[HN Gopher] Mozilla stops Firefox fullscreen VPN ads after user ...
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Mozilla stops Firefox fullscreen VPN ads after user outrage
Author : airhangerf15
Score : 283 points
Date : 2023-05-26 15:43 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bleepingcomputer.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bleepingcomputer.com)
| walrus01 wrote:
| The particularly terrible thing about this is that the Mozilla
| VPN product is actually Mullvad underneath, one of the better and
| more ethical VPN providers. Then they have to do this popup ad
| bullshit pushed by the browser and take a dump all over it.
| mig39 wrote:
| I have Mullvad running on my devices all the time...
|
| I wonder if they showed the ad to Mullvad users?
|
| Also, Mullvad is unique in that it generally doesn't do
| commissions or special sale prices, etc. The "top rated" VPNs
| on review sites and YouTube channels are usually the ones
| paying the most in commission. And it's a reason Mullvad is
| rarely in the "top rated" lists -- it doesn't pay commissions.
|
| I wonder how that works with Mozilla? Surely Mozilla is getting
| a commission?
| dogleash wrote:
| Without actually researching this, my impression is that
| Mullvad is a white label provider that the Mozilla VPN
| product is built on.
|
| That's very different business arrangement than Mullvad
| paying commission for customer acquisition.
| super256 wrote:
| What is the value proposition of using Mozilla VPN over Mullvad
| directly, other than adding a layer of USA on top of it (which
| is a bad thing imo)?
|
| Also, has Mozilla VPN also a windows client, or is it more like
| the Opera Proxies (which were called VPN for some reason)?
| elashri wrote:
| >has Mozilla VPN also a windows client?
|
| Yes, actually has something for all three major Desktop OSes,
| iOS and Android. [1]
|
| [1]https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/products/vpn/download/]
| john2x wrote:
| It was cheaper the last time I looked at it. $5.00/mo for
| Mozilla, and Mullvad is Euro5.00/mo.
| iso1631 wrote:
| I use Mozilla VPN rather than Mullvad because it was a nice
| way of supporting mozilla and thus firefox.
|
| I also think that while mozilla may handle my finances,
| mullvad handle the VPN. Mozilla doesn't get the technical
| details of mullvad and thus don't know what IP I'm on, and I
| don't think mullvad know my name. Sure it's not quite cash in
| an envelope, but paranoia comes with a cost too.
|
| > Also, has Mozilla VPN also a windows client, or is it more
| like the Opera Proxies (which were called VPN for some
| reason)?
|
| No idea, but it has a linux client and an ios client. It's a
| nice simple wireguard VPN
| walrus01 wrote:
| For myself as possible VPN end user I don't see the value
| proposition, but presumably, Mozilla is treating this as a
| new source of revenue (they get some percentage of the total
| monthly recurring or a one time sign up commmission or
| something from Mullvad?) as a way to be very slightly less
| dependent on Google for most of their incoming revenue
| stream.
|
| I can see ordinary non technical users who want to "buy a VPN
| service" going with this as a decent option. It seems to be
| fairly consumer friendly and have a well documented setup
| process.
| elashri wrote:
| The only thing that makes me choose it over Mullvad is how
| well the integration with Multi-Container in Firefox. It is
| a first class citizen compared with VPN profiles support
| for others.
| InCityDreams wrote:
| [flagged]
| whatshisface wrote:
| Well, I'm not going to use Chrome, but I guess WebKit is okay...
| what browser should we be using now?
| imadj wrote:
| Arc
| pixelbath wrote:
| Ah, yes. The closed-source, single-platform, invite-only
| browser made by a company nobody's ever heard of outside the
| startup ecosystem.
| triyambakam wrote:
| Brave is pretty good.
| beefnugs wrote:
| [flagged]
| uguuo_o wrote:
| As a firefox user of a couple of decades, I am now starting to
| look at alternatives. Anything chromium is a big no, but there
| are few alternatives. Perhaps it is time to go back to using
| Lynx.
| tempodox wrote:
| Are the bean counters and ad freaks taking the helm? Maybe time
| to look for a different browser...
| Cyder wrote:
| i gave up on firefox when i couldn't stop it from connecting to
| Google on a network device i was working on. Removing all the
| links from the advanced settings made it fail to start. That's
| when I realized how hypocritical they are. ( arm64 firefox-esr.)
| Even the latest chromium on arm64 connects to Google almost
| daily. i use epiphany-browser for that project now. no unwanted
| internet traffic from epiphany.
| ravenstine wrote:
| Any issues with DRM content?
| guraf wrote:
| Yeah when my DNS went sporty I noticed Firefox got very slow to
| load even local ips and investigated.
|
| Turns out it does two dozen queries on every start. Mostly to
| unknown Mozilla services but also a few from Google and others
| I couldn't identify (IP on either AWS or CloudFlare, likely
| just more Mozilla). And when it can't resolve those hosts it
| seems to continually retry every few seconds...
|
| Before the apologists arrive, try it yourself. Disable all your
| add-ons and set your homepage to blank, close Firefox, start
| wireshark, start Firefox and watch the avalanche.
| intelVISA wrote:
| Unfortunately normal for the mainstream ones, you can even
| see similar with Brave.
| kramerger wrote:
| "The advertisement boosts Mozilla VPN, a paid open-source VPN
| service that constitutes a crucial revenue source for the not-
| for-profit company."
