608682 - Forbid advertising on update pages

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(addons.mozilla.org Graveyard :: Policy, defect)

Description

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

I recently had a discussion on my blog about intrusive updates. 
http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/gerv/archives/2010/10/too_many_updates.html

Kadir made the following very interesting point in the comments:

"I'm almost sure that the majority of those updates are add-on updates. Some add-on developers earn money by putting ads on their 'you have updated xy page' so that's a strong incentive to update the add-on often. Very often."

We should have a clause in the a.m.o. terms of service which forbid using add-on update as a vehicle for displaying advertising. Something like:

"No action taken in the add-on update process should cause the user to see additional advertising. Specifically, no web pages opened as a result of an add-on update should carry advertising."

Gerv

Comment 1

[Jorge Villalobos [:jorgev] (he/him)]

I don't think this is a good idea.

Landing page advertisements is one of the least annoying ways to make some money out of the add-on. Forbidding these will only shift the annoyance into the add-on code; you can have a look at the reviews for TACO and IE Tab Plus to see what happens in those cases.

We can look into cases where add-on authors are pushing updates too frequently just to get more eyes into their landing pages. We don't have a explicit policy about this, but it's certainly disrespectful of their users to be updating so often.

Otherwise I think this is WONTFIX. fligtar?

Comment 2

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

(In reply to comment #1)
> Landing page advertisements is one of the least annoying ways to make some
> money out of the add-on. Forbidding these will only shift the annoyance into
> the add-on code; 

An ad displayed when you use an add-on's feature seems to me to be much better than an ad displayed whenever the add-on author decides it should be displayed.

> We can look into cases where add-on authors are pushing updates too frequently
> just to get more eyes into their landing pages. We don't have a explicit policy
> about this, but it's certainly disrespectful of their users to be updating so
> often.

Maybe Kadir has some particular add-ons in mind?

Gerv

Comment 3

[Jorge Villalobos [:jorgev] (he/him)]

(In reply to comment #2)
> (In reply to comment #1)
> > Landing page advertisements is one of the least annoying ways to make some
> > money out of the add-on. Forbidding these will only shift the annoyance into
> > the add-on code; 
> 
> An ad displayed when you use an add-on's feature seems to me to be much better
> than an ad displayed whenever the add-on author decides it should be displayed.

I disagree. Landing pages are easily dismissed and users quickly learn to ignore them. Embedding advertising features into add-ons can lead to privacy and security issues, and they tend to be less transparent and just feel wrong. That's at least my experience when looking at user reactions from different revenue models implanted into add-ons.

Comment 4

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

(In reply to comment #3)
> I disagree. Landing pages are easily dismissed and users quickly learn to
> ignore them. 

The discussion and feedback I reference in comment #0 suggests otherwise. There's going to be little gain in user satisfaction from going to silent updates for Firefox, if addon updates (of which there are a lot more if you have any significant number of addons) continue to be loud.

Users are suffering from update fatigue. Anything which reduces the intrusiveness of updates (of any sort) is to be welcomed. If it were me, I'd ban addons from indicating in any way that they had been updated until their functions were next invoked. :-)

> Embedding advertising features into add-ons can lead to privacy
> and security issues, 

Why do embedded ads lead to greater privacy and security issues than ads on update web pages?

Gerv

Comment 5

[Dave Garrett]

(In reply to comment #4)
> If it were me, I'd ban addons from indicating in any way that they
> had been updated until their functions were next invoked. :-)

Well, their functions could be next invoked on startup. There's also the valid case where a page is used to inform the user of new functions to be invoked.

> Users are suffering from update fatigue. Anything which reduces the
> intrusiveness of updates (of any sort) is to be welcomed.

Agreed. The big problem is showing pages on every update, rather than just first run or only major updates. That gets annoying quick, and I think we should simply have a policy requiring that if an addon does this that there be an easy route to turn it off, regardless if the page has advertising. (excluding the beta channel, where one expects more changes they opted-in for)

Comment 6

[Kadir Topal [:atopal]]

(In reply to comment #2)
> Maybe Kadir has some particular add-ons in mind?

I definitely had, but since I'm on Minefield most of the time now, I don't have many add-ons installed anymore. However I'm sure that AMO has stats about which add-ons are updating most often. If we had that list we could go through it and check if there is any correlation between the frequency of updates and advertisement on the 'update notice page'. It's much easier to discuss with data in hand.

Comment 7

[Jorge Villalobos [:jorgev] (he/him)]

(In reply to comment #4) 
> Why do embedded ads lead to greater privacy and security issues than ads on
> update web pages?

Because authors rarely include a simple web ad in their UI. That would make most users reject the add-on right away. The most common way to add some form of revenue stream to an add-on is to bundle another more commercial add-on. These add-ons normally analyze all pages the user is visiting and include ads, search suggestions, etc., and the price the user pays is that the URLs visited are being sent to third parties, unwanted cookies are added, and so on. Furthermore, all of this runs with chrome privileges, which is all reviewed by us but still poses more risk that regular web content.

