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- Hacker News
- There shouldn't be any telemetry in free software, end of. There are other ways to estimate the number of active users, e.g. through downloads and browser fingerprints.
Mozilla does not need more money than it already has. Ladybird has shown that you don't need a huge team to build a browser from scratch, so clearly Mozilla isn't spending all the money it gets from Google for development.
by drnick1 - Does Firefox sell this data? That would be bad and should be able to turn off. But there's other uses for telemetry that can help free software.by sourthyme
- > There shouldn't be any telemetry in free software, end of.
Don't install it if you dont want it, that is where you choice lies. Telemetry inclusion is up to the author. Good ones will make it opt-in if it is truly necessary to include.
> Ladybird has shown that you don't need a huge team to build a browser from scratch
Ladybird has done no such thing.
by nickthegreek - This is like saying you shouldn't have a computer because you can do addition yourself. Okay, what about all of the other use cases? Besides, collecting stats based on downloads/updates/etc is still telemetry.
I'm perfectly fine with telemetry in any software, free or paid. Just make it opt-in and don't turn into cookie notice style malicious compliance about that.
by zamadatix - > There are other ways to estimate the number of active users
The point of telemetry is not to estimate the number of active users, and focusing on "telemetry" is the wrong bogeyman. Things like crash reports are telemetry, and are perfectly acceptable as long as the user remains in control over whether or not to send them. Software should respect user privacy and user control.
by kibwen - This, absolutely. I used to publish free software for download, and I had absolutely zero idea how it was used, nor did I care.
The problem is that the surveillance mindset has infected developers these days so now you have a bunch of telemetry apologists and advocates influencing the narrative. Unfortunately they are themselves fine with being spied on... although the inevitable leak happens and hopefully some of them start to worry.
by userbinator - I don’t get this take. There’s good reasons to have telemetry in any software. Doesn’t really have to do with whether it’s free or not.
Of course, it’s also good to have the option to disable it.
by demibabs - I cant stand firefox for browsing, and now rarely access the web through a lap/desk top and just usb transfer files I create onto my phone, from where they get sent via whatever service is required. The web is dead anyway, so any random browser is good enough,as the whole fucking thing is a giant scam me baby honey pot if anything and one of these days a bunch of mega scraper operations are going to get stuck to each other and litteraly catch on fire, which would be interesting, remember that?, interesting things, ha!, now the reaction is to look over your shoulder to see if anyone noticed you bieng had.by metalman
- water is wet
the sky is blue
by jamesjhare - Just follow the money.by jqpabc123
- Vanilla Firefox is a swamp of user-hostile defaults, telemetry, useless AI features, and forced addons that try to upsell you.
The most sensible way to get around this is to use LibreWolf or Waterfox. They aggressively rip all of this out.
- I'm always baffled by vitriol like this. The alternatives you mention wouldn't even exist without Firefox, and what bloody swamp? What forced extensions?
I just started a two fresh profiles to test your claim (one in Firefox, one in Dev Edition), the opt-out for telemetry is present in the very first dialogue box and costs 2 clicks. There's a daily usage ping that's still on, and I'm happy to keep it on, because I believe that usage stat is valuable. It's easily disabled.
There are zero extensions by default, and one video decoding plugin. There is a skippable 'recommended add-ons' step on first run, so skip it if you want, easy.
The AI controls are all set to Available but none are automatically used, one must intentionally do so, at which point one is reminded these can be entirely disabled. Even opening the AI chat sidebar doesn't actually connect to a bot, it offers a list of bots, beneath which is a Close button, though that's not the only way to close it.
If you prefer Waterfox, great, you're not the primary target demographic for Firefox, but you can still use it without all the pain you complain of.
by Walf - I love Firefox but I don't understand why anybody would use it without a custom config like BetterFox[1].by overflowy
- Because my browser is an extremely sensitive piece of software and I don’t trust just anybody to provide it for me.by bsian
- It's somewhat cathartic to go through the settings and JS parts, using the source as a guide, and rip out/disable all the spyware, which you can do even without having to build the whole thing from source.
Since I do my content filtering at the proxy level, all I want is just a browser .
by userbinator - how? i used pihole, but it slows down everythingby anonymous344
- > To be clear, I know that the AI kill switch does not claim to disable telemetry or advertising.
Well, at least it's not the closing sentence.
by jasonvorhe - Thankyou! that title was painful, I spent 20 seconds term rewriting it in my head..
* Firefox's AI Switch Is Off. Telemetry Isn't
* Firefox's AI Switch Is Off. Telemetry Isn't off [complete second clause]
* Firefox's Telemetry Isn't Off [remove negative clause]
* Firefox's Telemetry Is On [remove double negative]
----
Admittedly I didn't read past the first two paragraphs, but I assume it is a several hundred word repetition of its tautologous title.
by Farmadupe - The troubling part in the post is that telemetry (about AI features) begins before the user can rush to disable either of them.
It's a response to the Mozilla CEO saying[0] "Trust is earned. Consent is asked. AI skipped both," which promised to ameliorate this issue, and apparently did not.