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Architecting Consent for AI: Deceptive Patterns in Firefox Link Previews (www.quippd.com)
submitted 10 months ago by to c/foss@beehaw.org
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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.

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[–] 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (3 children)

The author seems to think Mozilla should have protected our privacy by having someone act as the proxy for the request.

On the proxy part, they actually already have that and using it for some other parts:

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/ohttp-explained

TL;DR: Imagine an HTTPS-over-HTTPS proxy. Try to explain it like something groundbreaking without referencing existing tech. Now you have OHTTP.

https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/browser/components/mozcachedohttp/docs/index.html

https://www.fastly.com/blog/firefox-fastly-take-another-step-toward-security-upgrade

It makes me scratch my head a bit why I've never see it enabled for DNS-over-HTTP in default stock Firefox config despite it being supported for years - the endpoints are just not configured. You have to know about it and configure the barely documented URL in about:config for that. Unlike for newtabpage and the FF shopping feature where OHTTP is used by default. Infra costs?

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

    Interestingly, I just interviewed the Waterfox developer, who actually references Oblivious HTTP and his interest in developing this into a paid feature for Waterfox.

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago (1 child)

    That is interesting!

    BTW in case you're not aware, direct links to fedia.io like the one you posted just lead to a loginwall so you probably don't want to share those publicly. This one via beehaw.org works for everyone, though: https://beehaw.org/post/24563411

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