Hoping to provide constructive feedback. A little about me as a user first so you can understand: 1) I purposely do not use Chrome 2) I purposely do not use Google and use DuckDuckGo instead as my search engine 3) I purposely do not use Gmail and use FastMail instead 4) I use uBlock, self-destructing cookies, Privacy Badger, etc 5) I use container tabs 6) I opt-out of any data collection 7) The first thing I do with Firefox Focus on iOS is to opt out of data collection 8) I like the idea of Firefox Send being end-to-end encrypted 9) I encrypt my backup locally prior to sending it to the cloud 10) I do not use Dropbox and use Tresorit instead 11) I disabled all telemetry on Windows 10
Now, if this was pushed out, the first thing I would do is still to disable it. But why is that? RAPPOR is awesome right? I briefly read the overview for it, so please correct me if I have any misunderstanding. RAPPOR is kind of like the protection of farting in a crowded elevator. Somebody in that group did it, but we don't know who for sure. Yes, that's better privacy for sure, but is it total privacy? Not to me. Because you still know that somebody in that elevator did it very likely. Not a perfect analogy, but hopefully demonstrates the cracks. Why do users like me do end-to-end encryption? What does that give me? It gives me the ability to trust nobody except my end. RAPPOR does not offer that same level of protection, and I think that's hopefully clear by the elevator example. That's why the first thing I'll do is disable it. Why do users like me use uBlock and other things? What do those things give us? Total control in our hands. Does RAPPOR measure up to that standard? I think no. But I very much want Firefox to succeed because the alternative of Chrome or Edge is a sad world. And I very much would like to submit data to Firefox, but not in an automatic and uncontrolled (by me) way. Why does the choice have to be binary? If I may suggest, could Mozilla investigate doing a bit more UX work to make data collection palatable to users like me? And that means putting me in control. I know that perf data is extremely important. In fact, I was just seeing freezes yesterday and that's kinda frustrating. But I still won't enable automatic data collection. What I think would be nice is if you actually just prompted me "crash reporting" style. Ask me, "hey... we know Firefox was a bit slow for you on such and such site, would you like to let us know?" And then give me the option of "Yes, this one time", "Yes, always on this site", "No". Of course you still have to anonymize that data, but what this does is you've given me control. See the distinction? What if you want to know what top sites I'm visiting? or what sites with Flash that I encounter? Same thing. Yes, I know the suggestion is eTLD+1, but hopefully mindset of users like me has been explained at this point to show that is still not measuring up. I would love to let you know what sites I visit. Give me a little feedback ability, show me the sites that you're going to send and let me check off anything I don't want. Again, you probably don't want to annoy the user with needless prompts, so maybe the ability to say "Yes, these sites are always ok to send", or "Always exclude this site". I'm sure if you proceed as planned to automatic opt-in users to this collection, you're going to get more data. But you can bet you'll get none from me. I want to send you data, so please help me help you. _______________________________________________ governance mailing list governance@lists.mozilla.org https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/governance