|
| In 2021, Mozilla CEO received $5M in compensation. I don't really
| consider them a non-profit.
| uo21tp5hoyg wrote:
| It's intentionally confusing but "not-for-profit" and "non-
| profit" are two very different things and it seems the article
| gets them confused.
| [deleted]
| sounds wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35829283
|
| Mozilla's primary sources of revenue are for setting the
| default search engine. $500 Million.
| djbusby wrote:
| Wish my non-profit paid like that.
| zbuf wrote:
| That's how you don't make a profit
| NickHoff wrote:
| So, what do people think of Vivaldi? I'm a long-time Firefox user
| but I've been scanning for a new browser for a while now. Even if
| it weren't for stuff like this, I'll have to change anyway when
| Firefox dips below ~3% and websites stop supporting Gecko.
| [deleted]
| ekianjo wrote:
| They always feign being sorry about doing things like that, but
| come back a few months later with the same bullshit over and over
| again, like a wife-beater.
|
| They are completely pathetic and dysfunctional as an
| organization.
| comice wrote:
| it's a bit unclear what they intended here but I see a lot of
| people assuming the absolute worst intent.
|
| That Firefox would _fully intend_ to insert full page unskippable
| adverts of it 's own into unrelated websites is a major
| accusation and there is evidence this was an accident.
|
| Looks more to me like bleepingcomputer purposefully
| sensationalized the issue as clickbait.
| flohofwoe wrote:
| Did you even read the article? There's a screenshot which shows
| that this "feature" even got its own config items
| (browser.vpn_promo.*). This hardly looks like an "accident".
|
| Also note the weasel language of their statement: "We're
| continuously working to understand the best ways to communicate
| with people who use Firefox. ...".
|
| "Communicate" my *ss. It really makes my blood boil how the
| Mozilla management hijacked Firefox for their unethical
| bullshit (because it happens again and again, as soon as the
| dust has settled over the last 'accident').
| comice wrote:
| Firefox's responses are absolutely shit, for sure.
|
| But Firefox has all kind of promo things (the latest I saw
| was adverts on their overview/links page - which you can also
| disable), so the presence of a config item for this doesn't
| mean they intended for it to show up where it did.
| devmor wrote:
| This is not the first time Mozilla has injected an ad campaign
| into the browser chrome.
|
| They did this a couple years ago as well to similar backlash,
| that time with a plugin that they force-installed for users.
| comice wrote:
| That sounds pretty bad but what do you mean by "browser
| chrome"? Isn't the claim here that they injected an ad into
| an actual page?
| devmor wrote:
| No, they did not. The complaint is poorly worded. They
| added an internal browser pop-up that covers pages to
| display an ad.
| 0x457 wrote:
| No, browser chrome is the part that isn't the web page
| (i.e. browser UI itself).
| burnished wrote:
| Can you point to that evidence? I'm wondering how that change
| was even ideated let alone rolled out to people.
| VTimofeenko wrote:
| Bugzilla links in yesterday's post:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36077360
|
| seem to indicate that Mozilla intended for the popup to be
| shown if the user is AFK for 20 minutes but that timer
| malfunctioned
| JohnFen wrote:
| > seem to indicate that Mozilla intended for the popup to be
| shown if the user is AFK for 20 minutes
|
| Wow, that would have been a whole lot worse than what
| actually happened!
| eterm wrote:
| That's _worse_.
|
| The last thing I want is my browser popping something up when
| I'm AFK.
| grey_earthling wrote:
| This is a great way to freak people out and make them
| distrust you -- move their stuff while they're not looking.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| What else could they have been trying to do? From seeing the
| bug filed/fixed wrt the issue, it seems like the only
| unintentual part was that the popup appeared to quickly, it was
| showing up after 20ms instead of 20s or something like that
| comice wrote:
| they could have been intending to insert the advert into
| other places, which wouldn't be quite as outrageous (though I
| happen dislike them inserting them anywhere, but some places
| are definitely worse than others).
| pleb_nz wrote:
| I never saw the ad and I use Firefox an day, I use ublock, would
| this have blocked it?
| lolinder wrote:
| No, this was in the browser chrome itself. It covered the
| address bar and tabs as well as the page.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| I think something not getting enough attention is the design of
| the popup itself. It is chock-full of dark patterns (different
| sized click targets, "not now" dismiss action instead of "No")
| and doesn't include any way to disable similar "messages" in the
| future.
|
| It's concerning that someone at Mozilla designed this and didn't
| see any problem with foisting these dark patterns on their users.
| This is the kind of user-hostile design I expected from Microsoft
| Edge not Firefox, which I _thought_ was trying to be a user-
| respecting alternative.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| Makes you wonder how someone thought this was a good idea in a
| browser that was an early pioneer of popup blockers. Imagine if
| Firefox in the 2000's had seen popup ads and said "Yeah let's get
| in on that action!"
|
| At least it was a small scale experiment and not something that
| rolled out to the whole install base, I use Firefox on a couple
| of computers and didn't see it myself. But should you really need
| user feedback to know that inserting an overlay that looks like
| in-page ad content is a bad idea?
