When the service went from unlimited open access to being put behind a login wall, I assumed they were using this tool to pull more users into the Firefox ecosystem (like what google does). I stopped using the service at that point since it effectively lost the privacy aspect.
Too bad. I really enjoyed using it while it was up. The code is open source, and they have docs on how to set it up for self hosting. I wonder if there is a chance some active forks might live on?
Nearly all their "side projects" look like greenfields used by the project teams to boost their CVs so they can land better jobs. Those teams know very well that those projects have no use case, but they dont care. Foundation does not care either, since it is busy with increasing own remuneration and politics.
Meanwhile their core product lost around 10 percentage points of market share (from 15% marketshare to 5%):
1) Nobody works on Firefox any more. From 1000 people in Mozilla and how many working on Firefox? 50? and 950 doing various (useless) side projects?
2) they don't understand their own product and its user base: they killed extensions, killed ability to customize anything. Basically they rebranded to a "worse Chrome".
3) They dont care about quality and ship a half baked product. Recently they shipped Firefox for android that feels like alpha version. It is even unclear why did they ship it, they could have waited.
4) Countless bugs and problems caused by their own decisions (e.g. all extensions need to be signed - they forget to sign them so they stopped working..)
5) Not caring about the product at all because some people inside are stubborn dinosaurs. Firefox didnt have proper installers for business, just because someone inside didnt want to provide them. It's like sabotage.
Their tech savy user base gets alienated every day: no more extensions, no more customization, constant broken workflow (changes for the sake of doing changes, while old things are never repaired - greenfileds are easier). At some point you start to wonder, why use a Chrome clone that is worse than Chrome?
I expect that the marketshare will go from 5% to 0.% What will be terrible for everyone. We are already losing the address bar due to Google AMP. [on a sidenote: when Chrome pushed for Google AMP, Firefox didnt capitalize on it - in fact Firefox also changed the address bar as if the Firefox team wanted to secretly support AMP..]
Those teams probably know very well that Firefox is a sinking ship, since development teams are not working on core product; but they dont care, they will jump. Meanwhile those few who worked on Firefox are left holding the bag, while they were "paying" for all those side projects, that just siphoned money / development time from core product that is Firefox.
I assume they expected some use to spread illegal content, but the ratio of illegal use to accepted use was far different than their expectations. Presumably the reason to launch it was to advertise Firefox by providing a useful tool that encourages linking to others.
If you were being cynical (and to be honest I don't think this is exclusively what happened here), you could view it purely as a short term marketing campaign.
It generated lots of positive reporting about Firefox, associating them with: launching a new product, encryption, freedom and ease of use. It also had an element of virality, in that a passionate Firefox user could use the service to send to someone who doesn't use Firefox and forcibly introduce the brand to them.
All of this helps to build brand and mindshare, which, in an ideal world, leads to more installations and more ad revenue.
There are some comments about how they should focus on their browser. As much as I'd like to say otherwise, I'd argue that activities like this have a much better chance of pulling people over from Chrome than ticking off a few bug reports, or improving the certificate workflow for extensions.
That does seem incredibly naive. Maybe the problem is not so much that it was used to spread malware/illegal content but that it failed to reach mainstream adoption and as such was mainly used to host malware/illegal content that would be rejected by other hosts, while not generating a lot of good publicity and new users for Firefox?
And couldn't they have added a malware scanner to deal with the problem directly?
As for illegal content that's true with any private communication but maybe DCMA or similar got involved. I can accept that fighting for private large file transfer detracts from the main goal.
Mozilla Foundation, as owner of Mozilla Corp, is a non-profit. Thus the second argument is not that important. Also a single feature can be unprofitable if it helps to drive the related products.
First argument is more relevant, I see it as underestimated the risk there and coming out of a technical experiment ...
That all said: Mozilla Corp's "focussing" doesn't convince me.
