Mozilla explains their recent foray into advertising - A free and open internet shouldn’t come at the expense of privacy

This will be easy to hate on, but let's be careful not to get carried away.

Maintaining a web browser is basically the toughest mission in software. LibreWolf and PaleMoon and IceWhatsit and all the rest are small-time amateur projects that are dependent on Firefox. They do not solve the problem we have. To keep a modicum of privacy and openness, the web is de-facto dependent on Firefox continuing to exist in the medium term. And it has to be paid for somehow.

This reminds me of the furore about EME, the DRM sandbox that makes Netflix work. I was against it at the time but I see now that the alternative would have been worse. It would have been the end of Firefox. Sometimes there's no good option and you have to accept the least bad.

I would love to give Firefox money, as long as they slash their CEO's ridiculous salary
- And slash the CEO as well. Not literally of course.
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- I'm paying for a VPN on a monthly basis, as well as for cloud storage - I'd pay for Firefox too. However, they didn't come up with the idea of subscriptions, but damn ads...
Also, if firefox does better it'll forward the benefits of a better browser with more usage, more funding, faster features, and more on to the forks for those who want to use them. There is basically no downside for librewolf users here and its to their benefit to encourage for normie's to use firefox anyway
Getting angry at Mozilla for finding a way to survive by trying to offer something less evil won't solve the privacy problem in advertising. That has to be solved at the government level, and if anything, what Mozilla is working towards here is probably the best case scenario for a legislated solution in the US's economy.
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- @d0ntpan1c @JubilantJaguar
  what, concretely, do you believe they are offering that is less evil? Their proposed ad tech is no more private than Google's or Apple's.
  And they can't afford the army Google and Apple employ to prevent data leaks.
  What concrete parts of the Mozilla proposal do you believe is an improvement over Chrome and Safari?
To keep a modicum of privacy and openness, the web is de-facto dependent on Firefox continuing to exist in the medium term. And it has to be paid for somehow.
The web today has no privacy or openness. It has gmail accounts, russian propaganda bots, and AI SEO article spam. Does it matter which rose tinted browser you care to view or interact with this shit through? I'm approaching 40 and the web has been a fundamental part of my life to the point that I am sometimes bewildered about what I'd do without it. It is a sinking ship though, and at this point I'm much more interested in seeing alternatives to HTTP rather than trying to save the mess we built on-top of it.
- This analysis strikes me as a nice mix of cynicism and revolutionary thinking. In my own analysis of history, cynicism has never achieved anything except worsen what it claims to hate. As for revolutions, they mostly never even happen, and when they do happen they achieve nothing except heartache and backlash. The only way forward that actually works is slowly, one step at a time, building on what you have.

A fundamental flaw in this, is it still involves user data, even if "anonymized". You can advertise without any user data. We do it all the time. Does a television channel know your gender? Does a radio station know if you bought a car recently? Does the newspaper know your hobbies?

A fundamental flaw in this, is it still involves user data, even if “anonymized”. You can advertise without any user data.
Right. The reassurance is supposed to be: "don't worry, no personalized data is retained." So, ideally, no individual record of you, with your likes, your behaviors, your browser fingerprint, aggregated together with whatever third party provider data might be purchased, and machine learning inferences can be derived from that. Instead, there's a layer of abstraction, or several layers. Like "people who watch Breaking Bad also like Parks and Rec and are 12% more likely to be first generation home buyers". Several abstracted identity types can be developed and refined.
Okay, but who ordered that? Why is that something that we think satisfies us that privacy is retained? You're still going to try and associate me with an abstract machine learned identity that, to your best efforts, closely approximates what you think I like and what is most persuasive to me. I don't think people who are interested in privacy feel reassured at anonymized repurposing of data.
It's the model itself, it's the incentives inherent in advertising as an economic model, at the end of the day. I don't know that there's a piecemeal negotiation that is supposed to stand in for our interests to reassure us, or whose idea was that this third way was going to be fine.
Non targeted advertising isn't as profitable. (It lacks dark patterns)
For what its worth I still watch over the air TV
Yes, they actually CAN know those things.
- How come?
Thats a good point, those ads are far less profitable though, and as a result if mozilla offered that kind of service nobody would use it
- Which will lead to more and more pressure to drop privacy protections for profit until there is no real reason to not just use chrome.
Yes they have known these things for decades

We do not need a corporate structure to maintain software.

