- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- firefox@fedia.io
- hackernews@derp.foo
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- firefox@fedia.io
- hackernews@derp.foo
In order to measure the user experience, Firefox collects a wide range of anonymized timing metrics related to page load, responsiveness, startup and other aspects of browser performance. Collecting data while holding ourselves to the highest standards of privacy can be challenging. For example, because we rely on aggregated metrics, we lack the ability to pinpoint data from any particular website. But perhaps even more challenging is analyzing the data once collected and drawing actionable conclusions. In the future we’ll talk more about these challenges and how we’re addressing them, but in this post we’d like to share how some of the metrics that are fundamental to how our users experience the browser have improved throughout the year.
I doubt it is just that - the sending of such info is enabled by default for one, and even after disabling it, for several years now Firefox has continued to connect to the server regardless. I have not personally delved into the source code to verify just how “friendly” such a check is, which has already been asked to be halted, but ad blocking software such as Blockada (Android) has decided to mark it as “bad”.
If this feature was opt-in only, and functioned respectfully, it would be an entirely different matter, but as it is, user consent seems to be at least partly ignored. I am sure that those stats are useful to the developers… but that is not and will never be the point, for many people.
Firefox also needs to connect to their servers for stuff like Extension updates. It’s not necessarily to send them your data.