Mozilla stops Firefox fullscreen VPN ads after user outrage

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/mozilla-stops-firefox-fullscreen-vpn-ads-after-user-outrage/

by airhangerf15 • 3 years ago

335 213 3 years ago

wlesieutre2• 3 years ago

Makes you wonder how someone thought this was a good idea in a browser that was an early pioneer of popup blockers. Imagine if Firefox in the 2000's had seen popup ads and said "Yeah let's get in on that action!"

At least it was a small scale experiment and not something that rolled out to the whole install base, I use Firefox on a couple of computers and didn't see it myself. But should you really need user feedback to know that inserting an overlay that looks like in-page ad content is a bad idea?

logdap• 3 years ago

Mozilla management are malicious snakes. This isn't the first time they've tried something like this and it won't be the last. Each time they issue noncommittally apologies, if you can call them that, but it keeps on happening. They're testing the water for even more ads in Firefox, trying to normalize this until people stop complaining. Keep the heat on them, don't give them an inch or they'll take a mile.

MichaelZuo• 3 years ago

They might not care anymore or trying to do a Hail Mary, once >99% of browser-share is just Chromium and Webkit/Safari, then popular websites might not even work with FireFox anymore.

wodenokoto• 3 years ago

I’m not sure what “something like this” you are referring to.

But Firefox is an ad supported browser and has been for nearly 2 decades.

That they want to take ownership of the advertising is no surprise. Who knows when google will turn off the faucet.

But this is definitely not the right way

mozman3• 3 years ago

It's not all management. It's Mitchell Baker. She needs to step down as CEO.

JohnFen6• 3 years ago

Each time they issue noncommittally apologies, if you can call them that, but it keeps on happening.

An apology needs three parts: admission that you did wrong, expressing regret for your wrongdoing, and a change in your behavior so that you don't do it again.

Mozilla's tendency to just do the first two and skip the third means that, in my view, those weren't real apologies.

avereveard• 3 years ago

To be fair I've notice that apologies for company screwups have gone up in quality significantly afte r the introduction of chatgpt, and I await their with interest to see if the trend holds.

roelschroeven• 3 years ago

If they keep doing things like this, people will stop complaining. Because they drive users away, and there will be nobody left to complain.

pessimizer6• 3 years ago

Each time they issue noncommittally apologies

Introduced by a bunch of gaslighting that it isn't actually happening or isn't anything different that what was always happened, then interleaved with accusations of bullying and entitlement directed at its userbase.

ChuckNorris89• 3 years ago

Makes you wonder how someone thought this was a good idea in a browser that was an early pioneer of popup blockers.

Two reasons: clueless management who chases short term returns, and a rabid fanbase that will constantly make excuses for them no matter how much they decline, because "at least they're not Google/Microsoft"

elashri3• 3 years ago

and a rabid fanbase that will constantly make excuses for them no matter how much they decline, because "at least they're not Google/Microsoft"

To their defense, that ought to be more about the rate of decline that Google/MS goes compared to Mozilla. It is usually supported out of necessity, not ideology. But I'm not sure for how long this will actually work.

0cf8612b2e1e3• 3 years ago

"Rabid fanbase"? I feel like the majority of us are only begrudging users. Best of the worst available options.

weinzierl• 3 years ago

If something like this happens once it could be a slip, but we've been there again and again. Mozilla is testing how far it can go only backpedaling when there is resistance. I don't trust them a bit and would switch Browser anytime if there was a visble alternative.

wlesieutre2• 3 years ago

Orion (from Kagi) is "planning support for other platforms in the future," if that lands for Windows I'll probably bail on Firefox

For me it's been downhill since they removed "Compact" UI density, and I'd just as soon not jump through a bunch of custom CSS hoops to have sidebar tabs when nearly all the other browsers (outside of Chrome/Safari) are building them in natively. The main thing going for Firefox is being the independent rendering engine, for customization and power user features it's nothing special anymore.

sharess• 3 years ago

This ad overlay shows such a fundamental lack of understanding on what Firefox was built on that the people who greenlighted this need to go immediately.

They are completely out of their depth and not fit for their job.

lelanthran3• 3 years ago

The people who greenlighted this were the people who ousted those who built Firefox. The current crop of "leaders" have a vision that does not include Firefox being the best browser it can be.

