- cross-posted to:
- privacy@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- privacy@lemmy.ml
Mozilla’s system only measures the success rate of ads—it doesn’t help companies target those ads—and it’s less susceptible to abuse, EFF’s Lena Cohen told @FastCompany@flipboard.com. “It’s much more privacy-preserving than Google’s version of the same feature.”
https://mastodon.social/@eff/112922761259324925
Privacy experts say the new toggle is mostly harmless, but Firefox users saw it as a betrayal.
“They made this technology for advertisers, specifically,” says Jonah Aragon, founder of the Privacy Guides website. “There’s no direct benefit to the user in creating this. It’s software that only serves a party other than the user.”
You must log in or register to comment.
This entire thing is just idealism vs pragmatism for the trillionth time. The idealists are mad because they think all ads are bad and we shouldn’t try to work with advertisers in any capacity. They do not believe reducing the harmfulness of ads is a valid approach, because that would be an acknowledgement of ads. Common talking points there are about how this is technically working with advertisers and how the internet shouldn’t have ads in the first place.
The pragmatics also think ads are bad, but believe that an Internet without ads is very unlikely to happen, so they believe attempting to reduce the harmfulness of ads is a valid approach. Common talking points there are about how this isn’t giving advertisers anything they don’t already have and about how this doesn’t matter if you’re using an adblocker.
Like all other debates of this type, this probably isn’t ever going to be resolved to anyone’s satisfaction and we’ve really just been seeing the same talking points over and over again since the beginning. So I hope y’all have fun duking it out, I don’t think I’m gonna bother looking at these pointless PPA threads anymore.
Wrong.
Not an idealist, I’m not even mad, just calling out the hypocrisy because Mozilla did this quietly, not telling us at all.
“I’m doing this for your benefit, but I’m not telling you about it”, where have we heard that before?
Save me from people “doing things for my benefit”.
Just so funny how you blatantly mis-charaterize this, even using pejoratives to label people who dislike Mozilla’s arguably adversarial approach.
And frankly, they had a chance to develop a fair balance over 20 years ago, and chose to say “fuck all the users” instead. And the website owners keep repeating this. Ok, fine, I will never stop blocking ads - they chose this battleground, not me.
To take your approach to making arguments: how’s the taste of boot today?
As a privacy enthusiast and pragmatist, I see Firefox as providing no additional benefit to users or advertisers. Considering the laughably small market share of Firefox, I’m not sure how it is expected to woo advertisers over either.
Which of these options look more robust: Google Topics, Mozilla PPA, or advertisers doing AB testing on their own by simply using different links for different audiences?
Method: PPA Topics Using different links Corporate creator Facebook Google - Needs users to trust 3rd party? Yes (Mozilla) Yes (Google) No ~% browsers it works on <3% >60% 100% Guaranteed privacy increase? No No No If you trust the advertiser, they can do it on their own. If you don’t trust the advertiser, then the additional third party does nothing.
This is a nonsense comparison as these features serve completely different purposes, while only having in common that advertisers currently use user tracking to achieve the same.
Topics data-mines your browsing history for information about your interests and reveals this information to advertisers in order to improve ad selection. It’s meant to replace ad networks tracking each individual user’s visits to connected websites and building that profile themselves. Since this is, in a way, much more powerful than tracking cookies, Chrome has a scary dialog asking for it to be enabled, and I don’t think we’ll be seeing it in Firefox. “Using different links” cannot replace user profiling at all.
PPA doesn’t provide any new capabilities to advertisers. It’s a privacy-preserving way of measuring ad campaign success that is currently done by ad networks tracking individual users from ad impressions to conversions. “Using different links” is also defective, as advertisers need to connect ad impressions to conversions even if they are not immediately connected through a click on the ad.
If these features become generally available, this reduces the leverage advertisers have on legislators to prevent tracking from being outlawed. Mozilla will be hoping Chrome picks up PPA.
You want to legislate telling companies which servers they are allowed to gather data from, making it into a de jure oligopoly rather than a de facto one?!
Where did I say that?
It’s not that the ad issue isn’t going to be solved, it’s that ads are here now and we have to deal with them.
They are going to be replaced by direct micro-payments eventually but the puzzle pieces have been slow to get into place (also Google and the whole ad industry haven’t been cooperating for obvious reasons).
One of the major hurdles was the [in]ability to make online payments of a fraction of a cent but the digital Euro aims to make that possible (among other things).
With that and support for direct micropayments implemented in the browser we’ll be able to give a web page owner that fraction of a cent they get from ads now but only IF we want to, and when we do that we cut out all the ad industry as middlemen.
Many of the non-pragmatists also see this as somehow leaking information about you to advertisers though, rather than only working together with advertisers in the first place. But nobody has been able to mention what an advertiser would be able to know about me.
(Yes, yes, there are also people for whom it is only about working together with advertisers - I’m not talking about you, so no need to let us know.)
Exactly, well said.
Getting shot in the feet is technically better than getting shot in the stomach, but is still a bad option.
The problem with PPA wasn’t anything to do with the method it uses. Given enough announcement, discourse and investigation by the community; it’s entirely possible that users in general would have accepted it.
However; Mozilla did something very wrong by deploying this without asking the greater community. Point blank. That’s not good faith; and that did not allow for the community to go over the code and suggest fixes and express their concerns with how it works.
