify my claims, the source lives at &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;github.com&amp;#x2F;mozilla&amp;#x2F;addon-wr&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;github.com&amp;#x2F;mozilla&amp;#x2F;addon-wr&lt;/a&gt;, and initialization is controlled by addon&amp;#x2F;bootstrap.js.&lt;p&gt;This doesn&amp;#x27;t excuse our actions, but I hope it adds some context.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>resfirestar</author><text>Thanks for the balanced view of what probably happened here. The question I&amp;#x27;m left with is: why can the marketing team deploy SHIELD Studies without engineering oversight? This seems like a policy 101 thing, and has me worried enough to untick the preference until this is (hopefully) addressed by a future statement.</text></comment>
<story><title>Firefox is on a slippery slope</title><url>https://drewdevault.com/2017/12/16/Firefox-is-on-a-slippery-slope.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>bholley</author><text>My impression (without any internal knowledge on the subject) is that this was intended as a way to promote Firefox to Mr Robot viewers. A lot of people in this thread seem to have this backwards, IIUC - it&amp;#x27;s not an ad for Mr Robot, it&amp;#x27;s the onboarding experience of an ad for Firefox that ran in Mr Robot.&lt;p&gt;The folks behind this presumably wanted this experience to be seamless, and were also trying to keep it under wraps to preserve the surprise factor. This meant that they bypassed the usual processes by which Firefox engineers would have had the opportunity to (a) raise concerns about the deployment approach, and (b) suggest other mechanisms that would have achieved the desired experience while keeping deployment appropriately scoped.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s really heartbreaking that it ended up this way. The marketing team was trying to think outside the box to bring new users to Firefox, which is crucial if Quantum is to succeed. Surprises and stealth are the bread and butter of marketing, but they didn&amp;#x27;t think through the dangers of applying those things to engineering. Moreover, the very nature of surprise and stealth meant that they missed the chance for internal feedback before it went live.&lt;p&gt;A lot of us inside Mozilla are hurting right now. We poured our lives into Quantum for two years for the long-shot dream of giving Firefox a fresh start and saving the web from monopoly. It&amp;#x27;s frustrating to feel that all our hard-earned goodwill might be squandered by a few people and a botched marketing stunt. But the people behind that stunt were only trying to help, and I&amp;#x27;m sure they feel especially terrible right now too.&lt;p&gt;Mozilla will learn from this. But the mistakes here are probably less sinister than they may appear, and it would be sad if they caused our most closely-aligned users to switch to Chrome.</text></item><item><author>simias</author><text>&amp;gt;The core idea (deploy an easter egg via an add-on) seems pretty reasonable&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t understand why you believe that, especially when it&amp;#x27;s not an &amp;quot;easter egg&amp;quot; but actually an ad.&lt;p&gt;When&amp;#x27;s the last time I upgraded my linux kernel and it came bundled with an &amp;quot;easter egg&amp;quot; kmod, loaded by default, which made lightsaber noises if I wrote 1 to &amp;#x2F;sys&amp;#x2F;class&amp;#x2F;ad&amp;#x2F;starwars&amp;#x2F;enabled? Would you think that&amp;#x27;s appropriate?&lt;p&gt;You&amp;#x27;re developing a web browser, a critical piece of software. Almost an OS within an OS these days. You got rid of &amp;quot;cookies are delicious delicacies&amp;quot;[1] (an actual easter egg) because you deemed that the joke wasn&amp;#x27;t worth obfuscating an important piece of information. 15 years later you&amp;#x27;re adding stealthy extensions that look like backdoors. What changed?&lt;p&gt;I can assure you, people who want novelty extensions know where to find them.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;bugzilla.mozilla.org&amp;#x2F;show_bug.cgi?id=213186&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;bugzilla.mozilla.org&amp;#x2F;show_bug.cgi?id=213186&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>callahad</author><text>The core idea (deploy an easter egg via an add-on) seems pretty reasonable.  Looking Glass is a really cool idea &lt;i&gt;for users who want it.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;But pushing it out broadly, even in an inert state, was not good.&lt;p&gt;I can assure you that there&amp;#x27;s an active internal discussion to that effect. I&amp;#x27;m hopeful that we&amp;#x27;ll learn from this.</text></item><item><author>leeoniya</author><text>i have a question: why do any of this?&lt;p&gt;yahoo and google pay hundreds of millions, is this not sufficient? have any of these gimmicks actually helped gain users? it&amp;#x27;s likely that only Quantum - a purely technical improvement (plus marketing dollars) - made any dent in your user share. it&amp;#x27;s almost like mozilla keeps expanding into all the shady corners to use up its budget so it can have a bigger budget next year.