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Makes me wonder why so much of Corporate America make decisions
| based on "What's the outrage threshold for our users and how
| can we sneak up close to it?"
| MiddleEndian wrote:
| Microsoft basically got in on this with a lot of their recent
| Windows stuff. With Windows 7, suddenly you saw people's PCs
| were no longer full of adware. Then by 8 or 10, Microsoft
| thought, "Wait, people put up with adware for decades, let's
| get on that and put it into the OS ourselves."
| intelVISA wrote:
| Now now, it's just Good and Proper Business to Milk Your
| Customer Dry.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> Makes you wonder how someone thought this was a good idea in
| a browser that was an early pioneer of popup blockers. _
|
| Two reasons: clueless management who chases short term returns,
| and a rabid fanbase that will constantly make excuses for them
| no matter how much they decline, because "at least they're not
| Google/Microsoft"
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| "Rabid fanbase"? I feel like the majority of us are only
| begrudging users. Best of the worst available options.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Amongst my friends, I was consider a "rabid firefox user"
| because I kept using it for a few years after everyone else
| bailed on it after quantum.
| elashri wrote:
| >and a rabid fanbase that will constantly make excuses for
| them no matter how much they decline, because "at least
| they're not Google/Microsoft"
|
| To their defense, that ought to be more about the rate of
| decline that Google/MS goes compared to Mozilla. It is
| usually supported out of necessity, not ideology. But I'm not
| sure for how long this will actually work.
| sharess wrote:
| This ad overlay shows such a fundamental lack of understanding
| on what Firefox was built on that the people who greenlighted
| this need to go immediately.
|
| They are completely out of their depth and not fit for their
| job.
| lelanthran wrote:
| The people who greenlighted this were the people who ousted
| those who built Firefox. The current crop of "leaders" have a
| vision that does not include Firefox being the best browser
| it can be.
|
| Trust me, they're politically aware of what they are doing,
| and are only gauging outrage now. Give it some time and
| they'll figure out how to leverage the outrage, as they did
| before.
|
| Never let a good crisis go to waste, and all that.
| Animats wrote:
| > The people who greenlighted this were the people who
| ousted those who built Firefox.
|
| Mozilla got rid of their founder, Brendan Eich, for
| donating to a California initiative against gay marriage.
| Now we see what that costs us.
| Sunspark wrote:
| There would have been a cost to keeping him as well.
| There is a significant percentage of tech workers who are
| gay or trans, which would have reduced the hiring pool
| available to Mozilla.
| lelanthran wrote:
| > There would have been a cost to keeping him as well.
| There is a significant percentage of tech workers who are
| gay or trans, which would have reduced the hiring pool
| available to Mozilla.
|
| Having the best pool of workers in the world aren't going
| to make a difference[1] if they are working for power-
| mongers who use outrage to achieve a coup.
|
| The reverse is not true - having fewer skilled workers to
| choose from _can_ be irrelevant when they are working for
| someone who is focused on goals that are aligned to the
| user.
|
| IOW, there's no point in having the absolute best and the
| brightest people employed by self-serving schemers who
| wanted to use firefox as a vehicle for their
| political/virtuous ambitions.
|
| There might be, however, a point in having "only" the 90%
| best people employed towards making firefox better.
|
| [1] And, it looks like it didn't make a difference.
| 93po wrote:
| Jeff Bezos donated more than Eich in 2018 to Cory
| Gardner, who is anti-equal marriage, anti-LGBT+
| discrimination laws, and against same-sex adoption. It's
| interesting we don't hold the same standard to Bezos, or
| speculate that Bezos' donation affected his hiring pool.
| pessimizer wrote:
| It's not interesting at all. Exactly who was going to
| fire Bezos from Amazon?
|
| Also, I know this is the internet, but disapproving of
| one person doesn't mean that you're promoting another
| random person that wasn't even part of the conversation.
| If you want to bring Bezos in, at a minimum you're
| required to find a _single_ person, living or dead, who
| thinks that Bezos 's donations were fine but Eich's were
| terrible.
| 93po wrote:
| Boards pressure people like Bezos to step down all the
| time, often due to public scrutiny.
|
| I know no one is promoting Bezos. I'm just saying it's
| ridiculous how Bezos gets to white-wash incidents like
| this while causing untold harm to society, while Eich
| legitimately was furthering good causes in good ways and
| a single personal superficial detail prevented him from
| continuing to do that.
| kirbyfan64sos wrote:
| Yes, because Brave is the model of ethics! Oh, wait a
| sec...
| lelanthran wrote:
| > Yes, because Brave is the model of ethics! Oh, wait a
| sec...
|
| Short answer: Well, compared to FF and the fine article
| that we are commenting on ... yes, it's certainly a model
| that FF could adopt!
|
| Long answer: I don't see ads in Brave. I don't recall
| even installing any third parties to block ads. As far as
| the adtech space goes, Brave is indeed more ethical than
| FF (or Chrome, or Edge).
|
| Now if you are of the view that, ethically, blocking ads
| is a _bad thing_ , then I'm afraid we cannot actually
| discuss this any further, because there are very few
| arguments that will get me to change my mind about
| blocking advertisements, not least of which is the ad
| under discussion, i.e. _" FULL-SCREEN-IN-YOUR-FACE-COVER-
| EVERYTHING-AND-STOP-THE-USER-FROM-DOING-ANYTHING-UNTIL-
| THE-AD-IS-DISMISSED"_ type of ad.
