-
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?”
-
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.
-
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.