This stinks of C-suite justifying their existence when the alternative is well established and very successful.

Where else do you expect them to get the money needed to maintain a web browser?
- Well, how did they do it in 90s-2010s? Genuinely asking. What's changed that they can no longer do this.
- Either peasants step up or corpos will take over...
  Ball is in our court folks

Users don't want ads and advertisers want something that can collect as much data as possible.

Mozilla as lost both

Collecting as much data as possible is a means to an end. It's not valuable in and on itself.
- True but good luck getting the high paying advertisers on board.

A free and open internet shouldn’t come at the expense of privacy

Free as in free beer, not as in freedom unfortunately

I'm completely fine with anonymized ads being an option in theory, but there needs to be a way to compensate services w/o resorting to advertising. I think Mozilla should provide a way for users to pay to opt-out of ads, and get websites on board that way.

Websites want to get paid for their work, and advertising is the easiest way to do that. The solution isn't better ads, but alternative revenue streams for websites, and I'm 100% fine with Mozilla taking a cut of that alternative revenue stream. But I will not tolerate ads on my browser.

I hoped Brave would've solved this problem by letting users pay to remove ads, but instead they went to crypto to reward viewing ads. That's the opposite of what I want, and I really hope Mozilla has someone still working there in a position that matters that understands that.

Isn’t that exactly what brave did? I wasn’t a fan of their “watch ads to get BAT” system either, but the alternative was always to just buy BAT with actual money. I’d rather see Mozilla work with brave to collaborate and improve on the BAT strategy than to start another competing standard, personally.
- Does buying BAT compensate websites? AFAIK, no sites actually signed up to be compensated that way, so it just ended up being a random cryptocurrency. Brave went crypto first, websites second, and that obviously didn't work.
  Mozilla should do the opposite IMO. Go out and make agreements with major sites to make their content available w/o ads for compensation, and then get users to start using that service. What they use for payment isn't particularly important to me, but it should be stable and low-cost. I think GNU Taler is a good start to keep costs really low (no money is actually changing hands), and Mozilla can settle up with websites monthly, quarterly, etc.
  It should be Brave collaborating w/ Mozilla, not the other way around, because Brave obviously has weird motivations. Brave can keep BAT to reward watching ads, I just don't think they should use the same system for rewarding ads vs compensating websites for not showing ads.
- Why's it gotta be crypto though
- Isn’t that exactly what brave did?
  I'm actually quite intrigued with Braves attempts at innovating here, but I don't know how effective they have been and, alas, Brave relies on Chromium.
that's actually the first good idea ive seen somebody suggest mozilla do instead!
For the moment you can donate to sites you like while keeping the adblocker on.
- Yup, and that's generally what I do.
  I honestly just want to put $20 in a pool or something and have the browser deduct from that balance when I visit a site. The sites I visit more get more of my money, and I'll get a record of how much each site changes per visitor to decide whether I want to keep going there. If they use something like GNU Taler for the accounting, the sites can't track me at all, they'll just get micropayments and settle up with Mozilla at some interval.
  Yet Mozilla seems to not consider this at all. Their entire messaging is "better ads," not "alternatives to ads."