Trust me, they're politically aware of what they are doing, and are only gauging outrage now. Give it some time and they'll figure out how to leverage the outrage, as they did before.

Never let a good crisis go to waste, and all that.

MiddleEndian• 3 years ago

Microsoft basically got in on this with a lot of their recent Windows stuff. With Windows 7, suddenly you saw people's PCs were no longer full of adware. Then by 8 or 10, Microsoft thought, "Wait, people put up with adware for decades, let's get on that and put it into the OS ourselves."

intelVISA3• 3 years ago

Now now, it's just Good and Proper Business to Milk Your Customer Dry.

JKCalhoun• 3 years ago

Makes me wonder why so much of Corporate America make decisions based on "What's the outrage threshold for our users and how can we sneak up close to it?"

sandyarmstrong• 3 years ago

I noticed this yesterday. I've been using Mozilla/Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox as my primary browser for over 20 years. They've made some questionable calls, sure, but most of the recent things that have bothered people (like Pocket integration) haven't really irked me.

This is the first time where I got a visceral feeling that maybe this isn't the browser I knew and loved anymore. It's not like I'm uninstalling and switching to something else, but I do feel bummed out.

ilikepi4• 3 years ago

Did you miss the episode in 2017 in which they used an internal control to force the installation of an add-on as part of a promotion for a television show?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15941302

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15940144

I feel similarly to you...long-time user, bummed out by stuff like this. Sometimes it feels like Firefox would be a lot better off without Mozilla occasionally making deals like this.

0cf8612b2e1e3• 3 years ago

I read a conspiracy that Google has paid off Mozilla management to specifically sabotage the browser development. Actions like this make it hard to dispute the moves that frequently seem deliberately anti-user.

SilasX• 3 years ago

(Not the OP.) Nope, and I also didn't miss the torrent of HNers saying "what's the problem, you already trust them to provide the software, you should trust anything they want to send along with it."

jeroenhd• 3 years ago

The execution was definitely terrible, but "browser company ships promotional easter egg" isn't that bad as "browser company inserts ads into browsing experience" in my opinion. These ads are why Windows 10+ has become a trash fire despite all the technical improvements made to Windows.

Mozilla were stupid enough to try and sneak this Roboto stuff in, probably as part of the requirements or intentions of the ad campaign, rather than be transparent about it. Stupidity rather than malice.

The VPN ad is a targeted decision comingffrom within the non-profit. I sort of get it, Mozilla is desperate for income because Google is keeping them afloat, barely anyone who donates cares about anything but the browser, and the for-profit ventures aren't gaining much success.

ionioniodfngio• 3 years ago

It's not that I like Firefox so much as that all the competition is unusable. Firefox has gone downhill, but at least it's extensible enough that I can largely reverse the decay.

reaperducer• 3 years ago

It's not that I like Firefox so much as that all the competition is unusable.

I'm inching closer to using the Duck browser full-time. If you haven't tried it, give it a shot to see if it works for you.

It's not as customizable as Chrome or Firefox, but it gets the job done if you don't do a lot of heavy lifting with your browser.

Right now, I'm 60% Safari, 10% Firefox, and 30% Duck. And I use Firefox less and less lately.

JohnFen6• 3 years ago

Firefox is much less configurable than it used to be, though. I can no longer fix all of the stuff in it that needs fixing.

the_duke• 3 years ago

Firefox at least exposes an endless amount of toggles to tweak pretty much every behaviour the browser has.

This is includes settings for removing or disabling all the integration with Mozilla services and their ads.

See for example: https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js

warkdarrior2• 3 years ago

Yes, but the default should be to show no ads. If I want ads, I'll use Chrome or Edge with no ad blocker.

justsomehnguy• 3 years ago

FF removed the ability to delete the sites from MRU list in the address bar, the ability which it had since ages. It was removed when moved to Photon, 2017. They finally would add it back in FF 113, so 2023. Six / Fucking / Years

rwmj• 3 years ago

The Android version of Firefox recently started promoting commercial bookmarks on the home screen, another case where it seems they've lost the plot.

stjohnswarts2• 3 years ago

You can't turn it off? I haven't used Android in a while, but always like Firefox made it easy to turn this type of stuff and telemetry off.

dabluecaboose• 3 years ago

A while back I got a push notification on my Android device to some preachy blogpost about Facebook being bad politically

I don't want my browser to be a vector from which you push your blogs, Mozilla. I want a browser that isn't Chrome

JohnFen6• 3 years ago

I switched away from Firefox a couple of years ago for a number of reasons that can be collectively summarized as "Firefox no longer meets my needs".

