> will also be users who have disabled Firefox metrics collection and so will not have their opinion counted.

Gee. If only there was a way to collect users opinions on things. Welp.. guess we have to live with subtly spying on everything they do with our software.

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godelski 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Most people aren't vocal.

Most people who are vocal aren't representative of users.

Many vocal people aren't even users.

Don't get me wrong, I turn off telemetry, but you're acting like it's easy to get that information. You act like people don't scream when Firefox prompts people with surveys. You act like there isn't bias in survey takers.

If you just pretend everything is easy we'll just end up reinventing the same evils we're trying to fight today. Unfortunately most evils are created from good intentions. I hear there's an entire road paved that way

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account42 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Mainly it's just developers not wanting to hear what people say.

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johnnyanmac 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> but you're acting like it's easy to get that information.

It is, relatively speaking.

> You act like people don't scream when Firefox prompts people with surveys.

Surveys without proper response and adjustments aren't passing feedback, it's political theatre. People groan about surveys because it takes time and rarely shows results reflectant of the responses.

We know the system is broken. Hard to shame us into thinking we're the ones who broke it.

> You act like there isn't bias in survey takers.

You act like statisticians don't spend half their field accounting around bias.

>we'll just end up reinventing the same evils we're trying to fight today.

Let's have the old evils dealt with before worrying about creating new evils who happen to do the exact same thing as the "old evils" (spoilers: they are the same picture).

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TylerE 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Also, people lie. I don't trust what random users tell me, because years of tech support taught me that they're lying.

	▲	johnnyanmac 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		If you go into a survey expecting lies, don't expect people to be excited over taking them when you do nothing with them.

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supriyo-biswas 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If we replaced telemetry with some sort of survey emails and phone calls, we'd get exactly another 500-thread discussion on HN about how "Mozilla is collecting emails to sell to the highest bidder!", "Mozilla is sending us spam!" and whatnot.

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sigmoid10 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think at this point they know all these opinions pretty well, but they simply don't care or see better growth options by targeting users who don't belong to that particular bubble. They see OpenAI approaching the same active user counts as Facebook and they want a slice of that pie. And the majority of that pie is non-techies.

	▲	johnnyanmac 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Yup. When people feel like their voice won't matter, they will simply shut off any channels "listening" to them. You need to build up trust first. As a complete contrast, there's a lot more enthusiasm over Valve surveys.

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altairprime 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Arguing that telemetry is wrong doesn’t seem to have stopped Firefox from using it. If your fight against telemetry is a higher priority than your fight against AI in the browser, good luck and more power to you! I’m just making sure no one makes that decision by accident.

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manphone 30 minutes ago | parent [-]

This isn’t about a fight between two things. This is about a company that completely refuses to listen to their users and then some random guy on the Internet who says you should deal with their telemetry to somehow fix the problem that in no way relates to the actual problem and no way has evidence that they would take steps to fix the problem either. It’s very prosocial to think that Firefox actually makes changes based on user feedback, but almost none of these features have users been clamoring for, this is totally executive bullshit pushed into the product.

	▲	altairprime 11 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> It’s very prosocial to think that Firefox actually makes changes based on user feedback Nope, just hopeful, for me anyways. I already intend to migrate friends & family away from it next year, because from a prosocial standpoint they’re going to be more miserable over time as that sub-2% market share starts breaking banking and government sites, and whatever nostalgia I have for olde Firefox has no place in what’s best for those who depend on me. Regardless, I’m still hopeful that somehow concrete numbers might dissuade Firefox from being daft, or I wouldn’t have bothered commenting on this post at all! If they get the memo, then everyone I’m being prosocial towards benefits, and we all get to invest our limited time and energy into something more interesting and useful for the world than switching browsers. (Yes, I recognize this is an unlikely outcome, no need to try to shoot my hopes out of the sky like a clay pigeon, I’m well aware that their wings are made of melting wax, etc, etc.)