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.

  • LWD@lemm.ee
    10·
    2 days ago

    I’ve noticed a worrying trend among Firefox fans: too many of them supported this mandatory telemetry for on-device features.

    They had never held this position before. Mozilla made a change, and too many fans simply adopted it uncritically.

    Personally, I believe everyone should have internal ethical guidelines that aren’t mandated by their favorite corporation. Mozilla’s recent behavior has been particularly egregious because they push an ethical manifesto on their website and they promise every application they produce upholds them. Hopefully it should be clear to people that Mozilla’s stated goals are good because they are good and not simply because they came from Mozilla. If Mozilla updates their principles to suck, then they’ll suck. Ethics should not be treated like a religion.

    But this blog post is good news. It demonstrates that criticism actually has merit, and that Mozilla can be coerced into rolling back bad changes.

    I hope the Firefox fans who adopted Mozilla’s silent stance just a couple days ago will rethink their positions and decide not to be so harsh when they see criticism of Mozilla.