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.
I believe in “privacy preserving legislation” when I actually see it work. Legislation is Theory-Space, and quite often has no connection to online reality, as the net is international, but laws are not.
I, too, would like to ban ads, but banning them by law will not work unless it is an international law without any holes. Sadly, forcing advertisers into a less invasive mode and make them just rely on the firefox-defined technology is just as illusionary.
But the bottom line is that tech like this, that gives them the minimum they need without extra, is a hard prerequisite to any such laws even being genuinely considered. It’s easy to disable, and doesn’t give any extra information on default use case users because of all the other tracking. Advanced users who block that can block this easily. There’s no real downside.
There’s no legitimately plausible path to just banning their data collection without allowing for attribution of transactions. It won’t happen.
Banning them in the US or the EU would have a huge impact, because it would preclude businesses that operate in those countries legitimately from participating in the market for those countries. But it isn’t something that’s going to happen.
We’ve been collaborating with Meta on this, because any successful mechanism will need to be actually useful to advertisers, and designing something that Mozilla and Meta are simultaneously happy with is a good indicator we’ve hit the mark.
Oh, truly? Facebook happy with something that somehow respects people’s privacy and integrity? Perhaps instead it just shows that Mozilla is slipping. Because they have been, and at this rate it seems like they won’t stop. Sad to see.
There is a toggle to turn it off because some people object to advertising irrespective of the privacy properties, and we support people configuring their browser however they choose.
That’s not good enough. If this thing needs to be present, the option should be there to toggle on, not off. I don’t opt-in to privacy in my bathroom or bedroom, the privacy is mine by default. I don’t have to announce to the world that I don’t want it peeking in.
If this thing needs to be present, the option should be there to toggle on, not off.
This is my takeaway in general. The idea of this sounds fine, but the fact that they opted everyone into this experiment is really stupid considering a huge chunk of people use Firefox are privacy-conscious and care deeply about this stuff.
Isn’t privacy invasion (ie, cookies) already ON by default? What’s the difference?
Cookies have non-infringing uses, like identifying you to Lemmy’s Web interface so that you can post from your account with the settings you’ve chosen for it. Problem is, even sites where they have a proper purpose don’t set them at the appropriate time (as part of the login process, or when you first add something to your shopping cart for ecommerce sites).
Ad tracking has absolutely no uses that benefit the user, unless they’re the type of weirdo who actually clicks on ads voluntarily, which I’d guess is less than 1% of the population. Those people can use the opt-in toggle if they want.
Honestly?
Yes, it is shitty. But if you at all care about privacy you should be monitoring your software anyway. You never know when a previously “good” companies will do something you disagree with
Yes, it is shitty. But if you at all care about privacy you should be monitoring your software anyway.
That’s only the case because privacy isn’t the default, and it should be. Privacy is something that’s been taken from us. I think people that don’t want to learn or care much about privacy are still entitled to it.
Do we think anyone would actually opt in?
I’m not saying you’re wrong, just that making it opt-in is probably seen in this case as equivalent to throwing the entire feature in the trash.
You’re probably right, and that’s precisely the point. They’re wasting time and resources on something no one wants.
Seems like a worthy experiment to me. I’ll be leaving it turned on, for now.
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.
Can I import all my Firefox saved logins and whatnot on librewolf?
Also: What browser can I use on iOS?
I probably need to just take the plunge and start using an actual password manager. Just seems so daunting.
Thanks for the reply.
