As Darren discussed on Monday’s project call [wiki.mozilla.org], Suggested Tiles has been on track to go live to a larger audience next week for wider beta testing. I’ll provide some context around why we implemented this feature, details of how it works, and open questions of how to make it even better.

A suggestion made for people who visit Mozilla sites

We’ve been looking for ways to improve the user experience within Firefox by combining data that Firefox knows about with data Mozilla can provide. We’re also in a good position to work with the advertising ecosystem so that we can change it to care more about the values Mozilla cares about. We want to create advertising products that respect user’s choice/control over their data and get others interested by showing money can be made.

Last November, we launched Tiles with a framework to show external content within Firefox’s new tab page. A relatively small portion of Firefox users saw these because they only showed up if there would have been empty tiles, i.e., new users with little history or existing users who cleared history. Suggested Tiles expands on this to be a little bit smarter by showing content based on the user’s top sites. For example, if a user tends to visit sites about mobile phones, Firefox can now decide to show a suggestion for Firefox for Android.

We intend to bring value to users by showing them content that they would be interested in and engage with. On the flip side, this means we purposefully hold back on showing content that users might get annoyed with and block. We do this in a way that requires using a minimal amount of the user’s data, and as usual, we provide controls to the user to turn things off if that’s desired. For the initial release of Suggested Tiles, we plan to show content from Mozilla such as mobile Firefox, MDN, and HTML5 gaming.

The Tiles framework has been built in ways that are different from traditional web advertising in both how it gets data into Firefox [blog.mozilla.org] and how it reports on Tiles performance. The two linked posts have quite a bit of detail, but to summarize, Firefox makes generic encrypted cookieless requests to get enough data to decide locally in Firefox whether content should be added to the new tab page. In order for us to have data on how to improve the experience, Firefox reports back when users see and click on these tiles and includes tile data such as IDs of added content but no URLs. We have aggressive data deletion policies and don’t keep any unique identifiers that can be associated with our users.

The technical changes to support Suggested Tiles are not overly complex as the server provides one additional value specifying when a suggestion should be shown. This value informs Firefox which sites need to be in the user’s top sites before showing the tile. The reporting mechanism is unchanged, so if a Suggested Tile is shown or clicked, Firefox reports back the tile’s ID and no URLs just as before.

Even though the technical changes are not too complicated, the effect of this can be significant. In particular, Firefox reports back if it shows a Suggested Tile, and if that tile is only shown when the user has been to one of various news sites, Firefox reveals to our servers that this user reads news. Our handling of the data is no different from before.

Because we care about user privacy, we have policies around how/what suggestions can be made. For example, to match on news sites, we make sure there’s at least 5 popular news sites for Firefox to check against. This makes it so there’s user deniability of which site the user actually visited. We also focus on broad uncontroversial topics, so we don’t make suggestions based on adult content or illegal gambling sites.

An additional layer of protection is built into Firefox by only allowing predefined sets of sites [hg.mozilla.org] for making suggestions. These include mobile phones, technology news, web development, and video games. This rigidness protects Firefox from accepting fake/malicious suggestions that could reveal data Mozilla doesn’t want to collect.

This last point is important to highlight because we want to have a discussion around how we can be more flexible in showing more relevant content and fixing mistakes. For example, people who care about video games might only care about a specific gaming platform, but because Firefox only allows for the predefined sites, we would end up suggesting content that many users didn’t actually want to see.

Feel free to respond with comments about Suggested Tiles or to join in on the discussion about various topics on dev.planning [groups.google.com]:

• Improving trust and transparency for Suggested Tiles
• Ideas for policies to protect Suggested Tiles users’ data
• Suggesting tiles by region with finer granularity than country
• Potential privacy issues of not showing suggestions in certain contexts

As usual, we have the source code available for Firefox [hg.mozilla.org] and our servers that send/receive tiles data [github.com], create tiles, and process tiles data. You can also find additional details in the Directory Links Architecture and Data Formats documentation [people.mozilla.org].

Thanks Paul for letting people know how to define JavaScript functions, the ES6 way (in Firefox 22). I’m now busy converting my anonymous functions, e.g., function(x) x*x, to the new syntax: x => x*x.

But one thing caught my eye in the spec he linked, harmony:arrow_function_syntax:

// ''=>'' has only lexical ''this'', no dynamic ''this''

This means you no longer need to bind or do the self = this dance. Both patterns are common for setting up callbacks in JavaScript.

So if your code in a method of an object used to look like either of..

addEventListener(.., function(event) {
  .. this.value ..;
}.bind(this));

or

let self = this;
addEventListener(.., function(event) {
  .. self.value ..;
});

Your code can now look like this!

addEventListener(.., event => {
  .. this.value ..;
});

Exciting stuff! 🙂

I’ve been blogging on the Labs blog about locally analyzing Firefox data [blog.mozilla.org] and helping users share that data while keeping users in control of their privacy. One area of ideas has involved users setting terms on how the shared data can be used, such as requiring temporary use of the data and increased transparency to let the user know what parts of the data was used.

Common web pattern of users agreeing to terms

So far what I’ve described seems compatible with the Open Web because Firefox can expose access to the user’s data through a web API such as geolocation where the user confirms or denies the request. One main difference is that the site agrees to the user’s data privacy contract — perhaps through an electronic signature. But even then, this difference isn’t too foreign because this digital agreement pattern seems common on the web — except most of the time, it’s the user agreeing to the site’s terms.

One followup idea, regarding who is creating contracts, suggested a non-profit who cares about the Open Web and users’ privacy could be well suited to negotiate with web sites. Instead of having each user provide a user data privacy contract to each web site, Firefox could refer to a list of allowed domains that have already agreed to the non-profits requirements on how user data from the browser can be used. Of course Firefox would still give users control of what data is analyzed and to what detail is the data shared.

With these site-by-site contracts of agreeing to treat users’ data at a privacy level acceptable/required by the non-profit, it seems like a potential slow-but-steady way to improve the web for all parties: the site gets high quality user data, the user gets better personalized content, and Firefox protects privacy for users.

The tricky part here is that there would be a split between which web site have access to the web API: those who are contractually bound to treat users’ data correctly and those who are not. If Firefox only allowed access to web sites that have signed the contract, would this still be part of the Open Web? Is it necessary to have this as part of the Open Web? How about if general web access could be enabled through a user preference while also requiring user confirmation on a per-site basis from a scary looking dialog?

I’m sure there are plenty of other questions in this area of protecting users’ data while improving the Open Web experience. So please comment and provide your thoughts or questions!

After suggesting an idea of how Firefox could help users share their interests online [blog.mozilla.org], I’ve been wondering if it’s similar to something people already do outside of a browser. I gave it some quick thoughts, and stickers seem like they might be a suitable comparison in that they’re something people can easily acquire and customize and then present to others without giving them away.

Showing things you like on something you own

People seem to have all sorts of stickers placed on things they carry around, e.g., laptops, binders, or notepads; or a mode of transportation, e.g., cars, skateboards, or bikes. Even though showing something could be thought as a statement, I would guess that people aren’t necessarily always looking to have a conversation by displaying their sticker. They’re just happy to show off something they support or care about.

This note about having a presence without actively socializing seems to overlap in some way to the “Visitors” group from a study on Identity and the Internet [blog.mozilla.org]. Not everyone wants to be social on the internet and actively produce content, so using these stickers to show off one’s interests seems like a comfortable step from being completely without an online identity.

Do you use stickers? If so, what are you showing, where are you placing them, and why do you use them? I’m curious! 🙂