Hynek SchlawackWow, #Firefox injecting Mozilla VPN ads into web pages… the Chrome team stares jealously over. The question is always: what clueless middle manager thought this could be a good idea? A move that betrays virtually everything Firefox fans value!?
James Bennett@hynek Looking through the related bugs and links, my read is that it was supposed to be one of those "what's new in..." type things that only shows under certain circumstances, but it relied on a buggy API to decide when to show itself, and so started popping up kind of at random.
And then people decided to apply the least charitable possible interpretation (Mozilla is DELIBERATELY MALICIOUSLY INJECTING UNBLOCKABLE ADS in EVERY WEBSITE!!!ZOMGWTFBBQ!!!!!!!!!!), and now will never ever be talked out of that interpretation. It's the same old "If Mozilla screws up 1 time out of 100000, people treat it as a worse thing than Google screwing up 99999 times out of 100000" problem that's always existed.
(obligatory disclaimer: I no longer work for Mozilla, haven't for years, didn't work on the browser when I did, have no inside info, am speaking for myself and giving my own personal opinions, not official stances of Firefox or Mozilla)
@ubernostrum I really don't think that makes it any better and the fact they're peddling VPN snake oil now is the cherry on the cake
@hynek Well, this is kind of what I was getting at -- you already decided that this must be an evil/bad thing, so it doesn't matter if there's a mundane explanation, because you're not really open to having your mind changed about it.
That said, I've read the docs on it and it seems to be as clear as I think mass-market end-user docs *can* be on what a VPN can and can't do and when it might or might not be useful.
I used to run my own VPN to use when I was traveling and didn't want to have to trust random wifi, for example, and that's a use case they hit in the docs. If I still had that use case, I might throw a few bucks at them to solve it for me.
@ubernostrum I have not. The thing is I find thirsty “what's new” pop ups that interrupt me while surfing already super obnoxious and it only gets worse from there (→ ad → VPN). And yes, if you build a brand on a certain type of trust and then betray it, of course the damage is bigger than if you’re YOLO the whole time. Apple also gets lambasted for every tiny misstep.
@hynek And I guess the Apple comparison is important, because I feel the same way about Apple -- they never promised people "ad-free", that I'm aware of. They promised things like not selling personal/tracking info to third parties, but people *interpreted* that as "no ads on anything ever" and treat it as a betrayal if Apple does ads.
That mismatch between "they promised X" and "I interpreted it as Y" is really important to understanding the dynamic here.
@ubernostrum I was mostly referring to when they accidentally collect some data they shouldn't. Like when spotlight sent every keypress to Apple etc. But yes, whether we like it or not, the Y is what makes a brand. The what people perceive it to be.