But as a Firefox user from the very beginning, I still keep tabs on it, hoping that it will improve enough for me to return to it. Things like this, however, strongly indicate to me that Firefox is just lost and will never find its way back.

lolinder2• 3 years ago

What did you switch to?

nulbyte3• 3 years ago

I wanted to like Firefox. So much so that I used to carry my keys on a Firefox branded lanyard. Eventually, I gave up and switched. Presently, Im trying Brave. I don't really like it, but I'm now at the point where I don't think there is such a thing as a user-friendly browser anymore.

xuancanh• 3 years ago

The downturn of Firefox began a long time ago when Brendan Eich was forced to leave Mozilla in 2014. I highly recommend giving Brave browser a try, as Brendan Eich now serves as its CEO.

triyambakam2• 3 years ago

I recently switched to Brave

intelVISA3• 3 years ago

Same boat, used it since Win XP but they've been bleeding out badly since Eich left with no signs of recovery.

I do want to like Brave, as it is Firefox II in spirit, but the combo of web3 crap, Chromium and the fact that it still pings outbound (with it all 'off') puts me off entirely.

Maybe it's time for me to fork KHTML and do what needs to be done.

Macha2• 3 years ago

Note that KHTML is dead: https://github.com/KDE/khtml/tree/master

The writing was on the wall as KDE moved to first QtWebkit and then the Blink based QtWebEngine.

stjohnswarts2• 3 years ago

As long as they make it easy to turn off, I simply don't care. I also don't understand others acting like it's the end of the world. Like this is the equivalent of your most beloved partner turning out to be a complete hoax. Give me a break. If anyone is looking for a nice "new tab" filler I highly suggest the "tabbliss" plugin.

psychphysic• 3 years ago

Wow if ad blockers can work does that mean Firefox injects this advert?

Its not just and overlay but code added to the webpage?

I'm awe struck at the stupidity of this idea.

fabrice_d2• 3 years ago

No it's not blocked by ad blockers, since this was not injected in pages but part of the browser UI (the "chrome").

pleb_nz2• 3 years ago

I wonder why I have not seen the advert popup then. I run Firefox daily for 8 to 10 hours and I've not seen it once... Something must be blocking it for me.

red_admiral• 3 years ago

Unlikely. My guess is that the ad code runs in the context of the browser itself or some newly created context, rather than of the page you were reading before, but whatever fetch() or similar call it makes to load the ad goes through a subsystem that is affected by ad blockers.

Put another way, when you allow ublock or whatever you're using permission to intercept requests for ALL pages, that includes the "page" that mozilla is using to serve this ad.

Further evidence in favour of this hypothesis is that the ad can temporarily disable the rest of the firefox UI until you deal with it, which normal pages certainly can't do.

Kwpolska• 3 years ago

I doubt it was injected into pages. The screenshots shows the top chrome dimmed. I suppose people conflated not being randomly selected to get the ad with an ad blocker blocking the ad.

slater2• 3 years ago

Someone needs to make a "Firefox Marketing Department Greatest Hits" page; this isn't the first time, by far, they've tried to shoe-horn some absolutely user-hostile garbage into some release, followed by the usual "we will do better" back-pedalling non-apology

i2cmaster2• 3 years ago

It's really a wonder Mozilla keeps going. They've absolutely lost it.

__turbobrew__• 3 years ago

Free google money so chrome isn’t seen as a monopoly

ianlevesque• 3 years ago

Does 2.7% market share really count as "going"? Mozilla certainly isn't relevant anymore.

ilyt• 3 years ago

"But freedom and openness!"

grey_earthling2• 3 years ago

arewefishyyet.com is available.

netsharc• 3 years ago

Yeah, something similar to "Killed by Google". Maybe we need a template on Github for such sites to catalog bullshit, lord knows there's a lot of categories of bullshit we can catalog...

