I wonder what triggers that promotion to appear? In theory it is a contextual message, i.e., when a VPN might be relevant, but I have no idea how that is determined. (https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/browser/components/newtab/content-src/asrouter/docs/index.html)

There is a recently filed bug on Bugzilla: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1835158. However, that doesn't really help you.

I hope any of your site visitors who are shown this promotion are able to find and understand the "Not Now" link. I think in the future it would be a good idea to add an "X" button at the upper right or upper left, since people may feel more comfortable with the concept of "close this" than "maybe show this again later."

Hi

Thank you for reaching out with your concern. Firefox is committed to creating an online experience that puts people first, as such we quickly stopped running the ad experience, and are reviewing internally.

I see that you're "reviewing internally", so here's some more input from a professional standpoint:

The company I work for uses Firefox to view and project web content while filming government meetings, along with a number of critical apps. Modal popups will make it difficult to use in production; there are reports of this crashing the current page and causing issues with multiple monitors. If you add this back, I'll have to deploy a Firefox Enterprise policy to disable this on our entire laptop fleet, which is... annoying.

If you do add them back, I have three suggestions:

• Disable by default in the Enterprise ESR releases.
• Limit modal pop-ups to the new tab page; ensure they will not disrupt active tabs.
• Clarify where to disable it, preferably not hiding it in about:config.

I appreciate that there needs to be a business model to keep development funded, but you may end up driving off your userbase if the browser becomes difficult to use reliably. Thanks for all your hard work; I hope this is helpful.

P.S: I posted this on Mozilla Connect as well, not sure of the correct forum.

Hi Chris

We’re continuously trying to understand the best ways to communicate with people who use Firefox. Ultimately, we accomplished the exact opposite of what we intended in this experiment and quickly rolled the experience back. We apologise for any confusion or concern.

I understand this has already been answered, but I think the portions of the community that become aware of this occurrence would like assurance that something along these lines *will not happen again*. Much of your userbase are committed to Firefox largely for the reason that it gets out of your way, does not intrude on your experience, and does only what is asked for by the user. This is what Mozilla asks of (and indeed enforces on) add-on developers; we expect the same consistency and predictability within Firefox itself. You risk alienating your primary users and advocators with experiments such as this. I worry that I can no longer recommend Firefox as a distraction-free, user-oriented browser.

Whether or not you choose to make a clarifying announcement that will put people more at ease (or indeed worry them more), I would greatly appreciate knowing the following:

- On what grounds was this experiment conducted (was it expected to be overlooked)? - Does this indicate intention to introduce "prominent" advertising in the long-term? - Was the experiment intended to be so disruptive (was it meant to be shown while browsing the web)?

Thank you very much for your work on an otherwise excellent browser and community. I sincerely hold a lot of respect for Mozilla, and hope this will not be violated.