| weinzierl wrote:
| If something like this happens once it could be a slip, but
| we've been there again and again. Mozilla is testing how far it
| can go only backpedaling when there is resistance. I don't
| trust them a bit and would switch Browser anytime if there was
| a visble alternative.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| Orion (from Kagi) is "planning support for other platforms in
| the future," if that lands for Windows I'll probably bail on
| Firefox
|
| For me it's been downhill since they removed "Compact" UI
| density, and I'd just as soon not jump through a bunch of
| custom CSS hoops to have sidebar tabs when nearly all the
| other browsers (outside of Chrome/Safari) are building them
| in natively. The main thing going for Firefox is being the
| independent rendering engine, for customization and power
| user features it's nothing special anymore.
| logdap wrote:
| 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.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| They might not care anymore or trying to do a Hail Mary, once
| >99% of browser-share is just Chromium and Webkit/Safari,
| then popular websites might not even work with FireFox
| anymore.
| roelschroeven wrote:
| If they keep doing things like this, people _will_ stop
| complaining. Because they drive users away, and there will be
| nobody left to complain.
| avereveard wrote:
| To be fair I've notice that apologies for company screwups
| have gone up in quality significantly afte r the introduction
| of chatgpt, and I await their with interest to see if the
| trend holds.
| wodenokoto wrote:
| I'm not sure what "something like this" you are referring to.
|
| But Firefox is an ad supported browser and has been for
| nearly 2 decades.
|
| That they want to take ownership of the advertising is no
| surprise. Who knows when google will turn off the faucet.
|
| But this is definitely not the right way
| logdap wrote:
| [dead]
| pessimizer wrote:
| > Each time they issue noncommittally apologies
|
| Introduced by a bunch of gaslighting that it isn't actually
| happening or isn't anything different that what was always
| happened, then interleaved with accusations of bullying and
| entitlement directed at its userbase.
| mozman wrote:
| It's not all management. It's Mitchell Baker. She needs to
| step down as CEO.
| ipaddr wrote:
| [flagged]
| JohnFen wrote:
| > 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.
| Macha wrote:
| 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".
| hiccuphippo wrote:
| Mozilla needs a new wway to make decisions, the current one is
| obviously not working. New features should have an Enhancement
| Proposal document that the community can read beforehand and a
| council that approves it.
| horeszko wrote:
| I suppose now is a good time to ask if there are any good _non-
| corporate_ open source browsers out there?
|
| Seems to me that businesses operate within an incentive structure
| that will always encourage them to take maximum advantage of
| users and do anti-user things no matter what their original goals
| were. The non-corporate part is key imo (see Canonical, Mozilla
| now etc.)
| abnercoimbre wrote:
| We're not getting anywhere without the social support for it.
| Virtually all tech conferences are corporate-funded, for
| example, so they're not going to praise independent browsers.
| Conversations get stifled.
|
| Self-plug but my indie conferences [0] promote software that
| respect the user's quality of experience. One of my favorite
| presentations that we've featured is SerenityOS (including
| their open-source browser) which made headlines at the time.
| [1]
|
| [0] https://handmadecities.com
|
| [1] https://vimeo.com/641406697
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| 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
| postalrat wrote:
| Safari is the MSIE 6 of this time period.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| That's lazy stereotyping and not even close to being a
| useful or accurate analogy.
| postalrat wrote:
| It's the default browser for many people and also the
| browser with the most quirks.
| vinay_ys wrote:
| Safari - such a pleasure to use it.
| bombcar wrote:
| You have to keep moving; Brave has been relatively good to me
| _for now_ but I assume it will slump into the melt at some
| point.
| bordercases wrote:
| To burst your bubble:
| https://digdeeper.neocities.org/articles/browsers#brave
| hcal wrote:
| Gnome-Web if you're on linux and it is fine. It is a little
| light on features, but it does the basics. Falkon is another
| for the QT/KDE crowd. There are several forks of chrome and
| firefox, if that's your thing.
|
| I'm trying to ungoogle and switched to Vivaldi without enough
| research. Its a really nice browser and I really like the
| community around it (like their Mastodon service), but I
| basically jumped from one corporation's browser to another.
| tezza wrote:
| Happened to me today.
|
| It mostly caused mild exasperation.
|
| I want FF to survive so this gave me mixed feelings.
|
| First off: they are allowed to try things!
|
| Great they are trying to keep the income incoming.
|
| Bad that they don't know their users enough that they are
| attempting this tack. It screams of expensive external
| consultants building a campaign... Depleting the funds for FF.
| john2x wrote:
| I wouldn't mind seeing Mozilla VPN ads in the Settings menu or
| the 'new tab' page tbh. But injecting it on top of web pages
| directly is just scummy.
| pwdisswordfishc wrote:
| > The most recent relevant report on Mozilla's bug tracking
| platform received the "RESOLVED WORKSFORME" tag
|
| Typical Mozilla. At this point I don't know why they even allow
| bug submissions from the public at all.
| slater wrote:
| Now changed from WORKSFORME to FIXED
|
| https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1835158
|
| Nothing to see here, folks!
|
| (until marketing comes up with its next blunder)
| pessimizer wrote:
| I'm pretty sure "WORKSFORME" was somebody trying to be so
| aggressively mocking of users who complained that they forgot
| there was an actual bug in the ad.
| zuprau wrote:
| This isn't a bug, so the resolution is expected. What I don't
| understand is how Mozilla thought this would work out.