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Every corporation invested in unhealthy ventures will say it is necessary, and they can do it ethically, regardless of how misleading or untrue it is. They will launder their bad behavior through an organization to make it appear more ethical and healthy.
My guy.... you linked to a youtube documentary about the questionable economics of gold and a blog post about an unreliable certification group associated with Rainforest Alliance. Not because of anything specific to gold or certifications, but... to illustrate the general idea that corporations can be bad?
The level of generality you have to zoom out to, to associate those to Mozilla, is the same level of zooming out typically used for Qanon conspiracy theorizing.
This is exactly the kind of thing that people make fun of with Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. If you're willing to zoom out to six degrees, you can connect Kevin Bacon to anyone in the history of cinema. It doesn't prove that Kevin Bacon is personally connected to everyone in the history of cinema, but what it does prove is the frivolousness of reasoning from such stretched out connections. That goes for historical connections, but also funding connections, and, perhaps most importantly here, for conceptual connections. And I would venture that trains of thought hinging on such remote connections are a hallmark of fuzzy thinking, which is why it's terrible to go from "Rainforest Alliance bad" to "... and therefore Mozilla ad privacy is bad."
That's not to say one shouldn't be concerned about Mozilla's venture into advertising, but that this is a terribly incoherent way of showing it, that's as liable to produce overextended false positives connecting anything to anything as it is to produce any insight.
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Mozilla: For the foreseeable future, there's a lot of money in advertising, and we want some of it. It's all over the Internet. Why shouldn't some of the profit go to people like us, people who wish things were different even while bravely facing the harsh reality that there is no other choice but to devote ourselves to commercial advertising?

We know that everyone in our community will hate the idea, but surely this too is a sign that we are on the right path. By doing unpopular things, we demonstrate the courage that's needed to save the Internet from the kind of future where Mozilla can't get a piece of the biggest market on the Internet, the only one that matters, the market for advertising.

Sure, you can see it like that.
Doesn't change the reality. Sarcasm doesn't pay bills and personel costs, and hence most websites directly or indirectly rely on advertising. As does most other content like podcasts or videos.
We can either keep being delusional and pretend we can magically revolutionize the whole internet and much of the business around it, or we can be a bit more realistic and try some reforms, like less privacy-intrusive advertising and analysis.
Which do you think has a better chance to actually improve the actual privacy for users? Hrm?
- I think the fediverse has a better chance of doing more good, and Mozilla should've stuck with it.
- Podcasts, by their very nature, do not use any kind of tracking whatsoever (well, besides IP address regions, anyway).
  Absolutely no reason for a browser developer to get in on this besides shameless profiteering.
They should find other ways to make money. There are so many different ways they could create value.
Also I'm not convinced that Mozilla would make much off of ads anyway as the ad space is very competitive
- There are so many different ways they could create value.
  Such as?
Refreshing.

For what's its worth I agree with the hexbear user
Brother. Mozilla is the only browser company letting you keep those things, so you're not "moving" anywhere. And every feature they've announced is not targeted at you; your (and my) customized setup where we never see an ad and leave minimal trace is still fully supported. The PPA is designed to improve the state of Web advertising as a whole, and improve the situation for the normal user who is basically leaving a rich personal history on every site they visit.
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JWZ was one of the main instigators of Mozilla/Firefox, and Mozilla’s launch party was held at his nightclub.

Some relevant posts from his blog:

For now I installed Librefox on my devices until I am familiar with the json scripts stripping Firefox from these new features.

*Librewolf
Nice choice though. I personally would recommend the resist fingerprinting toggle extension as well
Same here. I've tolerated enough, and now it's enough. At the same time, I'm keeping my 👀 on Ladybird and Servo development.
- I already have a pihole to cut out most of the Mozilla phone home shit, now ads injected on websites with the new update, sponsored links in my address bar and what not...wuggghh. Librewolf is not exonerated strictly but better in privacy for now.
  I have been a Firefox user since two decades ago, no shit.

