What if instead of a company it’s an organization, and instead of being successful it’s about giving a quality service? Do you think that organization has it in their patrons best interest to improve their service?
Firefox can become a better piece of software by improving in areas it is lacking. If it sees that windows use has dropped, it can investigate that to provide a better product.
If Firefox didn’t collect analytics, it wouldn’t have even the slightest idea of who they are reaching and how to give those users a better experience. It also can give insight on the users they aren’t reaching, and creates an opportunity to reach more people.
Because I don’t know about you, but I’d wager that most developers want their software to be used, and they also want feedback on how they can improve their product. Collected analytics are a necessary piece of any continued, successful development.
Unless Firefox was developed by a single person, intended for absolute personal use, collecting certain data points is required.
Spying on users is fundamentally incompatible with being a quality product.
Firefox isn’t a fucking “service,” by the way. Products and services are different things, and I think a big reason for the corporate encroachment on our property rights is that corporations deliberately try to conflate the two in order to gaslight us into accepting them having more control than they deserve. In fact, your comment is a perfect example of how people have been swindled that way.
I guess the point that I’m not explaining well enough is the implication that this isn’t spying when you’re talking about things as abstracted as what OS a user is using.
You’re very obviously stuck in the specific example of firefox and have a large difficulty in making a larger observation on the ideas that I’m offering.
The simplest response I have is this:
Firefox has changed over the years. Understanding their user base to create a better product is a good thing. This includes collecting technical data that is relevant to the performance of their product. This is still a good thing. It is a bad thing if they take this data and sell it as an additional profit avenue.
I guess the point that I’m not explaining well enough is the implication that this isn’t spying when you’re talking about things as abstracted as what OS a user is using.
No, you’re explaining it just fine. Don’t try to condescendingly imply that anyone who disagrees with you must just be too stupid to understand.
In reality, I fully understand your argument and and am still saying that you’re wrong. Collecting data about the user that they didn’t explicitly opt in to giving you is spying, end of. It doesn’t matter what the data is or what supposed justification you have for it.
If Mozilla really needs to know that badly what OS their users are using, they can do all sorts of other things: they could measure downloads of the installers for different OSs from their website. They could send out surveys. They could ask websites what user-agent strings are being reported (which is also problematic – by default, Firefox ought to leave that field of the HTTP header blank – but at least the user is affirmatively choosing to communicate with that site). They don’t have to make Firefox phone home. They choose to make it phone home because that’s cheap and lazy, but when it comes at the cost of users’ privacy that’s a 100% unethical trade-off to make!
What if instead of a company it’s an organization, and instead of being successful it’s about giving a quality service? Do you think that organization has it in their patrons best interest to improve their service?
Firefox can become a better piece of software by improving in areas it is lacking. If it sees that windows use has dropped, it can investigate that to provide a better product.
If Firefox didn’t collect analytics, it wouldn’t have even the slightest idea of who they are reaching and how to give those users a better experience. It also can give insight on the users they aren’t reaching, and creates an opportunity to reach more people.
Because I don’t know about you, but I’d wager that most developers want their software to be used, and they also want feedback on how they can improve their product. Collected analytics are a necessary piece of any continued, successful development.
Unless Firefox was developed by a single person, intended for absolute personal use, collecting certain data points is required.
And that is true for any piece of software.
Spying on users is fundamentally incompatible with being a quality product.
Firefox isn’t a fucking “service,” by the way. Products and services are different things, and I think a big reason for the corporate encroachment on our property rights is that corporations deliberately try to conflate the two in order to gaslight us into accepting them having more control than they deserve. In fact, your comment is a perfect example of how people have been swindled that way.
I guess the point that I’m not explaining well enough is the implication that this isn’t spying when you’re talking about things as abstracted as what OS a user is using.
You’re very obviously stuck in the specific example of firefox and have a large difficulty in making a larger observation on the ideas that I’m offering.
The simplest response I have is this:
Firefox has changed over the years. Understanding their user base to create a better product is a good thing. This includes collecting technical data that is relevant to the performance of their product. This is still a good thing. It is a bad thing if they take this data and sell it as an additional profit avenue.
No, you’re explaining it just fine. Don’t try to condescendingly imply that anyone who disagrees with you must just be too stupid to understand.
In reality, I fully understand your argument and and am still saying that you’re wrong. Collecting data about the user that they didn’t explicitly opt in to giving you is spying, end of. It doesn’t matter what the data is or what supposed justification you have for it.
If Mozilla really needs to know that badly what OS their users are using, they can do all sorts of other things: they could measure downloads of the installers for different OSs from their website. They could send out surveys. They could ask websites what user-agent strings are being reported (which is also problematic – by default, Firefox ought to leave that field of the HTTP header blank – but at least the user is affirmatively choosing to communicate with that site). They don’t have to make Firefox phone home. They choose to make it phone home because that’s cheap and lazy, but when it comes at the cost of users’ privacy that’s a 100% unethical trade-off to make!