Because that's how surveillance-as-a-business-model[1] works[2]. The industry that brought us the "EULA" just loves to try to force contracts on people, especially when it tricks the user into giving up even more data.
It starts as a useful product until the network-effects take over and raise the cost of leaving, de facto locking people in. After they are hooked, you introduce various types methods to make the product rely more on remote services instead so more data can be captured. As few people understand the difference between a product that runs locally and a service that necessarily gives your data over to a 3rd party, this usually works without anybody noticing and objecting.
If a few nerds object, they are usually countered with a few lies about why such a service is "necessary", even when it isn't. In this case, the lie is that a 3rd party service is necessary so you can share your bookma^H^H^H^H^H^Hreading list on different devices (which assumes you have multiple devices, and that you want to move bookmarks between them). In hard cases, it may require some vague, misleading, and hard-to-prove statistics ("our data says user's like $foo", "everybody uses $foo"), or simply browbeating anybody that complains ("Then submit your own patches", "stop being paranoid").
The worst part is that for many of the engineers involved, this is probably unintentional. The human mind has a very limited "working set" that is given full attention; everything else is filtered heavily with various shortcuts[3], heuristics, and assumptions, making it incredibly easy to be distracted by endless technical details.
A more plausible explanation is that that's the only way people discover new functionality. Prediction: it won't be the default eventually (after people get used to the idea that they can easily pick and choose sharing services https://activations.cdn.mozilla.net/en-US/ to show).
It's opt-out because if it were opt-in, far fewer people would benefit from it.
The Firefox design team conducted user research experiments, and found that a significant amount of people like the feature (far more than dislike it). Most of those users are not techies, and would never even hear about an addon, so including it in the browser is the most realistic way to reach them.
That still doesn't explain why firefox has to be marketing for the Read it Later company. Why even bother having extensions if Mozilla going to pick and choose for you?
"this has absolutely nothing to do with money. We're shipping Pocket because we love their product, and so do our users. Pocket is, by very far, the most popular reading-list add-on used with Firefox."
Apparently they went too far: it's the most popular extension of that kind among people that care about reading lists (hardly the majority I think) and it's being hated by everybody that don't tolerate imposed choices. No good can come for Firefox and Pocket from this. If I were Pocket I'd ask Mozilla to unbundle the code into an extension as soon as possible because this is starting to be a PR backslash.
I'm not sure that is a denial. "[Us including pocket] has nothing to do with money." Could also mean "We like pocket enough to include it, but they are also paying us."
They had a win with the Hello chat stuff, which is backed by Telefonica. It's understandable that they might have tried another item in the same vein (regardless of underlying good v bad motiviation).
With that logic they could add the Ask Toolbar and make it opt-out too because otherwise far fewer people would benefit from it. Clearly adding pocket wasn't in the interest of users, but only Mozilla's. I doubt adding pocket by default into Firefox was even a thing anyone asked for.
And why Pocket? Maybe some Firefox users use Instapaper, and they had no say in the choice of Pocket.
>>hat a significant amount of people like the feature
So what?
Consider this argument: 80% like a feature 20% don't. You implement it, now 20% of the people aren't happy. Next feature is also 80%/20%, now between 36-20% aren't happy. Keep doing this and you will alienate most of your user base.
Did anybody actually want this feature? What percentage was that?
I don't see how it's shady. It's quite similar to other browser integrations. For example, Chrome integrates with Google services like Google Translate. All modern browsers do some amount of by-default enabled extra services. Of course, Search is the most familiar such service (google.com, bing, yahoo, etc.).
Firefox is, has always been, and always will be, open source. The Mozilla server side is similarly also open source. But Mozilla is quite small compared to Google and Microsoft, and so must partner with external parties for things like Search and Pocket.
Your search comparison is a good one. The bundled search providers are installed as removable. If Pocket was distributed in this manner (as an extension that was enabled by default, but removable via standard UI) there would probably be less of an uproar.
Um, no. Chrome prompts you to login, and uses the same login for your browsing session and the browser, but if you don't log in then you won't be logged in.
What are you asking for, exactly? That the browser should force you to login twice?
I think TheLoneWolfling explained it well, but I'll give you an example:
I want to be logged in in Chrome so that my bookmarks sync between devices. But I want to be logged out of my Google session so that my searches aren't tied to my Google account.
On Mobile Chrome, if you log into Chrome, you log into your Google account. There's no way to separate the two.
No. What I am asking for (although note I am not the author of the grandparent comment) is to be able to be logged into Chrome without being logged into a browsing session if I so choose. And as far as I know there currently is no way to do so.
It's nowhere near my only problem with Chrome, but it's one of the big ones.
This is similar to integrating with a search provider, which all browsers do, for better or for worse. And all search providers are closed source and for-profit: Google, Bing, Yahoo, Yandex, Baidu, etc.
however the precidence of selecting a closed source search provider already exists and is a strong expectation (this was something championed largely by firefox to begin with, as an interesting sidepoint)
There is no expectation of an integrated closed source "cloud reader" and attempts to paint this like "aww gee shucks it would be great it we could do something about this but thats just the way they world is" come off as extremely disingenious, especially as the mobile version of firefox had this feature baked in with no reliance on any third party at all.
