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[–]SuperConductiveRabbi 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

I had wanted the badge notification feature (which shows the number of comments on a URL) and searched around to see if anyone had brought it up before, and they had. It turns out that before Dissenter got popular the owner had said they'll never make that feature, as it requires a pingback on every URL to determine if people left any comments. (How else could it work?) He pointed out the obvious privacy implications of telling the Dissenter servers every URL that you're visiting.

Dissenter then became popular and tons of people requested that feature, and it looks like they implemented it, against their previous judgment. Now it seems Firefox has flagged it for being an invasion of privacy, even if you can disable the feature.

[–]wizzwizz4[S] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

They should have made it opt-in, not opt-out. It's a great feature, and really cool… but it also has privacy implications.

People who want it enough to ask for it want it enough to turn on a setting. But people who don't want it wouldn't be asking to not have it. The update silently turns a nice, secure, private extension into a piece of spyware.

[–]SuperConductiveRabbi 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Certainly agreed. It makes me think this is just a big misstep, and hopefully they'll fix it and the extension will continue to gain in popularity. It's a pretty fantastic thing to have on the web.