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Comment by syoc | Hacker News Reader

> I hope this is either a bug, or misunderstanding: this apparent change does not respect the "Always check if Firefox is your default browser" setting.

We absolutely continue to respect that check box. We won't always check at startup if Firefox is your default browser. When that box is left checked, you get a modal/prompt at every single startup. It literally always checks if Firefox is your default.

In contrast, the work resulting from this bug is just checking every 5 weeks and we happen to not be default, we'll ask with a more gentle infobar. We won't display the more disruptive modal/prompt.

I love Firefox, just stop shooting yourself in the foot. There is no way that is a fair interpretation of that option.

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> just stop shooting yourself in the foot

It's just non-stop with Mozilla, isn't it?

They have the curious pairing of technical excellence, and a long history of awful non-technical decision-making.

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14754740

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22616740

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23391659

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10680925

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24144137

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26262031

* http://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html

* https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1185193

Which is a shame because the technical is entirely subordinate to and for the sake of the non-technical ultimately.

Kick the technical and keep the bureaucrats. What could go wrong?

Were you around in 2014?

Yes. Thank you for your work all those years.

bring back Brendan Eich?

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Mozilla has no respect for its users. This is a continuing pattern as you've very clearly demonstrated.

It's been that way since the very beginning. The folks behind Mozilla always assume they know more about what the users ought to do, than the users themselves. You would maybe think that this arrogant position would have diminished a bit over the last 20 years, but apparently it has not.

The Mozilla manifesto [1] principle 8:

> Transparent community-based processes promote participation, accountability and trust.

Ha ha ha ha ha. Every change is decided in private. By the time anyone outside Mozilla becomes aware of them it's too late to provide any input. Discussion of such decisions is forbidden on bugzilla, and the forums are ignored.

The only way to provide meaningful feedback is to quit Firefox. But I don't want to use Chrome. sigh

[1]: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/

Why did you include the Mozilla Foundation as an awful decision?

Which link are you referring to?

Sorry for the late reply, but it was https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23391659

The main comments were people complaining about the foundation but I see you may have been pointing out the pocket recommendations.

Ughhh those sponsored links ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26262031 ) are only just new. I can't believe they are pulling that.

Glad it can be turned off but I bet it won't sync to all my other systems.

I'm more annoyed by Mozilla hiding functions used mainly by powerusers so they can be accessed only using about:config (for instance relatively recently layout.css.text-decoration-skip-ink.enabled) and then completely scrapping the functionality, because people don't use it (duh). Now they want to do same with compact mode. I dread when they completely disable usage of userChrome.css.

They completely ignore the fact that Firefox got big because technical users were installing it on computers of their less technically literate relatives. Now they changed the Firefox to be carbon copy of Chrome so powerusers no longer have any reason to use it, let alone install it for other people. My reason to keep using it is at this point only desire to avoid Chrome monoculture.

Firefox is my last holdout for a decent graphical browser. After that it will be lynx. I am not looking forward to the endless debates with vendors to get an API gateway that supports simple forms so I can use lynx. Maybe there is a reputable company that has already done this so I can use them as a reference standard. Amazon maybe? I bet Amazon has an API with a full parity web front-end into their store.

[Edit] Just edited this message with lynx.

At some point someone [1] should just fork Firefox and work on it independently.

---

[1]: (not me, I'm horrible at maintaining projects, though I would help)

GNU IceCat is pretty much that, not a fork exactly but a sanitized version of the latest Firefox. The project looks dead though. Last stable release was in 2019.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_IceCat

Waterfox [1] is another one. Each of the forks has pros and cons. Most of the forks seem to have very few developers supporting them.

[1] - https://www.waterfox.net/

How do people write this with a straight face?

Could they also show the modal 99.99% of the time and claim that meets the language they used?

I agree; anyone who deselected that check-box isn’t going to think - “ok now Firefox will only sporadically check if it is the default browser”

Yep, they might as well hire a lawyer to defend their bad decisions based on the exact wording of settings.

Nobody cares if the option doesn't literally imply it'll never "nudge" the user, I'd be annoyed regardless. And it's the only option visible to normal users.

They literally have the best (ok, subjectively) browser right now and they're just...

What even are they doing? What is their goal with all these user-hostile changes?

If it's to try juicing up active userbase just be a good browser and wait for chrome to make a change that annoys everyone (FLoC seems like a good candidate)

Better of shit options is leaving us all fucked.

This justification is making me strongly reconsider my browser choice.

Numerous times in the past couple of years I’ve briefly tried Firefox, or considered trying it again.

Stuff like this just keeps coming up completely souring it’s reputation.

At least anecdotally speaking, they’re shooting themselves in the foot and I’ll put off touching FF for another few months until I forget about this.

Ok but then what do you use? Lynx?

Chrome/Chromium/Brave have 10 times the amount of dark patterns. It's sad but the complexity and cruft of browser APIs have created an effective browser duopoly. There are no alternatives for any kind of mainstream usage.

What are the dark patterns in Brave?

Yes I've not encountered any yet.

Report them via github, or if you think intentionally dark, via https://hackerone.com/brave and we will pay bounty.

And this is why I use Brave. The people at the top are techies - who understand and respond to their users.

Mozilla could learn from this.

Thanks Brendan.

I use Safari + AdGuard for most things due to the native Mac interface and reduced power consumption. And Chromium + uBlock Origin when I need to use sites that don't work with anything other than Chrome.

They're absolutely shooting themselves in the foot. They need Firefox to stand out from Chrome. Instead they keep trying to turn it into Chrome. There's still some things they have that keep me from switching like some level of support for a tree styled tabs addon, container tabs, and not crippling the abilities of uBO filters. But I'm wondering how long it will be before those advantages go away. The tree style tabs are already suboptimal since the Quantum release. They share the same sidebar as anything else that wants to display in a sidebar and the addon can't toggle the display of the normal tabs.

> Why 5 weeks? [...] It's not often enough that it will annoy users.

You know what's annoying? Asking me to change something that I've already said no to, especially when you don't give me an obvious way to turn it off. 5 weeks, 5 days, 5 months, doesn't matter.

You already asked at install time and every time I started FireFox until finding and changing that setting. If I still haven't approved it and you keep asking, you're just going to piss me off.

Respect your users, Mozilla.

But this is somehow even worse: they do give you an obvious way to turn it off, then they ignore that setting 5 weeks later.

It's one thing to not ask your users for consent to a thing; it's another to ask them for consent, then intentionally ignore it and do the opposite. One is idiocy; the other borders on malice.