[TheCoelacanth]

The fact that an easter egg about a TV show makes the list of the worst things they've ever done speaks volumes. It was a bad decision, but it was not malicious and it had negligible impact on users. Google does something 10x worse every single day.

[ragnese]

I was about to post this comment. I can't BELIEVE people are still hung up on the Mr. Robot thing. This is exactly what we're talking about in this thread when we say that HN has a strong anti-Mozilla bias for some reason.

[mostlysimilar]

Whenever I see this I just assume it's people that are against Firefox/Mozilla anyway and are looking for any possible excuse to shit on them. Yes, it was bad, and an ideal organization would not have done it. But it is orders of magnitude less severe than what Google does to us every day. Not even a comparison.

[donkeybeer]

No but things like hiding the favicon when the audio playing notification is on the tab, changing UIs for no good reason, removing features for no good reason...these are the things that piss people off. Mostly designers making life shit for no good reasons, and then the CEO whining about low pay and constantly increasing her salary (after firing the rust team)

[VancouverMan]

In a situation like that, it's not just about any direct harm that may have arisen.

It's also about the loss of trust.

That particular incident, for example, was completely unnecessary. It involved a significant display of unbelievably poor judgment, and a total lack of foresight. It shouldn't have happened.

The fact that it did happen, despite it being such an obviously bad idea, raised a lot of questions and doubt.

It causes people to wonder what other incidents, which could potentially be far worse, might happen in the future.

It's remembered years later because it involved such a major loss of trust for so many people.

[ragnese]

Here's the thing, though. You've used several key phrases in this comment: "a lot of questions and doubt," "wonder what other incidents [...] might happen in the future," and "major loss of trust."

All valid concerns, but why post about them on the internet? Especially when it's nothing concrete--you used the words "questions", "doubts", and "might happen"? If someone is taking the effort to post FUD (literally) about Mozilla and "trust", why the hell aren't they using that same effort to post about Google or Microsoft and "trust"? Aren't those obviously much bigger problems?

Again, it's not wrong, per se, but I feel like it's bordering on some kind of astroturfing for people to complain about the fucking Mr. Robot non-story that happened years ago when TFA is about Mozilla at least signalling the right thing while Google is trying to be overtly evil YET AGAIN. I can actually type "Fuck Google" faster than I can type "Mr. Robot", so I'd have to have some kind of weird agenda or priorities to bring up Firefox's Mr. Robot thing.

[VancouverMan]

While you may consider it to be a "non-story", for some of the Firefox users who experienced it first-hand, it was a significant betrayal that can't be easily forgiven. The implications go far beyond the incident itself.

I don't think that there's "a strong anti-Mozilla bias" here, as you put it earlier. The people affected by that incident, and by others, were probably among the most ardent Firefox supporters. After all, they were still using it long after so many others had already moved to Chrome.

Loss of trust is something that isn't easily forgotten, and it's a relevant factor worthy of bringing up in discussion.

[ragnese]

I'm sorry, but it's definitely a non-story, and all this talk about "betrayal" and "trust" is sophistry.

It's a non-story because you had to opt-in to Firefox's "experiments" feature to get the extension pushed to you. Opting in to the experiments feature is *literally* granting permission for Mozilla to change the behavior of your Firefox browser remotely in between official releases. So, Mozilla had your permission to change your browser. I simply will not shed a tear for anyone who felt betrayed by something they signed up for.

And, by the way, I was also "affected" by the Mr. Robot thing because I also opted in to the experiments feature.

Furthermore, the extension did nothing harmful. It didn't even collect any data as far as I know. You know why Mozilla pushed an extension that didn't even collect any data instead of one that does? Because they were acting in a trustworthy way!

Sure, it was a faux pax. Mozilla thought they could be cute the same way a lot of old school FLOSSy, hackery, software would include amusing Easter eggs and jokes. It was inappropriate and didn't land well for a variety of reasons, but there was no reason to lose trust in Mozilla at the time, and there's *certainly* no reason to even bring it up today, years later, when just about every other tech company and computer product is trying their damnedest to spy on you, sell your data, prevent you from having root control of your devices, and squeeze subscription money out of you.

Again, Chrome starts tracking you the instant you launch it for the first time. Microsoft tracks you when you log in to Windows and occasionally re-enables tracking features that you've disabled. Mozilla pushed a silly "fun" extension to users who opted in that didn't collect any data nor make Mozilla any money.

This discussion is nonsense. If you truly don't trust Mozilla after the harmless Mr. Robot extension was pushed to you after you chose to allow them to modify your browser remotely, then go ahead and stop using Firefox- I don't care. But please stop spreading FUD.

[bobthecowboy]

My God, you're right. With such poor judgement, they might someday do something really awful like try to force remote attestation into the web at large.

[FireBeyond]

I look at it similarly to the iPhone / U2 debacle.

It's remembered now only by a very small, though vocal, minority.

[mrguyorama]

So let's just keep using the browser from the company with 90% control of the web and ACTIVELY (see this article) trying to make it impossible for you to do things like block ads or write a web scraper just because of "some loss of trust"

There is no perfect option right now, and Mozilla will never be that perfect option because they are human and at least three people working there probably want to make some money.

So yeah, lets just keep making them irrelevant so in ten years I won't have a choice and be FORCED to use the browser that says ad blocking is stealing and spoofing your user agent is a violation of the CFAA and all this other blatantly user hostile shit.

It's such clear whataboutism, to have ANYTHING to hold against the only web browser that isn't actively controlled by the people with billions of dollars a year incentive to actually harm how you use the web.

[skeaker]

If anything, shouldn't the fallout reinforce trust that it won't happen again? Kind of like how plane crashes actually make planes safer.

[VancouverMan]

Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to work that way in this case. For example, there was an incident just a couple of months ago that was discussed here:

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

"Mozilla stops Firefox fullscreen VPN ads after user outrage" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36085642)

That's another incident that just shouldn't have ever happened to begin with, in my opinion.

[skeaker]

That's not great, but it's not the same as the Mr Robot thing. That much has already stopped. This is a different thing that similarly won't happen again now that backlash has occurred. A different cause of a plane crash that has now been analyzed to prevent in the future, going back to that analogy.

[VancouverMan]

The underlying cause in both of those cases seems to me to be them doing something that fundamentally should not have been done in the first place.

It's the lack of foresight and the lack of good judgment that I don't see getting fixed.

Both of those incidents should have been completely avoidable with even the most minimal of forethought.