Mozilla Welcomes Anonym: Privacy Preserving Digital Advertising | The Mozilla Blog
blog.mozilla.org
Mozilla has acquired Anonym, a trailblazer in privacy-preserving digital advertising. This strategic acquisition enables Mozilla to help raise the bar for
  •  drspod   ( @drspod@lemmy.ml ) 
    36•14 days ago

    I’ve been using Firefox since the beginning, before that Mozilla, and before that Netscape Navigator.

    But I think it’s finally time to switch to Librewolf.

    I don’t want digital advertising of any kind, even if my privacy is “preserved” through fancy data-laundering.

  •  jet   ( @jet@hackertalks.com ) English
    26•14 days ago

    Here’s how it works:

    • Secure Environment: Data sets are matched in a highly secure environment, ensuring advertisers, publishers, and Anonym don’t access any user level data.
    • Anonymized Analytics: The process results in anonymized insights and models, helping advertisers measure and improve campaign performance while safeguarding consumer privacy.
    • Differential Privacy Algorithms: These algorithms add “noise” to the data, protecting it from being traced back to individual users.

    Okay. It’s still boils down to give us all the data and trust us. But hopefully they’re more trustworthy than other people, and not corrupted by influence and money like other humans are?

    By combining Mozilla’s scale and trusted reputation with Anonym’s cutting-edge technology, we can enhance user privacy and advertising effectiveness, leveling the playing field for all stakeholders.

    I was surprised they said they’re so explicitly, but yeah they’re trying to monetize the Mozilla reputation for things that I’m not sure stick to their core philosophy

    •  jet   ( @jet@hackertalks.com ) English
      18•14 days ago

      To me, this only makes sense if it’s integrated advertising in the browser. Trying to get third party websites to use their advertising network probably will be a very difficult sale.

      It could be a way of greenwashing, or whatever the expression is for privacy washing, businesses like meta, Google, by letting them license a “privacy friendly” advertisement platform.

      As far as I’m aware, there’s only two major online advertising platforms, meta and Google. So breaking in is a third platform would be difficult, unless they could integrate into apps directly through Mozilla’s app footprint

      https://www.anonymco.com/

      driving advertising performance requires privacy-enhancing approaches to data driven marketing. Anonym’s privacy preserving solutions allow you to take full advantage of your data assets.

      Fundamentally, privacy and data-driven marketing are diametrically opposed

    •  neo   ( @neo@lemy.lol ) 
      5•14 days ago

      Basically I see two options:

      1. This works for advertisers and based on your “profile” you are strongly influenced by the ads shown to you. So might just as well give your data to Meta and Google, who already sell profiled (and not individualised) ads.

      2. This doesn’t work for advertisers and you are not strongly influence by the ads shown to you. So the advertisers could just as well put a link somewhere and hope it is found by their target audience.

      Also I don’t my browser, my OS or any other core component on my system to be in bed with people who are trying to extract as much money as possible from me.

  •  CalcProgrammer1   ( @CalcProgrammer1@lemmy.ml ) 
    16•14 days ago

    Mozilla is going to absolute shit lately. Partnering with a fucking ad network? You’ve got to be kidding me. Firefox is still the better browser, but it’s time to abandon Firefox proper for forks that get rid of Mozilla’s bullshit. I have been using Librewolf for a while and unlike Firefox, it’s not adware.

  •  Unskilled5117   ( @Unskilled5117@feddit.de ) 
    10•14 days ago

    While there are a lot of critics of this, ask yourself: for how many services and apps you use (e.g. messenger, cloud storage, email, operating system, web browser…) are you willing to pay recurrently? If that answer is not for every single one of them, then this move is the answer.

    The internet desperately needs a way to fund things and advertising seems to be the only viable solution on a bigger scale. And I don’t think that there is anyone better suited than mozilla for the job of pushing a privacy respecting way of doing so. Sure this needs to be done the right way, but they should be given the benefit of the doubt.

    And this doesn’t mean that everything needs to be cluttered with ads. You could still pay a bit to remove them.

    Even if the answer to the question above was yes, consider the masses. Other people might not care enough/have the same awareness about privacy to pay, but they could gain a lot with this. Consider people in less fortunate circumstances monetary wise. Don’t they deserve privacy if they can’t afford to pay for services?

    •  neo   ( @neo@lemy.lol ) 
      10•14 days ago

      There are radio stations, financed through ads. And they check if people are listening by calling random persons to ask them what station they are listening to.

      So this is a viable business model and nobody is stopping anybody from putting plain pictures and links on sites and just estimate the page visits, but online advertisers want to know more. They always want more.

      At the same time, a browser is the essential software to browse the web. So this is as if your TV was like:

      Yo, many people mute their TV during commercials and don’t pay attention, which kills the poor networks. So I made a deal with advertisers and will check what your doing, while I provide unmutable ads , but don’t worry, your privacy is very important to us and we only care about providing to you the best TV experience possible.

      •  Unskilled5117   ( @Unskilled5117@feddit.de ) 
        4•14 days ago

        So do i understand it correctly, that ads are ok for you, but not targeted ads, because the advertisers always want to know more? Then that seems to be what mozilla is trying to achieve here: to limit what advertisers can know about you.

        The technology for targeted ads are already in place, this could be an alternative that preserves more privacy than current ad networks.

  •  GolfNovemberUniform   ( @GolfNovemberUniform@lemmy.ml ) 
    10•14 days ago

    Data anonymization is a good thing. If websites start using this solution instead of Google ads that’d be quite good. Well better than Google at least. But people seem to be afraid of ads getting added into Firefox. If it happens it will be a ticking bomb because the hunger for data and profit will rise every day.