Oh actually they do have their source available: https://github.com/codyogden/killedbygoogle

walrus012• 3 years ago

The particularly terrible thing about this is that the Mozilla VPN product is actually Mullvad underneath, one of the better and more ethical VPN providers. Then they have to do this popup ad bullshit pushed by the browser and take a dump all over it.

super2562• 3 years ago

What is the value proposition of using Mozilla VPN over Mullvad directly, other than adding a layer of USA on top of it (which is a bad thing imo)?

Also, has Mozilla VPN also a windows client, or is it more like the Opera Proxies (which were called VPN for some reason)?

walrus012• 3 years ago

For myself as possible VPN end user I don't see the value proposition, but presumably, Mozilla is treating this as a new source of revenue (they get some percentage of the total monthly recurring or a one time sign up commmission or something from Mullvad?) as a way to be very slightly less dependent on Google for most of their incoming revenue stream.

I can see ordinary non technical users who want to "buy a VPN service" going with this as a decent option. It seems to be fairly consumer friendly and have a well documented setup process.

elashri3• 3 years ago

has Mozilla VPN also a windows client?

Yes, actually has something for all three major Desktop OSes, iOS and Android. [1]

[1]https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/products/vpn/download/]

iso1631• 3 years ago

I use Mozilla VPN rather than Mullvad because it was a nice way of supporting mozilla and thus firefox.

I also think that while mozilla may handle my finances, mullvad handle the VPN. Mozilla doesn't get the technical details of mullvad and thus don't know what IP I'm on, and I don't think mullvad know my name. Sure it's not quite cash in an envelope, but paranoia comes with a cost too.

Also, has Mozilla VPN also a windows client, or is it more like the Opera Proxies (which were called VPN for some reason)?

No idea, but it has a linux client and an ios client. It's a nice simple wireguard VPN

john2x3• 3 years ago

It was cheaper the last time I looked at it. $5.00/mo for Mozilla, and Mullvad is Euro5.00/mo.

mig39• 3 years ago

I have Mullvad running on my devices all the time...

I wonder if they showed the ad to Mullvad users?

Also, Mullvad is unique in that it generally doesn't do commissions or special sale prices, etc. The "top rated" VPNs on review sites and YouTube channels are usually the ones paying the most in commission. And it's a reason Mullvad is rarely in the "top rated" lists -- it doesn't pay commissions.

I wonder how that works with Mozilla? Surely Mozilla is getting a commission?

dogleash• 3 years ago

Without actually researching this, my impression is that Mullvad is a white label provider that the Mozilla VPN product is built on.

That's very different business arrangement than Mullvad paying commission for customer acquisition.

ekianjo• 3 years ago

They always feign being sorry about doing things like that, but come back a few months later with the same bullshit over and over again, like a wife-beater.

They are completely pathetic and dysfunctional as an organization.

comice4• 3 years ago

it's a bit unclear what they intended here but I see a lot of people assuming the absolute worst intent.

That Firefox would fully intend to insert full page unskippable adverts of it's own into unrelated websites is a major accusation and there is evidence this was an accident.

Looks more to me like bleepingcomputer purposefully sensationalized the issue as clickbait.

flohofwoe• 3 years ago

Did you even read the article? There's a screenshot which shows that this "feature" even got its own config items (browser.vpn_promo.*). This hardly looks like an "accident".

Also note the weasel language of their statement: "We’re continuously working to understand the best ways to communicate with people who use Firefox. ...".

"Communicate" my *ss. It really makes my blood boil how the Mozilla management hijacked Firefox for their unethical bullshit (because it happens again and again, as soon as the dust has settled over the last 'accident').

comice4• 3 years ago

Firefox's responses are absolutely shit, for sure.

But Firefox has all kind of promo things (the latest I saw was adverts on their overview/links page - which you can also disable), so the presence of a config item for this doesn't mean they intended for it to show up where it did.

devmor3• 3 years ago

This is not the first time Mozilla has injected an ad campaign into the browser chrome.

They did this a couple years ago as well to similar backlash, that time with a plugin that they force-installed for users.

comice4• 3 years ago

That sounds pretty bad but what do you mean by "browser chrome"? Isn't the claim here that they injected an ad into an actual page?

burnished• 3 years ago

Can you point to that evidence? I'm wondering how that change was even ideated let alone rolled out to people.

