The main question is what behavior is being introduced. I haven't researched deeply, but apparently the add-on does nothing until the user opts-in on studies.
Yeah, add-ons from Mozilla merits the same trust as the browser. But this cuts both ways, this stuff undermines my and probably more people's trust in the browser.
“Firefox worked with the Mr. Robot team to create a custom experience that would surprise and delight fans of the show and our users. It’s especially important to call out that this collaboration does not compromise our principles or values regarding privacy. The experience does not collect or share any data,” Jascha Kaykas-Wolff, chief marketing officer of Mozilla, said in a statement to Gizmodo. “The experience was kept under wraps to be introduced at the conclusion of the season of Mr. Robot. We gave Mr. Robot fans a unique mystery to solve to deepen their connection and engagement with the show and is only available in Firefox.”
This is horrible. They pushed out this crap under false pretenses as a study and obfuscated it. Don't talk the ethics talk if you're not prepared to do the ethics walk.
Exactly.
> "The experience does not collect or share any data," Jascha Kaykas-Wolff, chief marketing officer of Mozilla, said
Looking in the sources of the extension, it adds additional HTML header to every HTML request to https://www.red-wheelbarrow.com/forkids/ pages. The activity of the users there could of course be tracked and the data dependent on the extension being active collected. Good try Mr. marketing officer of Mozilla delivering Mr. Robot ad using the mechanism for the "studies."
> "Firefox worked with the Mr. Robot team to create a custom experience that would surprise and delight fans of the show and our users."
Obviously fail. Surprise, yes. Delight? No.
The whole thing is still suspicious: it was delivered to everybody whereas if it was supposed to be used only by the users who are aware of it, as now Mozilla tries to spin it, i.e. only to those who decided to "play the game", then the hidden install, especially to every user, was unnecessary as the normal extensions to Firefox are easily installed by the user, a click or two are enough:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tabby-cat-fri...
"## Observed data
- Possible page view counts on SUMO
- Possible page view counts (with and without the special 'enrolled' header) on Partner pages."
I've also already explained the "special 'enrolled' header."
The turning on was obviously either planned for some special moment, which wasn't the moment of that the extension was actually delivered, or the extension was accidentally delivered in the unfinished state -- doesn't matter, it provably didn't get enough scrutiny, see my other comments here for the details, the damage it actually done is regarding "tracking" less than planned, but regarding annoyance of their users probably more.