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Comment by 2bitencryption | Hacker News Reader

> The core idea (deploy an easter egg via an add-on) seems pretty reasonable. Looking Glass is a really cool idea for users who want it.

But who actually wants it? Who wants a fundamental part of their daily work suddenly manipulated by somebody else at a whim?

What if Ford decided it would force-push add a cool "Star Wars" tie in to its cars (no pun intended on "force push")? That's a mission-critical part of my life, I drive my kids in it. Don't mess with my car over-the-air without telling me, I don't care if it's all fun and games to you, to me it's my life.

Same for my browser. It's not a toy I use for fun. It's how I see my medical records, pay bills, transport extremely sensitive and confidential information... I don't want anyone to suddenly push "cool fun easter eggs" to it, under any circumstance.

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> What if Ford decided it would force-push add a cool "Star Wars" tie in to its cars (no pun intended on "force push")?

FWIW, Tesla includes easter eggs in its cars. You need to go out of your way to use them, and they're pretty much hidden unless you go looking for them, and they keep adding more via OTA updates.

If your question is "Who are easter eggs made for?" then the answer is "the people that care to go looking for them." The difference between a Tesla easter egg (which are almost entirely regarded as delightful) and this easter egg is that this easter egg was poorly executed.

A Tesla easter egg is silly and whimsical. This easter egg parodied something that's potentially threatening. And hell, Firefox has had easter eggs since its first release; go visit `about:mozilla` in your address bar. Saying easter eggs are bad outright is silly, but they should be done in a way that isn't concerning to users.

> The difference between a Tesla easter egg (which are almost entirely regarded as delightful) and this easter egg is that this easter egg was poorly executed.

I don't own a Tesla but I assume a key difference is that the easter eggs exist solely to delight the user whereas this was more of a partnership designed to make Mozilla money.

Per my comment above, there's a misunderstanding here. The goal was to delight Mr Robot viewers and turn them into Firefox users. This was about marketing, not revenue, and I believe no money changed hands.

"delight" viewers?

Hah, good one.

Using the rhetoric of the parent, in case that wasn't clear.

Tesla includes easter eggs in its cars.

Thanks for that warning. I was considering buying one, but now I'm certain that I won't.

Yeah, old chocolate under the seats is awful, I don't like it either.

Um, the parent addressed your comment's point already, and said "But pushing it out broadly, even in an inert state, was not good.". The comment said that addons are a good way of making this work; but disagrees with the mode of deployment (just flat out installing it everywhere, as opposed to a more conditional approach)

Callahad agrees with you that "force pushing" the add-on was a terrible, terrible idea.

In the part you quoted they were just pointing out that an optional extension is the correct place to implement this sort of thing. I am sure that if they had just posted this as a separate extension from day one then the target audience of Mr Robot fans would have had fun with the ARG and everyone else would be totally unnafected.

> Callahad agrees with you that "force pushing" the add-on was a terrible, terrible idea.

That aren't Callahad's words. Here I quote him exactly:

"Looking Glass is a really cool idea for users who want it. But pushing it out broadly, even in an inert state, was not good."

Note, not even "bad." Just "not good." And far from "terrible, terrible."

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