The whole idea of slipping paid advertorial content into what are billed as "research" kind of gives the lie to this whole thing and is why I never turn these on in any product. Which is also why it's now "opt-out" by default, and why it will eventually not be an option at all. It's all for our own good, you see.
> Participation in an individual study is opt-in
Source: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Shield/Shield_Studies
If that didn't happen in this case, then I suspect it's probably a bug.
Wrong, as far as I see: Looking in my about:config, I see
app.shield.optoutstudies.enabled=true
browser.onboarding.shieldstudy.enabled=true
That means that the user must actively take steps to disable them, if he knows that they exist and where he can disable them.
Every time the user creates a new profile, and most probably also when he "refreshes" an old one, he has by default the studies allowed.
It's even worse in other aspects: through the UI the "Allow Firefox to install and run studies" can be unchecked but it doesn't change the value of "experiments.enabled" to false in about:config.
Apparently the "experiments" allow Mozilla to install the "experimental" extensions to any user, without him knowing. And these extensions are invisible in the GUI! Even if the user goes to the about:config and sets extensions.ui.experiment.hidden to false, it will be automatically set to true again.
It's nonetheless not obvious to me why you were downvoted; I don't know if someone else was annoyed at your definition of "new" or whether there were other dubious claims in your comment. Perhaps privacy advocates are just too exhausted and cranky to explain themselves again.
Mozilla really needs to be more transparent about this kind of stuff.
Adding my me-too because I was fully convinced this was user error until I saw it myself. The opt-in is busted.
No, I had Firefox test pilot with `Video Min` addon, I was not prompted about he `Looking Glass` I removed all addons from Mozilla and their test pilot yesterday. There is only one thing that keeps me away from moving to Brave browser https://github.com/brave/browser-laptop/issues/3101
I hope they fix it soon so I can drop Firefox and their "mission". This is second time my Firefox got infected by Mozilla and their addons. A month ago my PC at work got infected with "Firefox Pioneer" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15648179
Firefox Pioneer is literally a spy and tracking addon:
>Pioneer is an opt-in program that allows collection of richer data from Firefox.
I did not install it.
Windows 10 sends telemetry by default? Microsoft is literally Satan incarnate! BURN THEM AT THE STAKE!!!
Firefox installs crapware addons without user permissions and signs them up to participate in "studies"? Shhhhh...it probably only an innocent bug, nothing to see here, move along now.
Often these days I disable every "Help us with information" box, both on close/commercial software and even open source software. I mean I'd like the help the community, but I really no longer like submitting any type of tracking information or even debugging information. Everyone is already clamoring for my data, and I guess it's more of a mentality of I don't want to give it away for free. They already get so much for free.
I'll still file a bug report on bugzillas and compile stack traces on faults. But I want to do it myself, explicitly.
Do Mozilla have no QC, or is it purposeful?
All these "but it's only an add-on [we foisted on you]", should just be a bullet point on the upgrade screen "we'd like it if you used this".
This is Microsoft level "customer" control, where they just ignore any chance the customer doesn't want something changing and go ahead, it's being treated now as Mozilla's browser not the users.
> Participation in an individual study is opt-in
Though I do see some people now claiming the addon got installed without them opting in. Probably a bug of some kind.
Anyways, I've taken the opportunity to opt-out of Firefox.