"Opt-out telemetry" creates precisely the scenario I describe, where the users who care most are least visible to Mozilla, at which point their needs would go unconsidered; no one knows they exist, how many of them there are, or why they're opting out. This remains true regardless of why, which negates your entire list of issues, replacing them with a simple question that is very difficult to answer:
How could Mozilla respect the needs of users who opt-out of Mozilla knowing they, and their needs, exist at all?
How could any creator of anything?
If you can't identify who your users are, you can't ask them questions, and you can't tell if they're "vocal 0.001%" or "vocal 40%" of your userbase — then what consideration could you give, as a software developer, for their needs?
You can refuse to change, and simply always offer the one thing you offer, and accept that you're the best option for a minority of users over time. You can continue developing to your own needs, and let them stay or go as they see fit. You can try to read the tea leaves of internet forum posts, but that comes with a huge penalty to significance. You can try new things and try to tell from the howls of outrage whether it's a wording error or a direction error or simply "change is bad, I hate you all".
Opting out is not free. Opting out comes at a price to you. Your needs will be less likely to be considered, and your solutions may change in ways that are not to your liking. You have every right to opt out, but is the price of that acceptable to you?
ps. If you can solve how to let users of something influence its creator in a fair and just manner, such that all users have equal influence, while opting out of being known to that creator to exist at all, you will be a billionaire within five years.
>If you can't identify who your users are, you can't ask them questions, and you can't tell if they're "vocal 0.001%" or "vocal 40%" of your userbase — then what consideration could you give, as a software developer, for their needs?
I'd ask for feedback, and when that feedback is given freely, even when unsolicited, I'd take it on board and act accordingly. I would ask if people want to participate in "telemetry" and "studies", not assume they do without affirmative prior consent.
Mozilla is breathtakingly bad at this. They're about as responsive to feedback as GNOME/Freedesktop.
I most certainly would not put spyware in the product and turn it on without asking first. I'd most certainly never get myself into a situation where an oversight can simultaneously break every copy of my software ever deployed.
This idea that you require all copies of your software to phone home to make effective development decisions is bunk. We got along just fine without that garbage for decades.
> How could Mozilla respect the needs of users who opt-out of Mozilla knowing they, and their needs, exist at all?
How about surveys or well, common sense?
I'm a tech oriented person who cares about privacy. I want software that is lightweight, configurable, with sensible defaults. For any features besides the basic functionality (in this case: browsing the web), I don't want to opt-out, I want to opt-in.
Privacy oriented means for me that the software I use doesn't send one bit of data that isn't necessary for its basic functionality. I use a "dumb phone" because of this. I never understood how anybody can think telemetry and privacy can co-exist.
I want a Firefox without Pocket, Send, Screenshot Tools, Sync, Clickz, any cloud based service. I only want a fast, lightweight browser that doesn't send any unnecessary data anywhere without me explicitly configuring it. That's a sensible default for me, really. Software used to be like that.
I'd also like to configure when my software looks for updates. My Linux distro let's me do that.
And it would be awesome if all other functionality (like Send/Sync/Pocket, etc.) is available via optional plugins, or in another "full-featured" version of Firefox. The deluxe edition or whatever.
I believe I'm not alone with these ideas about software. In discussions about Firefox these things always come up. There are github projects [1,2] with 1600 and 1200 stars about hardening Firefox. People care about privacy. It's not hard to find this part of the userbase.
The idea that you can't create software for your users without telemetry, is what leads Mozilla to disregard their privacy oriented users in the first place. It's depressing.
And even if I allowed telemetry on my system Mozilla wouldn't learn anything about what I wrote here. It's useless.
A brief search of "site:blog.mozilla.org inurl:2019 survey" shows a bunch of results, and even more for inurl:2018. Have you signed up to receive unsolicited email from Mozilla in any venue? If you've opted-out, then you may be experiencing observer bias.
In the old days, and today in every other industry but tech, if you want to understand your customers you survey them, do focus groups and listen to unsolicited feedback.
> "Opt-out telemetry" creates precisely the scenario I describe, where ... no one knows ... why they're opting out.
Telemetry doesn't tell you why users do anything. They would have to ask, which doesn't require telemetry. There used to be a form for submitting feedback.
> How could Mozilla respect the needs of users who opt-out of Mozilla knowing they, and their needs, exist at all?
Because of the values and principles that Mozilla used to share with its users, the principles that underpinned the first implemenation of Firefox Sync and were completely abandoned in the current implementation.
I trusted Mozilla because they didn't require our trust. They understood this principle and designed their systems in accordance with it.
>no one knows they exist, how many of them there are, or why they're opting out //
They're burning half-a-billion a year of Google's money, they can afford to have an intern run filters to capture stories on HN, reddit, slashdot, ... amalgamate the main points and make them available as part of the user feedback.
Presumably many of the devs at Mozilla have been using it for the last 15 years too and also value a privacy-centric advertising-lite web.
How could Mozilla respect the needs of users who opt-out of Mozilla knowing they, and their needs, exist at all?
How could any creator of anything?
If you can't identify who your users are, you can't ask them questions, and you can't tell if they're "vocal 0.001%" or "vocal 40%" of your userbase — then what consideration could you give, as a software developer, for their needs?
You can refuse to change, and simply always offer the one thing you offer, and accept that you're the best option for a minority of users over time. You can continue developing to your own needs, and let them stay or go as they see fit. You can try to read the tea leaves of internet forum posts, but that comes with a huge penalty to significance. You can try new things and try to tell from the howls of outrage whether it's a wording error or a direction error or simply "change is bad, I hate you all".
Opting out is not free. Opting out comes at a price to you. Your needs will be less likely to be considered, and your solutions may change in ways that are not to your liking. You have every right to opt out, but is the price of that acceptable to you?
ps. If you can solve how to let users of something influence its creator in a fair and just manner, such that all users have equal influence, while opting out of being known to that creator to exist at all, you will be a billionaire within five years.