Hacker News Reader

Comment by piyush_soni | Hacker News Reader

Extending your argument only a bit, "No one is forcing you to use Firefox stable release version if it is not consistent with your faith". "No one is forcing you to use computers and internet if they are not consistent with your faith". I see so much irony in your statement. It's not about forcing anyone. It's about taking the web forward, and data security which Mozilla says it believes in. Nightly definitely means there could be unintentional mistakes and bugs, but does not mean it has our blanket agreement to intentionally sharing all of our private data by default.

View on HN

> No one is forcing you to use Firefox stable release version if it is not consistent with your faith

Nope. Debian repos (and most package managers I'd guess) do not have Nightly or Developer Edition. There's no direct link on the download page [1] that takes you to where you can download the Nightly branch. And the page for downloading it [2], to which you reach if you search for it specifically, makes it as visible as it gets that it's beta and meant for testing. I guess all of this is just lightly forcing you to download latest release. (edit: I mean this as sth. positive BTW, they're making it quite obvious which is the wiser option for the end user)

[1] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/

[2] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/channel/desktop/, "Get a sneak peek at our next generation web browser, and help us make it the best browser it can be: try Firefox Nightly."

1. google the web, e.g. using duckduckgo, for "firefox nightly ppa"

2. Go to https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-mozilla-daily/+archive/ubuntu/...

3. apt-add-repository ppa:ubuntu-mozilla-daily/ppa

4. apt install firefox-trunk

5. firefox-trunk

At no point during this are you informed that you will be subject to illegal tracking and analytics.

No matter what way of installing you choose they inform you via official website about pre-release version witch includes notice about sending automatic feedback. You don't need to prove your point in the most bizarre way and you can inform PPA admin to add this little line for clarification.

> the most bizarre way

Installing via PPA is much more common and trusted than installing a random binary from a random website.

> to add this little line for clarification.

That’s too late anyway, from May 8 on the GDPR comes into force, and then this will require explicit opt-in from the user, and the rest of the software has to continue working even if the user does not explicitly opt-in.

So, I’ll just wait for that. Also waiting for the day that the analytics on about:addons becomes explicitly opt-in, instead of being connected to the DNT setting.

Firefox is open source software. They can not control every single person distributing their software. That PPA is probably maintained by volunteers or Ubuntu folk.

So how do you want take web forward without testing new things based on real life data? Did you even read what they want to do and how they are going to do it?

By doing things with a clearly visible message and explicit, prior, opt-in permission, perhaps? What's so difficult about that?

Seriously they have to? Isn't this obvious enough? When downloading TEST RELEASE you willingly accept that it will collect anonymous data and send it to them. If you do not want to test something, because you're opposed to it, do not do it.

A lot of companies do that and I do not see anyone complaining about it for example Apple and macOS betas.

I just received this email from my bank. Something like this would be nice:

"Below is a link to the 2018 Annual Privacy Notice. This Notice provides details on the types of information we collect, why we collect it, and with whom we may share it. Collecting and permissible sharing of your information allows us to offer you a comprehensive range of services to help you meet your financial goals. "

Yes, for stable version if they want to track something more. But we are talking about test version. You accept this when downloading "Firefox Nightly automatically sends feedback to Mozilla.": https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox/#telemetry

How you want to improve something without data? Based on intuitions?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com