| mh- wrote:
| Seems like it should have been WONTFIX, then.
| Timber-6539 wrote:
| If the privacy crowd expected different treatment from a woke
| tyrannical organization in full control of their choice of
| browser, they only have themselves to blame.
| charlieyu1 wrote:
| A lot of organisations/entrepreneurs have made decisions that are
| so out of touch with the user base that people would question why
| would someone do that.
|
| Like, I can understand maximising profit, but you don't have to
| enrage your user base to achieve your goals
| mulmen wrote:
| Depends on your goals. Facebook has done well selling outraged
| eyeballs.
| john2x wrote:
| And I guess a lot more people now know about Mozilla VPN. No
| such thing as bad publicity I guess?
| zuprau wrote:
| The outrage Facebook feasts on is not directed at Facebook.
| That is just a byproduct.
|
| Here Mozilla decided to place a nice target on their backs
| asking for money.
| mulmen wrote:
| Sure. But my tinfoil hat is at the drycleaner so I will let
| you use your imagination to come up with a scenario where
| ill will toward Mozilla benefits someone.
|
| Cui Bono as they say.
| InCityDreams wrote:
| >"We're continuously working to understand the best ways to
| communicate with people who use Firefox. Ultimately, we
| accomplished the exact opposite of what we intended in this
| experiment and quickly rolled the experience back.
|
| What absolute lies. All they would have to do is a quick search
| on HN and boom - enough user input to last quite some time. In my
| country (perhaps others), the best way to "continuously work[ing]
| to understand the best ways to communicate with people who use
| Firefox." would be to actually communicate with people...
| "Ultimately, we accomplished the exact opposite of what we
| intended in this experiment" No, you got called out for trying to
| cheat people.
| devmor wrote:
| Bring back the browser wars. I'm tired of only having essentially
| two browsers to choose from, both from unethical companies that
| use slimy marketing speak to disguise their intentions.
| i2cmaster wrote:
| [flagged]
| doctor_radium wrote:
| Hear, hear! The problem is that browser complexity has exploded
| to the degree that at this point it seems impossible for a
| small team to reinvent the wheel. Who wants to write a web
| assembly engine from scratch, let alone the rest?
|
| My main browser has been Waterfox which I update manually,
| which doubly insulated me from this. But don't
| misunderstand...I hate pretty much all browsers now, too.
| guraf wrote:
| > Who wants to write a web assembly engine from scratch
|
| Webassembly engine is one of the simpler things to implement
| in a browser. It's essentially a giant switch statement in a
| loop.
|
| > let alone the rest?
|
| But who said a new browser has to implement everything from
| scratch? Why couldn't a browser use well established
| libraries for things like image decoding, webasm, JavaScript,
| font rendering, webrtc, http, etc?
| i2cmaster wrote:
| Meh. Webassembly has polyfills. I think an incremental
| approach wouldn't be as hard as people make it out to be but
| someone does have to _sit down and do it._
| sounds wrote:
| I see it as a larger trend away from general purpose computing
| and toward appliances:
|
| https://www.techspot.com/news/98811-windows-365-boot-paid-su...
|
| https://www.theregister.com/2023/05/24/windows_365_boot_prev...
|
| The browser does a lot of my computing now, and I'm not
| surprised the "General Purpose Browser" is disappearing,
| replaced by an appliance with user-hostile behavior that might,
| maybe, sometimes ... give you some internet browsing. Remember
| AOL Online?
|
| The solution isn't very complicated. Copyleft [1] uses
| copyright to preserve user freedom, instead of restricting it
| -- so the company that wants to monetize the software can't
| block the user from making copies of the source code.
|
| Let's skip the quibbling over Affero GPL, that's boring. How
| about inventing a license, where the license restricts the
| valid activites of the software?
|
| A browser restricted to only make network requests authorized
| by the user. An OS restricted from spying on the user. A
| computer that is personal again.
|
| [1] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/copyleft.en.html
| zeruch wrote:
| This was definitely not one of their best moves.
| sandyarmstrong wrote:
| 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 switching to something else, but I do feel
| bummed out.
| rwmj wrote:
| The Android version of Firefox recently started promoting
| commercial bookmarks on the home screen, another case where it
| seems they've lost the plot.
| ilikepi wrote:
| Did you miss the episode in 2017 in which they used an internal
| control to force the installation of an add-on as part of a
| promotion for a television show?
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15941302
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15940144
|
| I feel similarly to you...long-time user, bummed out by stuff
| like this. Sometimes it feels like Firefox would be a lot
| better off without Mozilla occasionally making deals like this.
| SilasX wrote:
| (Not the OP.) Nope, and I also didn't miss the torrent of
| HNers saying "what's the problem, you already trust them to
| provide the software, you should trust anything they want to
| send along with it."
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| 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.
| tivert wrote:
| > 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?
