1835175 - Idle trigger calculates idle/silent time incorrectly

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox :: Messaging System, defect, P1)

Description

[Shane Hughes [:aminomancer]]

Over here, the idle trigger tries to check the number of milliseconds that have elapsed since the user went idle and sound stopped playing. (It checks for sound because a user might stop interacting with the browser even though they're actively watching a movie on netflix or something) Then it will expose this duration to message targeting so we can show messages exclusively to users who have been idle for 20+ minutes.

But the math is wrong here, it's trying to find how much time has passed since the last user interaction or audio, meaning we want to report "idle for milliseconds" or "silent for milliseconds", whichever is shorter. But idle time and silent time are stored as epochs, not as durations. So we don't want Math.min() to find the shortest duration, we want Math.max(), to get the most recent idle or silent epoch, and subtract it from the current epoch, to get the overall time that has passed without an interaction or a sound.

So the fix is very simple, we just need to change Math.min to Math.max.

Comment 1

[Shane Hughes [:aminomancer]]

Attachment: Bug 1835175 - Fix idle trigger idle time calculation. r=#omc-reviewers

Comment 2

[grimd.666]

What about the dashboard use case? I use firefox to display prometheus dashboards. These play no sound or other media and are "idle" but should not fire this trigger.

Comment 3

[BelFox]

Why are you guys pushing through with this idea? Haven't you read the flood of comments on Reddit, Discourse, chat.mozilla, Twitter and other social media and the support tickets following your experiment with the Mozilla VPN promotions that user don't want modal ads displayed on top of unrelated pages?

grimd.666 rightfully mentions the dashboard use case, but there was also this support ticket:

I am a developer on an emergency intervention hotline for sexual assault.

Firefox is now throwing up pseudo-modal advertisements for it's VPN above pages. See attached screenshot for example.
It is absolutely IMPERATIVE that our visitors do not receive these new modal advertisements that Firefox is throwing at them. What can I do to prevent Firefox's new browser-hijacking advertisements from showing up on our hotline pages?

I experienced this on Twitter, and it 100% was not part of the dom. It also greyed out the tab bar, and prevented me from opening the menu with alt. I know how to make it not show up anymore on my machine, but how can I prevent it from appearing on visitors to my website, who are in some of the most vulnerable times of their life.
(https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1414278)

You just need to ABANDON this idea and find a better place for this kind of promotions (e.g. include promotions in the "What's new?" page displayed after updating Firefox e.g. https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/113.0.1/whatsnew/?oldversion=112.0.2).

Don't try to tweak this into working (sunk cost fallacy), this whole modal pop-up idea is the opposite of what users expect from Mozilla and will erode the trust people have in your brand.

Best regards,
a long-time Firefox user

Comment 4

[Ed Lee :Mardak]

This bug is fixing the timing of the idle trigger which can be used for many things not just promotions. Filed bug 1835481 for confusion of unrelated pages.

Comment 5

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/908732e4f89c
Fix idle trigger idle time calculation. r=omc-reviewers,jprickett

Comment 6

[Narcis Beleuzu [:NarcisB]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/908732e4f89c