“Keeping the internet, and the content that makes it a vital and vibrant part of our global society, free and accessible has been a core focus for Mozilla from our founding. How do we ensure creators get paid for their work? How do we prevent huge segments of the world from being priced out of access through paywalls? How do we ensure that privacy is not a privilege of the few but a fundamental right available to everyone? These are significant and enduring questions that have no single answer. But, for right now on the internet of today, a big part of the answer is online advertising.“ Advertisers always want more data on the people they are selling to. I hope you can hold the line. No one else has been able to that I know of.

And I love how they keep pushing the "ensure creators get paid for their work" as if they're doing the lord's work paying small-time YouTubers and PodCasters when, in reality, it's corporations getting the money. Who are these "creators" you're talking about, Mozilla?
- Millions of creators are making a living through their content.
  https://explodingtopics.com/blog/creator-economy-stats#
- Spare a moment to think of the poor technofeudalist serf working hard to put food on her family.
They should create a way to pay websites and creators

there are sites where I WOULD HAVE whitelisted them from adblocking if they had not chosen to make them functionally unusable or not stop nag me me. take youtube. I never minded those ad breaks..but that constant box nagging me to try premium is not acceptable. And then they just had to keep ramping up the adds and are now being a big baby trying to wage war on adbocking. Result: no more youtube. ty for convincing me to not even visit anymore -slow clap- good job ahole.

and ever been to a fandom wiki? used to be named "wikia" so that people could confuse their brand with "wiki". so many adds jammed into that thing browsers tend to choke if you aren't adblocking.

I mean sure privacy is great to care about, but nobody even pretends to care about usability.

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- all the groups you cited? are they just toothless and making no impact because it happened way too late? or do they just have a very trash definition of what is intrusive? The major players still intrude all they like the second adblock isn't there.
  by the time ablock plus's author tried to meet in a middleground advertising was already so far out of control that the users said "f that, no more" and most of us moved to ublock origin. these pricks need regulated into submission but it'll never happen.
  if it became reasonable, I'd turn off my blocking. ain't gonna happen and we all know it no use pretending these companies are going to back off thier tactics.

People who complain about this seems unaware that mozilla can't make money from thin air. You don't pay for the browser, so.... Put 2 and 2 together...

If you would actually consider paying for software you use all the time, companies could make quality stuff.

I would pay 5 dollars per month for Firefox, no problems. I don't like subscriptions but I would do it for Firefox. Been using it since the very first version of Firefox came out.

Mozilla gets millions in donations, but they give millions to their CEO and millions to political activists. Had Mozilla demonstrated they couldn't survive on donations alone I (and presumably others) would be a little more forgiving. But right, from my perspective, it looks like the board is using the Mozilla coffers as their personal piggy bank instead of making a good faith effort to do anything that would allow them to survive without enshittifying.
- Bloat is heavy... Signal has similar issues IMHO
  Product development is second or third order business.
- So what kind of ceo would they get if they paid pennies? That would be a better scenario?
  Then it would be "mozilla can't do shit with that crap ceo".
  I don't know. I'm really thankful we still have mozilla. May not be perfect but Google is horrible, so.
You are assuming advertisers want something that is user focused. I don't think this is going to be that successful as targeted ads need lots of user data.
Also they only make money if you click on an ad. How often are you doing that? Spoiler: you shouldn't
What I wish they would do is create a way I could compensate websites from the browser. I want a monthly subscription that donates a small amount to all the websites I visit.
- Tangentially related: Mozilla's big "draw" to this for advertisers is that they claim it will be able to (anonymously) track coversion rates. Not just click through but through to actual purchase. So advertisers can get true feedback on what works and what doesn't, because clickthrough doesn't directly correlate to sales.
People are pissed that firefox depends on google's money, and theyre also pissed when they try to make their own money.
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- I just don't want to lose control of my device. I could care less about how poorly run Mozilla is.
- Yeah it would be best if they could just create money, like the fed. Problem solved. :p

Guys.... don't you think this has already been circlejerked to death on Reddit and Lemmy? Do we really need to hash this out yet AGAIN? Getting real tired of this...