VTimofeenko• 3 years ago

Bugzilla links in yesterday's post:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36077360

seem to indicate that Mozilla intended for the popup to be shown if the user is AFK for 20 minutes but that timer malfunctioned

grey_earthling2• 3 years ago

This is a great way to freak people out and make them distrust you — move their stuff while they're not looking.

eterm• 3 years ago

That's worse.

The last thing I want is my browser popping something up when I'm AFK.

JohnFen6• 3 years ago

seem to indicate that Mozilla intended for the popup to be shown if the user is AFK for 20 minutes

Wow, that would have been a whole lot worse than what actually happened!

Rebelgecko• 3 years ago

What else could they have been trying to do? From seeing the bug filed/fixed wrt the issue, it seems like the only unintentual part was that the popup appeared to quickly, it was showing up after 20ms instead of 20s or something like that

comice4• 3 years ago

they could have been intending to insert the advert into other places, which wouldn't be quite as outrageous (though I happen dislike them inserting them anywhere, but some places are definitely worse than others).

pwdisswordfishc• 3 years ago

The most recent relevant report on Mozilla’s bug tracking platform received the "RESOLVED WORKSFORME" tag

Typical Mozilla. At this point I don’t know why they even allow bug submissions from the public at all.

slater2• 3 years ago

Now changed from WORKSFORME to FIXED

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1835158

Nothing to see here, folks!

(until marketing comes up with its next blunder)

pessimizer6• 3 years ago

I'm pretty sure "WORKSFORME" was somebody trying to be so aggressively mocking of users who complained that they forgot there was an actual bug in the ad.

zuprau2• 3 years ago

This isn’t a bug, so the resolution is expected. What I don’t understand is how Mozilla thought this would work out.

mh-• 3 years ago

Seems like it should have been WONTFIX, then.

charlieyu1• 3 years ago

A lot of organisations/entrepreneurs have made decisions that are so out of touch with the user base that people would question why would someone do that.

Like, I can understand maximising profit, but you don’t have to enrage your user base to achieve your goals

mulmen2• 3 years ago

Depends on your goals. Facebook has done well selling outraged eyeballs.

zuprau2• 3 years ago

The outrage Facebook feasts on is not directed at Facebook. That is just a byproduct.

Here Mozilla decided to place a nice target on their backs asking for money.

john2x3• 3 years ago

And I guess a lot more people now know about Mozilla VPN. No such thing as bad publicity I guess?

devmor3• 3 years ago

Bring back the browser wars. I'm tired of only having essentially two browsers to choose from, both from unethical companies that use slimy marketing speak to disguise their intentions.

doctor_radium• 3 years ago

Hear, hear! The problem is that browser complexity has exploded to the degree that at this point it seems impossible for a small team to reinvent the wheel. Who wants to write a web assembly engine from scratch, let alone the rest?

My main browser has been Waterfox which I update manually, which doubly insulated me from this. But don't misunderstand...I hate pretty much all browsers now, too.

i2cmaster2• 3 years ago

Meh. Webassembly has polyfills. I think an incremental approach wouldn't be as hard as people make it out to be but someone does have to sit down and do it.

guraf2• 3 years ago

Who wants to write a web assembly engine from scratch

Webassembly engine is one of the simpler things to implement in a browser. It's essentially a giant switch statement in a loop.

let alone the rest?

But who said a new browser has to implement everything from scratch? Why couldn't a browser use well established libraries for things like image decoding, webasm, JavaScript, font rendering, webrtc, http, etc?

sounds2• 3 years ago

I see it as a larger trend away from general purpose computing and toward appliances:

https://www.techspot.com/news/98811-windows-365-boot-paid-su...

https://www.theregister.com/2023/05/24/windows_365_boot_prev...

The browser does a lot of my computing now, and I'm not surprised the "General Purpose Browser" is disappearing, replaced by an appliance with user-hostile behavior that might, maybe, sometimes ... give you some internet browsing. Remember AOL Online?

The solution isn't very complicated. Copyleft [1] uses copyright to preserve user freedom, instead of restricting it -- so the company that wants to monetize the software can't block the user from making copies of the source code.

Let's skip the quibbling over Affero GPL, that's boring. How about inventing a license, where the license restricts the valid activites of the software?

A browser restricted to only make network requests authorized by the user. An OS restricted from spying on the user. A computer that is personal again.

