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this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2024
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I originally was one of the "FUCK FIREFOX IS FUCKED" people. However, after taking a deep breath and actually reading, yes, you are correct. There is no indication that they're blocking adblockers or taking away firefox customization. I think they're both looking for alternative revenue streams and trying to make the advertising business less intrusive. That being said, their communication is absolute dogshit and they deserve a lot of the shit they get. But I am not yet panicking. Firefox remains the best choice for blocking ads.
The problem for me is that I'm tired of ads at all, so while I do think that having an ad system that is less abusive than the current one is a step in the right direction, I still don't want to see any unsolicited ads and this feels like the initial steps to try to make it more palatable to eventually try to force users to accept ads back into their lives.
Right, there's still a slippery slope issue here. I actually think it was a good thing that Mozilla was coming up with add-on products to create a revenue stream. I would love to, for instance, pay for a 2TB Mozilla Drive over Google Drive. I would rather do that than the ads.
I'd love a subscription-based privacy review service. Hell, combine it with a full product review where the consumers of the reviews are paying for it, rather than ad revenue, commissions from selling what they are reviewing, free products from the makers, or being outright fronts for marketers.
Like that report about all car companies selling cars that are spy machines was very good to know, as much as it sucked to see confirmation that that was indeed the case.
If there's enough easy visibility on who is doing privacy right and wrong, then there might actually be more economic incentive to make good products instead of trying to sell out their own customers to make an extra buck.
Yea that's likely what it is. Hopefully I can remain in the 1% of people who go out of their way to block ads. As long as I can do that I'll welcome the industry as a whole being more privacy friendly (if that's even possible)
Yeah, that might be the best case scenario. Have ad blocking but add in some technical hurdles so that not enough people do it for it to be worth stamping out.
Though that makes me wonder if this will be effective at all because the technical hurdle to get Mozilla's new ad system is only slightly less than the technical hurdle to install ublock origin. I'm guessing advertisers will either ignore it entirely and continue with what they are doing (because the data means profit for them) or maybe put some portion of their bandwidth towards it while continuing to do what they are doing with other providers.
It's really hard to tell how Mozilla is acting doing because 99.99% of the posts/comments on Lemmy/Reddit is just FUD. I'm sire it skews people's perception.
Yeah, Lemmy isn't getting the same kind of propaganda as other social media, but it does appear to be present here on some topics.
Like normal conservative propaganda gets drowned out since the userbase has a large portion of people who are here because we're tired of corporate bullshit.
But it means we're probably more susceptible to propaganda that accuses corporations of corporate bullshit, whether the accusation has merit or not.
Exactly. It's a different variation. I think the Mozilla stuff is more a sleepwalking echo chamber than an intentional campaign, but at a certain point the difference doesn't matter.
I wouldn't be surprised at it being a combination of both. It's easy to be paranoid about this stuff because corporations have shown again and again that trusting them is a mistake, but Google and MS (plus many others like advertisers) do have a financial incentive to reduce trust in Mozilla so people go back to using their options and seeing those ads.
Yea that's a really good way to put it!
Yet.
We don't know that after they are deeper and deeper into the advertising industry, that they don't just go ahead and do it.
Remember how Google wasn't always evil? Money changes companies (and people). Advertising money could very well change Mozilla. Plus, remember, these statements are them telling you the public version, things that they are claiming will happen. Often times what goes on behind the scenes is very different.
I don't think it's unreasonable to be concerned by this.
It's comments like this that concern me. It's extrapolating on a worst case hypothetical, and setting it equal to a present day reality of Google's hundred billion dollar advertising empire.
It doesn't mean there's nothing to be concerned about, but I think you need to understand the difference between possible bad thing, and fanning the flames of mob mentality.
You know who also also wasn't always evil? VLC. And guess what, they're still not evil! Even though they have turned town tens of millions of dollars that would have compromised their software. So, what does that prove? Maybe that measured concern should be combined with an ability to be nuanced on a case by case basis.
Can you point to where I said that Mozilla is as bad as Google?
I don't think you'll be able to.
Mozilla has been called out for concerning things in the past, as has Canonical. I think it's okay to call companies out for doing shady things, and I think it's okay to hold them accountable.
I don't think it's unreasonable to be concerned.