TL;DR: Mozilla has a new CEO and a new mission: transform Firefox into an AI browser. That has run into some snags, as Firefox users don’t seem that interested in AI. Mozilla is forging ahead, utilizing deceptive patterns (previously known as dark patterns) to nag and annoy people into enabling AI features. You can see this in the introduction of Link Previews, an extremely invasive anti-feature that exists solely to push AI into your experience.
Is this guy for real?
As opposed to the case where you don’t have a link preview, and you click on a website to see what it contains, and they get your IP. The author seems to think Mozilla should have protected our privacy by having someone act as the proxy for the request. Because involving a thirds party that receives all these requests and does work for us for free is absolutely how we protect our privacy.
Yes, a feature clearly designed for pushing onto that juicy “people with mobility impairments” userbase.
I don’t like the direction Firefox seems to be headed in, but damn people really enjoy getting outraged over everything they do. Around here they get ten times more shit than any other comparable project.
But that is exactly what Mozilla is telling us – trust us.
Why was the feature added if my browser is going to browse to the page anyway? What is the value add? I was looking for some way for it to make sense - ah right, it could be a privacy preserving feature - I can preview the link and verify whether I want to visit it before I actually visit it. But that isn’t how it works.
Love that you ignore all of the people who are currently seeing the popups and not understanding why.
It’s just supposed to save you time and effort.
If anyone has real concerns about having their IP leaked they should be using a VPN (I think Proton has a fairly generous free tier) or TOR. Relying on a link preview feature like that would be like wearing a condom against the rain. It will technically increase your protection, but you will still be really quite exposed.
No, I just took his objection at face value.
I added a section to my post with some additional comment.
I began thinking of privacy because Mozilla was clearly thinking of it when designing this feature, but I don’t think they really thought it through.
People’s browsers are visiting pages that they never intended to. If a random extension did that, you would say that it was violating your privacy. The browser does it, and you get people defending it as “optional”. Yes, but the user never installed the malware extension that is leaking your privacy. It is your browser doing it in an automated update.
If you don’t think this is a privacy issue, why doesn’t the next version of Firefox just visit every page on every page that I visit, so that when I hover over a link, I can get a link preview immediately, without needing to wait. That would save me some real time and effort!
The author seems to be more interested in generating outrage than anything, but I think the point about AI still stands. From a UX standpoint, key points that may be incorrect are a terrible idea. That they originally intended to force AI on the user, at least from how it seems, is problematic.
The author’s privacy and accessibility concerns seem artifical to me.
Just wait until you see a post about GIMP…