RMS calls ubuntu spyware. Ubuntu fails at damage control

Many shall wonder what use is there for this blog. The story goes as follows: This year I upgraded my old ubuntu 10.10 to 12.04, and after going through various shocks, I actually got used to it. And the unity desktop. This upgrade made me interested once again in sharing bits of knowledge about ubuntu, and opining about foss.

Little did I know that after I finally decided to start the blog. I learned that ubuntu was going to include ads later. That is such a turn off. All my motivation was killed. Really. What will I do now? Continue promoting ubuntu and just tell people to uninstall the adware? Look for a fork? Like I mentioned, I liked unity and I wanted to promote it. But now what? So that explains the lack of content from this blog.

Today I have to say more things about Ubuntu's Amazon adware

RMS does not like it

Anyone not shocked about Richard Stallman calling it adware and generally not being happy at all about ubuntu's new "feature" Probably did not know Stallman or the new Ubuntu feature too well.

fsf.org - Ubuntu Spyware: What to do?

Ultimately, RMS is right, you know. It is spying all your desktop searches. It is spying your desktop searches to provide a feature that is not really that useful - To fill your desktop searches with amazon adware.

The highlight of the whole text is this:

If a sufficient part of our community's opinion leaders view this issue in personal terms only, if they switch the surveillance off for themselves and continue to promote Ubuntu, Canonical might get away with it. That would be a great loss to the free software community.

That is that continuing to promote Ubuntu because "you can just remove it". Is a very selfish way to do these things. Because not every user out there will be proficient enough to know that it can be removed.

What RMS does not know, is that despite the opposition to this feature. Despite that the new common new user reaction to ubuntu is "How do I remove the annoying Amazon ads?". Canonical want more of this. New ubuntu versions are likely to become worse before improving.

Damage control: Childish

Of course, when the starter of the whole free software thing. The thing that is still ubuntu's main selling point among passionate fans, says that ubuntu has spyware and that we should stop promoting it. It causes a disturbance in the plans of those who intended this feature to just slip away. It was time for damage control.

My first experience with damage control was actually quite poor. This ubuntu forums thread: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2092359 . In which someone calls Stallman's article FUD and leads us to the Ubuntu privacy another post leading us to Mark Shuttleworth's old blog post about the feature.

The privacy policy is not that much comfort because it mentions nothing about the desktop searches that are being sent to Canonical's server even though Mark Shuttleworth says that they are sent to Canonical's servers. Does this mean that the searches are sent to Amazon and the blog post was wrong? Does this mean that the privacy policy does not protect our desktop searches? I do not know!

The blog post is not comforting either, it is just some of the common defenses of the amazon adware feature. (These defenses miss the point.

Let us call RMS' article FUD. That makes sense does not it? Except RMS' post contains no Uncertainty or Doubt. What is left is Fear. It is unfortunately, founded fear, because ubuntu is sending your desktop searches to canonical by default. And that was confirmed by Shuttleworth himself.

I thought. Ok, those are not official Canonical stances about RMS' post. Let us wait to see what happens. I did. And I was not impressed

"As a response to RMS speaking out against Ubuntu about its privacy-violating integrated Amazon search results, which he considers to be spyware, Ubuntu Community Manager Jono Bacon has addressed RMS's statements. In his reply, Jono claims that Stallman's views on privacy do not align with Canonical's, that some of his statements are worded in order to 'generate fear, uncertainty, and doubt about Ubuntu' and that 'it just seems a bit childish to me.' The comments on the post itself are well worth a read."

The good thing about Jono is that he later apologized for the childish remark.

Honestly, if the best defense that Ubuntu supporters can come up about this is that "Privacy is a very personal thing" and that "Freedom is a very personal thing". And to say that it is just FUD. Then I am not very happy about this.

Point of the matter is that Ubuntu still sends your desktop searches through the net by default. Even if Canonical was the most reliable corporation ever, what about hackers? I mean, really. At least corporations should find ubuntu unsuitable at the moment. Because anybody in between the pipeline can learn at least the file names you are using.

What no one seems to like to admit , is that desktop searches can be very profitable information. They would just need some data mining. And since the ubuntu privacy policy makes no mention about how these searches are going to be used. The question is still out there... answer-less. Can we please have better damage control?

If you want some real FUD

We know that Canonical claim that your desktop searches are not sent directly to Amazon. But we also know that there is at least some Amazon traffic when you search from unity. I suspect that the images are downloaded from amazon.com. If that is the case, would not it be possible for Amazon to still track what sort of things you search in your desktop?