Instead Mozilla took the lead and decided it will exist; quietly. Without consulting the community. Given that this is how most companies turn selfish, that alarms MANY people who are knowledgeable about how Mozilla typically operates, and it undermines public trust in Mozilla.
There’s a lot of people that trust the privacy guides website and yet the founder is just spewing emotional bullshit that’s not even grounded in facts. A bunch of smart people can see the benefit to the average end user and then Jonah is putting out bullshit. I’m disappointed in him and privacy guides.
What in his statement was incorrect?
That there’s no direct benefit to the user.
I think a reasonable person would say better ad-tracking does not provide a direct benefit to a user.
The argument is that better ad-tracking means that companies such as mozilla can make money from advertisements while providing “better” privacy then the cookies/fingerprinting everywhere model.
That is a indirect benefit for the user. If they don’t use the new ad-tracking how does their experience change? Not at all. So any benefits are down the line.
I think a reasonable person would say better ad-tracking does not provide a direct benefit to a user.
That’s not a reasonable person. That’s an ignorant conspiracy theorist whose reality is grounded in delusion because right now advertisers take what they want and what they can get and the average user is depending on the browser to pay whack-a-mole with the invasive privacy tech they build and it’s not sustainable.
The argument is that better ad-tracking means that companies such as mozilla can make money from advertisements while providing “better” privacy then the cookies/fingerprinting everywhere model.
There has never been a suggestion that Mozilla is planning to monetize PPA for themselves.
That is a indirect benefit for the user. If they don’t use the new ad-tracking how does their experience change? Not at all. So any benefits are down the line.
The benefit is that it’s better than what we have now.
Since I think of myself as a reasonable person, and I agree with what said by the privacy guides editor, that means I’m also a “ignorant conspiracy theorist” and I may be just conspiring about my ignorance but I don’t appreciate being devalued as such.
Mozilla purchased a advertisement company… that’s a pretty strong step towards monetization.
One has nothing to do with another, since the other person replied with logical fallacies, I’ll point out that you’re using a false cause. Regarding your feeling devalued when you bandwagon and push a false narrative in order to assist in manufacturing outrage is on you.
And for the record, reasonable people stick to the facts, they don’t pull random bits of information to support theories with zero standing.
Ah, yes, ad-hom people you disagree with, that’s always a compelling argument.
Maybe you should learn how much we’re actively tracked today before making your claims.
I highly recommend “Taking Control of Your Personal Data” by prof. Jennifer Golbeck, published by The Teaching Company, ISBN:978-1629978390, likely available at your local library as a DVD or streaming.
A lovely bit of tu quoque in the afternoon! 🤤
That’s not a reasonable person. That’s an ignorant conspiracy theorist whose reality is grounded in delusion because right now advertisers take what they want and what they can get and the average user is depending on the browser to pay whack-a-mole with the invasive privacy tech they build and it’s not sustainable.
I’m afraid actually you are the ignorant corporate worshipper, whose reality is grounded in delusion, because ad tech companies will not ever stop using their already researched tracking and targeting techniques. For one, they have spent a lot of money on that research, the results are earning them a lot of money, and the business model of all of them is based on infinite growth, like cancer, so they’ll never stop using those techniques to switch to something inferior in their eyes.
You won’t be able to force them with legislation either. They’ll either find loopholes, make the loopholes, or just pay the small fines for the few cases they’ll receive, in any case treating the costs as the cost of business because it is still very profitable.Parasites cannot be believed, if you have forgot.
There has never been a suggestion that Mozilla is planning to monetize PPA for themselves.
I think the user was speculating that Mozilla might want to embed ads in Firefox with this tech, or on their support and other websites.
The benefit is that it’s better than what we have now.
Saying this is like accepting a new form of tax from a government that’s widely known to be (monetarily) corrupt, in the hopes that with it they’ll be content and will stop stealing and privatizing public money.
As the other comment mentioned, it’s about caring about principles in theory vs. real-world effect. He still says that you should use Firefox (with some tweaks - installing uBlock Origin is the most important one, of course) if you want the most privacy-friendly browser, but I’m sure his ruckus will have caused people to just give up and stay with Chrome too.
I don’t think that PG’s and EFF’s standpoints are incompatible.
PG says this is not private.
EFF says this is better than google’s solution.
Being better than google’s solution does not mean that it’s now private.
The biggest issue I have with this is that it is opt out
Wouldn’t be a very useful metric if no one had it on lol
At least they could have popped up a dialogue saying it existed, like Google Chrome does.
Insult to injury, Mozilla posted an excuse to Reddit that said that they didn’t want to confuse users with too many pop-ups. This is the same company that would pop up messages reminding you that they were blocking trackers, or saying you should change your browser…
That is a very anticonsumer and user freedom mentality.
Sure but it’s the reason why
Other big issue is they didn’t consult the Open source community. They could’ve been just straight with us and told us that donations aren’t cutting it and then community as a whole could’ve come up with something to monetize. And even if it ends up being advertising they could’ve worked with community to implement in such a way that it would respect the try reason why most people switch to Firefox to escape Google’s surveillance. And maybe I can stop daydreaming about an utopia
It was never about money. This feature isn’t and was never going to make Mozilla one cent.
It’s about reducing the leverage advertisers have on legislators when it comes to the measurements necessary to operate effective ad campaigns. The hope is that with privacy-preserving methods available, privacy-violating measurement can be more easily outlawed.
I think we would have arrived at the very same feature.