[tor-project] Tor Browser Vision Brainstorm

[Tom Ritter]

On Mon, 11 Feb 2019 at 13:54, isabela <isabela at torproject.org> wrote:
> It got me by surprise that folks did not thought we are already User
> First. I think by the time we are investing so much on learning about
> our users and applying improvements that focus on making their
> experience better we are being User First.

I might be one of the people you're referring to - but I don't think
we're not being User First. I think that there is a difference between
User First and targeting Tor Browser as being a user's primary
browser.  I think we're doing the first and not doing the second.

> This is how I see it. First, I don't think we (the Tor Project) are in
> the business of competing in the Browser market. We are in the business
> of providing anonymity and privacy technologies, and that is what we are
> doing.

To be clear: I am not solidly behind the idea of Tor Browser becoming
a full-fledged browser. I'm probably against it; but I'll also
probably never decide on a position concretely. =)  But I can see the
advantages of it (and disadvantages) and to play devil's advocate I
would suggest that *competing* in the browser market is different from
*being in* the browser market.

Competing implies trying to win users, actively. But choosing to exist
in the browser market - choosing to lean into the goal of supporting
Tor Browser as a primary browser - would bring privacy and anonymity
to *more of* a user's activity online, if not more users themselves.
If people flock to us because of our success, fantastic. But we don't
have to try to convince people the way other browsers 'compete'.

> For instance, I think that one of our principles is that if we can
> provide a secure way of doing something, that should exist for our user
> by default. Be that something like the backend fix for the window
> resizing suggestion from Arthur doc, or an 'opted-in' configuration that
> allows our user to save their browser history.

The opt-in-save-history goal would be example of something that would
be necessary (IMO) to be a primary browser; but I won't assume your
suggestion of doing so is with the intent to become a primary browser.

-tom