5 defenses of Ubuntu 12.10 Shopping Lens (That miss the point)

A 12.10 feature was fast-tracked and after the feature freeze of Ubuntu 12.10 Quantal Quetzal. The shopping lens (via OMGbuntu). Which effectively adds what can be perceived as ads by most users to searches in the home lens. There were many reactions, including bug report #1054776 which got full heat and a lot of "affected users" in a couple of users.

It called Mark Shuttleworth to make a blog post in defense of it I think this post made more harm than good. In fact, I was on the site that looked at it as a minor annoyance (but with potential to ruin PR) until Shuttleworth's post made it clear that this was, in fact , driven by money-making purposes.

I really think that in its current state the feature has no place in 12.10. It needs to be at least tweaked (removing the shopping adverts from Home searches is a decent fix). Let us explore some of the attempts to defend this feature.

#5. You can just remove it

Sure, we can remove it. This defense misses a big point though. Ubuntu is all about reasonable defaults. While other distributions put more emphasis on you building your environment, ubuntu puts emphasis in giving something well-tweaked and well-thought for the user.

If the main role of this feature is going to be to tip and trick posts explaining how to remove it. Is it a good thing?

It also misses that the method to remove it is not transparent at all. You need to now a bit about ubuntu packages. There is no easy GUI option to just disable the ads.

And it can work both ways. It is as easy to install the feature on a desktop that does not have it as it is to uninstall from one that does not have it. Then why not remove it from the default and make users that want to do Amazon shopping opt-in by installing it?

There is also another issue . What if, as a user, I might give the shopping lens a try every once in a while. If I am forced to remove the lens so that unwanted adverts stop appearing on the home tab, I will not be able to give the shopping lens a try when I want to. Forcing the shopping suggestions on the home tab might as well be discouraging the installation of these lenses and decrease Canonical's profits from it.

#4. They are not ads because...

As seen with Shuttleworth's comment a common approach is to say that they are not ads. That this feature does not mean ubuntu is turning into adware.

Let us assume we are all being honest and that Canonical does not intend them to be ads. But for all practical matters, they can at least be perceived as ads by a good chunk of the community.

In my case, I am not able to accumulate enough willing suspension of disbelief about the claim that they are not ads. If I go to the Unity's main menu and do a search for Shotwell, starting with "Sho", and I am shown "suggestions" to buy Shoes from Amazon. It sounds like adverts.

There is also the little bit about Mark admitting that Canonical will receive money for the hits and that it is indeed the reason they are starting with Amazon. These things are intrusive like ads. Suggest a commercial service like ads and provide money to the entity delivering these searches (just like ads).

But we can spend ages talking about what is an ad and what it is not. What is clear is that there is at least a portion of the user-base who sees them as ads. And the perception of the users is important. If Canonical does not intend them to be perceived ads, then something has to be changed.

#3. People are just complaining about change like always!

Is it so? Is this change just the same as (And I quote a ubuntuforums moderator) "moving the clock applet a bit"? I think that as opposed to layout changes this change brings plenty of issues. It raises privacy and ethical and legal questions. And it threatens to make the public's perception of ubuntu as AdWare.

#2. Do not want the home lens to show results for this? Just move to another scope!

It is true. We could manually click the video tab when looking for our videos or the app tab when looking for applications. But isn't it an extra annoyance?

The current use case of the home lens is to save you time as you search for something that will obviously not have scope issues. I need Libre Office, just type Libre Office and most likely the first results will be app links to Libre Office. I type "Thank you" and the first result will be the Thank you hater video.

Why can't it be the other way around. I suspect that most of the times, when I look for things in my {Home} tab I am going to be looking for local content. The number of times I will need to manually move to a specific tab would be much lower if the shopping results were kept separate.

And an inconsistency. Many of the lenses included in 12.04 are capable of doing remote searches. But none of them appear in the Home lens. If the intention is truly to make the Home lens do everything and anything, why is it that it is only the Amazon shop offers that appear in those searches and not youtube search suggestions (Which appear in the video tab)?

#1. It will be so much better in 14.04 LTS

In addition to all the concerns, there are also concerns about how the shopping lens is not even doing its job correctly. Bug reports about it providing adult content results (and parental controls are inexistent). Or it suggesting you to buy applications that do not run in Ubuntu. Are these are all just [kinks that will be unkinked] in the future?

If the future will be so bright. Can't we just wait for the future? It is true that Ubuntu is usually an early adopter. But there is a difference between rushing to adopt an early version that is not completely polished and rushing to adopt a version that is completely dysfunctional. I think that given the circumstances, it is better to postpone this feature till 13.04 when it will hopefully be more polished and basic GUI options to disable it will be present (and the community can make up their mind about whether it should show up in home or not).