Mozilla Clarifies on Data Collection: Firefox Labs to Not Require Telemetry or Studies in Future Updates
www.quippd.com
TL;DR: Mozilla has shifted from the forced telemetry introduced in Firefox 138 for Firefox Labs. Hours after I posted about the Labs change, Mozilla opened bug 1972647, which describes a change to Labs to allow it to be used when telemetry or studies are disabled.

cross-posted from: https://fedia.io/m/[email protected]/t/2320051

Starting in Firefox 138, Mozilla started gating Firefox Labs features behind data collection.

Mozilla had announced that some new Firefox features would be released via Firefox Labs.

It is now a few hours since I posted, and there is reason to celebrate – Mozilla is updating Firefox Labs to let people access features without needing to enable data collection.

  • slackness@lemmy.ml
    82·
    1 day ago

    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.

    • LWD@lemm.eeOP
      151·
      1 day ago

      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.

      • slackness@lemmy.ml
        21·
        12 hours ago

        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.

      • Victor@lemmy.world
        2·
        15 hours ago

        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. 👍

        • LWD@lemm.eeOP
          2·
          14 hours ago

          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

          • Victor@lemmy.world
            2·
            3 hours ago

            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. 👍