So I read a bit of Mozilla’s documentation about this feature. It sounds like they’re trying to replace the current practices with something safer. Honestly, my first thought is that this is a good thing for two reasons.
It’s an attempt to replace cross site tracking methods, which are terrible
Those of us that fight against ads, tracking, etc. can simple use typical methods to block the api. Methods that were already using (I think)
If both of these are true, then it could be a net positive for the world. Please tell me if I’m wrong!
Whether you like it or not a lot of the internet relies on advertisement to work.
Some sites can introduce subscription fees and they can get out of it (I’d personally like that), some sites aren’t really sites but just optimising towards ad revenue (with all the shady practices that follow), but most produce valuable content for their users and rely on advertisement to sustain themselves.
So if we want to find a way to support that large center group, without enabling the crappy bottom tier, we have to make profiling safer. Well we don’t have to, we can dream of a safer, better world and try to bring it about by creating revolutions, but if we are practical, creating something that enables what the advertisement industry would like, without destroying what the users would like, is a far more realistic approach to making the world better.
Some folks here just want to ban ads outright, but don't stop to think what that would mean. The one that frightens me is what happens to the already crumbling news industry when they additionally lose all advertising revenue? And don't say subscriptions, because those won't come close to cutting it. Maybe a couple outlets like the Times could survive, but all the others are going under.
Exactly. There is a general need to destroy and rebuild a system but it is often dangerous and costly. Especially with regard to a system of laws and government. Improving the system more naturally is far more safe and more achievable at smaller scales.
Sometimes I just get tired of having to fight against software to have it behave in a semi-decent way. The same way you technically "can" run a decent windows installation after removing/disabling/blocking a ton of stuff, I don't really want a browser that can be trusted after you had to tinker with dozens of settings to just get back to basic non-intrusive behavior.
I said this in another thread on the same topic somewhere else, but considering user tracking as an inevitability that we have to accept means we've already lost on that front.
There’s an element of trust when you buy a product. You trust that the product itself isn’t malicious and is intended to help you in some way. E.g. “This food is safely prepared and won’t poison me.” Harvesting user data and advertising really violate that trust.
Though it is worth noting that we don’t buy web browsers. We simply use them for “free“.
Sadly, tracking is the only way to perform attribution without help from the browser. Tracking is terrible for privacy, because it gives companies detailed information about what you do online. While Firefox includes many privacy protections that make it more difficult for sites to track you online (Enhanced Tracking Protection, Total Cookie Protection, Query Parameter Stripping, and many other measures), there’s a huge incentive for sites to find ways around these in order to perform attribution.
Our hope is that if we develop a good attribution solution, it will offer a real alternative to more objectionable practices like tracking.
"Our hope is, that if we transfer the bank robber some of our money in advance, they'll not come in and rob all of it."
While I appreciate your sentiment, this just isn’t realistic in the current state of the world. First, you need to make these kind of tactics illegal enough to incarcerate a person. Second, you need to expand and enforce this law globally. We definitely need this level of global cooperation, but are also soooo far away from achieving it
I mean they don't have to literally jail advertisers (although I'd love that). I'd agree with hefty fines. Which, while not perfect, several EU laws have shown is possible unilaterally (e.g. Apple allowing third party app stores in the EU, albeit kicking and screaming).
I agree that it's a mountain to climb, but we sure won't reach the summit if we walk in the other direction.
The EU can't "save" the rest of the world alone, true. All I'm saying is it doesn't necessarily require the entire globe to cooperate to outlaw something just because it's on the Internet.
And that Mozilla scheme won't save you either.
Exactly. It sounds like Mozilla is trying to protect those that aren’t willing or able to protect themselves. It’s a noble reason to do just a little bit of evil. This is roughly the source of my mixed feelings on the subject.
Imagine a world where Chrome doesn't exist and instead Firefox + privacy preserving attribution is the default for all of the people who won't listen to your reasons why they shouldn't use chrome or say "I don't need privacy, I have nothing to hide".
It seems like Mozilla is trying to do the browser equivalent of shifting the overton window and I'm for that.
However I'll be monitoring them very very closely.
Honest question, why does the fediverse like firefox so much? This is not a common opinion to have on the internet, but everyone here and on mastodon seems to have it.
Here's the best part to that. Safari's back end is called WebKit. At one point in time it was considered best in class. It was also the backend for Chrome as well for awhile.
I'm not in favor of talking about the Fediverse like it is a data monopoly like META or reddit. Lots of people make this place work in operations and content. Seems not that cool to slam them.
Because it is FOSS and responsible for many great contributions to apis that make the web what it is. It has history that goes way back. It has been decently transparent, certainly when compared to its closest competitors. It isn’t Google. It has a massive library of extensions. They aren’t planning to deprecate manifest v2.
Don’t get me wrong, I also like other browsers and I’m looking forward to seeing what comes from the servo reboot. But Firefox is bread and butter and there is often drummed up nonsense about it.
Alternatively you can do the same through Settings -> Privacy & Security -> Website Advertising Preferences and uncheck "Allow websites to perform privacy-preserving ad measurement"
Yup, but that's already mentioned in the article. Thought I'd give people the exact userpref, so they can modify their custom user.js if they have one.
I think there is a big misunderstanding about this feature. People are throwing their arms up in disappointment but in reality this is a helpful feature for privacy.
This post doesn't even explain what the feature is or how it works. If you take the time to go read what the feature actually does, you'll see it's a good feature to have and it really does improve your privacy when you don't have an ad blocker.
Just because Meta participated doesn't mean it's bad. If they only participated as consultants to understand the advertisement system so they can better protect us against it, it's not bad.
blog.privacyguides.org
Oldest