/dev/urandom3d ago

a lot of app developers compile telemetry data on what kind of settings users have, often to determine which parts of the app need improvement

often one of the saddest results of that telemetry is that the vast majority of users never change any settings at all

which, of course, then motivates the developers to change the defaults because how else will the users see the new thing we did? because if they don't, some competitor might release their program where that setting is the default and poach all the new users while we look like fools

i wonder if any developers tried to come at it from another angle and figure out if there's any positive way to motivate a user to change their settings or otherwise customize

Rhyme Repartee3d ago
Show thread/dev/urandom

speaking of, this idea that " #mozilla should know that their web browser is only used by power users, and so they should just listen to what those power users want instead of trying to attract new ones with a.i. features"

#firefox also collects telemetry, and according to it, less than half of its users have any add-on installed at all, and that includes language packs and browser themes, which afaik firefox will outright suggest to you if the version you installed doesn't match the system language settings

only 10% of users have uBlock Origin installed, even though, imo, it is practically a necessity

(in particular, i'm surprised by how few users have any add-ons in india, not even language packs, despite india's language diversity, and the most popular language packs they use are for different dialects of english, including canadian in the first place?)

i'm as annoyed by their decisions as you are, but i understand that people like you and me are, sadly, in the minority, and from pure statistics, mozilla will take a 5% chance to attract new users from the 97% of people who don't user firefox over even a 90% chance to piss off one of the 3% that already use firefox

Firefox Public Data Report

Mar 29 at 6:12amWeb
Show thread/dev/urandom3d ago

though honestly, that last part about india for some reason having the canadian english language pack as the most popular browser add-on makes me wonder if their data specifically is being skewed by bot farms

i've looked at the statcounter page on the most common desktop web browsers (where "unknown" beats out linux worldwide) and countries where "unknown" was the most popular also had weird situations where a lot of desktop computers seemingly had phone-sized screens and ran android versions of web browsers

Show threadFrancesco Lodolo3d ago

@rnd Language packs popularity doesn't tell you anything about locale distribution. You install a langpack only if you want a locale that is different from the one provided originally by the build, and Mozilla provides single-locale builds for each locale.

With that said, India's distribution is indeed baffling, given the language diversity.