I see where you are coming from but it is opt-in so I don’t believe that is theft.
All scientific research requires data and certain types of research require certain types of data to be useful.
I’m personally against ad driven data collection because 1) I don’t think as a whole its outcomes, both first order and second order, are in the long term interests of the viewers or society.
However assuming you can trust the data collected and how it is used is only as stated then studies looking to understand online interactions, where more and more of our lives are being lived, with the interest of improving long term outcomes seems like a good thing to me. Of course once the data is out of your hands you loose control over it so it’s good that Mozilla is doing data minimization and aggregation to help reduce the impacts of that.
I guess it really boils down to trust, intent, our ability to choose, and transparency which has not been respected in many cases so I very much do understand the skepticism. Here is to hoping this will be different. So far, in my opinion, this looks to be the case.
Some of the current studies [1]:
- Political and COVID-19 News
- Your Time Online and "Doomscrolling"
Edit: I read your comment [2] in another thread about the privacy policy, and that is a good point. I sent an email to mozilla asking for clarification and if I get a reply I will add it here.
All scientific research requires data and certain types of research require certain types of data to be useful. I’m personally against ad driven data collection because 1) I don’t think as a whole its outcomes, both first order and second order, are in the long term interests of the viewers or society. However assuming you can trust the data collected and how it is used is only as stated then studies looking to understand online interactions, where more and more of our lives are being lived, with the interest of improving long term outcomes seems like a good thing to me. Of course once the data is out of your hands you loose control over it so it’s good that Mozilla is doing data minimization and aggregation to help reduce the impacts of that.
I guess it really boils down to trust, intent, our ability to choose, and transparency which has not been respected in many cases so I very much do understand the skepticism. Here is to hoping this will be different. So far, in my opinion, this looks to be the case.
Some of the current studies [1]:
- Political and COVID-19 News
- Your Time Online and "Doomscrolling"
Edit: I read your comment [2] in another thread about the privacy policy, and that is a good point. I sent an email to mozilla asking for clarification and if I get a reply I will add it here.
1: https://rally.mozilla.org/current-studies/
2: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27633918