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Mozilla stops Firefox fullscreen VPN ads after user outrage

submitted by airhan+(OP) on 2023-05-26 15:43:44 | 335 points 213 comments
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9. ilikep+g6[view] [source] [discussion] 2023-05-26 16:10:26
>>sandya+k4
Did you miss the episode in 2017 in which they used an internal control to force the installation of an add-on as part of a promotion for a television show?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15941302

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15940144

I feel similarly to you...long-time user, bummed out by stuff like this. Sometimes it feels like Firefox would be a lot better off without Mozilla occasionally making deals like this.

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14. the_du+v7[view] [source] [discussion] 2023-05-26 16:16:36
>>sandya+k4
Firefox at least exposes an endless amount of toggles to tweak pretty much every behaviour the browser has.

This is includes settings for removing or disabling all the integration with Mozilla services and their ads.

See for example: https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js

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22. VTimof+g8[view] [source] [discussion] 2023-05-26 16:20:11
>>comice+W6
Bugzilla links in yesterday's post:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36077360

seem to indicate that Mozilla intended for the popup to be shown if the user is AFK for 20 minutes but that timer malfunctioned

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31. elashr+wa[view] [source] [discussion] 2023-05-26 16:29:16
>>super2+b7
>has Mozilla VPN also a windows client?

Yes, actually has something for all three major Desktop OSes, iOS and Android. [1]

[1]https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/products/vpn/download/]

48. dang+Sc[view] [source] 2023-05-26 16:37:42
>>airhan+(OP)
Recent and related:

Firefox displayed a pop-up ad for Mozilla VPN over an unrelated page - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36077360 - May 2023 (328 comments)

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72. Alexan+Qk[view] [source] [discussion] 2023-05-26 17:11:03
>>jareda+a9
For me it hit as a double-whammy. I tried opening a new tab, but had to stop what I was doing to restart Firefox instead because of a Snap[1] update, then I got this immediately after Firefox started back up. A really nasty snapshot of where free software is at in 2023.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snap_(software)

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95. warkda+6s[view] [source] [discussion] 2023-05-26 17:43:49
>>mozman+8p
Why would Google try to prop up Firefox as a competitor? Both Safari and Edge on desktop are twice the market share of Firefox, so the browser market is competitive enough without Firefox.

https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/desktop/worl...

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96. slater+7s[view] [source] [discussion] 2023-05-26 17:43:55
>>pwdiss+I7
Now changed from WORKSFORME to FIXED

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1835158

Nothing to see here, folks!

(until marketing comes up with its next blunder)

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107. wongar+hv[view] [source] [discussion] 2023-05-26 17:58:18
>>warkda+6s
Safari can probably be discounted since Apple discontinued the Windows version in 2012. A browser that can only run on 18% of desktops worldwide isn't necessarily the competitor Google is looking for.

Edge is available on Windows, Linux and macOS, so it would probably do. But that would allow one of Google's biggest competitors to drop an under-performing product and lobby for antitrust against Google. Unlikely to happen, but a risk Google might not want to take.

https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide

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140. LeoPan+hJ[view] [source] [discussion] 2023-05-26 19:17:31
>>horesz+OI
On KDE, Falkon.

On Gnome, "Web".

On macOS, Safari may not pass your "non-corporate" requirement, but it's spiritually non-corporate, and functionally "just a browser". It's also wicked fast and extremely light on your resources.

On many platforms, "ungoogled-chromium" may satisfy your needs. It's under the name "eloston-chromium" in many repos. https://github.com/ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium

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143. border+NJ[view] [source] [discussion] 2023-05-26 19:20:31
>>bombca+qJ
To burst your bubble: https://digdeeper.neocities.org/articles/browsers#brave
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148. abnerc+mL[view] [source] [discussion] 2023-05-26 19:30:12
>>horesz+OI
We're not getting anywhere without the social support for it. Virtually all tech conferences are corporate-funded, for example, so they're not going to praise independent browsers. Conversations get stifled.

Self-plug but my indie conferences [0] promote software that respect the user's quality of experience. One of my favorite presentations that we've featured is SerenityOS (including their open-source browser) which made headlines at the time. [1]

[0] https://handmadecities.com

[1] https://vimeo.com/641406697

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159. ilikep+4T[view] [source] [discussion] 2023-05-26 20:19:29
>>jeroen+7p
> The execution was definitely terrible, but "browser company ships promotional easter egg" isn't that bad as "browser company inserts ads into browsing experience" in my opinion. These ads are why Windows 10+ has become a trash fire despite all the technical improvements made to Windows.

