Apparently it's getting loaded anyway for some people that say they had "Studies" disabled and/or "Studies" itself became re-enabled.

The whole idea of slipping paid advertorial content into what are billed as "research" kind of gives the lie to this whole thing and is why I never turn these on in any product. Which is also why it's now "opt-out" by default, and why it will eventually not be an option at all. It's all for our own good, you see.

Apparently the addon is installed anyway, it just doesn't "change anything in Firefox" if not opted-in. I have to wonder why install it at all if it's not to be used.

Mozilla really needs to be more transparent about this kind of stuff.

I did not opt in and I have the "Looking Glass - MY REALITY IS JUST DIFFERENT THAN YOURS." extension enabled.

Adding my me-too because I was fully convinced this was user error until I saw it myself. The opt-in is busted.

> If you clicked on the link about shield studies you'd see it says they're opt in, did you not getting prompted about it?

No, I had Firefox test pilot with `Video Min` addon, I was not prompted about he `Looking Glass` I removed all addons from Mozilla and their test pilot yesterday. There is only one thing that keeps me away from moving to Brave browser https://github.com/brave/browser-laptop/issues/3101

I hope they fix it soon so I can drop Firefox and their "mission". This is second time my Firefox got infected by Mozilla and their addons. A month ago my PC at work got infected with "Firefox Pioneer" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15648179

Firefox Pioneer is literally a spy and tracking addon:

>Pioneer is an opt-in program that allows collection of richer data from Firefox.

I did not install it.

I remember this prompt (sending Mozilla crash/performance data) and disabled it a long time ago, and I don't have the add-on currently.

Often these days I disable every "Help us with information" box, both on close/commercial software and even open source software. I mean I'd like the help the community, but I really no longer like submitting any type of tracking information or even debugging information. Everyone is already clamoring for my data, and I guess it's more of a mentality of I don't want to give it away for free. They already get so much for free.

I'll still file a bug report on bugzillas and compile stack traces on faults. But I want to do it myself, explicitly.

I did not opt-in and the extension shows as being enabled. Someone messed up.

Yep, from https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Shield/Shield_Studies:

> Participation in an individual study is opt-in

Though I do see some people now claiming the addon got installed without them opting in. Probably a bug of some kind.

I did not knowingly opt-in to any shield studies, and I see it installed for me. I guess it's possible that I clicked on something without reading it.

Anyways, I've taken the opportunity to opt-out of Firefox.