I'm really not happy with the path Mozilla chose.
this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2025
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Firefox, sly as a fox, chicken as a chicken
Why a chicken? At least they are not forcing it down our throats like others do.
They are not forcing it down our throats because of the backslash of the community. So...chicken!
I am happy they're giving people a choice. On the other hand, the fact is, (privacy respecting) telemetry is the only way to make a program as complicated as a web browser better. Especially important when your competition is a giant data hoarder with orders of magnitude more users. And people will just not turn on opt-in telemetry.
Do you really think Firefox did a better job of improving with every version from 57 to 139, vs 1 to 56? Personally, I haven't seen it...
Is Netflix doing a better job of improving its programming compared to network TV of the 1990s and 2000s?
Call my principles old fashioned, but if companies want to know what people want, they could always ask. Ask and then listen.
The Netflix analogy does not make any sense in this context.
they could always ask. Ask and then listen.
Not nearly enough people turn on optional telemetry. I'll bet you don't always either.
Hey, I knew things would be okay in the end. ☺️
🤔 I thought you wanted Labs features to be gated
Must have been a misunderstanding. I merely said that it makes sense that you would want to collect usage data on potential new future features that are in development, to gather an understanding of what works and what doesn't. I didn't say that features should be arbitrarily gated. That would make no sense. 👍
It might be me, but when you wrote
But it's Firefox Labs, this is to test features before they're ready. If you want to participate in that, you're doing it to help Mozilla with Firefox, and it should thus be imperative that you also help with usage data as well. It just makes sense. Nothing to do with preference.
It sure sounded like you supported Firefox Labs features being gated
Well, that's an incorrect interpretation of what it says.
I make no mention of the word "gated" or any other synonym of that. Those are your words, and it's an incorrect extrapolation of what I'm saying. I make heavy use of words like "help", and I talk about it coming from our direction.
The help should be voluntary, I will concede, but I think it would be fine if it were opt-out. Maybe a lot of people won't notice an opt-in variant, so Mozilla would get a lot less usage data.
There's a big difference between supporting something "being gated" in and of itself, and supporting helping out an organization that has a very noble mission statement (as far as I understand it anyway). That's the way I see it. 👍