> It's quite similar to other browser integrations.
"Online advertisements with active content aren't shady, almost all networks use them!"
Except for course, what you said it's identical are a notoriously shady group of activities, which has led to much abuse my market leaders at various times (Google, Microsoft), and we see no difference here. For that matter, neither do you.
I get that Firefox benefits from shipping the integration, but you haven't provided any good technical reasons for it not being fundamentally a shift in the way you do business and kind of exploitative.
Holding up a bunch of famous exploitations as "me too!"ing is tonedeafly missing the complaint.
Historically, the binary blobs provided as "browser integrations" are both major attack vectors and used by market leaders to exfiltrate inappropriate data under the aegis of "they didn't opt-out of our totally optional service!".
So yes, the market is fundamentally shady for "browser integrations".
There are no binary blobs involved here. The API endpoint is closed source, but the Firefox-side code is not. This is true for Pocket, Hello, and Search.
Ok, I think I understand your objection now. I can sympathize with your position - browsers would be purer without such integrations. It would be a better world.
I do think, however, that to compete with other browsers, such integration is necessary. If Firefox doesn't integrate with search, users will not find it useful, because they are so used to using google.com and so forth.
So I agree browsers would be better with no such integrations. It's a necessary, sometimes painful compromise.
> If Firefox doesn't integrate with search, users will not find it useful, because they are so used to using google.com and so forth.
This is a particularly weak case, because what's really needed for this feature at the browser level is an API for search providers, backed by several plugins which take advantage of the feature and offer various providers.
However, that's not what Firefox did here, as far as anyone can tell. Why not? No technical reason has been provided, and the replies have been so completely off topic as to cause a long debate thread over that very reasonable concern.
Firefox tightly coupled a technology to their platform rather than providing a service API and plugins, and we have no understanding of why a group committed to openness would make such a fundamentally close source move.
Historically speaking, the reasons groups do that is malice.
Wouldn't "decide on first run" (i.e., the user is queried if, say, `browser.pocket.firstRun` is set to `true`) address both issues (of users who don't want to be opted in automatically, and of users who wouldn't discover it if it were opt-in only)?
Applying the "make it an option" tactic to all questions of UI is how one ends up with a preference menu like Eclipse's. It's a tradeoff, and "I'm on the losing end of the tradeoff" doesn't mean the wrong decision was made.
I think that the second sentence mischaracterises my argument (I haven't said anything, though my opinion is probably clear, about whether this is the right or wrong decision); but I appreciate the first sentence. I have been arguing the drawbacks of one extreme of the trade-off (bundle everything!), but it's worthwhile to observe, as you did, that the other extreme (prompt for everything!) is equally silly—so that really, I think, what we're all debating is what is the appropriate point in the middle, not at which end we should live.
The button is "decide on first click" whether you want to actually set up the integration. I think the opting aspect is fine, even if it should have been constructed as an extension.
That does not address the terms of service concerns. Not to mention that that sort of thing (random popups asking "do you want to enable X") gets far too many accidental misclicks. Look at bundled installers to see what I mean.
I'm afraid not, because for the average user, who understands very little about software, asking them "do you want [complex new feature]?" is almost always going to get a "no". And even if it isn't an actually complex new feature, it sounds that way to them.
It's true that this seems perhaps a little silly to people like us. We might prefer this to be opt-in. But we are a rare type of user. Studies show the best decision here is to bundle it by default.
> Studies show the best decision here is to bundle it by default.
I believe that there are meanings of 'best' for which this is true, but they aren't, I think, necessarily the right ones. In this case, it seems like 'best' is "best for widespread adoption of Pocket".
OK, so let's buy that widespread adoption of Pocket is a good goal because more users like it than don't. I'm sure there are lots of add-ons with this property, but we don't add them all on—so what is so special about this one, beyond just that it tested well, and moreover what is so fundamental about it that it has to be integrated at the browser, rather than extension, level?
I think that I was unclear. When I said "best for widespread adoption of Pocket", I meant just that: Mozilla have decided, after gathering data, that Pocket is a service that is good for users, and they want as many people as possible to use it. I did not mean to suggest that this was an attempt by Mozilla to promote Pocket for Pocket's sake.
This. It's like everyone wants Firefox to look like version 1. Seriously guys, there are great features like reader mode which people don't know about. There's a sync mode that people apparently aren't using (I know about it and even I haven't set it u, but I do have Pocket installed)
The Firefox design team needs to test these things out. If y'all don't like it stick to Iceweasel or some other fork. Just don't expect much innovation from the forks.
You're spewing so much PR bullshit in this thread it's fucking ubelievable. Why exactly a useless thing like this? Why aren't other, way more useful addons like AdBlock in by default? I tell you why - because you, and your friends in the "research" department are being paid for this.
