[tjoff]

Only IF it is correctly implemented. And only if you trust all relevant parties involved in this feature.

And honestly, whenever I see that something has been anonymized I assume it isn't. Mostly because the industry has a terrible track record, secondly because the incentives are almost always misaligned to begin with.

I'd trust mozilla more than most, but not enough to give them free rein and opt in things for me. I don't (yet) know enough specifics on this matter to make an informed decision, but if it weren't for hn I'd have missed this.

I doubt firefox would ask the user after install (again, incentives).

I should go through all options for every update (not just for firefox). But I can't, I don't have enough time. I need to be able to put some trust into the software I use, and things like this erode that trust.

[einpoklum]

> I'd trust mozilla more than most

More than Google or Microsoft does not say much. And - judging by how hard it is to fully disable telemetry and call-home on, say, Mozilla Thunderbird:

https://superuser.com/q/1672309/122798

I wouldn't trust them very much.

(Yes, I know it's a different project and not the same team but Mozilla is still the parent entity etc. etc.)

[eesmith]

Gahh! I'm planning a move from macOS to some Linux-based OS once this laptop dies. I've had 20+ years of using Mail.app and thought that Thunderbird would be the appropriate replacement.

But that link, and the comments at https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/thunderbird-should-by-d... ('Given that significant parts of Thunderbirds user interface (addons manager details, welcome page, whats new on updates etc) are essentially served as web pages into Thunderbird, perhaps your expectations are becoming unreasonable.') tell me that Thunderbird does not respect my desire to minimize my info leakage to the outside world.

[einpoklum]

The "served as web pages" is a bit misleading. It just means that the UI layout engine takes HTML or XML, not that information is passed through a web server.

[eesmith]

Sure, but the link concerned all telemetry, of which accessing a web page, even just to show what's news, is one.

The overall attitude included comments like 'I would like to see significantly more anonymous telemetry not less', while I want no network connections in my mail reader except that which I specifically initiate.

These are people so acculturated to data collection that they don't understand that some others don't want it.

[einpoklum]

There are organizational incentives to this approach - at Mozilla / Thunderbird, with which I have a bone to pick; but also elsewhere.

A couple of years back I was involved in an argument about doing something a bit similar in LibreOffice:

https://design.blog.documentfoundation.org/2022/11/01/commun...

Note the back-and-forth in the comments.

[eesmith]

I understand why developers want feedback. I have paying customers for my software library and I can't get useful feedback from then about what features they use.

OTOH, why can't get get UI feedback from logging institutional users for different domains, where they can get real legal and ethical consent from the institution side?

I mean, yes, it's easier to force it on everyone and have them swallow the pill for lack of alternatives than it is to deal with organizations. But then the issue isn't one of lack of data, it's that they don't want to deal with organizations as equals, since that takes more work.