[intopieces]

>But do we really expect VPN providers to not crunch the same numbers and come to the same conclusions?

Yes, because those numbers are different -- there's actual competition among the providers, which is not so for ISPs. I agree it's still a gamble, and still requires trust, but if/when that trust is broken, there's someone else ready to fill that void.

[ryanlol]

"competition" doesn't work super well here given the information asymmetry between users and providers.

There's simply no way for customers to tell if their VPN provider is selling them out.

[jopsen]

Isn't that why you want Mozilla?

By siding with you they can certainly pave over the asymmetry in the relationship between provider and users.

I trust Mozilla, not ProtonVPN, and I trust Mozilla vetted them and will continue to look them over the shoulder.

That's more than I can say for my current VPN provider.

[acct1771]

I currently would trust them right up until the point where they receive a subpoena from the government because I said something they deem icky.

[jopsen]

Having worked at Mozilla I can honestly say that I'm confident Mozilla can't keep a neferious secret :)

There is a lot of passionate privacy activists at Mozilla. Many of whom to would leak an NSL at the risk of persecution. (In fact I dare say the lineup would be long)

[tapoxi]

Make no mistake, Mozilla Corporation is a for-profit entity. They're owned by a nonprofit shell, but I imagine that nonprofit could easily sell them off.

This puts them in the same boat as say, IKEA.

[preinheimer]

Like when they slipped a Mr. Robot plugin into the download without telling people?

https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/16/16784628/mozilla-mr-robo...

[BoysenberryPi]

I must be the only one who thought this was a non-issue. A molehill turned into a mountain.

[sjellis]

The incident was trivial, but it exposed serious concerns in the process. Mozilla itself strongly promotes privacy and digital rights, but their marketing people did not understand that this was a breach of trust, and all of the technical people involved in the release of the add-on either did not realise this either, or were overruled.

[svrtknst]

No, I agree at least. I mean, it was a bad move and thoroughly short-sighted, but then again - what's the score?

One slight privacy infraction from Mozilla, vs. the countless others from Google, or Facebook, or whatever. It wasn't a good move, it also wasn't as bad as people make it out to be, and it's defeinitely better than any competition.

[kiriakasis]

> One slight privacy infraction from Mozilla

It was a breach of trust, but there was no privacy infraction.

[tehduder9]

I bet you'd be screaming hell if chrome would have done it.

[bigiain]

Sure - it was a dumb move on Mozilla's part.

But keep in mind that while it was pushed out into people's browsers in a stupidly-lacking-in-foresight fashion, it still required use activation before it'd do anything...

I'm at least four nines sure Google have got worse privacy-eroding code in Chrome that does way worse things that flip some text upside down after you specifically activate an add-on...

[addicted]

Like logging you into Chrome when you log into GMail.

This one hit me hard. And that was after I knew about it. I logged into Gmail on Chrome on my personal computer, without realizing I had been logged into Chrome itself, which then ended up mixing my personal browsing history with my work account, something I’ve tried very hard to avoid.

[Karunamon]

As I tell everyone that tries to defend this, it's not about what the plugin did or didn't do. It could have literally been a copy of about:blank, it changes nothing.

The entirely justified outrage was its purpose for being put there (which boils down to advertising) and the lack of consent for its being put there. That's it.

[eridius]

On the contrary, we already expect Google to try and monetize its users any way it can.

[bonsai80]

Right. It's the difference in having someone's trust or not.

[ionised]

Not really. We expect shitty things from Google at this point.