I'm not convinced that update fatigue has anything to do with ads on landing pages. Maybe it has to do with landing pages in general, and I would like to point out that many add-ons have update landing pages without ads. I think, though, that it has more to do with having to restart Firefox and see the update UI every couple of days.

Comment 8

[Dave Garrett]

On the topic of "particular add-ons" doing this, let us not forget the Adblock Plus vs. NoScript war of Spring 2009...
http://adblockplus.org/blog/attention-noscript-users
http://hackademix.net/2009/05/04/dear-adblock-plus-and-noscript-users-dear-mozilla-community/

Comment 9

[Kadir Topal [:atopal]]

(In reply to comment #7)
> I'm not convinced that update fatigue has anything to do with ads on landing
> pages.

Well, that's not really the point here, because if you earn money by showing people ads on your 'update notice page' that's a pretty strong incentive to update your add-on more often than if you had no gain by showing that page and that, in turn, leads to update-fatigue.

Comment 10

[Justin Scott [:fligtar]]

I don't think it's our role to enforce a policy like this. Of course I wish every add-on in the gallery has a perfect user experience, updates on a decent schedule, and doesn't show ads on their own website. But it's not up to us to regulate that; that's how Apple's App Store got the reputation it has.

We can say we'll never feature or promote add-ons that do this sort of thing, sure. But I'm not at all comfortable with preventing them from being hosted on AMO because of this. Users that don't like an add-on's behavior can stop using it and/or write negative reviews -- both have worked in the past to effect change. You can also choose not to install updates from a particular add-on if you know it does this sort of thing.

Comment 11

[Kadir Topal [:atopal]]

Well, the Apple app store has an incredibly awesome reputation with users (not the same with developers, true), that's why they just announced 7 billion downloads in 2 years. You are right, it's not our job to tell developers how to develop their add-ons, that is, unless users don't make a difference between a crappy experience inflicted on them by Mozilla or an add-on author. Because in the latter case we have already intervened in the past and forbidden certain methods.

Gerv put a lot of effort into reading many many comments from all sort of users, and their no. 1 comment was how they hated the intrusiveness of Firefox updates. Now it looks like that could be caused by add-ons. Shouldn't we at least take the time to look at the data to see if there is any truth in that?

Comment 12

[Dave Garrett]

There was discussion somewhere at one point of providing a standardized API for first run and update pages. If this were to be implemented, it could give three things:
1) When showing the page, do so in a standardized fashion possibly making a point to say it's an extension and in no way related to Mozilla (if it's not a Mozilla addon, of course).
2) Let any addons doing this coexist and have a sane multi-install experience.
3) Provide for a way to opt-out of these standardized pages to a variable degree such as major updates only or off fully and also for one addon or all.

This would be another bug, however. (probably already be one or two about it)

Comment 13

[Justin Scott [:fligtar]]

(In reply to comment #11)
> You are right, it's not our job to tell developers how to
> develop their add-ons, that is, unless users don't make a difference between a
> crappy experience inflicted on them by Mozilla or an add-on author.

Not being able to tell the difference between Mozilla updates and add-on updates is a different issue from "Forbid advertising on update pages". Update pages without advertising would still have that issue. I agree that it's important for these update pages to be clear about why they are showing ("{add-on name} was updated") and if there are specific cases that are ambiguous I do think we should ask the authors to make it clearer.

(In reply to comment #11)
> Gerv put a lot of effort into reading many many comments from all sort of
> users, and their no. 1 comment was how they hated the intrusiveness of Firefox
> updates. Now it looks like that could be caused by add-ons. Shouldn't we at
> least take the time to look at the data to see if there is any truth in that?

Firefox 4 automatically installs add-on updates by default, so the main complaints highlighted in the blog post should go away if they are based on the add-on update dialog.

And as Dave points out, bug 459965 will allow us to let users turn off first-run/updated pages, show an information bar at the top of the page that explains why it's showing, and anything else. I would be okay with requiring add-ons to use that mechanism for first-run and updated pages once it lands in a major release, assuming the author doesn't have a good reason for wishing not to.

Comment 14

[Kadir Topal [:atopal]]

Hmm, I feel like we are talking at cross purposes here. Without any data at hand it's hard to argue for anything. But if we found out that with the strong incentive peole update their add-ons twice a week whereas the ones without the incentive only update once a month, we could talk about ways to remove that incentive for the benefit of the users. Do we have an easy way to check that? Or should I file another bug to have a look at that?

Btw. Firefox 4 won't change this, since it would still show the 'you have updated' page for add-ons.

Comment 15

[Jorge Villalobos [:jorgev] (he/him)]

I opened bug 609008 to look for add-ons that may be abusing the update system. This is far as I think we should take this.