101
submitted 2 months ago by Blizzard@lemmy.zip to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/23894598

Despite its emphasis on protecting privacy, Mozilla is moving towards integrating ads, backed by new infrastructure from their acquisition of Anonym. They claim this will maintain a balance between user control and online ad economics, using privacy-preserving tech. However, this shift appears to contradict Mozilla's earlier stance of protecting users from invasive advertising practices, and it signals a change in their priorities.

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[-] sabreW4K3@lazysoci.al 87 points 2 months ago

A bit disingenuous to call explaining what they're doing as doubling down.

[-] parpol@programming.dev 77 points 2 months ago

Also disingeneous to call it adding ads to firefox, because that's also not what is happening. They're trying to replace cookies with something better for our privacy, and them developing this feature will not impact any users who block ads or disable tracking cookies already.

I think they should go ahead and make the feature so that people who don't care about ads at least don't get tracked.

[-] jjlinux@lemmy.ml 9 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

They are not trying to "replace" cookies. This is effectively adding yet another way to track users. Sure, may not be as invasive as cookies, but this does nothing to remove or modify them either.

Then there's the fact thay they deployed this behind the scenes and did not mention it until they were called out.

This comment alone:

"As part of this work, we are also committing to being transparent and open about our intent and plans prior to launching tests or features."

... means they have no intention to be honest about shit.

[-] parpol@programming.dev 13 points 2 months ago

It doesn't track users. It collects anonymous statistics and assign them to a unique ID without storing any other information about the user.

And it IS meant to replace cookies, but you can't just replace them all at once and disable the legacy cookies. It is going to have a gradual transition.

And they did tell us about this many months ago.

[-] tiddy@sh.itjust.works 12 points 2 months ago

I hate to say but technically collecting statistics is non-anonymous identifiable tracking, especially in this age where theres so many datasets companies can coorelate them to

[-] BearOfaTime@lemm.ee 6 points 2 months ago

Hahaha, because data can never be de-anonymised, right?

Oh, yea, that's repeatedly been show to not be true.

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] underisk@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 months ago

It tracks anonymous statistics, without my express consent, for the benefit of a third party. I do not care if it exists to replace cookies, because I’m not even convinced that cookies need to exist at all anymore. What utility do they provide to the actual person using the browser that can’t be accomplished through some other more modern API? If the only functionality left to replace is tracking people then maybe just deprecate them and move on.

[-] BearOfaTime@lemm.ee 4 points 2 months ago

Didn't we go through all this like a month ago?

Why are people still excusing Mozilla for this?

[-] jjlinux@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 months ago

Right? They've done some good stuff over the years, but that does not eliminate the fact that they have chosen to be part of all the enshitification going on.

[-] LWD@lemm.ee 2 points 2 months ago

disingeneous to call it adding ads

Who called it adding

[-] ArbiterXero@lemmy.world 52 points 2 months ago

Gotta pay the bills somehow, and I’m just happy they care about privacy.

[-] pipariturbiini@sopuli.xyz 63 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

I dislike ads as much as the next person, and find uBlock Origin necessary for browsing the web, but the cold fact is that the internet is run with advertising, whether you like it or not.

If that is done without creating a profile on me, and without crippling the reading/viewing experience, I can tolerate advertisement.

I assume this is also an action towards becoming independent from Google funding; which is a good thing.

[-] mnmalst@lemmy.zip 18 points 2 months ago

Happy to see some sane comments here. Couldn't have said it better. You can hate ads and still keep a foot in reality.

[-] Lexam@lemmy.ca 5 points 2 months ago

I choose to keep both feet firmly planted in unreality.

[-] sneezycat@sopuli.xyz 9 points 2 months ago

If ads are necessary for the internet, I'm going back to reading books. It was fun y'all.

[-] parpol@programming.dev 2 points 2 months ago

They put ads in books too, unfortunately. The internet ones you can block.

[-] TurtleTourParty@midwest.social 3 points 2 months ago

Book ads are at least usually at the end of the book and for other books you might want to read. And they're static. If internet ads were like book ads I wouldn't have to block them.

[-] XTL@sopuli.xyz 4 points 2 months ago
[-] LodeMike@lemmy.today 12 points 2 months ago

The internet is run with egress contracts. The web is run with ads.

[-] NateNate60@lemmy.world 6 points 2 months ago

Okay bud. Have a biscuit 🍪

load more comments (1 replies)

?? What? Bird law got nothin to do with the web you crazy

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] kylian0087@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

I absolute despise ads but they are a necessary evil, it can be implemented well if it is not done intrusive and doesn't take up more space then the content it self. Also if it are mostly scam ads and such they might as well not have ads at all.

[-] BearOfaTime@lemm.ee 1 points 2 months ago

Fuck ads.

You're lying to yourself if you think ads will ever be delivered without tracking.