[1] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/copyleft.en.html

bornfreddy• 3 years ago

I love Firefox but starting to hate Mozilla. How many more tricks like that do they have in store for us?

It's as if someone there is determined to undermine this browser's reputation.

slig• 3 years ago

It's not like their main competitor pays them half a billion a year.

jaredandrews• 3 years ago

Wow, I experienced this yesterday while I was absentmindedly using my computer.... I assumed I had clicked something without realizing it. The idea that it was an intentional pop up didn't even enter my head.

millzlane2• 3 years ago

Same here, my first reaction wasn't anger. It was to dismiss it so I could get back to work.

AlexandrB2• 3 years ago

For me it hit as a double-whammy. I tried opening a new tab, but had to stop what I was doing to restart Firefox instead because of a Snap[1] update, then I got this immediately after Firefox started back up. A really nasty snapshot of where free software is at in 2023.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snap_(software)

zerocrates• 3 years ago

I went through the song-and-dance for several versions to remove the Snap firefox and go back to the deb, and now that the deb is gone I just downloaded it directly from mozilla so it can use its own internal autoupdate feature. It works better that way anyway.

Cyder• 3 years ago

i gave up on firefox when i couldn't stop it from connecting to Google on a network device i was working on. Removing all the links from the advanced settings made it fail to start. That's when I realized how hypocritical they are. ( arm64 firefox-esr.) Even the latest chromium on arm64 connects to Google almost daily. i use epiphany-browser for that project now. no unwanted internet traffic from epiphany.

ravenstine• 3 years ago

Any issues with DRM content?

guraf2• 3 years ago

Yeah when my DNS went sporty I noticed Firefox got very slow to load even local ips and investigated.

Turns out it does two dozen queries on every start. Mostly to unknown Mozilla services but also a few from Google and others I couldn't identify (IP on either AWS or CloudFlare, likely just more Mozilla). And when it can't resolve those hosts it seems to continually retry every few seconds...

Before the apologists arrive, try it yourself. Disable all your add-ons and set your homepage to blank, close Firefox, start wireshark, start Firefox and watch the avalanche.

intelVISA3• 3 years ago

Unfortunately normal for the mainstream ones, you can even see similar with Brave.

kramerger• 3 years ago

"The advertisement boosts Mozilla VPN, a paid open-source VPN service that constitutes a crucial revenue source for the not-for-profit company."

In 2021, Mozilla CEO received $5M in compensation. I don't really consider them a non-profit.

djbusby• 3 years ago

Wish my non-profit paid like that.

zbuf• 3 years ago

That's how you don't make a profit

uo21tp5hoyg• 3 years ago

It's intentionally confusing but "not-for-profit" and "non-profit" are two very different things and it seems the article gets them confused.

sounds2• 3 years ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35829283

Mozilla's primary sources of revenue are for setting the default search engine. $500 Million.

freediver• 3 years ago

All directly or indirectly ad-supported business models will sooner or later come to the point of breakage in serving user”s best interests, as the fundamental misalignment of incentives between the business and its users creates a force too strong to contain.

This is entirely driven by a simple fact that in ad-supported businesses users are not the same as the customers.

I advocated several times and will do it again - Firefox should completely embrace a freemium browser business model, align incentives with its users, and attempt to have a second golden age (first was 2005-2010).

whoisthemachine2• 3 years ago

Agreed. I can't help but think that giving normal, technical users a great browser, and then catering on bended knee to enterprises for a very controllable, supported, extended version as the source of revenue that supports the normal browser is a sustainable model. Maybe not a model that takes over the world, but one that sustains development of a good open source browser.

bee_rider• 3 years ago

Are there any open source projects run like that? The closest thing I can think of is, like, Chromium but they don’t really make a framework that anyone can customize, they are inextricably tied to Google, right?

IMO open source works best as a community implementing small, single-purpose programs, which the users can integrate however they’d like. Web browsers have gotten too monolithic and the internet has gotten too over-complicated for a healthy open source web browser to exist.

dang• 3 years ago

Recent and related:

Firefox displayed a pop-up ad for Mozilla VPN over an unrelated page - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36077360 - May 2023 (328 comments)

hiccuphippo• 3 years ago

Mozilla needs a new wway to make decisions, the current one is obviously not working. New features should have an Enhancement Proposal document that the community can read beforehand and a council that approves it.