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| My annoyance is more the half-brained projects which
| Mozilla pursues. Then surprised Pikachu when they have to
| cut budgets and Firefox is impacted.
| slondr wrote:
| That "promising work" was "inventing the Rust programming
| language," and, yes.
| evv wrote:
| It's not a conspiracy that Google pays Mozilla for default
| search engine placement.
|
| Maybe that arrangement led to the stagnation of Firefox,
| without malicious intent from any party. Hanlon's razor,
| yadda yadda
| letsdothisagain wrote:
| Hanlon's razor only makes sense if you're a teenager
| posting on reddit. Just world theory and all that.
|
| Once you get into corporate politics it's the exact
| opposite.
|
| God help you if you ever get into the nuts and bolts of
| governmental, or _gasp_ intergovernmental politics.
| orangecat wrote:
| Eh, from my experience in several large companies there's
| some malice, but there's way more incompetence.
| pessimizer wrote:
| From my experience, companies are happy to strategically
| feign incompetence, blindness and deafness.
| DANmode wrote:
| Conspiracy theory
| dehrmann wrote:
| Th other conspiracy I've heard is Google subsidizes Mozilla
| so they have a credible claim there's competition in the
| market.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| If true, it really backfired on them as buying Mozilla's
| default search is currently being used against them in a
| search engine antitrust suit.
| pessimizer wrote:
| According to a weird definition of "really backfired,"
| because they would without question have been hit a long
| time ago with credible antitrust if they hadn't kept
| Firefox afloat (though user-hostile enough to keep people
| on Chrome.)
|
| There's such a marginal difference between the quality of
| the two browsers, and Chrome is held back in what it can
| be by the necessity of furthering Google's commercial
| interests. The only limit Firefox has had is that they
| can't abuse the trust of their users. Firefox had to
| voluntarily (and often aggressively) inflict a huge
| amount of reputational and functional damage on itself to
| reduce its market share to the place that it has.
|
| edit: it's important to say that they didn't really
| backslide technically; it's user-hostile (management)
| decisions that have hurt the browser, not anything to do
| with the skill of Firefox developers.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| > would without question have been hit a long time ago
| with credible antitrust if they hadn't kept Firefox
| afloat
|
| It is questionable, and being declared a search engine
| monopoly would be far worse for Google than Chrome being
| a browser monopoly. They only make Chrome to push their
| search/ad network.
| wongarsu wrote:
| Doing both makes sense. Google has a clear motive to keep
| Firefox in the market, at the same time they have
| repeatedly shown that they want Firefox to have the
| smallest market share possible. For antitrust purposes it
| might be enough to show "people could to Firefox", even
| if nobody does.
| mozman wrote:
| This is the correct answer
| warkdarrior wrote:
| Why would Google try to prop up Firefox as a competitor?
| Both Safari and Edge on desktop are twice the market
| share of Firefox, so the browser market is competitive
| enough without Firefox.
|
| https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-
| share/desktop/worl...
| wongarsu wrote:
| Safari can probably be discounted since Apple
| discontinued the Windows version in 2012. A browser that
| can only run on 18% of desktops worldwide isn't
| necessarily the competitor Google is looking for.
|
| Edge is available on Windows, Linux and macOS, so it
| would probably do. But that would allow one of Google's
| biggest competitors to drop an under-performing product
| and lobby for antitrust against Google. Unlikely to
| happen, but a risk Google might not want to take.
|
| https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-
| share/desktop/worldwide
| pessimizer wrote:
| Safari and Edge ( _which is also Chrome_ ) having twice
| the dismal market share of Firefox doesn't make the
| browser market competitive. Safari is an appliance
| delivered exclusively on machines manufactured by a
| single company that holds a small, though luxury, part of
| the market. Edge ( _is Chrome,_ and) is only available on
| one OS [edit: I 'm guess I'm wrong about this, didn't
| imagine that Edge would be available on Macs.]
|
| Firefox is the only "credible" competitor, although
| Firefox's only profitable customer is Google itself.
| kuratkull wrote:
| Chrome, edge and safari are just, well chrome, on a
| single family of rendering engines
| jonas21 wrote:
| Google would probably prefer if Safari and Edge did not
| gain market share. They're both developed by large
| corporations that pose a major threat to Google. Firefox,
| not so much.
| philistine wrote:
| That makes no sense. Mozilla goes so hard on the VPN ads
| exactly because it wants to diversify its revenues away
| from its vassalage to Google.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| The execution was definitely terrible, but "browser company
| ships promotional easter egg" isn't that bad as "browser
| company inserts ads into browsing experience" in my opinion.
| These ads are why Windows 10+ has become a trash fire despite
| all the technical improvements made to Windows.
|
| Mozilla were stupid enough to try and sneak this Roboto stuff
| in, probably as part of the requirements or intentions of the
| ad campaign, rather than be transparent about it. Stupidity
| rather than malice.
|
| The VPN ad is a targeted decision comingffrom within the non-
| profit. I sort of get it, Mozilla is desperate for income
| because Google is keeping them afloat, barely anyone who
| donates cares about anything but the browser, and the for-
| profit ventures aren't gaining much success.
| chrsig wrote:
| how are you differentiating "promotional easter egg" from
| "ad"?
| isomorphic wrote:
| The thing is, if I _was_ somewhat interested in a Mozilla
| VPN service, this spectacularly idiotic decision to deploy
| full-page intrusive advertising into Firefox makes it 100%
| certain I will never buy the Mozilla VPN service--because,
| how can I trust that they won 't do the equivalent to
| _that_ service? What 's to stop them from blocking certain
| sites (on the other side of the VPN) as part of some
| promotion? Or worse?
|
| They've made it clear they don't believe their own language
| about privacy and user choice. They've compromised one
| product to advertise another. And perhaps worse, they
| doubled-down about it in Bugzilla with corporate
| doublespeak, which to me is the tell that they'll
| absolutely do it again.
