“Last month, Mozilla made a quiet change in Firefox that caused some diehard users to revolt…”
The counter argument is that all ads are bad and that we should create an Internet whereby ads don’t exist. Reality says that ads aren’t going anywhere. So rather than let them do what they want with invasive privacy tracking, it’s best to ring fence advertisers and give them enough actionable data to appease. Now you may be thinking, we don’t negotiate with terrorists! But you do, it happens all the time. In this case, it’s giving advertisers enough to leave innocent people alone. As for the not so innocent (people like me and you that run adblockers), this never affected us. People that run adblockers and are upset about this were just trying to manufacture outrage because for whatever reason, they feel that unless Mozilla does that they want exactly, they’re unhappy.
Just to be clear, and I’m probably oversimplifying, this is essentially a bunch of counters, user batch pressed ads on pages about _______ that was above the fold. So advertisers see ads on _____ site got __ impressions and was about _____ placement was above the fold and generated __ hits.
Smarter people that me have explained it in more and exact detail where as I’m just painting a vague picture of a concept to try and convey things.
imo we’re all lacking innocence, regardless of using adblockers or not. we all, myself included, haven’t funded mozilla fairly for FF.
even if viewing ads for a website was an ethically sound exchange (in principle? probably achievable; in modern implementations? highly debatable),
regardless, that revenue is naturally for the sites not for the browser. maintaining a modern browser requires non-trivial resources, alot of us get hours/day from our browsers, advertisers are getting paid, and meanwhile ff has been missing out.
i could be wrong, but my gut feeling is mozilla is (mostly) a legit organisation with genuine good interests at heart. and if we’d all donated even a fraction of what its genuinely worth, they probably wouldn’t have to make these kinds of faustian deals.
giving advertisers enough to leave innocent people alone
I think this is very optimistic, the ad industry has virtually zero incentive to play fairly here. afaict they’ve currently got it far too good to have any genuine motivation to make concessions?
if i had to guess, one of the biggest actual threats on their horizon is somehow maintaining s̶u̶f̶f̶i̶c̶i̶e̶n̶t̶ infinite growth, which is further reason for them to NOT be satisfied with an equivalent or lesser scope than they already have right now.
imo its not a matter if but when it will be discovered meta’s behaved in bad faith here. i could be wrong, and hopefully i am because it would ofc philosophically be a step in the right direction.
if we’d all donated even a fraction of what its genuinely worth, they probably wouldn’t have to make these kinds of faustian deals
That’s wrong. The creation of PPA isn’t about getting paid, it’s about trying to safeguard the privacy of the average (non tech savvy) user. I don’t understand where this suggestion that this is a means for Mozilla to syphon money, comes from.
That’s wrong. The creation of PPA isn’t about getting paid
ok that’s fair, thanks for the useful info i didn’t know that. until money or other resources change hands i’m happy to withdraw the view that while firefox is underfunded by the community, it may not have resulted in these kinds of collaborations.
what i’m not understanding is how average non-adblock running users will be better off?
i appreciate you’ve stated how the sole purpose of this collaboration is intended by mozilla.
yet unlike the current implementation which appears to be opt-out, afaict meta’s particpation here is entirely opt-in, isn’t it? if meta etc decide on a whim they want to have their cake and eat it too, what is stopping them?
we should create an Internet whereby ads don’t exist
I think the main issue with that approach is that it is not commercially sustainable without an alternative source of revenue… and I really don’t think people are going to pay money to every website they visit.
Or maybe you are one of the people who consider a capitalist society fundamentally broken and that there is no solution to make that method work long-term. Not saying anyone is right or wrong, and I don’t presume to have any answers there either.