Timber-6539• 3 years ago

If the privacy crowd expected different treatment from a woke tyrannical organization in full control of their choice of browser, they only have themselves to blame.

millzlane2• 3 years ago

I saw this yesterday while I was using the browser at work. At first I really thought nothing of it. It was was strange seeing it out of nowhere and I was indifferent about it. I love the browser and it has saved me time and my sanity by allowing be to block advertisements that infect us all and being reliable as a browser I can always count on to work how I want.

With that said, after reading the bug reports and comments a sense of indignation did wash over me. But only after reading the comments. I honestly forgot about it right after clicking the button.

bentcorner• 3 years ago

I saw this too and wasn't too bothered, although I wondered if there was something I did on the page that somehow triggered the "we think you should know about our VPN thing" popup. Which IMO is also a bad thing - users don't know why you're showing them that thing at that particular moment.

The best place to show something like this is probably in an update splash screen. "Hey great news you're updated to v.next, you might want to know about our VPN thing too"

AlexandrB2• 3 years ago

I think something not getting enough attention is the design of the popup itself. It is chock-full of dark patterns (different sized click targets, "not now" dismiss action instead of "No") and doesn't include any way to disable similar "messages" in the future.

It's concerning that someone at Mozilla designed this and didn't see any problem with foisting these dark patterns on their users. This is the kind of user-hostile design I expected from Microsoft Edge not Firefox, which I thought was trying to be a user-respecting alternative.

photonbeam• 3 years ago

What in the world were they thinking. Are we going to have to run IceWeasel builds again

pleb_nz2• 3 years ago

I never saw the ad and I use Firefox an day, I use ublock, would this have blocked it?

lolinder2• 3 years ago

No, this was in the browser chrome itself. It covered the address bar and tabs as well as the page.

jedahan• 3 years ago

whatshisface• 3 years ago

Well, I'm not going to use Chrome, but I guess WebKit is okay... what browser should we be using now?

triyambakam2• 3 years ago

Brave is pretty good.

_xivi• 3 years ago

Arc

pixelbath• 3 years ago

Ah, yes. The closed-source, single-platform, invite-only browser made by a company nobody's ever heard of outside the startup ecosystem.

tezza• 3 years ago

Happened to me today.

It mostly caused mild exasperation.

I want FF to survive so this gave me mixed feelings.

First off: they are allowed to try things!

Great they are trying to keep the income incoming.

Bad that they don’t know their users enough that they are attempting this tack. It screams of expensive external consultants building a campaign… Depleting the funds for FF.

john2x3• 3 years ago

I wouldn't mind seeing Mozilla VPN ads in the Settings menu or the 'new tab' page tbh. But injecting it on top of web pages directly is just scummy.

godshatter• 3 years ago

I keep hoping some of the laid off devs will fork the project and we can get back to a mostly volunteer model focused on just the browser. I'd much rather donate to something like that than the Mozilla foundation, at least as it currently stands.

aio2• 3 years ago

We have Librewolf fer desktop, and Mull and Fennec for Android. They are forks

tempodox• 3 years ago

Are the bean counters and ad freaks taking the helm? Maybe time to look for a different browser…

InCityDreams2• 3 years ago

"We’re continuously working to understand the best ways to communicate with people who use Firefox. Ultimately, we accomplished the exact opposite of what we intended in this experiment and quickly rolled the experience back.

What absolute lies. All they would have to do is a quick search on HN and boom - enough user input to last quite some time. In my country (perhaps others), the best way to "continuously work[ing] to understand the best ways to communicate with people who use Firefox." would be to actually communicate with people... "Ultimately, we accomplished the exact opposite of what we intended in this experiment" No, you got called out for trying to cheat people.

sinistersnare• 3 years ago

I think that there needs to be a level of accountability here for the programmers who did this. Tech workers need to stand up against this kind of anti-user hostility. Firefox is an openly-developed project, who wrote the code to allow this kind of attack, and should we ask them to commit to not writing such code again?

elaus• 3 years ago

I'm not sure what this would achieve? I mean, surely it wasn't some random developer who came up with this idea and implemented it. This is a management decision and management decisions are driven by the company culture.

eska• 3 years ago

If I joined a company like Mozilla as a programmer rather than Google etc my motivation would probably be to create a privacy-protecting browser. If my company asked me to implement user-hostile features I’d just walk out. It’s not like someone like that can’t find a different job somewhere else.

horeszko• 3 years ago

I suppose now is a good time to ask if there are any good _non-corporate_ open source browsers out there?

