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757 points shak77 | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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hitekker ◴[] No.15934310[source]
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?

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toyg ◴[] No.15935512[source]
1) One day you wake up and somebody is watching TV in your living room.

2) you freak out. Who is this guy? I didn't invite anyone last night!

3) The guy turns around and it's just your mate Chad. He didn't mean any harm, just wanted to watch TV and hang out.

4) This is not on, Chad is a psycho.

Intentions don't really matter: they've just demonstrated a scary and invasive capability without any warning. Minimizing it doesn't help.

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franga2000 ◴[] No.15935975[source]
This "scary and invasive capability" has been included in almost every larger piece of software for years and is widely accepted to be a mostly good thing - it's called automatic updates. Considering updates allow pushing native, even admin-level code, this capability of pushing little bits of JS becomes benign in comparison. Therefore, the only thing that's left to worry about are their intentions. And I, for one, would rather trust the goodness of Mozilla's intentions than Google's or Microsoft's.
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1. bigbugbag ◴[] No.15936488{3}[source]
Automatic updates are a thing, but not necessarily good as this is the first thing disabled on windows since palladium for security, privacy and usability reasons.

Actually talking of good/bad dichotomy is inappropriate here, automatic updates are a tool that can be useful and comes with benefits and downsides. Firefox automatic updates is among the first things I disable when I install firefox because it caused me more issues than it solved.

Starting firefox to discover it has auto-updated itself and had broken half the extensions you rely on to make the browser usable is not nice, specially when there are no option to undo the update other than removing and reinstalling.

But when the autoupdate installed a new firefox that simply broke audio in the browser and now forces you to install something you've been actively avoiding or that is not available in this specific distro is something else.

I have a working update hygiene I'd rather deal with updates myself, thanks.