|
| It's amazing how apt the trust-thermocline analogy is.
| ilikepi wrote:
| > The execution was definitely terrible, but "browser
| company ships promotional easter egg" isn't that bad as
| "browser company inserts ads into browsing experience" in
| my opinion. These ads are why Windows 10+ has become a
| trash fire despite all the technical improvements made to
| Windows.
|
| I'm not sure I agree. The Mr. Robot "promotional easter
| egg" was done by installing an add-on via the Shield Study
| system. This system is enabled by default, and it is
| intended to allow the Firefox devs to run A/B tests with
| browser features.[1] This sort of system already makes some
| non-trivial minority of users bristle. For Mozilla to co-
| opt it specifically for an advertising campaign perfectly
| validates the concerns of that group of people. So then we
| get a thread on HN[2] in which several Firefox devs post
| about how badly they and their colleagues felt about the
| whole debacle, and how it would undoubtedly lead to many
| internal conversations. I'll give them the benefit of the
| doubt and assume that happened, and apparently[1] Shield
| Studies now require some level of scientific rigor behind
| them before they are deployed. But unfortunately, the
| marketing department still seems to be willing to sacrifice
| the ever-diminishing good will their remaining users seem
| to place in Mozilla as the steward of Firefox the browser.
| It doesn't feel to me like they fully appreciated the
| lessons of 2017.
|
| [1]: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Shield/Shield_Studies
|
| [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15940144
| ionioniodfngio wrote:
| It's not that I like Firefox so much as that all the
| competition is unusable. Firefox has gone downhill, but at
| least it's extensible enough that I can largely reverse the
| decay.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Firefox is much less configurable than it used to be, though.
| I can no longer fix all of the stuff in it that needs fixing.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _It 's not that I like Firefox so much as that all the
| competition is unusable._
|
| I'm inching closer to using the Duck browser full-time. If
| you haven't tried it, give it a shot to see if it works for
| you.
|
| It's not as customizable as Chrome or Firefox, but it gets
| the job done if you don't do a lot of heavy lifting with your
| browser.
|
| Right now, I'm 60% Safari, 10% Firefox, and 30% Duck. And I
| use Firefox less and less lately.
| triyambakam wrote:
| I recently switched to Brave
| the_duke wrote:
| Firefox at least exposes an endless amount of toggles to tweak
| pretty much every behaviour the browser has.
|
| This is includes settings for removing or disabling all the
| integration with Mozilla services and their ads.
|
| See for example: https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| FF removed the ability to delete the sites from MRU list in
| the address bar, the ability which it had since ages. It was
| removed when moved to Photon, 2017. They finally would _add
| it back_ in FF 113, so 2023. _Six_ / _Fucking_ / _Years_
| warkdarrior wrote:
| Yes, but the default should be to show no ads. If I want ads,
| I'll use Chrome or Edge with no ad blocker.
| 93po wrote:
| Even Edge with adblocker shows a ton of ads and Microsoft
| shit that on one wants as part of the default browser
| behavior.
| [deleted]
| dabluecaboose wrote:
| A while back I got a push notification on my Android device to
| some preachy blogpost about Facebook being bad politically
|
| I don't want my browser to be a vector from which you push your
| blogs, Mozilla. I want a browser that isn't Chrome
| xuancanh wrote:
| The downturn of Firefox began a long time ago when Brendan Eich
| was forced to leave Mozilla in 2014. I highly recommend giving
| Brave browser a try, as Brendan Eich now serves as its CEO.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I switched away from Firefox a couple of years ago for a number
| of reasons that can be collectively summarized as "Firefox no
| longer meets my needs".
|
| But as a Firefox user from the very beginning, I still keep
| tabs on it, hoping that it will improve enough for me to return
| to it. Things like this, however, strongly indicate to me that
| Firefox is just lost and will never find its way back.
| nulbyte wrote:
| I wanted to like Firefox. So much so that I used to carry my
| keys on a Firefox branded lanyard. Eventually, I gave up and
| switched. Presently, Im trying Brave. I don't really like it,
| but I'm now at the point where I don't think there is such a
| thing as a user-friendly browser anymore.
| chappi42 wrote:
| What don't you like?
| lolinder wrote:
| What did you switch to?
| JohnFen wrote:
| I'm using Brave right now as a stopgap until/unless I can
| find a better one. Brave isn't fantastic, but it works
| better for me than FF.
| eep_social wrote:
| Have you tried Vivaldi? I am still not switched over for
| various reasons but it seems to be well aligned for me.
| intelVISA wrote:
| 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.
| Macha wrote:
| 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.
| godshatter wrote:
| I keep hoping some of the laid off devs will fork the project and
| we can get back to a mostly volunteer model focused on just the
| browser. I'd much rather donate to something like that than the
| Mozilla foundation, at least as it currently stands.
| aio2 wrote:
| We have Librewolf fer desktop, and Mull and Fennec for Android.
| They are forks
| psychphysic wrote:
| Wow if ad blockers can work does that mean Firefox injects this
| advert?
|
| Its not just and overlay but code added to the webpage?
|
| I'm awe struck at the stupidity of this idea.
| red_admiral wrote:
| Unlikely. My guess is that the ad code runs in the context of
| the browser itself or some newly created context, rather than
| of the page you were reading before, but whatever fetch() or
| similar call it makes to load the ad goes through a subsystem
| that is affected by ad blockers.
