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See what’s changing in Firefox: Better insights, same privacy (blog.mozilla.org)

submitted 6 months ago by neme@lemm.ee to c/firefox@lemmy.ml

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To disable it in about:config

browser.search.serpEventTelemetry.enabled  =  false	
browser.search.serpEventTelemetryCategorization.enabled  =  false

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[–] Vincent@feddit.nl 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Hmm, so what user-facing free software is at Firefox's scale? I think Ubuntu has telemetry, for example (though I think they even have fewer users).

[–] kbal@fedia.io 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Ubuntu telemetry is fairly minimal, as of last time I used it a few years ago. Not remotely comparable to what firefox does. They just want to know what hardware you have, there's no user behaviour tracking, and it's fully opt-in (you have to deliberately turn it on when installing). KDE and Gnome have a little something like that as well now, I think. Almost everything else does not.

Debian has a list (last updated 2023-10) of software among the 97000 packages they distribute which have been found to violate user privacy by "phoning home" for telemetry or other purposes:

gnome-calculator - fetches currencies
Firefox - multiple issues
Thunderbird - opt-out telemetry that is not yet patched for Debian
Chromium - phones home in various ways
syncthing - version check and lots more
cura - phones home in various ways, patched out in Debian
azure-cli - collects "anonymous" telemetry by default
glances - connects to several online services to discover public IP
webext-bulk-media-downloader - loads the website and sends version info
Golang - planning on implementing enabled-by-default telemetry

[–] Vincent@feddit.nl 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

there's no user behaviour tracking

I mean, that depends on how you define user behaviour. It tracks which packages are frequently installed, for example, or how often people install Ubuntu in the first place. All of which I think is pretty legit, in my opinion, since that only involves aggregate user statistics that help prioritise work and detect common problems - but that's essentially what Firefox is doing too.

Debian is a great example of relatively commonly used free software that doesn't really collect data btw.

[–] kbal@fedia.io 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Canonical apparently turned on enabled-by-default telemetry for new installs in 2018 which records basic system hardware stats and such. It's not that much compared to what Firefox sends, but adding it still did damage to their reputation.

Another thing Ubuntu has in common with Firefox is a continuing long-term decline in market share. As they do things like adding telemetry, flirting with the idea of putting advertising in the package manager, insisting that everyone use snap, et cetera, users have started to go elsewhere. As I did.

In the case of Ubuntu though, the company's main business is in serving their corporate customers. If it's little-used by the rest of us the company might still do well, as I hope they continue to do. Firefox does not share that advantage.