I've built `ffsend` as CLI tool for Send to securely share files from the command line. It has been a great success! Thanks Mozilla, for building and providing this amazing service!
I'm currently hosting a public Send instance myself so ffsend keeps working. Let's see how long I can keep this going (and funded). It's available at send.vis.ee .
I mean... Were they really suprised by this? An encrypted file sharing service, of course it's going to be used for sharing malware and illegal content.. I'm not sure what would've been the solution for this issue, but it was pretty clear that that was gonna happen...
This seems like a feature, not a bug. People can send things privately to you. It's important, therefore, to verify who you're talking to. Maybe instead of blaming it on the lack of server-side malware scans (which are always easily defeated) they could blame it on lack of an appropriate way to build a framework of trust between endpoints?
WeTransfer has been abused the exact same way for as long as they existed even though I don't think they have the e2e encryption. They are still operational.
That is, it's an issue with the file transfer services as a class that can be managed, but Mozilla decided against wasting time/resources on that and just nuked it instead.
Terrible shame how lame people somehow always find a way to ruin everything good they find online for everyone else without a second thought about it. :(
Either Send is more long lived than I realized, or I have a very different definition of "legacy"
From the Mozilla Blog: ... we are announcing the end of life for two legacy services that grew out of the Firefox Test Pilot program: Firefox Send and Firefox Notes.
They're calling the two programs something that was carried on after the discontinuation of Firefox Test Pilot, not saying it's outdated software. Like the "legacy of our forefathers."
For transferring large files between machines that don’t necessarily have the same clients installed I find file.pizza quite convenient.
My understanding is it basically loads a JavaScript BitTorrent client and let’s you transfer using that protocol, so both ends needs to be online, but there is no file size limit, and good support on flaky connections.
There’s a few services like this, but I always find file.pizza to be the one that I remember the name of :)
Has been shared a lot on hn and i always find it funny that it is simply not working for me. I can't even transfer files between tabs in a single browser nor between browsers on the same host.
I really want this to work, but every time I tried to actually use it the connection broke a few megabytes into the transfer process. When transferring larger files (>6Gb) it hogs all of my computers 16Gb memory, at which point the oom killer eventually manages to end firefox.
To be honest, I think some form of abuse was bound to happen. Your files are encrypted client-side with JavaScript before uploading, so to the server it's just an opaque blob.
Out of curiosity, I did some technical analysis¹ of how your files were being encrypted to see if they were really secure and as a side-effect, also wrote a Go client for it.
An interesting property I did discover about the way the encryption keys are derived is that the scheme allows you to delegate an oblivious third-party to download the blob for you, without actually revealing the file contents to them.
This was a great service for transferring 1 off files between 2 people (such as 500mb wav files for podcast episodes which is what I used it for).
As it turns out, you can get similar behavior with Dropbox. The person sending the file doesn't need a Dropbox account either. You just send them a URL and then they have permission to upload the file.
The only extra step vs Firefox Send is you as the receiver need to delete the file after you've downloaded it. Technically that's optional but in my case that's what I wanted to do.
Tangentially, I wonder what's happening with Lockwise. [1] It also seems to be languishing without significant improvements. I was expecting it to be a competitor, at least on mobile, to the likes of Bitwarden, 1Password, and other solutions.
I once again don't have a good solution for 'how do I email a large file' but https://webwormhole.io/ is useful and simple, particularly for sending something big to someone you're video chatting with.
I switched to croc (https://github.com/schollz/croc) to send large files. Works great across macOS and Windows. It's synchronous, one-time, so not a fire-and-forget system. But quick for large files (sending custom disk images for Raspberry Pi).
This was really funny because I tried to use it for the first time just after it was taken down, but before the announcement. At that time, it loaded a page that made it seem like it was just offline temporarily.
Android Beam looked promising but Google killed it for something proprietary. Samsung had an updated version that used WiFi Direct, but I don't know if it was open.
It seems that something that was somewhat plugable would be very useful.
- NFC or bluetooth for setup.