|
| Put another way, when you allow ublock or whatever you're using
| permission to intercept requests for ALL pages, that includes
| the "page" that mozilla is using to serve this ad.
|
| Further evidence in favour of this hypothesis is that the ad
| can temporarily disable the rest of the firefox UI until you
| deal with it, which normal pages certainly can't do.
| Kwpolska wrote:
| I doubt it was injected into pages. The screenshots shows the
| top chrome dimmed. I suppose people conflated not being
| randomly selected to get the ad with an ad blocker blocking the
| ad.
| [deleted]
| fabrice_d wrote:
| No it's not blocked by ad blockers, since this was not injected
| in pages but part of the browser UI (the "chrome").
| pleb_nz wrote:
| 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.
| fabrice_d wrote:
| Looks like that was an experiment targeted to a subset of
| the user base, and you were just not in the pool.
| freediver wrote:
| All directly or indirectly ad-supported business models will
| sooner or later come to the point of breakage in serving user"s
| best interests, as the fundamental misalignment of incentives
| between the business and its users creates a force too strong to
| contain.
|
| This is entirely driven by a simple fact that in ad-supported
| businesses users are not the same as the customers.
|
| I advocated several times and will do it again - Firefox should
| completely embrace a freemium browser business model, align
| incentives with its users, and attempt to have a second golden
| age (first was 2005-2010).
| whoisthemachine wrote:
| Agreed. I can't help but think that giving normal, technical
| users a great browser, and then catering on bended knee to
| enterprises for a very controllable, supported, extended
| version as the source of revenue that supports the normal
| browser is a sustainable model. Maybe not a model that takes
| over the world, but one that sustains development of a good
| open source browser.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Are there any open source projects run like that? The closest
| thing I can think of is, like, Chromium but they don't really
| make a framework that anyone can customize, they are
| inextricably tied to Google, right?
|
| IMO open source works best as a community implementing small,
| single-purpose programs, which the users can integrate
| however they'd like. Web browsers have gotten too monolithic
| and the internet has gotten too over-complicated for a
| healthy open source web browser to exist.
| bornfreddy wrote:
| I love Firefox but starting to hate Mozilla. How many more tricks
| like that do they have in store for us?
|
| It's as if someone there is determined to undermine this
| browser's reputation.
| slig wrote:
| It's not like their main competitor pays them half a billion a
| year.
| dang wrote:
| Recent and related:
|
| _Firefox displayed a pop-up ad for Mozilla VPN over an unrelated
| page_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36077360 - May 2023
| (328 comments)
| dumpsterlid wrote:
| [dead]
| [deleted]
| zuprau wrote:
| [flagged]
| jaredandrews wrote:
| Wow, I experienced this yesterday while I was absentmindedly
| using my computer.... I assumed I had clicked something without
| realizing it. The idea that it was an intentional pop up didn't
| even enter my head.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| For me it hit as a double-whammy. I tried opening a new tab,
| but had to stop what I was doing to restart Firefox instead
| because of a Snap[1] update, then I got this immediately after
| Firefox started back up. A really nasty snapshot of where free
| software is at in 2023.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snap_(software)
| zerocrates wrote:
| I went through the song-and-dance for several versions to
| remove the Snap firefox and go back to the deb, and now that
| the deb is gone I just downloaded it directly from mozilla so
| it can use its own internal autoupdate feature. It works
| better that way anyway.
| millzlane wrote:
| Same here, my first reaction wasn't anger. It was to dismiss it
| so I could get back to work.
| jp191919 wrote:
| I use firefox everyday for several hours and I have never seen
| this before. In the US.
| [deleted]
| sinistersnare wrote:
| 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?
| elaus wrote:
| 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.
| photonbeam wrote:
| What in the world were they thinking. Are we going to have to run
| IceWeasel builds again
| millzlane wrote:
| I saw this yesterday while I was using the browser at work. At
| first I really thought nothing of it. It was was strange seeing
| it out of nowhere and I was indifferent about it. I love the
| browser and it has saved me time and my sanity by allowing be to
| block advertisements that infect us all and being reliable as a
| browser I can always count on to work how I want.
|
| With that said, after reading the bug reports and comments a
| sense of indignation did wash over me. But only after reading the
| comments. I honestly forgot about it right after clicking the
| button.
| bentcorner wrote:
| I saw this too and wasn't too bothered, although I wondered if
| there was something I did on the page that somehow triggered
| the "we think you should know about our VPN thing" popup. Which
| IMO is also a bad thing - users don't know why you're showing
| them that thing at that particular moment.
|
| The best place to show something like this is probably in an
| update splash screen. "Hey great news you're updated to v.next,
| you might want to know about our VPN thing too"
| jedahan wrote:
| .
| slater wrote:
| 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
| i2cmaster wrote:
| It's really a wonder Mozilla keeps going. They've absolutely
| lost it.
| ianlevesque wrote:
| Does 2.7% market share really count as "going"? Mozilla
| certainly isn't relevant anymore.
| __turbobrew__ wrote:
| Free google money so chrome isn't seen as a monopoly
| ilyt wrote:
| "But freedom and openness!"
| grey_earthling wrote:
| arewefishyyet.com is available.
| netsharc wrote:
| 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
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