&lt;p&gt;many users use firefox for ideological reasons, even when Chrome is&amp;#x2F;was technically superior. and these reasons are disintegrating at a ludicrous speed. you are throwing away the very users that helped you grow. we are telling you this here, directly and in plain language. much of the same group uses firefox because they can make it work exactly how they want with exactly 0 surprises. some of this died with the web extension addon transition, but it&amp;#x27;s at least justifiable from a technical &amp;amp; security perspective.&lt;p&gt;every time you force-feed what should be a visible and removable extension, i have less and less control over my browser and less incentive to to use or recommend it. it&amp;#x27;s heartbreaking, really. whoever is pushing forward on all this farcical marketing spin and bundling stunts needs to be shown the door, asap. call ads &amp;quot;ads&amp;quot;, not &amp;quot;experience enhancements&amp;quot;. it is not okay. you guys need to stop this before you lose your most dedicated users that have stuck with you through thick and thin. having been on firefox&amp;#x2F;nightly for over 10 years, deploying firefox on thousands of PCs, reporting many bugs, and making donations to mozilla, i am &lt;i&gt;this&lt;/i&gt; close to saying &amp;quot;fuck it&amp;quot; and taking my friends, relatives and coworkers with me. i&amp;#x27;m gonna be one user that costs you 2000 more.&lt;p&gt;please get this to whoever needs to hear it [and gives enough fucks to actually do something].</text></item><item><author>callahad</author><text>Most of us are on flights today, hence the slow response, but I want to clarify two things:&lt;p&gt;1. The study is not &amp;quot;still active and ongoing.&amp;quot; It was pulled yesterday after the backlash, though that may take up to 24 hours to propagate: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;gizmodo.com&amp;#x2F;after-blowback-firefox-will-move-mr-robot-extension-t-1821354314&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;gizmodo.com&amp;#x2F;after-blowback-firefox-will-move-mr-robo...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;2. Even when &amp;quot;enabled&amp;quot; in the add-on manager, the add-on was &lt;i&gt;completely inert&lt;/i&gt; unless a user &lt;i&gt;also&lt;/i&gt; manually dove into about:config and specifically enabled a flag related to the add-on. Without taking that deliberate action, it didn&amp;#x27;t do &lt;i&gt;anything&lt;/i&gt; but watch that flag. No headers, no word inversions, etc.&lt;p&gt;If you&amp;#x27;d like to verify my claims, the source lives at &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;github.com&amp;#x2F;mozilla&amp;#x2F;addon-wr&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;github.com&amp;#x2F;mozilla&amp;#x2F;addon-wr&lt;/a&gt;, and initialization is controlled by addon&amp;#x2F;bootstrap.js.&lt;p&gt;This doesn&amp;#x27;t excuse our actions, but I hope it adds some context.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>leeoniya</author><text>the problem is that this is recurring and the apologies are now mostly meaningless. action, not words are needed.&lt;p&gt;i would have been happy to write this one off, but the ship has all but sailed. the ice is so thin that you guys are one PR disaster away from a mass exodus of people who trust you.&lt;p&gt;if mozilla learned anything from the Pocket disaster, it would have immediately made it a removable addon and genuinely apologized. instead, there it is in my toolbar on nightly. i know you guys bought them, but that&amp;#x27;s a solution that only addresses the privacy aspect - you went from nonremovable Pocket to nonremovable Mozilla&amp;#x2F;Pocket.&lt;p&gt;every misstep that has happened with &amp;quot;enhancing the user experience&amp;quot; is an affront to the brilliant engineering you guys are doing. you&amp;#x27;re literally shedding user-engineers - not unlike yourselves - over these user choice, bundling&amp;#x2F;marketing double-speak, viralgrab and privacy fiascos.&lt;p&gt;i&amp;#x27;m reasonable. i understood the DRM situation. the content providers make the rules and the consumers make the choices based on where they can consume the content. many people went apeshit with ideology. but mozilla is in full control of everything that is going on right now.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; This meant that they bypassed the usual processes by which Firefox engineers would have had the opportunity to (a) raise concerns about the deployment approach, and (b) suggest other mechanisms that would have achieved the desired experience while keeping deployment appropriately scoped.&lt;p&gt;i don&amp;#x27;t know what&amp;#x27;s worse, that users don&amp;#x27;t know what&amp;#x27;s going on, or that the engineers don&amp;#x27;t. here&amp;#x27;s an apt description for this: rgba(0,0,0,1)&lt;p&gt;rather than being delighted to discover features i didn&amp;#x27;t know where in there, i&amp;#x27;m now horrified to discover them. i&amp;#x27;m becoming mozilla&amp;#x27;s unwitting social testing platform and this is unacceptable. it is not what i signed up for with firefox 1.5. there&amp;#x27;s a reason that Tor&amp;#x27;s browser is firefox; i think this reason is ripe for re-evaluation.&lt;p&gt;mozilla is long overdue for automated regression tests of their core values.&lt;p&gt;plz don&amp;#x27;t take this comment personally. i have huge respect for the work you do. it&amp;#x27;s a shame the engineers are not in control of their destiny; they rarely are.</text></comment>