Firefox CTO Responds On Collecting User Advertisement Data
Firefox CTO Responds On Collecting User Advertisement Data
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We’ve been collaborating with Meta on this, because any successful mechanism will need to be actually useful to advertisers, and designing something that Mozilla and Meta are simultaneously happy with is a good indicator we’ve hit the mark.
Oh, truly? Facebook happy with something that somehow respects people's privacy and integrity? Perhaps instead it just shows that Mozilla is slipping. Because they have been, and at this rate it seems like they won't stop. Sad to see.
There is a toggle to turn it off because some people object to advertising irrespective of the privacy properties, and we support people configuring their browser however they choose.
That's not good enough. If this thing needs to be present, the option should be there to toggle on, not off. I don't opt-in to privacy in my bathroom or bedroom, the privacy is mine by default. I don't have to announce to the world that I don't want it peeking in.
If this thing needs to be present, the option should be there to toggle on, not off.
This is my takeaway in general. The idea of this sounds fine, but the fact that they opted everyone into this experiment is really stupid considering a huge chunk of people use Firefox are privacy-conscious and care deeply about this stuff.
Well you close and lock the door. So you kind of do opt-in. It's just muscle memory at that point.
Do we think anyone would actually opt in?
I’m not saying you’re wrong, just that making it opt-in is probably seen in this case as equivalent to throwing the entire feature in the trash.
it's hilarious that they basically accused their entire user base of being too dumb to understand, so that's why they didn't say anything about it, while simultaneously thinking this wouldn't explode in their faces. which was S-tier fucking dumb.
anyway, as others have said: librewolf ftw
LibreWolf on desktop and Fennec on Android, let's goo
Why Fennec? I use Mull and both have warnings that they are not fully open-source. It seems to me that only Librewolf is good, too bad it's not available for Android.
because any successful mechanism will need to be actually useful to advertisers
No.
It's, by the way, one thing every child should be taught to say, and traditionally an important part of one's upbringing, and one strongly eroded in the last 20 years.
Simultaneously to that various people with strength are putting before us sets of false choices all leading to the same result, and we pick "the lesser evil" only to avoid saying "no".
We don't owe advertisers shit. They can go fuck themselves with a dry aspen stick. We don't owe Facebook shit. They can go swim in sewers. We don't owe Mozilla shit. They can go milk bulls.
Just no and nothing in exchange for something we don't owe them.
Yeah totally agree. The central premise of Mozilla's argument is wrong: that we need to care about what advertisers want.
No compromise is needed as advertisers problems are not users problems. Mozilla has massively dropped the ball on this.
People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you.
You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity.
Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head.
You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don’t owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don’t even start asking for theirs.
– Banksy
We don't owe Mozilla shit
So don't use Firefox.
Why? It's a gift. One can clean it of unwanted features and use it.
Or if it's not a gift, they should make it clear.
Cheating is bad. Being gifted a thing and then told some bullshit how you now need to give your blood to Devil to show your gratitude, you should just say "fuck off" and get on with your life.
Will do.
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Rather than fighting against ad-tech , they're caving. If someone comes into your house to punch you and rob you everyday, do you say "let's find a solution that we're both happy with, how about you rob me and don't punch me?"
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We could have argued about how privacy-protecting this is, and whether it will actually prevent further intrusive tracking. Perhaps I might be persuaded to keep it. But the fact that I wasn't informed about being opted in when upgrading, and the fact that the CTO is doubling down on "users are too stupid to understand this", means they've lost any trust and/or willingness for me to listen to them. Turning this off for good.
I don’t get all the fervor against ads. People are talking about kicking them out as if it’s so much more ethical than piracy. What they do is surround your house with billboards; of course you negotiate in that scenario
If you're the one paying for internet access, you should also have the right to determine the content that you're paying to have access to. While something like pi hole could be used to metaphorically take down most of the billboards without impacting the ground below it, even everyday users should be informed about the data advertisers are getting from them, whether it is anonymized or not. Hiding an important setting about data sharing near the bottom of a page in settings doesn't help anyone but the advertisers.
Gross
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in the absence of alternatives, there are enormous economic incentives for advertisers to try to bypass these countermeasures, leading to a perpetual arms race that we may not win
Fuck off with that defeatist shit Mozilla, don't decide for us.
Also I think in Gemini there's not much advertisers can do to "try to bypass these countermeasures".
They could add Gemini support in Firefox. Or even roll out their own "small web"-style protocol for hypertext. Simply without the functionality advertisers use.
With their resources it'd be a minor feature.
The issue is that while somewhere they have some people actually making a browser, as an entity it's a company making money on advertising. People deciding on directions use that as the main criterion.
Digital advertising is not going away, but the surveillance parts could actually go away if we get it right. A truly private attribution mechanism would make it viable for businesses to stop tracking people, and enable browsers and regulators to clamp down much more aggressively on those that continue to do so.
Dear CTO,
What makes you think that advertisers would drop any existing privacy intrusion software just because you just gave them another, less useful data set on top of what they already collect? For them, more data means better targetting which in turn means more profit. Do you expect those people to suddenly stop profiling everyone and make less profit out of the goodness of their heart? Well, then you are probably heading for a big surprise.
This is the corporations-want-to-be-good falacy.
Yep. Common sense would tell one that this is a stupid idea from the word go, but sadly common sense is way less common than the name implies.
It could make it easier to get privacy preserving legislation through if there's a technical solution to the part they actually need.
I hate ads, and hate tracking, and do my best to prevent exposure to either. But internet ads need to know what sites are driving clicks to function. Unless you want to ban ads (which I'm all for, but isn't realistic), technology like this, then banning additional tracking is your best bet.
I believe in "privacy preserving legislation" when I actually see it work. Legislation is Theory-Space, and quite often has no connection to online reality, as the net is international, but laws are not.
I, too, would like to ban ads, but banning them by law will not work unless it is an international law without any holes. Sadly, forcing advertisers into a less invasive mode and make them just rely on the firefox-defined technology is just as illusionary.
Legislation like that might happen in places like the EU, but in the US at least, unless lobbying rules are amended, consumers stand next to no chance against the commercial interests of advertisers.
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Librewolf good, vanilla firefox bad
I'm impressed this person was able to type all of that with Meta's giant dick in their mouth.
You are overestimating Meta, it's their money and not that kind of love, one can call it.
Money has a way of changing people over time.
Ugh, you were supposed to be the chosen one!
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Much has been said about this already, but I'm really annoyed how they repeatedly try to twist this into a technical question like:
"This is better for privacy than how it used to be. Here are 20 reasons why, and we have good scientists who say it offers good privacy. Do you have any technical arguments against these privacy claims? We welcome a discussion about possible flaws in the reasoning of the scientists/engineers in terms of assuring privacy."
To me, that is a secondary question. More important:
- Don't introduce tracking features against my will, with only an opt-out (ironically, while explaining in the same post why opt-outs suck)
- Give room to a discussion about tracking-based advertisements, whether we want to have that in the internet (IMHO no) and support it in firefox of all browsers (IMHO no)
- If they go this way, who is supposed to continue using their shit browser after this? The only reason left is that it's "the reliable other/good browser". People who don't care about these questions are using Chrome anyway.
This is such a self-destructive move, it's painful to watch.
Wow, I have been a firefox user for years. I wasn't even considering switching, even after the changes, until I saw this.
Hope the check was fucking worth it, you're dead to me firefox.
Seems like a worthy experiment to me. I'll be leaving it turned on, for now.
An experiment should be opt-in, not opt-out.
So.. You want the default to be more tracking instead and then people need to opt in to get their privacy? 🤔