Seems to me that businesses operate within an incentive structure that will always encourage them to take maximum advantage of users and do anti-user things no matter what their original goals were. The non-corporate part is key imo (see Canonical, Mozilla now etc.)

LeoPanthera2• 3 years ago

On KDE, Falkon.

On Gnome, "Web".

On macOS, Safari may not pass your "non-corporate" requirement, but it's spiritually non-corporate, and functionally "just a browser". It's also wicked fast and extremely light on your resources.

On many platforms, "ungoogled-chromium" may satisfy your needs. It's under the name "eloston-chromium" in many repos. https://github.com/ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium

vinay_ys• 3 years ago

Safari – such a pleasure to use it.

postalrat3• 3 years ago

Safari is the MSIE 6 of this time period.

bombcar• 3 years ago

You have to keep moving; Brave has been relatively good to me for now but I assume it will slump into the melt at some point.

bordercases• 3 years ago

To burst your bubble: https://digdeeper.neocities.org/articles/browsers#brave

hcal• 3 years ago

Gnome-Web if you're on linux and it is fine. It is a little light on features, but it does the basics. Falkon is another for the QT/KDE crowd. There are several forks of chrome and firefox, if that's your thing.

I'm trying to ungoogle and switched to Vivaldi without enough research. Its a really nice browser and I really like the community around it (like their Mastodon service), but I basically jumped from one corporation's browser to another.

abnercoimbre• 3 years ago

We're not getting anywhere without the social support for it. Virtually all tech conferences are corporate-funded, for example, so they're not going to praise independent browsers. Conversations get stifled.

Self-plug but my indie conferences [0] promote software that respect the user's quality of experience. One of my favorite presentations that we've featured is SerenityOS (including their open-source browser) which made headlines at the time. [1]

[0] https://handmadecities.com

[1] https://vimeo.com/641406697

jp191919• 3 years ago

I use firefox everyday for several hours and I have never seen this before. In the US.

zeruch• 3 years ago

This was definitely not one of their best moves.

uguuo_o• 3 years ago

As a firefox user of a couple of decades, I am now starting to look at alternatives. Anything chromium is a big no, but there are few alternatives. Perhaps it is time to go back to using Lynx.

NickHoff• 3 years ago

So, what do people think of Vivaldi? I'm a long-time Firefox user but I've been scanning for a new browser for a while now. Even if it weren't for stuff like this, I'll have to change anyway when Firefox dips below ~3% and websites stop supporting Gecko.

sphars• 3 years ago

I used Vivaldi on and off over the past few years, but I've been using FF full time since late last year. Vivaldi eventually starting slowing way down for some reason. Startup took nearly 10 seconds, when it used to be < 3. Not sure what did it. It may be due to the chrome (UI) as it's a very heavy custom CSS solution.

Also their address bar behavior was way different than Chrome or FF, and it kept messing me up.

It might be better now, they've had many updates since I last used it. Might give it another go, now that FF is doing this stuff.

deely3• 3 years ago

I use it as main browser for the last 7 years I believe. And honestly - I love it. It have some gimmicks - sometime its slow a bit, sometime there some bugs that you have to wait for fix in the new version, but amount of customizability is a thing that overcome any issues.

With Vivaldi I can be sure that my preference will not be removed in the next version as unnecessary or as not popular enough. And there a LOT of preferences to customize as you want.

So, I personally, love it. Again, its not perfect with performance and bug minor happens, but for me its ok. I prefer the feeling that I decide what browser will do and how it feels. Not some corp.

Zuiii• 3 years ago

How do you forcefully eject an ineffective "CEO" of a nonprofit from their position when they have failed their duties and violated their org's charter/mission while giving themself unjustified pay-raises and bonuses? Is there any gov process we can invoke to hold them accountable?

s3p2• 3 years ago

I've never seen this on my machine. Been using FF exclusively for years.

Mozilla stops Firefox fullscreen VPN ads after user outrage

Related Stories