- Bluetooth, Wifi Direct or Internet for transfer.
Mesh networking would be cool as well but I don't think it is actually needed for the MVP.
I was under the impression Firefox Send was one of the upcoming paid service offerings. At least, that we were seeing the free service and waiting some premium features to be released later on. It will be missed, it was a really easy and intuitive solution for file sharing,
I have used it a few times in the past for the classic task "move large file between two computers that are next to each other, how the hell do I do this simply", but yeah, I can't see how that would be cost-effective for Firefox.
I used this service fairly often with clients to send me large files... pretty much drag and drop and send me the link to the file. I thought it was great.
I guess I'll check out some of the alternatives listed in the comments here now.
[+] [-] headalgorithm|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jb775|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 40four|5 years ago|reply
https://github.com/mozilla/send https://github.com/mozilla/send/blob/master/docs/deployment....
[+] [-] aj3|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mkayokay|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gergely|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] redsolver|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kace91|5 years ago|reply
- Content was used to spread malware/illegal content
- It was not profitable
How are those two things something you find out after the fact? What was the reasoning for launching the product in the first place?
[+] [-] rvba|5 years ago|reply
Meanwhile their core product lost around 10 percentage points of market share (from 15% marketshare to 5%):
1) Nobody works on Firefox any more. From 1000 people in Mozilla and how many working on Firefox? 50? and 950 doing various (useless) side projects?
2) they don't understand their own product and its user base: they killed extensions, killed ability to customize anything. Basically they rebranded to a "worse Chrome".
3) They dont care about quality and ship a half baked product. Recently they shipped Firefox for android that feels like alpha version. It is even unclear why did they ship it, they could have waited.
4) Countless bugs and problems caused by their own decisions (e.g. all extensions need to be signed - they forget to sign them so they stopped working..)
5) Not caring about the product at all because some people inside are stubborn dinosaurs. Firefox didnt have proper installers for business, just because someone inside didnt want to provide them. It's like sabotage.
Their tech savy user base gets alienated every day: no more extensions, no more customization, constant broken workflow (changes for the sake of doing changes, while old things are never repaired - greenfileds are easier). At some point you start to wonder, why use a Chrome clone that is worse than Chrome?
I expect that the marketshare will go from 5% to 0.% What will be terrible for everyone. We are already losing the address bar due to Google AMP. [on a sidenote: when Chrome pushed for Google AMP, Firefox didnt capitalize on it - in fact Firefox also changed the address bar as if the Firefox team wanted to secretly support AMP..]
Those teams probably know very well that Firefox is a sinking ship, since development teams are not working on core product; but they dont care, they will jump. Meanwhile those few who worked on Firefox are left holding the bag, while they were "paying" for all those side projects, that just siphoned money / development time from core product that is Firefox.
[+] [-] boomboomsubban|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tweetle_beetle|5 years ago|reply
It generated lots of positive reporting about Firefox, associating them with: launching a new product, encryption, freedom and ease of use. It also had an element of virality, in that a passionate Firefox user could use the service to send to someone who doesn't use Firefox and forcibly introduce the brand to them.
All of this helps to build brand and mindshare, which, in an ideal world, leads to more installations and more ad revenue.
There are some comments about how they should focus on their browser. As much as I'd like to say otherwise, I'd argue that activities like this have a much better chance of pulling people over from Chrome than ticking off a few bug reports, or improving the certificate workflow for extensions.
[+] [-] simias|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] darkstar_16|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] karmakaze|5 years ago|reply
And couldn't they have added a malware scanner to deal with the problem directly?
As for illegal content that's true with any private communication but maybe DCMA or similar got involved. I can accept that fighting for private large file transfer detracts from the main goal.
[+] [-] johannes1234321|5 years ago|reply
First argument is more relevant, I see it as underestimated the risk there and coming out of a technical experiment ...
That all said: Mozilla Corp's "focussing" doesn't convince me.
