this post was submitted on 06 Aug 2024
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Firefox

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[–] [email protected] 107 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (3 children)

How much AI do you want in your browser:

( ) None

( ) Zero

( ) I want my browser to automatically close any page that mentions AI

[–] [email protected] 50 points 3 months ago (3 children)

Which of these options do you prefer:

( ) having an AI assistant integrated into the browser

( ) getting kicked in the balls by elon musk

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 months ago

A genuinely tough decision

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 months ago

hi we're the marketing team and we already decided what we want to do, and we can make up whatever data you want to see for us to justify it!

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago (1 children)

More like

  • 2x slower browser

  • AI

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[–] [email protected] 69 points 3 months ago (6 children)

What country do you live in: Germany, United States, Brazil, other

What? Weird survey options.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 months ago

Data retention would be my guess.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Very weird, because it's not sorted alphabetically. That means there is a bias in the sorting, because the first option is default and the best option for most users.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago (2 children)

They are sorted at random for each visitor.

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[–] [email protected] 64 points 3 months ago (2 children)

i don’t like how they used "want least", it means three very different things:

  • i want this but it’s not the thing i want the most
  • i don’t care for this
  • oh god fuck no
[–] [email protected] 14 points 3 months ago (3 children)

That's why they did it in sets of three. They could just give every user a blank text box for every option, but doing it this way makes it far easier to analyze the data in bulk.

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[–] [email protected] 48 points 3 months ago (7 children)

Which of the following attributes would you most want your new browser to have, and which would you want least?

Twice as slow as your current browser

Is that a joke?

[–] [email protected] 48 points 3 months ago (4 children)

Control question probably, to check if you actually read the questions.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 months ago (5 children)

I forgot those exist and interpreted it as "Would you sacrifice performance for one of these features?"

Am I stupid?

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Makes sense. What about those who click that option as a joke? Maybe discount all other replies from that person because of that too?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 months ago

I mean, fair?

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago (1 children)

lol, yeah. 👍

I was doing a political poll just the other day and the third or fourth question was a color question like: “Which of the following is associated most with a ripe banana?”

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 3 months ago (9 children)

For me that was together with

A privacy-respecting AI assistant that makes your browser smarter by learning how you use it

So I don't really care how slow the browser is, as long as it doesn't have an AI "assistant" that is monitoring my browser usage

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[–] [email protected] 34 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Everyone's here complaining about the randomised questions when I'm just curious why location options are "Germany", " Brazil", "USA", or " Somewhere we don't care about".

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 months ago (4 children)

Yeah wtf going on there, what's Germany, Brazil and USA got the rest of us don't?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 months ago

Those are simply the most significant Firefox user bases.

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 3 months ago (2 children)

I wonder what percentage of people chose "Least important" for "Do you want another fucking annoying pointless AI assistant?"

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 3 months ago (12 children)

You folks are really exaggerating. How is this survey weird? The random questions in groups of 3 make it easy to compare 3 features instead of rating 60 different features by most wanted to least wanted. In aggregate from thousands of replies, they can sort all answers.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 months ago

I feel like most of these people were way over analyzing the questions. No reason to look for in depth meaning of possible answers, just answer them and take them at face value.

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 3 months ago (1 children)

This is one of the weirder surveys I've ever taken, I hope they know what they're doing.

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Do they publish any of the data from these surveys or use it as an excuse to remove more useful features?

"We listen to our community, so now we're removing about: config access from stable desktop builds to match the mobile version to provide uniform builds, making problems easier to replicate and also provide better security for all. Please use beta or nightly builds for tinkering."

[–] [email protected] 16 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

Product managers know what KPI's they want to improve, and its almost never survey sentiment results. The survey will be used to justify projects that improve the KPIs they already have. Best case scenario it helps them choose what to work on first, worst case (and most likely) it doesn't matter what the survey says - it's engineered to justify a pet project.

i.e. Straight out of "how to lie with statistics" - Would you rather drink bleach or add in browser advertisements based on privacy respecting AI categorization of you browsing behavior? ..... The people have spoken and they OVERWHELMINGLY want more monetization in their browser.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago (1 children)

"We found that users wanted AI over a 2x slower browser"

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 3 months ago (13 children)

Bring back PWA!!

Sadly, they're probably thinking mobile.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 3 months ago (1 children)

When looking for a new web browser, which feature would you prefer most and which would you prefer least?

  • A color palette that matches Danny DeVito's armpit hair.
  • Play the theme to Annie at startup.
  • Take up all computer resources.

I don't want any of those. Can't we just have a browser that filters all of the popups, junk and advertising?

Nope. You can't progress through the survey without picking one thing you really don't want and at least one of two things you couldn't give a shit less about.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 months ago (5 children)
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[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 months ago

Yes, I want the most for Firefox to be twice as slow as my current browser (Firefox/Fennec)

[–] [email protected] 14 points 3 months ago (1 children)

All those features, and the only one I want is customizable hotkeys. Although I guess I'd also take "browser is twice as fast."

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Which do you prefer:

( ) browser twice as fast

( ) women find you irresistible

[–] [email protected] 23 points 3 months ago

( x) browser twice as fast

( ) women find you irresistible

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (4 children)

I hope like hell the sets of questions were randomized, because if they weren't, they were tweaked by the surveyors beforehand to try and force a particular result.

Like the AI question was paired with some incredibly crappy options like "A browser that runs 2x slower than your current browser". Obviously they want you to click that option as least wanted and leave the AI development alone (if that wasn't a randomized grouping).

Similarly, it looked like they were trying to decide which feature to sacrifice in support of AI dev in later questions, because all 3 would be things I enjoy much more than AI, but I have to rate one as least wanted.

EDIT: OK, thanks for all the responses everyone! Looks like my pairing of AI and 2x slower was just a bad random selection inducing extreme paranoia on my part. Very happy to hear that.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 3 months ago

They were randomized.
For me '2x slower' was not paired with any AI.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 months ago

My 2x slower was paired with the 2x faster 🤣 guess which one I chose?

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

I took the survey and I didn't like how they occasionally put all shitty features in a group and I had to pick one I wanted and then followed it with all good stuff in a group and I had to say I didn't want one.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago

This the most blizzare survey I have ever seen. What is even happening?

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