In order to measure the user experience, Firefox collects a wide range of anonymized timing metrics related to page load, responsiveness, startup and other aspects of browser performance. Collecting data while holding ourselves to the highest standards of privacy can be challenging. For example, because we rely on aggregated metrics, we lack the ability to pinpoint data from any particular website. But perhaps even more challenging is analyzing the data once collected and drawing actionable conclusions. In the future we’ll talk more about these challenges and how we’re addressing them, but in this post we’d like to share how some of the metrics that are fundamental to how our users experience the browser have improved throughout the year.
Care to explain?
Because Firefox collects diagnostic data by default; which they used to achieve this improvement, but @possiblylinux127 doesn’t like that.
Ah, got it. Interesting that they clearly state it’s anonymized and aggregated but to each their own, I suppose.
I doubt it is just that - the sending of such info is enabled by default for one, and even after disabling it, for several years now Firefox has continued to connect to the server regardless. I have not personally delved into the source code to verify just how “friendly” such a check is, which has already been asked to be halted, but ad blocking software such as Blockada (Android) has decided to mark it as “bad”.
If this feature was opt-in only, and functioned respectfully, it would be an entirely different matter, but as it is, user consent seems to be at least partly ignored. I am sure that those stats are useful to the developers… but that is not and will never be the point, for many people.
Firefox also needs to connect to their servers for stuff like Extension updates. It’s not necessarily to send them your data.
That’s a good point but I thought it was different servers, like one had “telemetry” directly in the name? Unfortunately I really don’t recall bc it’s been too long and I didn’t have time to finish delving in the first place, nor since. I don’t want to spread misinformation so let me know if you think I might be doing that. Mostly I’m saying that if Blockada chose to mark their checks home as “bad”, enough to block them upon a default installation of that app, then they surely had some reason to do so, even if ultimately it turns out to be harmless.
On a scale of 1 to 10 for severity, this might be just like a 1, but that’s still not 0, and some people just prefer to stay away from an app that has demonstrably chosen to ignore user consent. Even if they clearly state that they felt they had good reasons for doing so.
Mine are all toggled off. Seems like a reasonable compromise to me.
I’ve been a FF user for a very long time. I just never understood why folks don’t like it.
I used to use Librewolf too, but I opted to just customize FFs settings and keep diagnostic data collection and “installing and running studies” on.
When I first discovered that Google gives FF a large sum of money to keep their search engine the default one, I immediately got paranoid and started researching Mozilla. I ended up using Librewolf for about a month and then decided to switch back because collecting anonymous diagnostic data wasn’t such a big deal, and Google doesn’t seem to influence Mozilla as much as I expected.
The installing and running studies was off for me since that time they decided to use that feature to inject ads into web pages.
The studies one is always an instant no from me. My CPU cycles are my own to allocate as I see fit. I love FF, but you don’t get that access here.
That aside, FF seems like the only browser left that is interested in having me actually browse the web.
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No