[+] [-] timvisee|5 years ago|reply
I've built `ffsend` as CLI tool for Send to securely share files from the command line. It has been a great success! Thanks Mozilla, for building and providing this amazing service!
For the interested: https://github.com/timvisee/ffsend
I'm currently hosting a public Send instance myself so ffsend keeps working. Let's see how long I can keep this going (and funded). It's available at send.vis.ee .
[+] [-] dmix|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chzplza|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] 0-_-0|5 years ago|reply
https://www.techradar.com/news/mozilla-suspends-firefox-send...
The content can't be scanned server-side because uploaded files are encrypted
[+] [-] akuji1993|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] taneq|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] huhtenberg|5 years ago|reply
That is, it's an issue with the file transfer services as a class that can be managed, but Mozilla decided against wasting time/resources on that and just nuked it instead.
[+] [-] ekianjo|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shultays|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blooalien|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] parliament32|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blunte|5 years ago|reply
From the Mozilla Blog: ... we are announcing the end of life for two legacy services that grew out of the Firefox Test Pilot program: Firefox Send and Firefox Notes.
[+] [-] bscphil|5 years ago|reply
> It was launched on March 12, 2019
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox_Send
[+] [-] boomboomsubban|5 years ago|reply
Probably not a great word choice though.
[+] [-] robertlagrant|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fzzzy|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wodenokoto|5 years ago|reply
My understanding is it basically loads a JavaScript BitTorrent client and let’s you transfer using that protocol, so both ends needs to be online, but there is no file size limit, and good support on flaky connections.
There’s a few services like this, but I always find file.pizza to be the one that I remember the name of :)
https://file.pizza/
EDIT: as other people in this thread, I am also having trouble getting file.pizza to work, in both Safari and Chrome.
Maybe it isn’t the answer it used to be.
[+] [-] tpetry|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] roryokane|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] f1refly|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] maple3142|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zxcvgm|5 years ago|reply
Out of curiosity, I did some technical analysis¹ of how your files were being encrypted to see if they were really secure and as a side-effect, also wrote a Go client for it.
An interesting property I did discover about the way the encryption keys are derived is that the scheme allows you to delegate an oblivious third-party to download the blob for you, without actually revealing the file contents to them.
¹ https://irq5.io/2019/05/14/data-encryption-on-firefox-send/
[+] [-] nickjj|5 years ago|reply
As it turns out, you can get similar behavior with Dropbox. The person sending the file doesn't need a Dropbox account either. You just send them a URL and then they have permission to upload the file.
The only extra step vs Firefox Send is you as the receiver need to delete the file after you've downloaded it. Technically that's optional but in my case that's what I wanted to do.
[+] [-] AnonHP|5 years ago|reply
[1]: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/lockwise/
[+] [-] rkangel|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] toyg|5 years ago|reply
I said it yesterday: Mozilla and Dropbox should talk. Alone they will perish, united they’ll be a real alternative to FAANG.
[+] [-] sstanfie|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jtbayly|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alex_duf|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kevincox|5 years ago|reply
Android Beam looked promising but Google killed it for something proprietary. Samsung had an updated version that used WiFi Direct, but I don't know if it was open.
It seems that something that was somewhat plugable would be very useful.
- NFC or bluetooth for setup. - Bluetooth, Wifi Direct or Internet for transfer.
Mesh networking would be cool as well but I don't think it is actually needed for the MVP.
[+] [-] blooalien|5 years ago|reply
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24503077
Another tool for sending encrypted files from one machine to another. Viva la Hacker News!
[+] [-] isodev|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shp0ngle|5 years ago|reply
I have used it a few times in the past for the classic task "move large file between two computers that are next to each other, how the hell do I do this simply", but yeah, I can't see how that would be cost-effective for Firefox.
[+] [-] surfsvammel|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] werdnapk|5 years ago|reply
I guess I'll check out some of the alternatives listed in the comments here now.