I'm not sure I agree. The Mr. Robot "promotional easter egg" was done by installing an add-on via the Shield Study system. This system is enabled by default, and it is intended to allow the Firefox devs to run A/B tests with browser features.[1] This sort of system already makes some non-trivial minority of users bristle. For Mozilla to co-opt it specifically for an advertising campaign perfectly validates the concerns of that group of people. So then we get a thread on HN[2] in which several Firefox devs post about how badly they and their colleagues felt about the whole debacle, and how it would undoubtedly lead to many internal conversations. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that happened, and apparently[1] Shield Studies now require some level of scientific rigor behind them before they are deployed. But unfortunately, the marketing department still seems to be willing to sacrifice the ever-diminishing good will their remaining users seem to place in Mozilla as the steward of Firefox the browser. It doesn't feel to me like they fully appreciated the lessons of 2017.

[1]: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Shield/Shield_Studies

[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15940144

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173. sounds+sZ[view] [source] [discussion] 2023-05-26 21:01:09
>>kramer+Ea
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35829283

Mozilla's primary sources of revenue are for setting the default search engine. $500 Million.

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175. sounds+x11[view] [source] [discussion] 2023-05-26 21:13:46
>>devmor+m8
I see it as a larger trend away from general purpose computing and toward appliances:

https://www.techspot.com/news/98811-windows-365-boot-paid-su...

https://www.theregister.com/2023/05/24/windows_365_boot_prev...

The browser does a lot of my computing now, and I'm not surprised the "General Purpose Browser" is disappearing, replaced by an appliance with user-hostile behavior that might, maybe, sometimes ... give you some internet browsing. Remember AOL Online?

The solution isn't very complicated. Copyleft [1] uses copyright to preserve user freedom, instead of restricting it -- so the company that wants to monetize the software can't block the user from making copies of the source code.

Let's skip the quibbling over Affero GPL, that's boring. How about inventing a license, where the license restricts the valid activites of the software?

A browser restricted to only make network requests authorized by the user. An OS restricted from spying on the user. A computer that is personal again.

[1] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/copyleft.en.html

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178. netsha+641[view] [source] [discussion] 2023-05-26 21:30:59
>>slater+Y5
Yeah, something similar to "Killed by Google". Maybe we need a template on Github for such sites to catalog bullshit, lord knows there's a lot of categories of bullshit we can catalog...

Oh actually they do have their source available: https://github.com/codyogden/killedbygoogle

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181. Macha+l81[view] [source] [discussion] 2023-05-26 21:59:26
>>intelV+vx
Note that KHTML is dead: https://github.com/KDE/khtml/tree/master

The writing was on the wall as KDE moved to first QtWebkit and then the Blink based QtWebEngine.

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189. Zak+Lt1[view] [source] [discussion] 2023-05-27 01:46:45
>>eterm+1o
(Bug reporter here)

I don't know exactly what anyone else experienced. What I experienced is: I was away from my computer and noticed that my Syncthing[0] folders were out of date, so I used KDE Connect[1] to make sure Syncthing was running on my PC, which opens a tab connecting to Syncthing on the local machine in the default browser - Firefox in my case. Some time later, I unlocked my PC and found the advertisement on top of my Syncthing admin page.

So yes, it popped something up while I was AFK, though I can't guess whether it would have done so if I hadn't remotely triggered a new tab. Needless to say, I was very surprised to see that behavior from Firefox, and even more surprised that despite posts to reddit and HN complaining, I didn't find a report in Bugzilla.

[0] https://syncthing.net/

[1] https://kdeconnect.kde.org/

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192. postal+Tv1[view] [source] [discussion] 2023-05-27 02:16:45
>>handsc+em1
How is the the most complaint browser?

https://html5test.com/results/desktop.html

Looks like its the worst. Unless you have something proving otherwise. Till then I'll assume all your facts are bullshit.

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205. super2+3o2[view] [source] [discussion] 2023-05-27 13:49:56
>>elashr+7b
I looked this up and it looks very cool! Why aren't they advertising this better?

I now want this for mullvad too tbh

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/protect-your-container-...

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