This whole "anonymization" nonsense is a lie. It's been shown, repeatedly, that data can be de-anonymised, especially data that's not exactly narrowly collected.

[-] refalo@programming.dev 25 points 2 months ago

69% of the world population doesn't use ad blockers. Google made their billions from people clicking on ads.

Not only are we technical folks, only 5% of the population, not their target audience, it seems most people don't care enough about ads to ever try to stop them... at all.

[-] Blizzard@lemmy.zip 15 points 2 months ago
[-] yikerman@lemmy.world 15 points 2 months ago

I installed local-network-wide DNS adblockers. After the change my mother found me and asked me why she couldn’t see the ads: she needed the ads and were enjoying them.

[-] jjlinux@lemmy.ml 9 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

That is fucking epic. I had (not anymore) a similar issue with my wife and ads about shoes and coats. So I allowed all the crap on her devices only on Adguard Home.

Then her phone died, I gave her mine with GrapheneOS on it,until she could get a new one. The first 2 weeks were a pain: "where's the playstore?", "what is this gayscale chrome (Vanadium)?", "My banking app keeps crashing", etc. After a while we started spending more time doing things together, she was spending more time with the kids, and was being way more productive in her business.

Long story short, she kept the phone, I ended up getting a new one, and she even asked me to remove Windows from her computer and set her up with Fedora.

It's a habit thing, I think.

[-] toastal@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

My partner has slowly been walking away from everything like that too. The hard part is she has done a lot in marketing & now wonders if it is all bullshit/evil, but it is still needed even for the good products & services, just not in deceptive or manipulative manner.

[-] WhiteOakBayou@lemmy.world 7 points 2 months ago

That's really nuts to me when I run into it in the wild. It's so easy and such a qol upgrade. I know a guy who self hosts a bunch of services, programming job, but does not use any ad block at all. He's on the computer all day. Just looking at ads.

[-] refalo@programming.dev 2 points 2 months ago

such a qol upgrade

I don't think you're wrong, but I do think that if everyone thought that, they would be doing it already.

I have routinely tried to get friends and family to use ad-blockers and they simply don't care enough to even attempt to download one.

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] fireshell@lemmy.ml 5 points 2 months ago

I can already see a crowd of advertisers running to them for the remaining 3% of its users.

[-] BumpingFuglies@lemmy.zip 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

~~Yet another Mozilla hit piece that seemingly-intentionally misrepresents the good they're doing for users.~~

It begs the question: who has the means and motivation to consistently pay "journalists" to malign the only browser that has the slightest chance of tearing any significant amount of users away from chromium-based browsers?

EDIT: Turns out the answer to my question above might, in fact, be OP! They wrote a patently false, inflammatory title that isn't supported by the article (or reality) at all, and I fell for it like a sucker.

[-] felsiq@lemmy.zip 9 points 2 months ago

…did we read two different articles? The only link I see is to Mozilla’s own blog, explaining their choices in a relatively positive way. I’ve seen the effect you pointed out a lot, I just don’t see it here.

[-] floofloof@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 months ago

I guess the hit piece is just the title OP put on the post.

[-] BumpingFuglies@lemmy.zip 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Nope; you read an article, and I just reacted to comments on Lemmy, assuming that those commenting had read the article.

If I'd simply opened the link, I'd've seen it was on mozilla.org and would've realized it was just that the OP made a shitty clickbait title, not another Mozilla hit piece.

Shame on you, OP! Also shame on me.

[-] ozoned@lemmy.world 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

First off, yes, the title of the post is misleading. Mozilla is creating a privacy focused ad system. However, I legit don't get who this is for.

As a user, I'm not turning off my adblockers. Yes, privacy is important. I'm ok with some ads, but I'm not going to risk my privacy and security, because it's not like I'll have a clue who is backing said ads. So it's not for me.

Normal users have shown that they really don't care, let alone have any kind of clue what's going on. So it's not for them.

Advertisers have huge incentive to show you targeted ads. They don't want to show someone an ad on the other side of the planet for something they don't have access to. Also why would they want to show you an ad for something completely unrelated. What's the incentive for them to give up their targeted ads?

It's not like Mozilla is poising themselves for any kind of government oversight. I'm in the US, and the US gov doesn't seem to give a shit. And the EU, while they have GDPR and they're fining companies left and right, it doesn't seem like they're really targeting these kinds of ads. Outside of those two I don't know anything about other countries honestly.

So again, I have zero clue who this is for or why Mozilla thinks this will be successful. There's no incentive or knowledge that this is needed.

I use Firefox. I run Linux. I'm not trying to bash Mozilla here. I'm not trying to be a naysayer. I'm just trying to understand what kind of real world use case this solves and incentivizes users and advertises to use it over the alternatives.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments
view more: next ›
this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2024
101 points (75.6% liked)

Privacy

32177 readers
943 users here now

A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

Some Rules

Related communities

much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS