1559586 - Turning off all recommendations in about:preferences does not disable recommendations on about:addons in Extensions & Themes

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 1571277

(Toolkit :: Add-ons Manager, defect)

Description

[gwarser]

Attachment: Screenshot_20190615_120058.png

Firefox
Version 69.0a1
Build ID 20190614215040

Comment 1

[gwarser]

"Allow Nightly to make personalized extension recommendations" in "Nightly Data Collection and Use" section is also off.

Comment 2

[gwarser]

Should block https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1523406

Comment 3

[Alex Cornestean]

Attachment: Personalized recommendations setting.png

Comment 4

[Alex Cornestean]

Hello,

The settings you have unchecked will have no effect upon recommendations being displayed in the Add-ons Manager page on the Extensions and Themes tabs. For further information regarding what those 2 options do, click on the ‘Learn more’ link at the end of each one of those settings.

The setting responsible for recommendations being shown on those tabs is located under the ‘Privacy & Security’ tab in the browser’s options at the ‘Nightly Data Collection and Use’ section - to be more precise, the ‘Allow Nightly to make personalized extension recommendations’ setting (see the attached screenshot).

However, even with the above setting unchecked, recommendations will still be shown on the ‘Extensions’ tab, the only difference being that default recommended add-ons will be displayed instead of personalized recommended add-ons (which are recommended based on telemetry data collected from your usage data and already installed add-ons).

Regarding the recommended themes from the ‘Themes’ tab, these are not personalized, but a random selection from a pre-defined list, curated by the Mozilla staff.

In conclusion, there is no option to completely turn off recommendations in those tabs, only a way to receive either, default or personalized recommendations, as Mozilla intends to facilitate a way in which users can discover curated content in a trusted and highly trafficked environment.

Comment 5

[poperigby]

In conclusion, there is no option to completely turn off recommendations in those tabs, only a way to receive either, default or personalized recommendations, as Mozilla intends to facilitate a way in which users can discover curated content in a trusted and highly trafficked environment.

Will there be an option at one point?

Comment 6

[Gingerbread Man]

Enter about:config into the address bar, then set extensions.htmlaboutaddons.recommendations.enabled to false.

Comment 9

[poperigby]

(In reply to Gingerbread Man from comment #6)

Enter about:config into the address bar, then set extensions.htmlaboutaddons.recommendations.enabled to false.

That's going to be difficult for the average user to figure out.

Comment 10

[Tessa]

I signed up for this bugzilla to report this as well, because I assumed this was a bug, not an intended feature. Given the option is labelled "Allow Firefox to make personalized extension recommendations", it implies that disabling that option will disable the recommendations, not still show them. I'd highly recommend making this an actual preferences option all users can change in the settings pane, this isn't a great thing to have always-on.

Also, note that after disabling the personalization in the prefs and restarting the browser, the text in about:addons still reads:

"Some of these recommendations are personalized. They are based on other extensions you’ve installed, profile preferences, and usage statistics."

As well, the list of recommendations hasn't changed since I disabled recommendations. So I do believe that, regardless of intent, disabling this feature doesn't properly disable it. I'm testing this on win10/64, v68.0.