Mozilla Clarifies on Data Collection: Firefox Labs to Not Require Telemetry or Studies in Future Updates
www.quippd.com
TL;DR: Mozilla has shifted from the forced telemetry introduced in Firefox 138 for Firefox Labs. Hours after I posted about the Labs change, Mozilla opened bug 1972647, which describes a change to Labs to allow it to be used when telemetry or studies are disabled.

Starting in Firefox 138, Mozilla started gating Firefox Labs features behind data collection.

Mozilla had announced that some new Firefox features would be released via Firefox Labs.

It is now a few hours since I posted, and there is reason to celebrate – Mozilla is updating Firefox Labs to let people access features without needing to enable data collection.

    • Vincent@feddit.nl
      27·
      2 days ago

      Either log a feature request in Mozilla Connect and otherwise not talk about it on social media, or if you talk about it on social media, start with a “hmm, I wonder why this” attitude, rather than a “Firefox is becoming spyware and no longer open source” one.

      • cloudless@piefed.socialEnglish
        2·
        17 hours ago

        You seem to have a lot of trust in Mozilla. Do you realise that Firefox is developed and maintained by a for-profit corporation called Mozilla Corporation?

        • Vincent@feddit.nl
          11·
          14 hours ago

          Yeah, quite a bit, especially compared to the rest of the industry. The reason is a) because that Corporation is owned by a non-profit, i.e. it has no shareholders that want to squeeze users for every penny, and b) there’s a solid track record, and lots of passionate employees and contributors.

          Add to that that the belief that the only thing that will come from Mozilla’s demise, is even more power to Google, Microsoft and Apple, and yeah… I’m hesitant to immediately go for the worst-faith interpretations of every action. Unfortunately most of the Fediverse appears to think differently.

      • LWD@lemm.ee
        6·
        2 days ago

        No offense, Vincent, but your methods don’t work: Firefox Connect has ignored requests like “Add StartPage” for years and uses the platform to announce other search engines getting added instead.

        Please don’t dissuade people from using effective methods

        • Vincent@feddit.nl
          12·
          1 day ago

          I guess, but it’s just so tiring to keep getting collectively outraged about every little thing. And sometimes it does have the opposite effect, i.e. it doesn’t necessarily work.

          (Although I don’t think you could stir up an effective outrage campaign that would result in StartPage getting added, but I’ll concede the larger point that Connect posts aren’t automatically added to the TODO list.)