cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/23894598

Despite its emphasis on protecting privacy, Mozilla is moving towards integrating ads, backed by new infrastructure from their acquisition of Anonym. They claim this will maintain a balance between user control and online ad economics, using privacy-preserving tech. However, this shift appears to contradict Mozilla’s earlier stance of protecting users from invasive advertising practices, and it signals a change in their priorities.

38 points

Gotta pay the bills somehow, and I’m just happy they care about privacy.

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54 points
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I dislike ads as much as the next person, and find uBlock Origin necessary for browsing the web, but the cold fact is that the internet is run with advertising, whether you like it or not.

If that is done without creating a profile on me, and without crippling the reading/viewing experience, I can tolerate advertisement.

I assume this is also an action towards becoming independent from Google funding; which is a good thing.

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15 points

Happy to see some sane comments here. Couldn’t have said it better. You can hate ads and still keep a foot in reality.

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4 points

I choose to keep both feet firmly planted in unreality.

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8 points
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I absolute despise ads but they are a necessary evil, it can be implemented well if it is not done intrusive and doesn’t take up more space then the content it self. Also if it are mostly scam ads and such they might as well not have ads at all.

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12 points

The internet is run with egress contracts. The web is run with ads.

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6 points

Okay bud. Have a biscuit 🍪

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0 points
Deleted by creator
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6 points

?? What? Bird law got nothin to do with the web you crazy

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0 points

Fuck ads.

You’re lying to yourself if you think ads will ever be delivered without tracking.

This whole “anonymization” nonsense is a lie. It’s been shown, repeatedly, that data can be de-anonymised, especially data that’s not exactly narrowly collected.

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70 points

A bit disingenuous to call explaining what they’re doing as doubling down.

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69 points

Also disingeneous to call it adding ads to firefox, because that’s also not what is happening. They’re trying to replace cookies with something better for our privacy, and them developing this feature will not impact any users who block ads or disable tracking cookies already.

I think they should go ahead and make the feature so that people who don’t care about ads at least don’t get tracked.

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7 points
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They are not trying to “replace” cookies. This is effectively adding yet another way to track users. Sure, may not be as invasive as cookies, but this does nothing to remove or modify them either.

Then there’s the fact thay they deployed this behind the scenes and did not mention it until they were called out.

This comment alone:

“As part of this work, we are also committing to being transparent and open about our intent and plans prior to launching tests or features.”

… means they have no intention to be honest about shit.

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11 points

It doesn’t track users. It collects anonymous statistics and assign them to a unique ID without storing any other information about the user.

And it IS meant to replace cookies, but you can’t just replace them all at once and disable the legacy cookies. It is going to have a gradual transition.

And they did tell us about this many months ago.

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1 point

Didn’t we go through all this like a month ago?

Why are people still excusing Mozilla for this?

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2 points

disingeneous to call it adding ads

Who called it adding

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-1 points

So banning ublock origin lite from the addon store was malice, after all?

That means they will drop MV2 as soon as Chrome ends the business/legacy support, since they were the alternative.

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18 points

I think the ublock origin lite thing was a legitimate mistake, though I understand Mozilla’s depleting benefit of the doubt.

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6 points

THe developer also don’t want to develop uBLock Origin Lite. Mozilla is sucking all energy out of people.

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3 points
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of course they don’t want, it’s such an inferior addon that it’s almost useless for privacy. it’s little besides just visually hiding ads. but that’s the best that can be done on chrome

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1 point

I’m very happy that I moved to Floorp.

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7 points

No idea what’s that but it sounds… sticky.

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2 points
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Here ya go! it’s a Japanese fork of FF that’s more focused on privacy. I prefer Librewolf personally but it’s good to have options I guess.

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1 point

I just… I… I can’t install a browser that’s called “Floorp”. I just cant. I wouldn’t be able to look another person in the eyes and tell them that “I use floorp”. It’s probably a perfectly good fork of Firefox, but I just can’t.

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-14 points
Removed by mod
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15 points

I have a suspicion you were downvoted for your view on women, not Mozilla

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-7 points

in the previous topic they downvoted

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